Dear Marvel, Stop Trying To End The World

marvel you need to stop making movies where the world is about to end you've made this mistake far too many times now so please let eternals be your last this is an issue because when a marvel movie says this big threat is going to end the world you've spoiled your own movie simply by having that be the plot because the audience knows you aren't going to destroy earth not when no way home is coming out in a few months and it's a safe bet you aren't killing spider-man off-screen before then as well as you know nearly the entirety of the mcu's cast as well every time i see a marvel movie and then there's this big info dump where a character is told that everyone on earth will die and then the character says everyone on earth will die my investment in the story just plummets and i imagine that's case for a lot of you guys too as because of this we're now going into the climax knowing with 100 percent certainty the villain's plan will fail and as a result it makes for predictable storytelling and as a general rule the more predictable a story is the more boring it gets even as we see that celestial rise out of the ocean in eternals even when humanity is literally minutes away from extinction we just can't bring ourselves to care or we might care about the characters their relationships and their fates granted but the world itself ending like the main plot not a chance why should we care when we know how it's going to end despite the fact we've never seen the film before films like iron man winter soldier civil war and black panther those films are marvel at its best because the stakes are so much more toned down thus it feels like the villain could actually win they even do sometimes and that adds a certain unpredictability to the story and that uncertainty increases the overall tension making the movie more riveting and entertaining but look at black widow for example while i did not like that movie as my previous video essay explores in far more detail one thing that film did do right was how the story stakes are at the perfectly right level especially for a standalone hero story there are no countries about to fall from the sky no dark hell was about to massacre all humanity it's really about a woman wanting closure and reconnecting with her estranged family black widow was not a good movie but in the same breath i'm compelled to say it stories exactly like this that the mcu needs more of and it's large scoped absurdly high-stakes ones like eternals that it needs less of now world-ending threats are totally fine to do in fiction provided that you do them right if you look at game of thrones for example as we see the white walkers slowly grow in power as our characters try and fail to thwart them the audience feels so much dread not just because they're terrifying which they are but because it's believable that they might overrun westeros and kill all the characters we've come to love or you know at least that was the case back when the show was actually good danny kind of forgot about the iron fleet we need to find euron greyjoy's fleet and sink it no we are not going there do not get me startled on game of thrones because then we'll be here for the next three hours but if you want to have a world ending threat you can do that but in order for it to work well the audience must acknowledge it's possible that the world might end this isn't rocket science in order for a story to have stakes the audience must believe what's at stake might be lost and if you fail to pull that off even if what's at stake is the earth itself your story might as well have no stakes at all although there is an important caveat to mention here if you're doing an end of the world story where your audience is savvy enough to realize that this threat won't come to pass that still can make for a great story but it's essential that the world ending is not where you derive your story stakes you can totally have this world ending threat be your inciting incident let's say what makes your characters team up and go on their quest however you should also realize that the world ending is not going to generate even the slightest bit of interest from your audience so permanently keep it in the background double down on other things uh character relationships having a really good arc for your protagonist have some subplots that could end in tragedy or victory so there's uncertainty right there and that generates some great engagement and ultimately ensure that your climax is not about the world about to end rather make something else the focus entirely one novel approach you can take to this is to totally shatter the conventions like how spider-man far from home did it and you can say the world is sadly going to end because of these spooky elementals oh no it's sad the world's about to end but at the midpoint you shatter the audience's expectations and reveal that the protagonist was lied to he's been bamboozled along with the audience these elementals were a fake threat the world was never in jeopardy and from here on the movie is all about something else entirely that movie had big balls for completely subverting the traditional superhero formula and they pulled off pretty well if you ask me but honestly on this whole issue a really interesting film to look at is shangshi now to give credit shangshi is honestly a pretty good movie partly because the action scenes are great but mostly because the character work it's just fantastic it's it's some of the best character work we've seen in the mcu and the relationship between shang shi and his dad like oh chef's kissing that was great writing however this movie still falls for the same issue eternals did stopping it from realizing its true potential because the big threat in the end the big climax it's all about shangshi's dad trying to unleash a world-ending magic dragon that eats people's souls it's left kind of vague but it's heavily implied that if this monster breaks free billions of people maybe even all of humanity will have their souls eaten and the moment we hear that exposition a good chunk of the audience chuckles in their head and thinks [Music] like that's ever gonna happen one popular opinion i've noticed that's really interesting here is how most people say they loved shanxi that they loved every bit of it that was until the father died in the climax and everything after felt like a generic uncompelling cgi punch-up isn't it interesting that once the dad dies the climax suddenly becomes way less compelling and why is that it's simply because now the main and frankly only plot line most of the audience really cared about has been resolved the movie now has the same amount of stakes you'd find in a vegan restaurant because this is shangshi's origin story he ain't gonna die like we aren't afraid for his life and we know the earth is going to be fine for obvious reasons and so while shangshi's fighting the apocalyptic spooky dragon it's brought down by the damning question why should we care again this reinforces what i said you totally can have a world-ending threat in a small-scale mcu movie you've just got to make sure it's always in the background and is never the main focus at any point because if that's so your audience's engagement with the film will lapse uh but don't get me wrong shang shi was a genuinely good movie because while the main plot of the story did fall short in the end the relationships between the characters really picked up the slack this is part of the reason why i think shangshi's third act is just outright more entertaining than eternals is was not just because eternals has that subplot of the sentient monster that's given a lot of setup and then exactly bugger rule payoff but because while both climaxes are held back by this exact same flaw shanxi in my highly subjective opinion had a much better built-up relationship with his dad meaning there's a reason to care a catharsis for us to have meanwhile with the eternals they instead have icarus be the big baddie they're fighting and while i hesitate to say the team's dynamic with him was bad because it wasn't really bad per se it wasn't so well built up that it could carry the whole weight of the film's climax on its back but my big point i'm building up to is that with shangshi while the ending was fine it could have been so much better it could have resonated so much more powerfully in the end if the movie had instead told a more intimate story where the movie is about nothing else but the relationship between shangshi's family as they deal with grief for their lost mother while still doing it in a way where it has the essence of a superhero origin story that would have been a better way to execute that movie but a common sentiment around shangshi is it's a great movie that's let down by the fact it's forcing itself to adhere to the mcu formula and that's something i totally agree with but what's interesting here and what simply has to be brought up is when you ask around what people's favorite x-men film is a lot of people will say it's logan but when you stop and think about it logan is a total departure from every previous x-men movie it could not go more against the grain the movie is so much more grim and it's easily the lowest stake story in that entire franchise yet it's probably x-men's most beloved and most emotional movie that can't be a coincidence marvel i know you want to sustain a very specific style a very standardized formula for each of your movies to follow and that strategy isn't exactly a losing one as your box office numbers do show but it's also a flawed strategy one with room for improvement it's flawed for the aforementioned reasons but also because you're being too rigid creatively as some of your stories were genuinely better off with a smaller scale with something more personal more intimate shangxi being an obvious standout here if any marvel executives happen to be watching you can still have grand epic scope stories with avengers level threats but when you do them it is utterly essential that the stakes are believable a great example is infinity war well i imagine a few people have typed in the comments already before they finished the video saying but what about infinity war henry the stakes were really high then but it was still a great film but that film fits quite seamlessly into my whole argument because it actually proves my point because admittedly while the audience did go into the film thinking thanos can't really kill half of all life that will never happen they've surely got to stop him at some point as the film goes along we gradually realize oh crap no no no thanos might actually pull this one off he might actually win and the tension the dread it only grows as more and more heroes fail to stop him as he collects more stones and grows in power over time and it culminates in that final march towards vision that just had everybody at the edge of their seats isn't it interesting how thanos's final march where he takes out captain america and his team it's so gripping it's so immersive so anxiety-inducing meanwhile with shangshi and his world-ending magic dragon who knows how many billions are about to die and we're just slumped back in our seats not really giving much of a damn why is that i think the reason why is because infinity war was pretty much the climax of the whole mcu at the time a story so big of such importance that the audience kind of expects something totally different they expect major characters to be killed for terrible things to happen that may permeate throughout all future movies while the world literally ending like as the main stakes of avengers films is still a little too high for example in age of ultron it's got to be said that with avengers films they've got quite a bit more leeway here would you just generally when it comes to high stakes threats and not just because they need to have high stakes because let's be honest they're avengers films but also by the very nature of them being these massive events these nexus points for the franchise the audience just has far less of a clue as to how things might end and that generates a certain uncertainty that standalone films like shangshi or black widow could simply never have and that uncertainty generates tension which again makes for a great story and i just want to say i love making these youtube videos it's the best job in the world but it doesn't come without its troubles not only can i have pretty much any of my videos blocked copyright striked or demonetized at any time but the algorithm is often loving creator one second and then they drop them on a whim the next imagine if your boss was hal from 2001 right and he's a cold robot that rewards you if you're doing well but the second your numbers are down he cuts you off and checks you out of the airlock and doesn't feel a thing as it ruins your livelihood when i say it like that it sounds a bit like a ridiculous metaphor it's a little lighthearted but i've seen it happen and i i have seen creators livelihoods ruined because the algorithm basically just deemed them unworthy but it's not all doom and gloom because myself and over a hundred other youtubers like h bomber guy hello future me just right nando v movies legal eagle wendover and like so many names that you've probably heard of we've all come together and we've come up with a solution and it's called nebula youtube has a monopoly on the video sharing space nebula is here to change that basically the idea of nebula is you the viewer sign up for a really low fee like so cheap it's ridiculous and then you can watch all of your favorite creators in an ad-free experience no annoying unskippable ads no brand deals getting in the middle of your videos and a major chunk of your subscription fee gets given to the creators you watch based on how long you watch them and what really sweetens the deal here is nebula's joined up with curiosity stream which is a great streaming service with thousands of high quality documentaries some of which involving david attenborough which i greatly enjoyed and they're doing a joint subscription it means that if you click my link in the description for 14.79 a year you can get access to nebula and in doing so directly support your favorite creators and on top of that for just on the house you get full access to curiosity stream and if you haven't checked out sherlock holmes against conan doyle yet i thoroughly recommend it because it's a fascinating breakdown of the iconic sherlock holmes character and how he was created that one's a great start for all you writers out there and you can watch it only on curiosity stream so make sure that's the first thing you check out when you click my link in the description and get two for one on these two great streaming services today anyway thanks for watching keep writing and i'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,318,155

Keywords: the closer look, the closer, closer look, video essay, video, essay, the eternals, eternals, marvel, mcu, shang chi, shang, disney, how to, writing

Id: v5S60IWQvM8

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022