There was enough witchy hunty goodness there to turn my mind back to the adventures of Finn Moone, which I'd been thinking about in the interim but figured I finally had enough material to post regarding, for the first time in, shoot, four months? Three, I suppose. A quarter of a year, on a blog that had initially been supposed to be daily. But we saw how well daily blogging worked out for me last year... I could probably get this back up to weekly again, or even tri-weekly, like I'd toyed with as an idea in my DVD post The M/W/F Supremacy.
why'd I stop for so long?
I realized that I didn't know nearly enough about the characters as I'd needed to, to actually have anything completed all within NaNoWriMo. There's a particular agent (asset) crucial to the plot of the story, with some crazy hinky magical powers even crucialer to the plot of the story, but, the powers are kind of incongruous, and I don't know how to justify them in-universe, but I just know that out there there's some creature from world folklore that perfectly matches what this guy needs to be. If only I could find it. It would require a ton of sifting, and a ton of research, and as long as I'm researching folklore and magic stuff, I might as well be researching HUMINT and espionage stuff...
the jeopardy perilous
But, The Last Witch Hunter, as I was saying. This gives me an outlet to express some thoughts I've been having, conversations with myself as I've been walking to and from the store and stuff this week. Kalder is immortal, cursed with the inability to die by the Queen Witch, even though it'd be kind of nice to die since his wife and daughter are dead (he's managed to suppress his emotions regarding that event, but of course the plot of the movie requires him to confront those emotions and memories again directly.) A major criticism of the film is that if Kalder is immortal throughout (most of!) it, we never feel like we're in too much jeopardy, no matter how much bad scary crap is going down around him.
Which leads to my recent thoughts on jeopardy:
- We go into a movie theater with expectations. If we're going into a light-hearted romantic comedy, we expect all the characters to be mortal, but we don't expect them to die. We're invested, but not because of the characters' physical vulnerabilities.
- Superman's greatest weakness isn't kryptonite. Kryptonite is the writers' greatest weakness. Superman fights, but he does it for truth, justice, and the American way. Those things conflict with each other far more often than Superman can be placed into physical danger, and yet the writers cram Kryptonite down our throats like it's the only thing that could give a Big Blue Boyscout emotional depth.
- The Last Witch Hunter puts Kalder in psychological danger a bunch (especially in regard to the above-mentioned memory confrontation scenes,) trying to rectify the "boring invincible hero guy" problem. Physical danger is easier to film than psychological, though, so the psychological peril isn't really played up as much as it should be and so to the audience it still doesn't feel very dangerous, no matter what happens.
meet Chandler (but without Zootopia watch/review this time)
Finnegan Michael Moone is basically invincible, at least against danger that's supernatural rather than ordinary, which, well hey who'd'a guessed, describes 99% of the danger he gets caught up in. And randomly at that, so it's more of a distraction from the plot than something that would directly string it along, by conventional logic. The idea of such random assault, though, is based on Chandler's Law, wherein Raymond Chandler would, if he'd written himself into a corner, have someone burst through the door with a gun out of nowhere and bingo, plot advanced.
It works for Chandler because Marlowe is mortal, physically vulnerable to attack. With Finn Moone, we need to use Truth, Justice, and the American Way-level logic, if the peril is to be real instead of a fairly amusing running gag. Which, you know, it can be, if we want it. The audience needs to know right off the bat, though, that danger can be more than a diversion. It's an inherently funny idea, but comedy's not comedy at all if it doesn't take something seriously. Audiences invest in what the characters invest in; in order to make Finn Moone not boring we simply need something that he cares about that can be placed in real peril by his fake peril. Like the good of the mission. or something. Finn's victories must simply always be "yes, but," because (unless he chooses to lose, which is his right) they can never be "no, and."
Finnegan Michael Moone is basically invincible, at least against danger that's supernatural rather than ordinary, which, well hey who'd'a guessed, describes 99% of the danger he gets caught up in. And randomly at that, so it's more of a distraction from the plot than something that would directly string it along, by conventional logic. The idea of such random assault, though, is based on Chandler's Law, wherein Raymond Chandler would, if he'd written himself into a corner, have someone burst through the door with a gun out of nowhere and bingo, plot advanced.
It works for Chandler because Marlowe is mortal, physically vulnerable to attack. With Finn Moone, we need to use Truth, Justice, and the American Way-level logic, if the peril is to be real instead of a fairly amusing running gag. Which, you know, it can be, if we want it. The audience needs to know right off the bat, though, that danger can be more than a diversion. It's an inherently funny idea, but comedy's not comedy at all if it doesn't take something seriously. Audiences invest in what the characters invest in; in order to make Finn Moone not boring we simply need something that he cares about that can be placed in real peril by his fake peril. Like the good of the mission. or something. Finn's victories must simply always be "yes, but," because (unless he chooses to lose, which is his right) they can never be "no, and."
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