How To Write Great Magic — No Way Home, Harry Potter & God of War

what do spider-man no way home harry potter and the chamber of secrets and 2018's god of war all have in common the answer is magic obviously as soon as you've read the title but there's a specific aspect of magic that these three examples pull off exceptionally well it is a quality that is almost never talked about yet i firmly believe it is the single most compelling way to use magic in a story it has nothing to do with power escalation or whether the system's hard or soft the things that come up all the time when writers talk about magic it's instead well we'll get there in a moment but today i'm not just defending fantasy i'm breaking down how fantasy has an incredible edge over every other genre and what is this edge well spider-man no way home knocks this out of the park if you haven't seen it the movie starts with spider-man's identity being made public he hates the consequences of that so he sees doctor strange for help who then casts the spell to make sure that everyone in the world forgets peter parker is spider-man things are going well that is until peter also throws in a ton of alterations in the middle of the spell's casting wanting to pick and choose exactly who forgets his identity this corrupts the spell so much so it doesn't just not work it also tears the fabric of reality apart things from here just get worse and worse until in the very end spider-man resolves the plot not by blowing up the bad guy nobody sprang some blue gunk into the sky rather he makes a decision for doctor strange to cast a new spell one that solves the crisis but has an effect so much worse than the original one was ever meant to have now the world isn't just forgetting peter parker as spider-man it's forgetting that peter parker exists entirely including his best friends and when he sees them after they've forgotten him in the end choosing to not introduce himself it makes for what i'd argue is the most cathartic and powerful ending we've ever seen in any spider-man movie but why is this such a powerful ending like why like what does it do to work so bloody well it's how the magic doctor strange uses in this movie it's more than a mere plot device it's a symbolic representation of taking accountability peter pestering doctor strange with alterations and exceptions in the beginning works great as a story beat because it's resonating with a universal truth that when one tries to take accountability for a terrible thing but one picks and chooses the terms effectively trying to take accountability just without any of the negative consequences that comes with it that is not truly taking accountability thus to do so can only end in disaster and just for a second imagine an alternate no way home where dr strange had cast a spell in the climax solved everything meaning only peter's loved ones remember he's spider-man and everything's coming up milhouse for peter like just imagine if the movie had ended in that happily ever after way it just would have felt so wrong it just would have the idea that peter massively messed up and he can just wish that away with zero consequences like it doesn't resonate in fact it does the opposite i think something fundamental inside of us like very deep in our unconscious would have disliked that ending intensely what a lot of people learn as they go from being teenagers to being adults is to admit fault has terrible consequences yet you should never run from that because those very consequences will only compound every time you fail to deal with them and eventually those consequences will have built up to such a formidable mass that you have no choice but to grapple with them and when you do you will regret not being accountable and responsible right from the word go this lesson most people learn as they mature it is exactly this lesson that peter learns in this movie the arc he undergoes and it reinforces the feeling that in the end peter's finally become an adult and interestingly this is a lesson that is only made more powerful because this movie uses magic i will circle back and complete this train of thought in a second but in order to go deeper here and properly explore this topic have any of you heard the myth of king midas as the greek legend goes king midas was a king who lived in decadence who stuffed himself silly with food and had an obsession with material wealth but no matter how many jewels he owned it was never enough midas then found the follower of a god in his garden was very hospitable to him and in return the god offered him a wish for whatever he wanted as a thank you for taking good care of his minion midas then wish that everything he touches turns to gold and from here i imagine most of you know the rest he was initially overjoyed by his new powers running around his palace touching everything he could but after his initial fun he tried to eat some food but couldn't because it turned to gold the moment it touched his lips he tried to sleep but couldn't his soft bed turned to metal beneath him crying in despair his beloved daughter came to see what was the matter and when he held her she turned to gold too and now the way the myth ends varies some tellings have him remain this way forever and dying of starvation but the main telling involves him voicing true repentance for his wish and the god then turns things back to how they used to be but can you see the similarities between this myth and spider-man no way home because there are a lot of them and the fact these great stories are so similar highlights a crucial insight as to what makes for great storytelling midas wish that everything he touched turned to gold this was a terrible mistake and it's a mistake fueled by an incorrect belief the character had the belief that the path to true happiness lies in material gain and it is this exact belief that leads to him losing the taste of food of the comfort of a good night's sleep and depriving himself of his relationship with his daughter but yes this is a myth but perhaps it's made a myth because it has the same qualities as a parable a parable being a story that effectively teaches a lesson by conveying a universal truth an archetypal truth and which one is that it isn't that you should be careful what you wish for it's instead what happened to king midas is what will happen to you if you get too obsessed with material wealth as you will gradually lose the other things in life that matter until material wealth is the only thing you have left and what a hollow sad life that must be spider-man wished for everyone but those he cared about to forget him it is this it is him cherry-picking the terms of the spell that is the manifestation of the lie peter believes in the same way it was for king midas if spider-man had been wiser he would have accepted the dire consequences of the initial spell with grace if king midas had been wiser he would have wished for the ability to better serve his people or that his beloved daughter might live a long healthy life or perhaps if he had been exceptionally wise he would have never wished for anything at all and there is something important to learn here as it betrays why some stories are remembered and others forgotten because when i named your king midas i'd bet that the majority of you had no bloody clue who the man was his name didn't ring a bell for you however when i said that everything he touched turned to gold i'm willing to bet money that 100 percent of you literally every single person watching this video was like oh yeah i remember that sorry the one where all he touches turns to gold i've heard that one before the question is why why is it that every single one of us remembers the premise of that myth i miss with the last time you heard it that might have been over a decade ago meanwhile if i were to ask you the basic premise of that crappy movie you saw on netflix 10 months ago you wouldn't be able to recall a thing like that is an extremely interesting question like i i cannot stress how excited this question gets me because it's such like the importance of this question it can't be understated from like a storytelling point of view and here's what i reckons the answer the quality of a story is not just defined by how exciting the plot is or how entertaining the characters are it's also defined by the truths explored within that story and it's when a story does an outstanding job at exploring a truth whichever one that might be at giving the audience food for thought and helping them be just that little bit wiser that is when that story is taken to a whole other level of quality and thus popularity personally i've noticed that when i think a story is about to say something insightful that is when any story is its most captivating for me and i imagine a lot of you feel the same way too deep down we all don't just yearn for entertaining stories we also yearn for ones with deep meaning and the fact almost all myths do this how they've endured in our minds for decades as well as in our culture for thousands of years because they're such excellent parables like that isn't exactly news right that's not exactly like a controversial take but what's the question that i feel has been totally neglected here why are all myths technically fantasy this plays directly into the question of this video in how to do magic right and it's a question that's been staring us all in the face for all our lives but we pretty much never ask it why is it that every myth has magic from arthurian legend to norse mythology to greek mythology how they involve cursed women with snakeheads that turn people to stone and enchanted swords that only the true king can wield and god's punishing the petulant for the flaws in their character i believe the answer is a simple one that magic in storytelling is the ultimate device to use if you want your story to say something meaningful and it's so exceptional at this that all of mythology makes use of it as any potential myths that didn't use it were based purely in reality that was a story that didn't distill truths well enough to have been remembered and was thus a story lost to time there are so many things you need to think about if you want to build a great magic system the rules need to make sense there needs to be interesting limitations and far more challengingly it must capture people's imaginations and frankly i've never experienced a story that knocks all of those things out of the park better than brandon sanderson's mistborn saga like seriously if you want to write better magic i think the final empire and all of the subsequent mistborn books are just required reading material because they're the gold standard of how to do magic right and if you're interested i've got a great deal for you as thanks to audible the sponsor of today's video you can grab the audiobook for the final empire the first missport novel today totally for free audible really is the best place on the internet to grab your audiobooks and what i love so much about audible is how it allows me to read all the things i want to read without making any sacrifices as i listen while playing games cooking dinner commuting around and doing all the daily things i was going to do anyway and today thanks to audible so can you if you click my link in the description or text closer look to 500 500 you'll get a free credit used to get any audio book you like and i cannot recommend the final empire enough to you like i devoured the first three mistborn audiobooks in the space of like 10 days because i loved them so much and i implore that you will lose your social lives and go to bed three hours late every day for the next 10 days too again do click my link in the description or text closer look to 500 500 and get lost in the incredible mistborn saga today but back to it in order to realize the exact mechanics of how magic distills truth how it's the ultimate way to add meaning to a story let's look at a story that pulls this off exceptionally well let's look at harry potter and the chamber of secrets if you want to realize the truth this movie explores what the story is about essentially all you have to do is look at the monster the basilisk bear that in mind and then ask what are the three main fear responses any animal has when confronted by a predator there's fight flight and what freeze and in the chamber of secrets what happens when someone sees the basilisk they get petrified they literally freeze the basilisk in this story is not just the antagonist it's a symbolic embodiment of fear itself the more you think about this the more sense it makes because as the story goes along everyone in the castle is being increasingly terrified by the snake that is until our hero harry descends into the depths to confront the monster in its home and once doing so what immediately happens forks the phoenix uses its claws to gouge out the basilisk's eyes and this means harry will no longer be petrified if he sees the beast and then here's a really interesting thing when i describe it in this way it really does sound like a plot convenience it really does like the big monster suddenly losing its main power totally out of the blue that should feel incredibly unsatisfying but it doesn't in fact i've never heard anyone ever criticize this moment in the story despite its seeming total contrivance and this moment works because it's tapping into a collective unconscious that defines whether or not things such as this feel right to us while everyone in the story has been cowering in fear of fear itself harry has bravely chosen to directly confront it and in doing so as a consequence of his brave decision the symbol of fear has suddenly lost its capacity to petrify this is commenting on the truth that being brave and directly confronting fear head-on in simply making that decision you weaken the effect fear has over you in a sense directly confronting fear is not just a highly effective way to overcome it it is the only way to do so and the truth explored don't stop there because later in the climax uh when he confronts the snake he stabs it but is sadly bitten at the same time he's poisoned and is doomed to die but just before he does forks again comes around cries into his wound and cures him god this is even more of a deus ex machina than that last one and it didn't bother anybody like why does this deus ex machina works so well as a story beat it's because the phoenix is a symbol for rebirth as the animal endlessly grows old dies and is reborn from the ashes and when the symbol for rebirth heals the wounds harry sustained in his final battle with fear it's capturing the truth that when people directly confront their demons they will get hurt just as a fact however once they've beaten their demons their terrible wounds will heal and the person will have a metaphorical rebirth from the ashes of their old self as they become a better person because of their struggle the same can be said for how throughout the book the paranoia and nervousness of everyone in the castle has been growing increasingly worse as the story progresses and short this sense of increasing tension and dread does a lovely job at adding to the rising action but yet again it's resonating with the truth that we all know we just don't consciously know the truth that when something comes along that induces fear not solving the issue will only cause that fear to grow worse and more terrible and worse and more terrible until it feels like a poison in our veins and the worst possible moment the true dark night of the soul will always inevitably be the moment just before the fear is confronted but once it is then comes the relief as the fear washes away and the catharsis comes what i just described is not a plot structure instead it's what it feels like in real life when we confront the things we're afraid of like the idea of someone using universal truths like this in their climax it's fantastic already but to wrap one's sense of rising action around an archetypal truth like this as everyone grows increasingly more terrified because that's what happens to all of us when we procrastinate on dealing with the things we're afraid of the story elements harmonize together and this is and i'm just gonna say it incredible storytelling the word outstanding is simply inadequate this is a true masterpiece the narrative choices made here are simply inspired and has this real like mythological quality to it if you're a writer the ceiling of who you should aspire to be is the kind of creator who makes narrative choices as wholeheartedly genius as these what's quite interesting here is how there's a very real chance that rowling didn't consciously realize these things like perhaps she did but there's a very good chance that she wrote her story simply did what felt right to her and incidentally what felt right to her was tapping into these universal truths this opens up a whole pandora's box of a conversation around the collective unconscious a very brief summary of which being how they're supposedly an incredible amount of wisdom that you and i don't consciously know but rather unconsciously do as we've inherited it from both the human genome as these base ideas and constructs will inevitably form in every human mind regardless of nurture and also from the stories the myths the lessons we learn as we live our lives it is this hidden trove of wisdom we all have deep in the recesses of our minds that is what defines whether or not certain story beats despite being unforeshadowed and coming from seemingly out of nowhere such as forks blinding the basilisk feels so very right nonetheless and if you want another example from recent media of this approach done exceptionally well 2018's god of war pulls this off wonderfully it is a game with a near universally loved story and that is a bloody impressive thing to pull off in this day and age and if you ask me the fact the game resonates with these truths exactly in the same way spider-man did exactly in the same way myths do that greatly contributed towards the game's near universal acclaim in this game kratos is a god with a dark past he has killed the entire greek pantheon more or less and has done some rather depraved things in his time and so he actively hides from his past he doesn't tell his son of their true heritage making his son believe he's just a normal human not the god he is throughout the game people warn kratos that his son must know the longer you wait to tell him his true nature the more damage you do he will resent you and you may lose him forever there's much about me i would not have him know it's unhealthy to hide these things they say but kratos totally ignores them that is until the sun accidentally taps into his latent powers and it makes him severely ill rendering him at death's door kratos is then told by a witch that in order to save his son he has to delve into hell quite literally delve into the underworld which fits the hero's journey really rather snuggly and he has to fetch a magical mcguffin to revive him to do this the axe he's used so far in the story is going to be useless in order to visit the underworld and cure his son's sickness he has to pick up the blades of chaos the weapons from his dark past the ones he's kept hidden beneath the floorboards in their home all this time he then uses these blades to complete his quest revive his son and quickly after he does so he tells his son that his father is a god and therefore he is too before this point in the story the son has been endlessly coughing and showing signs of sickness after this point he no longer shows any symptoms of any sickness at all this exactly like the myth of king midas is capturing a truth and it's that to hide from one's past to mask one's heritage no matter how dark is always a bad thing the sun's magical sickness is a symbol for what happens when someone doesn't know their true heritage to not know where one hails from is a form of sickness and the blades of chaos represent shame they represent regret but mostly they represent the evils the demons of kratos's past there is a lot of symbolism going on here even better there are multiple symbols interacting with each other when kratos picks up his blades in order to visit the underworld this represents his decision to hide from his past no longer and it is kratos doing this that is what facilitates his son regaining his health and why does this magic work so well like why is it that all of mythology is technically fantasy it is not because such stories are better at capturing the imagination it is not because a people of the past were superstitious and thus had a preference for those kinds of stories at least not mainly that but because fantasy is the ultimate genre for distilling truth as fantasy allows one to go larger than life with cyclopses and maniacal dark lords and magic spells that erase the memory of someone from everyone's mind it's in going larger than life that renders these elements detached from reality enough that you can mold them into perfect symbolic representations of ideas from our reality and in doing so that allows you to provide commentary on those ideas with so much more precision than you could ever manage in a purely contemporary story where every aspect is grounded in reality and thus muddied by it and when you have an element in your story be a symbol for an idea that means every time your character interacts with this element whether it be when they get close to the one ring from lord of the rings or any time someone tries to wield excalibur from arthurian legend or anytime someone dares to open pandora's box that's an opportunity for you to provide laser-focused insightful commentary on the idea this fantastical object is a symbol of in an odd sort of way the fact fantasy can allow itself to be so detached from reality allows it to scrutinize our reality with a level of exactness that a non-fantasy writer would envy as that is a luxury that is seldom granted to you when writing in any genre that is not fantasy as a fun tip if you really want to knock this out of the park having one symbol can work great but having two such symbols interacting with each other works even better because now you can explore the relationship between the ideas these two things represent god of war pulled exactly that off with flying colours this is the hidden quality magic has in storytelling the one that i wish was so much more prevalent in discourse around the topic because if you ask me nailing the way magic complements your theme is so much more important a thing to get right than having a perfectly done power escalation could ever be and again if you really like the sound of mistborn one of my favorite novel series of all time you can listen to it right now for free on audible by clicking my link in the description or texting close look to 500 500. like i hope you enjoy missporn as much as i did because like when you find the right story and it just captures you like the final empire did for me nothing compares to it but anyway hope you liked the video keep writing and i'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 217,492

Keywords: magic, how to write magic, magic systems, hard magic, soft magic, how to write a magic system, how to write great magic, no way home, spider man, spiderman, spider-man, harry, potter, harry potter, fantasy, how to, the closer look, the closer, closer look, video essay, video, essay, brandon sanderson

Id: v-pfuTRqz30

Length: 24min 58sec (1498 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022