A Writer Watching – House of Error

A Writer Watching – Eternals, Part 2

Hello and welcome back to “A Writer Watching – Eternals”!

This is the second part of a two part series, so if you’re just joining us now, you might want to check out part one first via this link.

But if you’re like, “Nah,” for any reason, I have to clarify again that the purpose of this series is to pick apart the bad writing of a multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster. Not just to expose its writing mishaps so impressionable young writers who love this movie can see them / avoid internalizing them . . . but so the rest of us can kick back and rag on something “movie night” style.

If that sounds mean-spirited, all I can say is that I am in no way ragging on the actors or the characters themselves. I’m ragging on the end product of capitalistic writing-by-committee; as I said in part one, I am always on the side of characters, not Hollywood executives. Sometimes I will be like, “Wow, that actor gave an extremely wooden, emotionless delivery of that line,” but I try to keep that to a minimum, because we’re not really here for that.

But also, I mean . . . the writers I’m criticizing are all millionaires in Hollywood, where the rich constantly fail upwards. If I can take heavy criticism for my work, so can they.

Anyway, because of the vibe of this series, you’ll have way more fun if you’ve already seen this movie.

But if you haven’t and you’re determined to read on then warning: spoilers ahead.

That said, let’s dive back into . . .

A Writer Watching – Eternals

Recap – Last time, we ended with the Eternals finding Druig in the Amazon. After they explain the film’s plot twist to him (that the Eternals are all robots sent to prepare the Earth to be destroyed so a Celestial can be born), Druig starts talking about how he’s been living in the Amazon, casually controlling people’s minds for 500 years, and I got so pissed off by that that I had to turn the movie off.

(1:06:17) – Now, we continue with Druig weirdly conveying that he’s angry because Arishem lied to them.

And I’m like, “Dude, you compelled someone to do something without their knowledge or consent, like, 10 seconds ago in screen time. Fuck all-the-way off.”

Seriously, my favorite part is when he makes sweet, huggable Karun throw his own camera at a wall and then asks Kingo, “Oh, where’s your sense of humor?”

I’m not going to keep ranting about this, but I have to reiterate again there’s a very fine line between making a morally ambiguous character actually morally ambiguous. This film not only makes Druig flat-out horrible, but also never punishes him for being horrible. At worst, he gets this moment, where everyone is toothlessly confrontational with him, which only accentuates his bad boy vibes.

I’ll end this here by saying, for the umpteenth time, that I will never try and control what anyone else writes. But if you’re making illogical leaps in your plot to avoid punishing the bad boy for being bad . . . then you’re making illogical leaps in your plot to avoid punishing the bad boy for being bad.

(1:13:02) – After a few good dialogue scenes, Deviants arrive in the Amazon village to attack the Eternals. Kingo tells Sprite to get Karun to safety because, despite having two of his cameras destroyed, he somehow has a third camera he’s recording with. While pushing him to cover, Sprite asks, “How many cameras did you bring, young man!?”

And, seriously, how charming of a line is that? I love the idea that Sprite is older than Karun and I really enjoy seeing her be casual about that fact. Obviously, you couldn’t have her making this joke over and over, but if anyone acted like they were 7000 years old, I wish it was her. It could’ve lent so much to her character, especially if she said this kind of thing defensively.

To put this in writing context, I just have to reiterate how badly I wish these characters were written as their actual age instead of acting like / sounding like / looking like modern super heroes.

Seriously, I just imagined a 7000 year old version of Sersi—determined to help humanity but also extremely tired. Having a normal-girl façade that she puts on around Dane only to sigh and stare into the distance when she’s alone, seeing 7000 years worth of humans like him dying in what amounted to a heartbeat for her. But what can she do? Tell her heart no? Abandon humanity like some of the other Eternals have? She’d already tried that, and 100 years alone on a mountain had been 100 years too many. Humanity needs her, and even though it breaks her heart to be around them, Sersi knows that she needs them too.

. . . Yeah, I think it would’ve made for a more interesting story is all.

(1:14:55) – Sersi is trapped under debri and a Deviant is charging her. Before it gets there, however, a bunch of people start shooting at the Deviant. Normal, human people who are being controlled by Druig. Two of them are killed as Druig runs in, grabs one of their guns, and does an admittedly awkward spin onto its back while shooting it. Said Deviant is then stopped by Sersi, who uses her powers to collapse a crystal (?) tree onto it. Sersi then finally tells Druig to let go of the people he’s controlling because he’s “better than this.” Druig reluctantly releases them, and they seem confused, asking Druig, “What’s happening?” before he tells them to escape to “the river.”

My favorite part is when the super hero makes the innocent people kill themselves to save the other super hero.

Nothing wrong with that; just a full 180 from the entire point of super heroes.

Seriously, could you imagine the fucking uproar if Wanda made the people of Westview fight Agatha for her in WandaVision?

It’s just gross. The idea that any super hero would do this is awful, much less a super hero using humans to fight the monsters he was created to fight.

And it’s made so much worse by Druig running in and capably fighting this fucking Deviant on his own anyway. In the grand scheme, all he did was distract the Deviant so Sersi could drop a tree on it, which means they didn’t need the puppeteered humans helping to begin with. Fuck’s sake, Sersi didn’t even need Druig’s help! She demonstrably could’ve just turned the floor to water under that Deviant, then turned that water to stone or whatever exactly like she did in the canal fight at the start of the movie. And then she could’ve pushed her crystal tree on it.

It would have completely sold me on Druig’s supposed concern for human life if he’d been shown stopping people from fighting the Deviants and making them escape. Holy shit—omfg—can you imagine if he made them escape even though they were trying to save Sersi!? Fuck! That would’ve been so goddamn cut throat and awesome. Like, not only would it solidify his reasons for leaving (that he cared more about human life than he did about the Eternals), but it would’ve rolled up his anger from his last scene into such a nice, badass ball. And then Sersi kills the Deviant anyway (she would’ve killed it in my draft) and Druig starts to smuggly explain himself only for Sersi to cut him off like, “Keep getting people to the river.” Ugh! It would’ve been so fucking good! Such good, juicy, complicated drama!

But . . . no. Instead, we got Druig making humans unwittingly kill themselves fighting a monster they couldn’t hope to kill.

Cool.

(1:18:39) – After saving Ikaris from a Deviant, Sersi is pushed into a pool of water. The Deviant dives after her and Sersi grabs its face, transmuting its body into a tree.

And in this moment, with the hero music in full effect and the Eternals staring in awe, I thought, “. . . Wait, is something special happening here?”

I didn’t realize she transmuted the Deviant until it was clarified later.

And to some degree, that’s because the scenario in which it happened made it very vague. Sersi and the Deviant were in water, so I thought she just transmuted the water into wood. Earlier, when she pushed a tree onto one of the Deviants, not only did they show her selectively transmuting only a small part of that tree—they showed her transmuting that part of the tree . . . into water. How could I possibly not assume she was just doing that reaction in reverse here?

But on top of that, Sersi’s powers are extremely vague to begin with. What can she transmute? How much can she transmute? Is it difficult if she tries to change something to an extremely different element?

What I’m saying is, in writing terms, it definitely would’ve helped if Sersi’s powers were more clearly defined, and / or if this moment happened in a less confusing scenario.

(1:20:40) – Gilgamesh protects Thena from the head Deviant only to get caught by said Deviant and killed. After assimilating his powers, the head Deviant becomes humanoid and starts . . . talking?

This is just the weirdest tangent this movie goes down.

For no discernible reason, the head Deviant can talk so he can express what would be an interesting perspective on the whole Eternals-Deviants thing . . .

. . . but they just do absolutely nothing with it. He learns to talk just so Thena can kill him later and get revenge . . . which he didn’t need to be able to talk for? Seriously, even in the one moment near the end when it seems like this Deviant will team up with the other Eternals to fight Ikaris, nope—that just inexplicably doesn’t happen.

It’s just bizarre and feels 100% like something cut from a different draft of the story. Like maybe there was a draft where the Eternals learn to accept and work with the Deviants, who would also logically want to fight Arishem. But, if that plotline ever existed, 90% of it was excised for whatever reason, leaving only this talking Deviant for . . . some reason.

Seriously, kill your darlings, people. This head Deviant only serves to slow down and confuse the plot.

(1:23:24) – Druig and Sersi talk while watching Thena spread Gilgamesh’s ashes in a river.

Right in the middle of this conversation, you can seriously see a weird cut in dialogue—a jump in topic from “the Eternals and Deviants are the same and both want to fight Arishem,” which is the plotline I just imagined was removed, to “we need to stop Arishem,” the plot of the theatrical release.

Sersi: “These Deviants are trying to keep us from killing their own kind. They have a conscience now. That makes them more dangerous.”

Druig: “No, Sersi. That makes them us. Eternals and Deviants. Arishem’s children.”

And then, from Druig again, with absolutely no pause or justification: “But you are asking me to take control of a mind of a Celestial.”

It’s easy to miss, but it’s there. A jump in topic so awkward that it almost feels like a few lines were cut in post-production. I don’t want to put on my conspiracy hat and be like, “There was definitely a plotline cut!” but I will say that if there ever needs to be any cut of any kind in a story, it’s definitely worth going over dialogue to make sure there aren’t weird hiccups like this, where topic A and topic B kind of smash into each other.

Also, “the.”

“The mind of a Celestial.” If you want a crash course on 90% of what I do when I edit my own stuff, it’s changing lines like this. “But you are asking me to take control of a mind of a Celestial” should be “But you are asking me to take control of the mind of a Celestial.”

It just flows better.

(1:23:24) Continued.

Also, wait, hold on—did Druig just say that at one point he thought about controlling everyone in the world? He did—and Sersi asked him, “Why didn’t you?” as if he can just . . . do that?

How fucking powerful is he? How powerful are any of these Eternals? What the fuck?

Also, gotta love the gross way that he was like, “I didn’t do it because then they wouldn’t be human anymore.” Like, “Cool. I’m glad that was the reason you decided not to brainwash me last Tuesday, dude. Can’t think of a single other reason. ‘Because they are flawed and I like them that way’ is definitely not the worst fucking answer you could’ve given there.”

(1:27:15) – After the Eternals (once again) kind of just teleport to the next part of the plot—reuniting with Phastos in Chicago—Ikaris and Sersi sit down to explain everything to Phastos and . . .

Phastos: “It all makes sense why she wouldn’t let us interfere with human conflicts. Conflicts lead to war, and war actually leads to advancement in lifesaving technology and medicine. So our mission was never to make a peaceful or harmonious world, but to increase the population at all costs.”

Me: “I mean . . . was your mission ever to make the world a paradise? Cause I just thought it was to kill all of the Deviants. Also, I kind of just assumed you weren’t supposed to interfere in human conflicts because you were supposed to have killed the Deviants hundreds of years ago and then peaced out (thus leaving humanity untouched either way). Like, you clearly wanted to solve a plot hole here . . . but that plot hole is only a plot hole if I needed an explanation for how humanity continued to grow without killer aliens eating everyone, and like . . . I don’t need an explanation for that because I am human on a real-life Earth where Deviants aren’t real and the population just kept growing?”

Seriously, I’ve never seen a movie be like, “Oh shit! Human history is a plot hole!” before, so my mind is kind of blown right now.

(1:31:25) – The gang goes back to their ship, the Domo, which is buried in Iraq. Despite the ship being buried, Phastos steps on a bag of potato chips on the way in, leading to the discovery that Makkari is inside, reading a book.

And I’m just so confused on so many levels.

The ship was buried. How did Makkari get out for chips? If she teleported out the way the Eternals did at the beginning, why couldn’t the others teleport in the same way?
Why is Phastos reacting to seeing Makkari by asking “What has she done? Is that . . . a sarcophagus in my lab?” Did they all know she was on the ship? Why did she stay on the ship?
Also, why has she just been on the ship for the last 500 years?

None of these questions get answered.

But I get why she stood on the ship from a writing perspective; once again, it’s the speedster problem. If Makkari had been a part of this plot way earlier, she could’ve run all over the world and gathered the other Eternals together in 30 minutes of plot time. The head Deviant never would’ve gotten away from her in the Amazon, Gilgamesh never would’ve died, etc.

Still, it just kind of blows that Makkari was locked out of the film until the hour and thirty mark on a technicality.

(1:32:33) – Inside the Domo, Druig picks up a box of Twinkies while Ikaris looks at the Emerald Tablet. Druig walks up and the two look at each other before grudgingly swapping items.

And, like, I get what’s happening here, but it falls so amazingly flat because neither character was shown having an affinity for either item earlier in this film. Seriously, if you swapped it so Ikaris was holding the Twinkies and Druig had the tablet and they swapped in the same way, this moment would’ve been exactly the same.

Writing-wise, a little reinforcement goes a long way; even if you were super lazy about it and just focused on one of them—maybe showing earlier that Ikaris loves food—this moment would’ve worked much better.

(1:32:49) – Druig asks Makkari how she got the Emerald Tablet and things get flirty real fast.

And here’s the totally unrealistic zero punishment I mentioned earlier for Druig.

It is completely unrealistic that we get no scene where Druig has to explain himself to Makkari. Was she not mad when he left? Did she not feel abandoned? I totally get that she’s morally grey like he’s supposed to be, but ‘morally grey’ doesn’t mean, ‘totally accepting of everything always.’

Makkari should feel something complicated when she sees him again, but almost like she’s not a character (and Druig needs to get away with murder), she just smiles and acts like shit’s great. It could’ve been a good, emotional moment that told us a lot about Makkari, but instead, she’s leveraged to make Druig look cooler.

And Druig doesn’t die by the end of the story or learn the error of his ways, so . . . <shrug>.

(1:34:34) – The group is debating how to stop the Emergence and what will happen if they fail. During the debate, Kingo turns to Ikaris and asks him for back-up by, saying, “Boss, am I right?” In reply, Ikaris points out that Sersi was chosen to lead the Eternals. Sprite barrels straight past that and says Ikaris should lead them.

And I just wish this bit of complexity factored more heavily in the story.

The idea that the other Eternals would soft-mutiny Sersi because she isn’t Superman is extremely interesting and could’ve amplified Sersi’s arc if it was just seeded a tiny bit better. It would’ve pushed the film more firmly into PC territory if you leaned too hard on it—turning the plot into a very obvious message on sexual discrimination—but if you didn’t want to make it that in-your-face (which seems like the movie’s MO), you could’ve sprinkled in moments earlier on where someone assumed Ikaris was the leader, or otherwise showed their lack of confidence in Sersi as a leader. And that would’ve made her hero moment at the end of the film that much more gratifying.

It’s absolutely a second-draft issue, but it’s still an issue. Non-essential, but if you hired me to edit your script, this is one of the things I’d tell you.

(1:37:02) – In a flashback, Ikaris and Ajak talk about the Emergence. During the conversation, Ajak mentions off-hand that she has followed Arishem for “millions of years.”

And *phew.* Is she saying she’s never had her memories wiped? Does Ajak have millions of years worth of memories in her head? I know that this might just mean that she gets wiped every time like the others and then a new copy of her is told the plot twist, but it really seems like she has had the same batch of memories the entire time . . .

. . . which means that I have to say for one final time how fucking rad it would’ve been if she was written that way. Can you imagine if she was aloof and exhausted? A leader executing rote actions with little patience? Cold to everything and everyone, almost always lost in thought? That would’ve made her such a better vehicle for mahd wy’ry too—like maybe change it so that at the very beginning, she’s fine, but as the flashbacks progress, she gets more and more distant. And in plot, the explanation is that she has mahd wy’ry, so she’s sent back to Arishem, who tells the others that she will return to usher them back to Olympia. But then, by whatever means, Sersi contacts Arishem and finds out that, no, Ajak has been dead for a thousand years by Arishem’s hand (possibly because she tried to fight him on her own when she got back to the World Forge but failed) and also the world is ending.

(1:41:09) – After killing Ajak, the head Deviant goes back into his Deviant cave with the other Deviants. He then tentacles them right in the necks, changing their forms.

And this is seriously on my Top 10 Unnecessary Moments in Movies.

I’d be hard-pressed to believe that anyone was wondering why some Deviants are bird-shaped while others are wolf-shaped, etc.—especially after it was shown earlier in the film that Deviants evolve (the entire reason Arishem designed the Eternals to be incapable of evolution). But this moment exists to explain why these Deviants aren’t all just wolves . . . which is a question created by the previous scene. And the explanation inherently doesn’t make sense because it isn’t based on anything previously established in the plot; these Deviants don’t just look like wolves because the head Deviant can . . . change them into other animals inexplicably.

. . . Thanks?

I always think of this as a ‘clean cut’; when I’m editing, I will run into a situation where, say, a character is awkwardly standing outside of a house, holding open its door, which swings inward, so another character can jump down from the ceiling inside and kick it closed. But after a few minutes of trying to figure out how to gracefully explain all of that, I will just be like, “Holy shit, the door just swings outward.”

Like, fuck it. Clean cut. If I’m ever wasting time trying to explain something that doesn’t matter because I want to justify it for myself, I just fucking cut it. Seriously, it’s to everyone’s benefit.

This scene? Even people who dig the CGI candy would not notice if this scene was cut from the script. Get rid of it. Clean cut.

(1:45:04) – After finding out that the Emergence has started, Phastos gives some tech to Makkari and tells her to find “the point of emergence.” Makkari proceeds to run through several time zones in six seconds.

This moment is extremely cool. I love that it’s not showing the world slowed down while Makkari moves at normal speed—it’s Makkari moving incredibly fast in real time. And it looks great.

But also, this is the moment on my first viewing where I was like, “Ah . . . Okay . . . Makkari is unstoppable.”

Just all tension gone, all confrontation invalidated.

I love Makkari. But also, we will come back to this.

(1:49:02) – After Ikaris turns on the group, admitting that he killed Ajak, Sprite decides that she’s going to go with him.

And here’s where the character complexity starts to feel kinda whiplashy.

I know Sprite is in love with Supermannequin . . . but she also very visibly loved Ajak, to the point that after her death earlier in the movie, Sprite was shown to be the most hurt by it.

And yet . . . she’s throwing in . . . with the guy who killed Ajak?

On my first viewing, I thought this was setting up a double cross, with Sprite turning on Ikaris at the last minute, but nope—she legit joins Ikaris.

And it just feels like the writers were working with a checklist. “It says here that Sprite loves Ikaris so <shrug> I guess she goes with him,” instead of Sprite feeling impossibly betrayed to find out the man she loves killed a member of her family.

All I’m saying is, character traits are dope, but your character who loves spaghetti doesn’t have to be eating spaghetti in every single scene. Especially after he finds out spaghetti killed his mom.

(1:50:05) – After Kingo explains that he won’t help the Eternals fight Ikaris and stop the Emergence, Makkari catches him and tells him, “We need you,” to which Kingo says, “Even with my help, we’re no match. It’s Ikaris.”

And, seriously, Makkari should just be like, “I will go snap Ikaris’ neck right now before he even knows I’m there.”

“No worries. I will go pulp his brain by vibrating his skull at the speed of sound.”

“You just blinked and, oop—what’s this in my hand? It’s Ikaris’ still-beating heart! The movie’s over!”

(1:50:05) – Continued.

Also, when Kingo leaves, he says, “But I hope to see you on the next planet,” and man, someone needs to explain the Reset button to Kingo. Like, “Dude . . . you are going to die in a few hours and a new model of you—not even a clone—will be on the next planet. You aren’t going to see anybody ever again after the Emergence because you will have exploded, my guy.”

But, of course—and yet again—I have to acknowledge that Kingo gets written out here on a technicality; he probably would’ve been too helpful in the fight against Ikaris, so the easier solution was to have him be like, “Nah. Peace.”

And at this point, it’s 2AM and I’m tired, so whatever.

(1:55:30) – We finally enter the film’s endgame, starting with Ikaris flying onto the Domo as it arrives at the Emergence. Upon blasting his way into the ship, Ikaris encounters Thena, who confesses that she’s always wanted to fight him as they initiate combat.

And I love that dialogue choice.

I was expecting, “I’ve never liked you,” but “I’ve always wanted to [fight you],” achieves the same while saying more.

That said, this moment where Thena finally returns to being a badass warrior doesn’t feel earned. It feels like we needed a scene focused exclusively on Thena’s struggles with her memories and her feelings about Gilgamesh’s death. Instead, she silently dealt with stuff in the background. How did Thena get her mojo back? Was it seriously watching Gilgamesh die?

Just saying, it would’ve been so much more rewarding if maybe she’d stopped Ikaris from killing Makkari earlier instead of Kingo. Maybe in that moment, when another member of the family was about to die, she triumphantly remembers why she fights and battles Ikaris to a quick, tense stand still, making him flee (which would of course make this fight on the Domo a significantly more intense rematch).

But no. She floats around the plot before eventually just sorta becoming Thena again.

(1:58:01) – After killing-but-not-killing Druig, Ikaris lands and says a vague, “Druig is gone. It’s over.” Then Makkari charges in, grabbing Ikaris by the throat and running him through a bunch of scenery before chucking him against a wall.

All of this looks great.

But also, Makkari, for real, just vibrate his head extremely fast—give him five thousand concussions in 3 seconds and he’s done.

Build up speed and kick him in the nuts so hard that you yeet his ass into the fucking stratosphere. Like, explode his balls! He will just stop fighting, I guarantee it.

I dunno—am I evil? Maybe I’m just evil.

But for real, there are countless ways Makkari could’ve ended the film right here.

Pure speedster nerfing in full effect.

(2:00:26) – Nearly everyone is fighting Ikaris and it’s really cool.

And while it’s happening, the head Deviant—who’s called Kro–shows up. And despite it seeming so much like he’s going to help everyone fight Ikaris, he just lands a single cheap shot before Thena splits off from the others for revenge.

And . . . why?

This fits so poorly with the rest of the endgame. It is seriously no longer time to even think about the Deviants—we’ve moved on to stopping a Celestial from destroying the planet and the idea that we’re taking time away from that to continue fighting the red herring villain is absolutely bonkers to me.

Seriously, if you set up a red herring villain for a story, I think this case is a great argument for why you should never try to resolve their threat in the endgame; the threat of the actual villain will always eclipse them. Kro was just a massive, bizarre mistake in this film.

(2:01:10) – After Kro and Thena fuck off, Ikaris tries to fly away, but Phastos catches him, pinning him to the beach with tech that limits his powers.

And I’m just frustrated.

Why did Phastos not open with this?

I hate this phenomenon in general, and it’s something I try to avoid in my own work; characters inexplicably not using the best of their abilities so more plot can happen. Like, “Hrrm. I could pin you down and drastically weaken you while two other Eternals are fighting you . . . or I can wait until it’s just you and me to use this fight-ending tech. Hrrm.”

(2:02:44) – Sprite distracts Sersi with a hologram of Ajak and then stabs her in the back with a tanto.

And I laugh every time.

Not because I’m sadistic (I’m not) or because I hate Sersi (I don’t).

I laugh because we just watched 70% of the Eternals bat each other around at sonic speed, with laser beams that are capable of slicing off Deviant limbs. Druig was just hit with that laser and sent hurtling down hundreds of feet, literally into the Earth, and he still comes back a-okay.

But Sersi gets stabbed with a knife and she’s like, “Urrrk! I am undone!”

I know she turns the tanto into water and just gets up in a minute, but that makes this moment even worse.

Seriously, I wish I could go to Sprite and be like, “So . . . Sersi is what’s called an ‘Eternal,’ which—and this may surprise you—means that stabbing her with a knife won’t kill her. I know that you’ve been an Eternal for 7000 years, but apparently you didn’t know this somehow, so FYI.”

The movie is trying so hard to play this off like a Loki style assassination, but it doesn’t work on even a single level.

(2:07:15) – The Emergence has begun and we see Tiamut’s fingers rising out of the ocean. At this exact time stamp, we get a very good shot for size comparison, revealing that each finger is larger than the volcano that’s been in the background for the entire endgame.

All of this looks extremely cool. It exudes such Final Fantasy vibes that I can’t help loving it. The world is well and truly ending, the stakes are ridiculous, and it looks super pretty.

But also, I’m noting that this Celestial’s fingertips are larger than volcanoes. In one shot, no exaggeration, those fingertips are in the mesosphere.

We’ll come back to this in one sec.

(2:11:37) – At this exact time code, we get an amazing shot of Tiamut’s head and left hand, turning to stone (which I used as the feature image for this post). In this shot, we see that both head and hand are so large that they’re practically in space.

Which is the moment where I have to say it.

The Eternals . . . did not save the world here.

I hate to be that guy, but in a few hours, massive tsunamis will hit every continent, killing countless people, because something of that size breaking that far out of the Earth would just end everything.

But . . .

. . . it looks so cool that I, as a viewer, am able to suspend my disbelief.

Or, well, I’m clearly not able to do that, but I’m willing to give it a pass.

I am absolutely certain without a shadow of a doubt that countless people on MCU Earth would be dead by the next day.

But the rule of cool is a rule for a reason. I usually don’t abide by it.

But this time, I will abide.

(2:14:02) – Sersi just kind of teleports back to the beach with the other Eternals and Phastos asks her how she turned Tiamut to stone. She says Tiamut joined their Uni-Mind. And Phastos says, “I always wondered how we survived the destruction of other planets that we were on. By being connected to the Celestial as it emerged.”

And just like that, three minutes later, I’m reminded I’m watching a terribly written movie.

Thanks, Phastos. Once again, that explanation makes zero sense and fails to solve a plot hole that wasn’t a plot hole. Didn’t they die every time? Didn’t their memories just get beamed up to Arishem via cosmic wi-fi and then a new copy of them was sent to other planets?

Seriously, I don’t know who was determined to have characters explain all of these nonsense plot holes, but every single time, they just make them worse.

And, putting it in writing terms, I’ll say flat-out that I think it’s always bad when characters try to explain plot holes in dialogue. This movie absolutely taught me that; never have your characters say, “Hrrrm. That explains why . . .” because it almost never, ever works. I know it’s primarily a Hollywood thing to leave plot holes in and try to explain them away like this, but it’s always worth repeating that it’s better to just take the plot hole out instead of trying to justify it to your audience.

Also—and I feel like I’m losing my mind here, but—if you absolutely must leave a plot hole in, at least make sure it’s actually a plot hole before you try to justify it.

(2:15:30) – Sersi tells Sprite that with the power left over from the Uni-Mind, she can make Sprite human. She accepts.

And, once again, I would gather all of the Infinity Stones myself if I could change this scene so she makes Sprite into a Furby instead. Like, imagine if in this touching moment, Sersi got mad ratchet like, “That’s what you get, bitch! You stab me in the back!? Fuck you!” while the other Eternals are like, “World Star!”

(2:26:30) – Finally, we end our journey with the mid-credits scene, in which a CGI troll-man teleports into the Domo and heralds the arrival of . . . Harry Styles.

Okay, look.

I have rewritten this last part so many times.

At first, I was openly confused. Then I was vitriolic while writing directly to Marvel Studios. At one point, I was like, “I didn’t even realize that was Harry Styles!” and went on a tangent about why they must’ve chosen a pop culture icon for the role.

But I don’t want to do any of that, because I’m not writing this for Marvel Studios—I’m writing this for us.

After watching this mid-credits scene, what I want to say to every aspiring writer out there is . . .

. . . write your good ideas.

If you have two stories in the chamber, and you know one of them is an awesome idea but the other one is a little niche and you’re wondering, “Can I make it work?” I’m here to say, “Maybe . . . but please just write the awesome idea.” The world wants to see it, and it will probably be infinitely better than the story you’re trying to figure out.

And, to be clear, I don’t mean, “Write your more typical ideas,” or, “Be a hack.” I just mean that you should write the ideas you’re more certain of—the plots you know are intriguing with the characters who have strong silhouettes.

Write your Silver Surfers, not your Eternals.

Full disclosure: I needed to hear this too. I still don’t like Eternals, but I’m glad this film led me to this conclusion, because now I have full, undeniable confirmation that, yes, I should just abandon some of the ideas I’ve had on the docket. The one short story about characters trying to find and kill a god? Cool, but also, I’ve known for years that the conclusion didn’t work, and I have to drop it. It just isn’t going to work as well as other, functional plots I already have.

And, for the same reason, I just have to drop my high school series.

Yes, I mean the series I started working on in high school—the one I spent every moment of every day thinking about and worldbuilding on post-its for nearly a decade. I’ve known that story wouldn’t work for nearly 20 years for a whole slew of reasons.

And I just can’t keep bashing my head on it anymore. I’ve always thought, “Oh, I’ll rework it at some point and it’ll be my magnum opus,” but decades later, I’m such a different writer that I don’t even care about those characters anymore. Hell, I don’t even care about writing a magnum opus; I just want to write the handful of awesome ideas I have. I just want to tell those stories.

But also, the world has moved on, so that high school story’s cast, which was 90% vampire stereotypes, is not worth reworking (PS-yes, I was a goth in high school).

Anyway, all of that is to say none of us have an infinite amount of time on this world.

It isn’t worth spending any of that time tinkering with a story that doesn’t work.

At best, writing the stronger story will help you figure out how to write the weaker one.

At worst, writing the stronger story will make you realize the weaker one is a lost cause.

So, with that said, farewell, Darkness Nightmare. I’m sure there’s a reality where I could find you in paperback, but that reality will never be this one.

Also, yes, it was called Darkness Nightmare. And yes, I know. Watch your glass of milk—it might slip off this e-e-e-e-edge!

~~~

Phew.

This post was even longer than part one.

But holy shit . . . I never have to watch Eternals ever again! Dobby is free!

If you made it all the way to the end, thank you so much for reading. This series was exhausting, but it was also a lot of fun.

No idea what I’m posting next week, but if you’re new here, it’ll be random. It could be anything from an update about the novel I’m currently editing or a post about The Book of Boba Fett. If you’d like to be here for it, you can drop me a Follow via the button on the left side of the screen (on PC) or in the hamburger menu on the top-right (on mobile).

Until next time, take care, stay safe, and rewatch that Silver Surfer chase scene from Rise of the Silver Surfer. The dialogue is still painful, but the Silver Surfer holds up. To this day, fifteen years later, he’s still amazing and terrifying. Like, you could lift that scene, put it in Avengers 5, and replace Johnny with Captain America and it would still be awesome.

Anyway, have a good week!

A Writer Watching – Eternals, Part 1

Disclaimer: I know that some people really like this movie. In fact, some of my best friends really like this movie.

However . . . a balance must be struck.

Since the beginning of time, I’ve vowed that if there came an MCU film worthy of an absolute tear-down because its writing was a mess, I’d be as merciless to it as I have been to similar DCEU films.

And that time has come.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Eternals is a recent MCU film that does a few genuinely good things . . . and a ton of absolutely awful, nonsense things. It is a vehicle of bad writing to such an extreme that I want to dissect it here so that any young writers who enjoyed it can at least see the writing missteps in it, and thus avoid them in their own work. And so, here we are, with “A Writer Watching – Eternals,” my first “A Writer Watching” since Wonder Woman 1984.

This is going to be a very long post. But before I get started, I want to establish for any newcomers that this is not CinemaSins; the goal here isn’t to point out nonsense non-issues and editing mistakes in this film, but to approach it as a writer and editor. Comments will be more “Here’s why this scene doesn’t make sense,” or, “Here’s why this character’s motivations feel hollow by this act,” and less, “Oh geez—that character was holding a book in his left hand in the last shot but nOw It’S iN hIs RiGhT!” We are strictly here for the writing, and I will do my best to stick to that and not point out, say, weird acting choices (but real talk: I know I’m going to fail with Richard Madden’s Ikaris).

That said, the vibe here is more “a bunch of writers sitting down with a few beers and tearing apart the bad writing of a multi-million-dollar box office bomb” and less “Creative Writing Lab 203.” We’re here to have fun, but you’ll definitely have the most fun with this post if you’ve already seen Eternals and didn’t like it. If you liked it, however, I just ask that you stay open-minded and acknowledge that I’m not here to shit on the characters you love, but rather to vouch for them; I feel like the Eternals deserved a better movie, just as I felt Wonder Woman did in 2020. And, if anything is my mantra in these posts, it can be summed up as that: I am, and always will be, on the side of fictional characters I like, not the Hollywood executives who mangle them for profit.

Oh, and, of course, if you didn’t see Eternals, spoilers. Just everywhere, all over the place.

That said, let’s dive into . . .

A Writer Watching – Eternals

(3:30) – The exposition fight scene on a beach when the Eternals first arrive on Earth. At this specific time code, Ikaris hovers while using his laser eyes to blast a Deviant.

The exact point where I was like, “Ah. He’s evil.”

Because the Superman analogue is always evil.

Brightburn kid, Homelander, Omni-Man. Hell, Superman himself has been evil, in film, twice now. Him turning evil is one of the major inciting incidents in Injustice.

Seriously, just saying, if you want to write a super team story where a member of the team turns out to be evil, don’t make it the Superman analogue.

(5:31) – Afraid, the inhabitants of Earth run up on the Eternals with spears drawn. Druig uses his powers to make them drop their weapons.

Just wanted to mark this here.

‘Why?’ you ask?

We’ll circle around to it. I promise.

(7:22) – Sersi sees that the knife she just gave to a kid in the previous scene is featured in the promos for an exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

The framing is just strange here. Considering this is a comic book story and we haven’t heard of the Eternals in any MCU film before this, I genuinely thought Sersi stoicly snapping a pic and saying, “Shit!” meant that the dagger being used in an exhibit was a bad thing. Like maybe the Eternals have been hardcore about managing their secret identities (thus why we’ve never heard of them across 20+ films), and we were going to open with them trying to get that knife back.

But no, that “Shit!” was because an alarm popped up on her phone. The alarm flashed by so quickly that I missed it on my first viewing and thought she got a text from a fellow Eternal about the knife.

All of this is to say that man this moment confused the fuck out of me. It didn’t kill my viewing experience, but it is exactly the kind of hiccup I edit for; a simple miscommunication of vague emotion that gave me pause, which I always try to prune from my own work.

Making emotions clearer here would’ve smoothed this scene right out. If she looked “wistful” or “smug” or anything other than “possibly concerned,” all of this would’ve been as charming as it was meant to be.

I know this is veering toward an acting / directing criticism, but the point I want to make here is: passing character emotions are always super important.

Also, this is 100% what I do with my own manuscripts. I am just this neurotic.

(8:00) – Sersi, arriving late for work, tells a statue of Charles Darwin, “I know I’m late, Charlie.”

I just love this moment and wanted to say something nice. The idea that the Eternals know important historical figures is extremely charming.

Unfortunately, this is the only instance of such a familiarity popping up in the entire film. From here on out, the Eternals effectively act like normal people. Possibly because it would’ve been very hard / potentially plot-breaking if the Eternals acted like they’d experienced all of human history.

But, I mean . . . isn’t that part of the premise?

And wouldn’t that have been more interesting?

I guess not necessarily with the latter. If you wanted to write a fun, easy comic book adventure, maybe being hyper-faithful to the framing of 7000 year old protagonists wouldn’t be best.

But I can’t help thinking there’s room here for an extremely interesting story that was just left on the table.

(10:38) – Sprite makes herself look like a woman to flirt with a guy at a bar. The dude catches onto her illusion when he tries to touch her hand and his hand falls through it. Sprite tells him, “You’ve had too much to drink,” before walking ten feet away and dropping her illusion.

And all of this just feels super ham-fisted. Not much to note here, but I have to point out that there was a much subtler way to write this moment. As is, there’s no way the guy she’s talking to wouldn’t be asking her if she was a superhero immediately, shouting to the bar that, “This girl has powers!” or possibly just following her to try to get with the hot woman with superpowers. Or literally just seeing her from ten feet away as she transforms.

But no, Sprite proceeds to just walk into a hallway and drop the illusion with no consequence, and it all feels a little too convenient.

If I was writing it, maybe they’re laughing together when we cut to them. The guy asks if she wants to dance and Sprite smiles wistfully. “Yes,” she says, but then looks at the other people dancing, close, hand-in-hand. The guy reaches for her hand, but Sprite, having thousands of years of experience, pulls it away quickly. “Just give me a sec,” she says. “I’ll be right back.” And then, uncomfortably, “Don’t you go anywhere!” She gets up, hurries through the bar to a back door that her illusory hand phases through, her real hand grabbing the handle and pushing it back so Sprite, sans-glamour, can hurry out into the alley and slump against a wall with a frustrated sigh.

(12:00) – Sersi and her boyfriend, Dane, talk in a stairwell about moving in together. Dane asks her if she’s a wizard because when they eat out together and a waiter ignores them, their “water always turns to coffee.”

Dane is not that stupid.

No one is that stupid.

Again, extremely ham-fisted.

This is followed by Dane saying he knows Sersi broke up with her ex a century ago and that he could fly–because Sprite told him. And just . . . I mean, coupled with the last scene, how haven’t the Eternals outed themselves by now? Seriously, if they’re this flippant with their secret identities, they should’ve been public knowledge for hundreds of years—at least.

(13:20) Fresh out of the bar, the crew run into a Deviant. After Sersi uses her powers to trap it in the ground, they take off running only for Dane to shout, “I thought you killed them all!” to Sprite. She answers, “You believed me!?” and Dane answers, “I do now!”

Just a genuinely strange, unnecessary delivery of exposition.

I am all for more active exposition dumps, but this was just a strange batch of hoops to jump through. Protags are running from threat, but also protag C not only regularly experiences water turning into coffee around his girlfriend and was told she broke up with her ex one hundred years ago, but was also literally told that ex eradicated a race of killer aliens ages ago and . . . he still didn’t believe it, even though he lives in a world that got invaded by Chitauri, Dark Elves, and had half the population of the universe snapped away—and then snapped back.

It just feels like a lot to take in. A) We’re running from a Deviant, which are back? B) Dane is one of the dumbest characters of all time? C) Sprite fucking told a human the entire history of the Eternals because I guess she just doesn’t give a fuck?? D) Their secret identities are still intact somehow???

Not to mention how promotional material stressed that Kit Harington was playing Black Knight, so I was watching this saddled with the knowledge that, “Okay, Dane isn’t actually a hero yet . . . Or he is and he’s just pretending he’s not?”

And holy shit, I’m ranting, so TL;DR: that exchange was a bit much. And it was clumsy.

And unnecessary because, after this fight, we get the sa-a-a-a-ame exposition anyway.

(13:51) – Dane prepares to jump over a small railing so he can climb up a wall after Sersi and Sprite, but at the last second, the music cuts and he says, “No. Stairs,” like he isn’t Kit Harington, who’s already in great shape.

Just primo MCU cringe. Seriously, we’ve far surpassed the point where these moments are funny. The “triumphant music building up just to drop at the last second for a subversive joke” is no longer subversive; it’s just a tired trope and no one should ever do it.

(17:02) – After the fight, Sersi tells Dane about the Eternals. And . . .

Sersi: “We came here 7000 years ago . . . to protect humans from the Deviants. We thought we killed them all five centuries ago, but now they’re back.”

*a moment later*

Dane: “If the Deviants were eradicated a long time ago, why are you still here?”

Sersi: “We’ve been waiting to be told we could go home.”

Me: “Wait—hold on. Dane, she just fucking said they didn’t eradicate them all. You just saw one 2 minutes ago. Clearly they weren’t eradicated. Why did you even ask ‘If the Deviants were eradicated…?’ when they clearly weren’t!?”

Still Me: “And you, Sersi, you also just saw a Deviant! Why didn’t you say, ‘We were sent here to protect humans from the Deviants. We thought we killed them all five centuries ago, but clearly we were wrong. Must be why we were never called back home’?”

Seriously, this conversation just feels like a quick edit of a draft someone was not willing to let go. Possibly excised from a draft that didn’t have the last scene with the Deviant.

It’s the kind of dialogue you come back to on a later draft and drop a hard “Enter” on . . . Yeah, “Hard Enter” sounds weird, so what I’m saying is, you create a new line before this convo and just rewrite it from scratch. Because editing it is just asking for a loophole like this to stick around.

(20:40) – The first of many flashbacks to the Eternals’ past. Here, we see them fighting a bunch of Deviants in Babylon. And in this moment, we get a cool shot of Makkari knocking down a Deviant and then proceeding to punch it, like, 30 times.

Not jabs either—we’re talkin’, in the span of 2 seconds, she runs away, runs back, and punches this Deviant a ton of times.

Which is to say the speedster problem is really bad in this movie.

I love Makkari—she’s my favorite by far—but that might be why I noticed how bizarre it is that she’s just not ending this and every other fight immediately.

She’s usually shown saving people, which is fine, but because she’s also shown doing legitimately wild shit—like charging and punching one opponent 30 times in 2 seconds—it makes it extremely hard to not think, “Why doesn’t she just go pulp all the other Deviants’ brains in, like, 3 seconds?”

We will come back to this, but for now, if anyone doesn’t know, speedsters are easily the most powerful superheroes in any universe, and using them in one of your stories requires some adequate suspension of disbelief or strong internal story logic to explain why they can’t just end your story immediately.

For a great example of the speedster problem at work, watch the first season of the CW’s The Flash. In it, you’ll find that the Flash has the bizarre habits of stopping to talk to the episode’s big bad and/or fighting them at normal speed instead of running in and punching them before they even know he’s there. Particularly enraging because he has no problem knocking out petty thugs at the speed of sound during an episode’s exposition. But, oh man, the moment that big bad shows up, he just kinda forgets how so the rest of the episode can happen.

And once you see it, you can never unsee it.

(28:30) As part of a montage of Sersi and Ikaris “dating,” we get a shot of Ikaris awkwardly standing and watching as Sersi gets her hair done by a village girl and . . .

. . . I mean, it’s just so awkward.

You can feel someone struggling to come up with another shot for the montage, and ultimately, they just decided on this because the shot looked very pretty.

But man, part of your fucking date was having Ikaris stand over you, mannequin-silent, while a little human does your hair? Fuck’s sake, I’m single right now, and if my dream girl was like, “I will glandly stand here and watch while you get your hair braided,” I’d be fucking hyperventilating in 3 seconds. Like, “omfg she’s a lizard person abortabortabortabortabort.” My skin seriously crawls just imagining the silence.

Anything else would’ve been better. This only makes Sersi and Ikaris’ lack of chemistry painfully obvious.

Which is to say . . . man it’s easy to write characters into a relationship with no chemistry. Like, frighteningly easy. And I have no tips for it either! I guess if you have to write a date scene where one of your characters stoically watches the other get her hair did, shit ain’t workin’.

(28:47) During their date, Sersi gives Ikaris a stone that she makes jet black and tells him, “It matches your eyes.”

And holy shit, I would gather all the Infinity Stones myself if I could snap in the line, “Because it looks cold and dead and reminds me of the empty void of space, just like your eyes.”

(30:10) Just an actual sex scene. Like a full-on, they-went-for-it sex scene between Sersi and Ikaris.

I know this has nothing to do with writing, but man it’s just so painfully awkward. Now I have to die knowing that Ikaris is really bad at sex? Come on, man.

Also, Sersi says, “I love you, Ikaris,” to him, and, as if he’s powered by A. I. Dungeon, Ikaris takes a moment before parroting it back at her. “I love you, Sersi,” he says, in the exact same format.

Like, could he not say, “I’ve always loved you”? Something remotely different so he sounds like a real person?

(32:34) Back in modern day, Sersi, Sprite, and Ikaris find Ajak’s body. And Ikaris goes, “It was a Deviant.”

And maybe it’s because I was raised by manipulators, but holy shit was that an obvious attempt to control the narrative.

No lie, if I was there, I would not have turned around because my eyes would’ve gone deadpan. I would’ve thought, This motherfucker killed her. And then I’d put on the right face, get up and say something innocuous before leading Sprite away to tell her the first chance I got.

Like, seriously, at the beginning, when I thought Ikaris was evil, it was just my now-ingrained reflex to think that any hovering man with laser eyes is evil. But this line made me actually go, “Oh shit. He really is the bad guy.”

Framing this in writing terms, man that one line is basically a spoiler. Richard Madden even delivers it like he’s in the middle of trying to defend himself. I guess that’s a nice touch on the performance?

But again, ham-fisted. If I could’ve, I would’ve suggested he give commands, telling Sersi and Sprite to keep an eye out while he checked the body to confirm it was a Deviant. Or he would’ve asked them, “Was it a Deviant?” so they could confirm it themselves.

(38:30) A flashback where, after Thena attacked everyone, the rest of the Eternals talk about how she’s suffering from “mahd wy’ry,” a condition that afflicts Eternals, by which their memories overload their minds.

First, it’s obligatory. I have to talk about how stupid of a name “mahd wy’ry” is. It’s the result of the really bad Silver Age tendency to give something a name made up of normal words intentionally misspelled so they seem otherworldly. The original Captain Marvel’s name being “Mar-Vell” is a great example of this.

Of course, there’s no way to future-proof something like “mahd wy’ry”—the person who invented the term couldn’t predict that ‘mad’ would become slang for ‘very,’ and that eventually “mahd wy’ry” would sound like a hipster saying they’re tired, but here we are.

Regardless, I think we can definitely say the ‘misspelled normal words as alien names’ convention is . . . not great? At the very least, it’s always a contrivance, and whenever it can be done, I think it’s always best to cook up a replacement name.

(38:30) – Continued

It was also at this point when I started feeling really fatigued.

I’m a Fantasy writer, so I wasn’t thrown by a made up condition with a weird name.

But this is . . . the fourth time jump? The third flashback? And, look, it’s not like I was having a hard time keeping track.

But I really thought Thena turning on the other Eternals was the beginning of the intrigue. I thought that now, having seen Ajak dead, we were going to build up a strong case that Thena was her killer, possibly having escaped after being afflicted with mahd wy’ry.

But no. Gilgamesh agrees to watch her and the conversation turns from her to Ajak’s leadership pretty quickly. Ajak then tells everyone they can go their own ways, which seems like the exact opposite thing this group would do if Thena’s mahd wy’ryness was actually a concern and . . .

. . . I mean, it just sucked all the energy out of me. It made it feel like this story was 70% lore flashbacks and 30% characters talking about those lore flashbacks.

If I’m being generous, I liked the idea of a member of the team suffering from / ultimately learning to live with a disorder.

But considering the way this movie handles it, ‘mahd wy’ry’ should’ve been removed, or something else should’ve been done with it. Because what mad wy’ry ultimately provides the plot is not worth the time spent to set it up.

(41:20) Still in a flashback, Druig challenges Ajak’s leadership and ultimately decides to mind-control everyone fighting outside of their temple. He then just . . . walks away with them.

Just mentioning this for later. At this point, 1521 AD, Druig walks away from the other Eternals with a bunch of soldiers he’s puppeteering.

(44:33) Back in present day, the team seemingly just teleports to Kingo, who’s shooting a Bollywood film.

And holy shit, on this second viewing, I again have to ask myself, “Why couldn’t this movie just be about Kingo?” Why did they use Kumail Nanjiani so little when he brings so much personality and energy to the screen?

Sorry. Not a writing comment, but it’s just frustrating how charming he is when he gets screen time but it took 40 minutes to get him that screen time.

(46:39) On Kingo’s private jet he . . . has his valet Karun follow him around with a camera to shoot a documentary.

And here’s the point where I was like, “ . . . Okay, but not like this.”

Kingo is great. Next to Makkari, he’s my favorite.

But this scene where he’s shooting a documentary feels too much like ‘Marvel’s signature thing they do to make a character fun after Homecoming.’

Writing-wise, this whole scene feels like a might-delete-later. And no, I’m not trying to sound like a Zoomer—there’s no better thing to call it; it’s the kind of joke or funny scene that you write knowing it might be too cringe, and you’ll only be able to tell when you come back to it in edits. I seriously just edited one such joke in my current WIP three days ago.

I wish this scene had been edited the same way.

How? Definitely lose the camera. Seriously, Marvel, please quit it with the ‘fun video recording’ thing. It was absolutely painful in that one zombies episode of What If…?

But to be more constructive, off the top of my head, maybe Kingo sits down with a notepad and says he’s decided to write a movie script about this adventure. Maybe he literally starts writing what people are saying, telling them to slow down so he can get everything, and then pointedly not writing whenever someone says something boring. Maybe Ikaris keeps saying impressively boring shit so Kingo riffs on him for it. Maybe Kingo openly changes dialogue to make it more charming. I dunno.

What I do know though . . . is irony: I wrote a quick replacement scene for this moment while drafting this post, but when I came back to it . . . I deleted it! Because it was cringe! Ha ha! Being able to edit yourself is fucking great!

(47:59) Ikaris tells Sersi that Sprite said she’s addicted to her phone. Sersi replies by showing him himself, aged up on FaceApp or something.

When your characters have such little chemistry that you have to fill the silence between them with an app, something is seriously wrong.

(48:21) Kingo explains how he’s created a film dynasty for himself by pretending to be the youngest in a lineage of actors–something he’s done for generations.

I like this moment a lot and wish that the other Eternals had more interesting ways of ingraining themselves in human society.

But also, looking at these older pictures of Kingo made me realize . . . he and all of the other Eternals have had the same hair for 7000 years?

But no . . . because in the posters Kingo shows off, he has different hairdos.

Look, I know this is a super small thing, but man it really would’ve sold the timeline of these heroes if any of them had different hairstyles at any point. Like, I know Sersi gets her hair done by the human girl in the one horrifying date scene, but I feel like that just serves my point; even if these space robots wouldn’t think to change their own hair, humans would’ve thought of it for them. Probably at many different points. And if they had to live through certain time periods, they probably would’ve had to change their hair to fit in, right? Like, there’s no way a human in the 1970’s wouldn’t have suggested Sersi get a bob or something.

Again, small, but I’ve always been an advocate for characters getting evolving, changing looks as their timelines progress. And in this story, that approach would’ve done wonders.

(53:16) After the crew finds Gilgamesh, they sit down to a hearty dinner. And at this timestamp, Karun—Kingo’s Valet—looks up and notices Thena staring at him.

And I know that this is probably supposed to be her staring at the one human in the group, but if you are not aware, a bleach blonde, plastic-surgeried white woman staring at a brown man while menacingly eating . . . will send a very different message to some minorities.

I know the Eternals are a diverse group, but even on this second viewing, I’m like, “Ah. So Thena is racist. Got it.” This moment seriously just screams, “Meeting my white girlfriend’s parents for the first time over dinner at their house on Long Island.”

(54:03) Dinner conversation turns to the Avengers. Kingo says Thor used to follow him around when he was a kid but now won’t return his calls.

What a total self-own.

I understand that the vibe here was supposed to be, “This guy is older than Thor! Whoa!” but it feels like, “Thor used to idolize me but then he grew up and learned better.” Just, I dunno . . . Make sure your characters aren’t accidentally owning themselves?

(54:09) Still at dinner, Sprite asks who’s going to replace “Captain Rogers” and Iron man.

And I will never be able to unsee that Sprite actually said “Now that Captain America and Iron Man are both gone…,” but they ADR’d ‘America’ so she says ‘Rogers’ instead.

We’re not talking writing stuff here, but this ADR is super fascinating to me. Was it to appeal to overseas markets? Is it because, by this point, with Phase Four projects shuffled around, Sam Wilson became Captain America before Eternals was released and they had to account for it?

(55:29) Alone with Gilgamesh, Sersi explains that she was chosen to lead but can’t “even figure out to talk to Arishem,” their space boss.

And sound the fuckin alarms, because we’ve got ourselves a trope, baby! Not just a hero being uncertain about how to use their powers, but another character basically saying, “Maybe you’re doing blank . Have you tried doing the opposite of that ?” which immediately solves the problem.

It’s just a tired trope kept alive by comic book movies and TV shows. Never do it—let it die.

(57:20) Sersi gets in touch with Arishem, and he explains the film’s first plot twist in a totes frickin’ sweet 4D Experience. At this time code, he says that in order for the Celestial inside of Earth to grow, it needs “vast amounts of energy from sentient life.”

And it’s not explained a-a-a-a-any further.

What is this energy? Are we talking literal, like electricity? Does he just need a bunch of power plants on the surface to draw from? Or are we talking “life energy,” but exclusively from sentient life forms? Brain power then?

The point I’m getting at here is that this is just a contrivance that helps the plot make sense. But when you set a contrivance like this in the foundation of your story, it sits there—at the foundation of your story.

(59:07) During the 4D Experience, Arishem explains the twist that Olympia—the home planet of the Eternals—never existed. All of them are just mass produced space robots sent out to claim planets and then die.

First, the twist that Olympia never existed would’ve hit way harder if we’d actually seen the Eternals on Olympia at any point. As it is, the twist just didn’t land. When this movie tells me that an imaginary place I’ve never seen was never real, I just kinda shrug like, “Yep. And?”

Second, and super depressing for me . . . this is basically just the dynamic between the Silver Surfer and Galactus. Galactus sends the Surfer to prepare a planet to be devoured/destroyed, and the Surfer turns on him to save the Earth.

So I guess we’re never going to get a Silver Surfer movie in the MCU?

Cool. Thanks, Eternals.

(1:05:10) After learning about their true purpose on Earth, the Eternals go to the Amazon to find Druig. While walking into is village, Karun says, “It’s very nice here, sir,” to which Kingo says, “Don’t be fooled. Ignorance is bliss.”

#1 – I just hate the way the Eternals are seemingly teleported from location to location. This isn’t even the first time it’s happened; I mentioned it earlier when Sersi, Sprite, and Ikaris just kinda showed up on the set of Kingo’s film.

It’s very strange; they just kinda get shifted from scene to scene like action figures, killing all sense of motion and creating a fictional world that feels extremely fake.

It’s also extremely convenient; seriously, they get picked up from Gilgamesh’s home and immediately dropped into the exact town where Druig lives. I’m not saying I want to watch them trek across the Amazon trying to find him, but it’s strange and confusing when Sprite walks up to a random person and is just like, “Yo. Is Druig here?” and the guy’s like, “Yep.” Like, wait—what??? How did they know Druig lived in this exact town? Why is this so impossibly convenient?

#2 – “Ignorance is bliss” . . . What the fuck does that mean in this situation exactly? That Karun is naïve for thinking that these people living in the Amazon are nice? That these people living in the Amazon are stupid?

No, seriously, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

I seriously hate this movie.

(1:06:17) And here we have it. The last entry in this first part of “A Writer Watching – Eternals.” After Druig puppeteers a man so he can say hello to Sprite, he comes out, greets them, and then we cut to after the team has explained the plot twist to him. Druig, when asked if he’ll help them stop the Emergence, tells the others that he’s been “protecting these people for 20 generations.”

And by “protecting these people,” he abso-fucking-lutely means “mind-controlling them.” Because that’s the only power he has.

And he’s been doing that . . .

. . . for 500 years.

500 years.

Druig has been living in the Amazon, casually mind-controlling people without their knowledge or consent.

For 500. Fucking. Years.

How the fuck am I supposed to like these characters?

Seriously, we’ve already seen him puppeteer someone so he could fucking say “Hello.” In a few minutes, Druig mind-controls these people to make them fight a Deviant while he watches. And when he’s rightfully told to stop by Sersi, the people he controlled seem confused.

How in the world am I ever supposed to get behind the Eternals after they perpetrated this shit or just allowed it to happen for 500 fucking years? Like, if Druig used someone to say hi, what other inane shit does he make them do for him every day?

And how the fuck did this even make it into Eternals after WandaVision? That show clearly conveyed that controlling people without their consent is fucking awful—so bad that Wanda was logically portrayed as a villain for the majority of the show. So bad that after all of the blaring hero trumpets and laser battles of the definitely-not-great finale, it was still made clear that the people of Westview did not forgive her—that they feared her and will probably always fear all superheroes.

It’s just such tone deaf hero worship. It would be like if DC made a new Superman movie and had him tear ass through Metropolis, killing thousands of people again after Batman V Superman.

Okay. Okay. I’m breathing, breathing.

I like that these characters are complicated. I like that the people who made this film tried to skirt the line between good and bad with Druig.

But they completely failed and made a fucking monster. And it worries me that they didn’t have the tact to punish this character for doing something horrible.

I can’t control what anyone writes and I never would. But I will say that if you want a prime example of how to fail at making a character morally ambiguous, this is it.

~~~

And with that said, I just have to stop.

My doc for the draft of this post just hit 12 pages, one of my wrists is busted, and I hate this movie so I’m calling it here.

If you enjoyed this post, this is just the first part of a possible trilogy? We’re seriously only an hour deep and have an hour and a half to go. Whatever, the point: to be continued.

If you want to be here when that sequel comes out, you can give me a Follow via the button on the left-hand side bar (on PC) or the top-right hamburger menu (on mobile). I appreciate it because I am still trying to build a platform while working on my own writing projects.

Until next time, stay safe, stay hydrated, and just rewatch WandaVision. It wasn’t the best show ever made, but man was it brazenly experimental for a superhero show . . . Until the end, anyway. I think I might start a rewatch tonight now that I’m in recovery mode.

Anyway, bye!

A Writer Watching – Wonder Woman 1984, Part 2

Well, it looks like it’s that time again. What time, you ask?

1984. Unfortunately.

This second part of “A Writer Watching – Wonder Woman 1984″ feels like a doozy, so I’m going to jump right in.

However, this is the second part of a two-parter, so if you haven’t read part 1 yet, you might want to do that first.

That said, let’s do this . . .

_Yay.

Wonder Woman 1984 (cont.)

(1:15:04) Barbara murders the gross dude from earlier.
I understand that what I’m supposed to be getting from this scene is that the monkey’s paw is making Barbara evil, but, again, there’s been no build up to her becoming evil. At worst, she’s ignored people when they were speaking to her. To jump from that to murder is pre-e-e-e-etty big, even with her victim being a total scumbag.
What’s really coming through for me is the “Nerd Rage” trope, where a person who’s perceived as weak gets powers and immediately turns evil to get back at the people who persecuted them.
Fun.
(1:19:41) Okay. Max Lord goes to Emir Said Bin Abydos, who wishes for control of his land. The monkey’s paw part of our Deus Ex Machina erects a wall around that land, which means his people won’t have access to water.
But isn’t Max Lord supposed to decide the punishment for the wish? Isn’t the blowback for Emir’s wish supposed to be that Max Lord takes his security team?
What I’m getting at here is that this is the point where the rules for Max’s powers get muddled.
(1:21:58) Diana gets out of her car and starts running after Max Lord’s convoy.
And it looks . . . terrible.
I understand that this isn’t necessarily the writer’s fault, but I will take this opportunity to make a point: it doesn’t matter how awesome your character is; if you write them doing something that might look stupid, there’s a possibility they will look stupid.
And I think this needs to be said because, more than any other genre, Fantasy is full of ‘might look stupid’ moments. For example, “he jumped up and kicked the first bad guy in the face, but also used his face as a foothold. In a second, he was running across all of their faces in a perfect circle, knocking a new bad guy out with every step!” Like . . . Okay. I’m not going to say you can’t write that, but the chances readers will read that and imagine it looking cool are pre-e-e-etty low.
(1:23:24) Diana gets hit with a bullet, and we’re supposed to realize she’s losing her powers.
But Diana has never once been shot before this.
There was a moment earlier (when she struggled to pull a lock off of door) that hinted at her powers being the price she paid for Steve Trevor coming back.
But I thought the price was that Steve was in another man’s body (but Diana just oddly didn’t care about that).
So, what I’m left to believe then is that . . . Diana did wish for Steve to come back in another man’s body?
Whatever. This movie needed to do a better job seeding Diana losing her powers.
Or, even better, just don’t do the “sequel where the hero loses/gives up their powers” trope, because it’s overdone.
(1:24:13) Diana flips over a truck that’s behind Max Lord’s vehicle, uses it to propel herself into the air, and . . . lands on the front of Max Lord’s vehicle, facing him. Notice that the movie does not show the mid-air turn necessary to get her into that position. Just a weird, disjointed cut from her falling, facing forward, to her on the hood of Max’s car, facing the opposite direction.
Again, spacing and action execution in action scenes is so goddamn important. If you’re struggling to make a character pull off an awesome feat, just think of another awesome feat for them to do. One that makes sense.
(1:25:42) I realize this whole fight could be a lesson in spatial awareness in an action scene, but this last moment, where Steve fires a rocket and Diana whips onto it and sails through the air to save some kids ahead of the convoy, re-e-e-e-eally takes the cake. It’s silly, bizarre, and overly complicated (with Steve needing to understand how to fire a rocket out of a military vehicle he’s never seen before and Diana needing to whip the rocket away after getting far enough ahead [but not losing any momentum whatsoever while she does so]).
But, on top of that, another common problem I see in fiction happens at the beginning of this scene; Steve shows Diana a rocket and shouts, “Diana!” and she nods, showing that, yep, she gets what he’s thinking—even though there’s no way she possibly could.
I call this “the Look,” based on D&D players metagaming by giving each other “a look that says I’ll kill the first goblin while you grab the treasure.”
Really? What kind of look? Please explain.
The Look happens in fiction all the time as well, and it’s something to keep in mind because it can get out of hand very easily.
“She gave him a look that said she didn’t buy the minister’s lies,” is totally fine and makes sense.
“She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe the minister was telling the entire truth,” is pushing it.
“She gave him a look that said she knew the minister was going to kill again tonight and that she was going to try and get it out of him right now,” does not make sense.
(1:29:04) The macguffin being tied to the mysterious downfalls of ancient civilizations is one of the most tired tropes a macguffin can have.
(1:29:45) Barbara Minerva is in full, post-murder bad guy gear, and I have to say, again, that I feel really bad for Kristen Wiig.
There are a lot of 80’s styles Wardrobe could’ve used to make a woman look cool and evil.
The outfits they gave her in this movie were not it.
(1:33:46) I just have to take a moment to point out here that I love Pedro Pascal, who does a great job in this moment (when he’s not directed to act like a weird goofball).
(1:35:44) If I had to pick one scene that I really like from this movie, it’s this heartbreaking moment with Max Lord and his son. Max, a living monkey’s paw, tries to get his son to wish for his own greatness, but his son, who loves him, winds up wishing for his dad’s greatness. Pascal’s reactions really sell how badly Max wants his son to succeed and how hard he takes it when that potential is unwittingly thrown away.
(1:41:11) Again, zero setup on a Deus Ex Machina—this time, the golden, winged armor Diana will use in the third act.
And I’m sure that the argument can be made that this scene is the set up, but if a story spends 43 seconds setting up flashy armor that only exists to be flashy (and has absolutely no effect on the larger plot), then it’s A) a bad, rushed set up, and B) the armor isn’t worth having in the movie.
And it’s a shame because, man, just imagine if the intro with the tournament had established that the armor would, like, magically manifest on the strongest of the Amazons. Maybe the Amazon who won that tournament has that armor bond with them because they made some crazy sacrifice (like Lynda Carter’s character did). Maybe the Amazon who earned the armor stopped in the middle of the tournament to help another, injured Amazon get to the finish line while young Diana ran past them because she didn’t realize or was too focused on winning (and that’s why she doesn’t win the prologue tournament). I mean, that’s off the top of my head, but what I’m getting at is, ffs, how much cooler would it have been if, after struggling with losing Steve, Diana sacrificed him (and her own happiness) at the end and that’s why the armor came to her. Not just a flashy suit upgrade, but a physical embodiment of her sacrifice that allowed her to fly, like Steve. At the very least, I would’ve been invested in it.
(1:42:26) Wonder Woman sees CCTV footage of Max Lord’s car driving through Washington D.C.
And, for the millionth time, setting.
How does she have a hook up to CCTV footage in Washington D.C. . . . in the 80’s?
Was there already a complex network of surveillance set up in the 80’s, or did Wonder Woman go around and hook up cameras in different hot spots for years? And, if so, why did she put one here?
Can’t help feeling it would’ve been cleaner to show a news broadcast with a reporter like, “This just in: the President has set aside an important foreign diplomacy meeting to meet with Max Lord.”
Because even if there was a CCTV network in America in the 80’s, that would just make this a classic example of the Stranger than Fiction phenomenon.
(1:48:04) Steve picks up a sword with the intent to kill Secret Service officers, but Diana says, “No, Steve, you can’t use that,” because of course he shouldn’t just kill people who are under Max’s control (also, how a former American soldier would think of skewering Secret Service with a fucking sword is beyond me–I guess Steve is a Patriot?).
But then, after telling Steve no, Diana throws her insane, razor sharp tiara at their heads, which they only narrowly duck.
She doesn’t even throw it at the lights for cover. She throws it at them.
Diana! If you want to murder them yourself, just say so!
(1:50:20) I still feel bad for Kristen Wiig. In part because the idea of a villain getting their powers by wishing on a monkey’s paw is interesting—to me. I think if they’d just left it there, that would’ve been pretty cool. I am absolutely sure it’s been done, but I still enjoy the cleanliness of that idea. No science experiment gone wrong. Just a person wishing they could be cool like their friend without knowing that A) their friend had super powers and B) their wish would be granted. I dig it. Especially because it could yield a very interesting mentoring situation gone wrong, maybe with Barbara learning about/going to Themiscyra, being corrupted by the idea that she, a human, is stronger than all of the Amazons.
Unfortunately, this movie hurdles right the fuck over all of that. In this fight scene in the White House, Barb even predicts and counters an attack Diana almost never uses, because this movie wants us to feel like they’ve been rivals for decades (because they have been–in the comics). Gotta love that good ol’ total-lack-of-patience!
(1:53:01) We get a few lines here from Kristen about how Wonder Woman has “always had everything” and “people like me have nothing.”
The thing is, there is absolutely a conversation to be had about “pretty privilege” and other forms of discrimination (age, weight, color, sex). It’s too bad this movie actually demonizes the awkward nerd, who was genuinely being treated like shit at the beginning of the movie. Because the only thing worse than a nerd is a nerd who’s angry that everyone treats them like shit, amirite?
Fuck this movie.
(1:53:59) Here, in the same conversation as above, Diana is bloody and bruised, her hair messy.
And, as a fan of a hero getting fucked up over the course of their adventure, I just have to say . . . please, everybody, more of this. Especially if you’re writing a female protagonist. Because, I dunno about everyone else, but I am the kind of feminist who’s ready for his female protagonists to take battle damage. Like, straight up, fuck the male gaze; give me the female superhero who gets fucked up like Tobey’s Spider-Man at the end of their movies.
(1:55:25) I am a big fan of “shit is going down” super hero stories, where the threat feels palpable. I have to give it to this movie for at least selling me on the bizarre idea that one irresponsible dude being able to grant everyone whatever they wished for would destroy Earth in one day.
(1:57:35) Diana tells Steve that she’ll never love again, but Steve tells her, “That isn’t true,” and can we please get more male characters who say extremely healthy shit like this, please?
I still hate the entire Ghost Steve situation, but this one line is the kind of example more male characters need to provide.
(1:58:00) Also, Wonder Woman saying, “I can’t say goodbye” to you, and you replying, “You don’t have to. I’m already gone,” is just so good. Like, yes, sure, BDE. But more important, saying the perfect thing to get someone to revoke the wish that’s keeping you alive is incredible.
Seriously, I always try to predict what characters are going to say in a movie (it’s just a bad habit I have), and I was actually surprised by that line.
(1:58:29) First, props to Gal Gadot for really selling this entire ordeal.
Second though . . . you can just renounce your wish from anywhere, without touching the monkey’s paw?
So . . . what’s the point of the monkey’s paw then? They’re supposed to punish you for being covetous, but if you can just cancel at any time, that means you can opt out of the punishment after getting the reward (if you’re smart). For example, I can be like, “I wish to be able to safely teleport anywhere I want.” According to this movie’s logic, I’d then have that power for, like, 3 days before anything bad starts to happen, and when it does, I can just say, “I renounce my wish,” and be fine. You could make the argument of, “Well, you would lose whatever you got with that power,” but does that include experiences? Cause I’d spend one day in Japan, another in New Zealand, a third day wild carding (like, on the moon and shit). This movie doesn’t indicate that people lose the memories, so I’m golden. Gimme that shit! Where’s it at!?
(1:58:58) I can’t believe the set up for Wonder Woman learning how to fly is “she whipped too hard, then whipped onto a plane for reasons that aren’t clear.”
Just . . . what?
(2:01:05) Max Lord offers Barbara a second wish and she wishes she was in Cats.
All of this is just stupid and I’m tired. LOL
Just to scale it back and talk big picture here . . . why the fuck did they even need to make Kristen Wiig into cat lady? I get that she’s Cheetah, and fans want to see Cheetah VS Wonder Woman.
But this is the kind of massive contrivance that ruins comic book movies—the moments where they have to adhere to their source material, even when that adherence is not properly set up.
In an alternate reality somewhere, WW84 had the patience to set up Barbara as a morally grey sidekick, and then, in WW3, she becomes evil, finds the Jellicle Stone, and uses it to gain more power, becoming Cheetah in the process.
(2:02:23) The rules of Max Lord’s power go to absolute shit at the end here. Not a single fuck was given. “Oh. He can ‘touch’ people by being in a broadcasting station, broadcasting to televisions that no one is touching? Okay. Sure. What-the fuck-ever.”
(2:03:10) Max Lord manages to broadcast himself to everyone on planet Earth who has a TV, and I just have to laugh here. Because if I was alive for this—if Max Lord was real and he did this tomorrow—the moment he said, “All you have to do is make a wish,” I–freshly torn away from Control, which I just started playing–would absolutely roll my eyes and say, “Well, I wish Max Lord would shut the fuck up forever and let me get back to my game,” and his entire plan would be ruined. By just one smarmy asshole.
And there is no way in hell I’m the only person who would do that.
In fact, if I had just gotten home with a ton of groceries and I was tired, there’s a 95% chance I would sigh at my TV and say, “I wish Max Lord would fuck off and die.” Seriously, I say that kind of thing all the time without thinking—stupid, schoolyard exaggerations that I would logically never expect/actually want to happen.
Max’s plan here would have failed immediately.
(2:04:34) I actually laughed really hard when the “She’s riding the lightning!” scene they kept showing in the promos was a totally pointless 5 seconds. Because of course it was.
(2:06:01) Cannons start shooting up into the clouds at something you can’t see. Turns out to be an awesome, badass, female superhero.
No way you’ll ever see that in a Marvel movie.
(2:07:21) Cheetah finally appears. No transformation.
Cheetah doesn’t look terrible, but this fight is . . . not great.
And of course it isn’t. I mean, if we’ve learned anything, it’s that the writers behind this movie didn’t think about the space of their scenes and the execution of their action, so of course Diana blocks Cheetah’s attacks for (by my rough count) 35 seconds. She and Cheetah then spend about a minute swinging from Diana’s whip. Then, she and Diana fall in a pool of water, into which Diana pulls an electrical wire. And that electrocutes Cheetah . . . but not Diana?
But, hold on, isn’t Cheetah also a god now? Actually, isn’t she better than one? Because she initially wished to be like Diana, who, per the first film, is a literal god . . . But then, Barb wished to be better than Diana and “everyone else.” So shouldn’t she be shifting reality and teleporting around? I mean, this is the DC universe, so she should’ve flown down on a god ray wearing a cape and punched Diana into the center of the Earth, because Superman counts as “everyone else.”
Or, at the very least, she should’ve been able to withstand some fucking electricity.
(2:13:47) There’s not much else for me to go on here, but there is a moment that perfectly encapsulates this entire movie.
Max Lord is taking wishes from people and building his own power. In a moment, Diana will use her whip to . . . talk to all of the people Max is transmitting to?
It’s all-the-way stupid.
I do like the idea of a villain being talked down instead of punched down, and (although it’s bizarre that he and Cheetah get off 100% Scot-free) I do find it interesting to see villains get passes. It even seems like Max gets a chance to reform, which is surprisingly healthy for a comic book movie.
That said, in this moment at 2:13:47, Diana leans back against a wall, and her armor . . . pushes it in, making it clear that the wall is foam. And of course it is; Gal Gadot fell back against it, so it makes sense it would be made out of foam as a safety precaution on her behalf.
But this shot, where her shoulder dips softly into concrete, is what this entire movie has been.
No one cared. No one double-checked the plot or questioned the action. They saw the kinks—the weird hoops the story had to jump through—and they shrugged. In the same way an editor saw the wall pressing in and shrugged.
“It’s fine,” they might have said aloud.
“Yes, I see those obvious flaws, but whatever. There are cool moments and my main character is rad. I’m good.”
And all I have to say is, “Please, no.”
Please, never, ever think that.
Writing—particularly editing—is a dangerous game. A lot of people keep working on their stories for eternity, never actually trying to get them published. That, obviously, is bad.
But it’s just as bad to see genuine flaws in your work and just shrug them away.
If something in your work is bad, it’s an opportunity to write something better. Because, at least in my experience, that’s almost always how correcting mistakes goes; no matter how deep I have to go into a plot to excise a loophole, my WIP’s are always better for it.

So, yes, if there’s one idea Wonder Woman 1984 reinforced in me, it’s the importance of editing, especially if you’re editing something you love.

But, also, it’s super important to understand settings.

Oh, and don’t ever put a dead character into a stranger’s body and totally disregard that stranger’s emotions.

And–goddammit, no. Nope. I’m just stopping! I need this part of my life to be over!

~~~

Thanks for passing by. I hope you enjoyed this honestly reserved criticism of a comic book movie that made millions of dollars regardless of how bad it was.

If you’d like to read another one, well boy howdy, I’ve done one other brutal takedown of a big budget Hollywood film, the cost and profit from which could’ve been used to save tons of people from poverty! Ha ha! Enjoy!

A Writer Watching – Solo: A Star Wars Story

Until next time, take care, stay safe, and if you know someone who’s lived totally by themselves for 10 months at this point, maybe check in on them? Everyone’s different, and everyone’s situation is unique, but if they’re still social distancing and they’re one of the many who probably won’t get the vaccine until the Summer, they’d probably appreciate hearing from you.

A Writer Watching – Wonder Woman 1984, Part 1

Okay. So, I still only want to be positive on this site.

But if there’s one massively influential avenue of media that needs to be heavily criticized when it’s bad, it’s movies. I never want to tear apart someone’s novel or short story on here, but giant blockbuster franchise movies are just free in my eyes. They’re often written by committee, the people who write them usually fail upward anyway (because that’s how Hollywood works for some reason), and if I was watching any of them with an impressionable young writer, I would absolutely take the time afterward to be like, “Okay . . . You get why elements of that were really bad, right? Like, I know you thought it was cool, but you get how stupid it is that Palpatine came back, right? Please tell me you understand.”

But, let’s be real: even if I knew any budding writers, I’m not social enough or confrontational enough to watch a bad movie they like to break down why is sucks.

So, instead, I’m going to continue doing what I feel oddly compelled to do: use my platform to float these criticisms out into the ether with the hopes that someone who needs to find them finds them.

Folks . . . it’s time for another Writer Watching.

This time (finally) on a movie that was released recently:

Wonder Woman 1984

Now, to preface, two things.

First, this watch wound up being so long that I had to split this Writer Watching into two parts.

Second, before I watched WW84, I watched Wonder Woman for the first time, and I liked it, but really wish it had ended differently; I feel like it would’ve been way better if the ending was just, “Nope—Ares died a long time ago and people are just bad. Time to fight Dr. Poison and magical cocaine man [I do not know his name].” Of everything I liked in that movie though, the thing I liked most was Diana herself. The movie was at its best when it was totally unafraid to just lean into her character (I loved that moment near the beginning where she sees a baby and is all, “Awww!”). So, what I’m trying to say here is, I was excited to watch WW84 tonight because I like Wonder Woman and I was expecting this movie to be good.

But about 12 minutes in, I texted a friend like, “Oh-h-h-h-h-h no-o-o-o-o-o-o.”

(11:45) The intro to our setting, 1984. Specifically, 11:45 is the moment where a jogger wearing a walkman almost gets run over by a car, but Diana kicks it out of the way . . . on a street lined with other cars. It makes a football punting sound, and, sure, that’s a (bad) foley choice, but the real problem is . . .
. . . it’s a street full of cars.
I would give anything for a follow up shot of the car she kicked slamming into three other cars, but Diana just jogs by like, “<wink> You’re welcome!”
(12:33) Okay, look . . . I am a soundtrack man. I never, ever talk about it on this site, but I have a bizarre affinity for movie and TV soundtracks. I do not know why. It’s a very stupid super power that just makes me weird whenever I use it. Seriously, the last time I did, it was at a morning meeting at my old job. One of my managers was like, “I’m gonna hum a tune, and if you know where it’s from, shout it out.” I shit you not, he was like, “Dun den—“ and I was like, “Duck Tails,” and he was like, “Wha—Holy shit. How the fuck did you get that?” and no one felt more uncomfortable about it than I did.
That said, a retro 80’s movie not having an 80’s synth soundtrack is a bizarre, objective failure. I do not know why this movie has these jaunty orchestral compositions, but it absolutely destroys this film’s attempts at establishing an 80’s vibe.
(16:26) I really dig this thing they’re doing where Diana dashes and slides around. I don’t know why—it’s just cool. I have to wonder if they originally intended to have her in plain clothes on roller skates . . . Hard to tell if that would be horrible or great, but still, I dig the long range, sliding combat.
(16:45) I am completely aware that Diana threw her tiara earlier in this scene to destroy the mall’s cameras.
But it is objectively bizarre when she gives this kid a wink and a “Shhh.” It’s an adorable moment . . . but there are roughly 300 other people who watched all of this, in broad daylight.
The “shhh” makes zero sense. The other 299 people who were here are going straight to the first camera they see, describing Diana to a T, and the cops are going to put out an APB on a vigilante they call Wonder Woman.
How none of that happens will always be beyond me. Instantly, my Suspension of Disbelief is out the window.
(17:35) Okay. This is just a small aside, but . . . objectively . . . these movies take a little too much inspiration from the Captain America films.
I’m sorry. I know no one wants to hear that, but this moment where we see pictures of Diana with characters from the first movie who grew old and died . . . It’s just a retread of Steve Rogers talking to Peggy Carter in The Winter Soldier.
(18:50) Man, Diana drinking alone sixty-six years after the only person she loved died is the most Libra thing I’ve ever seen in my goddamn life.
I am a Libra, btw, so I can say that.
(20:17) I feel so bad for Kristen Wiig.
Girl, you did not deserve to get Electro’d in this superhero movie.
Actually, let me upgrade that statement: no one deserves to get Electro’d anymore.
Please, just . . . if you’re writing a super hero thing where the villain is a clumsy nerd who crushes on the hero, please just change it immediately. “The jealous, sweaty nerd” is just a terrible, weird, meat-headed angle for a villain.
(23:20) Here, Diana and Kristen Wiig are looking at an artifact together. Somehow, Kristen, who’s trained in this kind of thing, A) doesn’t know Latin and B) doesn’t notice the Latin inscriptions on the artifact. So . . . is she a scientist or someone who just walked in off the street? I am asking the plot.
(29:35) Okay, this I probably don’t even need to say, but a magical macguffin that can grant wishes is Bad Writing 101. The fact that this thing is going to both bring Steve Trevor back to life and give our antagonist her powers is pre-e-e-e-etty lazy.
(31:40) Our villain wishes to a magical stone that she can be sexy. And then takes off her skirt . . . and is sexy, by the movie’s standards.
I mean, did she really need a magical stone for that?
But also, more importantly, she was beautiful to begin with! She is Kristen Wiig! Just . . . This is sending the worst message to nerd girls. “Being nerdy and having anxiety is bad. Being sexy and popular is good!” No. Being any combination of those things is good. Being who you are is good, girl. Don’t listen to this stupid fucking movie. Wear those giant glasses and get yourself some more flats, girl, cause you are beautiful!
(32:07) Oh, Mando. What did they do to you?
(33:25) Barbara and not-Mando are laughing while messing with artifacts in their lab.
I volunteer in a conservation lab, and even if a fucking donor came in and started manhandling artifacts like this, we’d kick his ass out.
Seriously, of all the issues this movie has, the most persistent one is an inability to understand its settings. The car being kicked on a crowded street, the absence of 80’s synth, characters manhandling artifacts and no one caring—someone just didn’t understand or think about any of these settings.
(47:10) I promise not to keep harping on this . . . but Steve Trevor is apparently <sigh> a man out of time.
Can’t wait for more jokes like this futon bit from good ol’ Steve.
(48:48) Steve Trevor is such a man out of time that he can’t figure out why an exercise bike wouldn’t work like a normal bike.
Seriously, no one is ever that out of time. That would be like me going to the future and being confused why I couldn’t pour water into a cup that had no bottom.
(49:45) Okay. This thing where Steve is in another man’s body is the most bizarre contrivance I’ve ever seen.
Like, is this what Diana wished for? “Magic rock, please bring Steve back. But only his soul. Inside of someone else’s body, thanks.”
If I was an editor and this hit my desk, I absolutely would’ve sent it back like, “If you have to work this hard to put Steve Trevor in the movie, he shouldn’t be in it.” A new relationship for Diana, or her focusing on making new friends, would’ve been fine for this movie. Ghost Steve is just strange.
And creepy. I’m sure you’ve heard about that from anyone who reviewed this movie, but it needs to be said into infinity that it’s just wrong and gross that some random dude’s body is hijacked for Diana’s wish and no one cared. Steve didn’t care, Diana didn’t care—they just used his body. To have sex. It is . . . so creepy. I’ve heard some people ask, “What if he was gay?” which, yeah, totally. But even if he wasn’t, even if he was a straight dude who would be attracted to Diana, it would still be gross. Because if Gal Gadot knocked on my door and was like, “Wanna have sex?” I’d be like, “‘Yes’ is too long a word right now.” But if Gal Gadot knocked on my door and was like, “Hi. We actually had sex last week, when you were asleep, but you didn’t know. ; ),” I’d be like, “Ah . . . I have to go call the cops. BRB.”
Just fucking ew.
(56:15) This is a dress-up montage, just like the one in the first Wonder Woman.
It is also . . . Shitty Committee Writing 101—a sequel regurgitating a fun scene from its predecessor. This is something that many blockbuster sequels do, and it’s as painful here as it is anywhere.
Just never do this. If you’re writing a sequel to something, never regurgitate the one scene. I don’t even like that later seasons of Daredevil had their own “hallway fights.” Just do something new instead.
(57:47) Steve Trevor’s mind is blown by an escalator.
And I have to ask . . .Why are they writing Steve Trevor like a child?
It’s just bizarre.
He stepped onto an escalator, two feet away from where the escalator goes down . . . and somehow was not expecting it to go down?
Did Steve Trevor never experience stairs back in World War I? Because that’s basically what an escalator is—stairs that move–and literally any adult who’s never experienced escalators before would be like, “Oh. They’re stairs that move. Cool.” Even if they never experienced stairs before, they’d be like, “Whoa. Some kind of device to move me from up here to down there,” not, “WhOoAaA! I tHoUgHt I wAs GoNnA fAll!”
I am legitimately baffled.
And a little creeped out.
By this entire montage.
There’s just something about it. The way Steve is like a dog. The way he was eating Pop-Tarts in bed earlier, like a weird super slob. The way he can’t dress himself.
Like, I don’t know who was behind this montage.
But apparently they think it’s cute when a hot man has a child’s brain?
Extremely weird.
(58:00) Steve Trevor’s mind is blown by a train.
Trains were invented in 1804, a full 110 years before World War I started.
Please do your research, people.
Sidebar: So, at this point, I decided to just watch through the rest of the movie, because I thought, “Maybe the constant criticizing is making me enjoy the movie less.” That . . . was not true.
I am going to pare down these criticisms now though, because I realized (as I always do with A Writer Watching) that I can’t be here all day.
(1:01:20) Having watched the movie through, I have to say that I really like the idea of Max Stone—a villain who is a living monkey’s paw—has potential, but the execution in WW84 is extremely messy.
In this scene in particular, we’re meant to notice, at the end, that he’s experiencing abnormal headaches, but he asks for “my vitamins,” which implies that maybe these headaches are not abnormal (because if he’s taking vitamins so often that his secretary knows about them and where they are, maybe that means he experiences headaches and other minor health issues consistently, which he’s trying to correct with consistent vitamin use).
The weird thing here is, all of this could’ve been solved with a longer pause and focus on his headache in this scene. Or an easy swap to “Bring me some aspirin.”
(1:09:53) The origin of Diana’s invisible jet is pre-e-e-etty bad. In part because it comes completely out of nowhere.
This is another case of “Don’t Do This 101,” so I think most people know it, but pulling a Deus Ex Machina out of thin air is a bad, bad move. Always always set them up.
But also, just gonna throw it out there that . . . there would’ve been countless situations where making something invisible would’ve been more useful to Diana. Especially considering that she’s been hiding her vigilante activity for sixty-six years.
(1:12:03) Steve and Diana fly through some fireworks.
And it is literally just a string of pretty visuals to look at. Diana and Steve don’t fall more in love. They don’t use the fireworks as cover. If anything, this is slowing down the plot and making them more visible in their invisible jet.
Seriously, I just call this “trailer fodder.”
In case anyone has the wrong idea, please no–do not write moments like this in your stories unless it actually moves the plot forward.

~~~

And that is as far as I’m going today, because, unbelievably, this is half of my criticisms for WW84.

If you enjoyed, part 2 will be coming next Sunday.

Until then, take care, stay safe, and listen to some 80’s style synth. If you’ve somehow never heard it, I suggest “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd. Bye!

A Writer Watching – Titans, Episode 1

Yesterday, I decided to watch a comic book movie to try and wind down, escape the news.

By the end, I was so incredibly angry that I hopped on here and wrote a monster post about that movie–how I couldn’t help seeing it in a really, really bad light.

It was one of those cases too where you just need something vitriolic out of your system, so I wrote the entire post in one, trance-like sitting, hit “Save draft,” and then thought, “I can’t post this.”

Not because it was so hateful–I have no shame in the fact that I fucking hated Venom and I’m never going to apologize for that (also, yeah, it was Venom)–but because it was very reactionary; I might still post it, but I need some time to think it over–maybe share it with some friends to see if my extremely hot take has legs, or if I was just seeing a huge issue that wasn’t really there.

That done, I decided to wind down . . . by watching a comic book TV show.

And, literally 13 seconds in, I realized, “I need to do a Writer Watching for this.”

So, here we are. As always, I’m super late to the party, but, look, I’m still quarantining and working-from-home, so I’ve delved into the “bad movies / shows I felt I should watch” part of my backlog.

So, if you’ll humor me, let’s dive into the tonally backwards, massively irresponsible mess that is the first episode of Titans.

(0:13) Holy shit. The very first shot is of abandoned circus tents. A girl is walking in, looking at the blinking lights, music playing in the background, and . . . are we getting the Joker immediately? Seriously, if this show couldn’t go 5 minutes without shoving that fucking clown down our throats again, this is going to be a real short Writer Watching.

[Kept watching and it turns out this was a Dick Grayson origin scene, but wow, isn’t it weird how my brain is just trained to expect the Joker whenever I watch anything DC?]

(2:13) The marquee in the background, which says “The Flying Graysons,” started to blink. “Flying” went dark, and, omfg . . . I seriously thought it was going to light back up as “The Dying Graysons” and I almost lost my fucking shit.

Please, 2020, give me this one gift. The one executive who was like, “Oooooh, that would be super edgy!” Just please, give me that sweet, sweet, boardroom-certified melodramatic grit!

(4:15) Also, as a huge fan of the Teen Titans cartoon from back in the day, y’all fucked up with this intro. Seriously, how did Puffy AmiYumi knock it out of the park so hard that motherfuckers don’t even try?

(4:46) Oh. Oh, we’re actually following Robin immediately. Okay. Yeah.

Disappointing.

Cause, alright, I’m about to drop my truth on you guys.

DC has four crutches that they absolutely rely on for almost every movie and show they make.

1. The Psuedo-Batman Crutch, by which the protagonist of a show emulates Batman so closely that they cease to be themselves and become Batman instead (i.e. Arrow, in which Oliver Queen was even fucking trained by Ra’s al Ghul).

2. The Bat Family Crutch, by which a movie or show centers around Bat Family characters or is otherwise tied directly to Batman (i.e. Gotham, Pennyworth, Batwoman, Titans).

3. The Joker Crutch, in which a movie or show A) focuses entirely on the Joker, B) heavily shoe-horns in the Joker, even if he has nothing to do with the over-arcing plot, or C) focuses on characters directly related to the Joker, thus including a ton of scenes about the Joker and/or cameos by the Joker (i.e. Joker, Suicide Squad, anything else with Harley Quinn in it).

4. The Marvel Crutch, by which a DC movie or show attempts to emulate Marvel (i.e. Wonder Woman [which is set during a World War, has Diana using a round shield–which she’s never been known to do before–and even gives her her own Howling Commandos], Aquaman [in which a prince of a mythical realm has to fight his brother for control of that realm], and Legends of Tomorrow [in which a gang of misfits goes on fun adventures in an exciting frontier, like the Guardians . . . and the Atom is a very embarrassing rip off of Iron Man. Also, Arthur Darvill–who played a significant, named role on Doctor Who–is playing a straight, no-fucks-given rip off of the Doctor, which isn’t related at all, but will always blow my mind]).

Getting back on track, this show is already leaning real hard on that Bat Family crutch and I was hoping it wouldn’t.

(6:04) Sound the alarms! We’ve got a “Joker” here! Six minutes in and already the name drop!

I don’t remember if this show has its own Joker, but I’m going to assume it does and he just got lost among the 4 other Jokers we got in 2019.

(7:02) We get our first clear shot of Raven here, and . . . I mean, no shade whatsoever on this actress, but seeing her, with the purple hair and everything, is just a reminder that I never, ever wanted this show. On the long, long list of things I never wanted a grim dark, realistic reboot for, Teen Titans wasn’t even on the list because I could never even fathom it being an option.

It is just depressing that this is real, but a revival for the original CN show isn’t.

(8:20) I know this is a TV series with an ensemble cast, so they need to move quickly. I really shouldn’t rag on them for that.

But holy shit, this first scene with Raven goes from “Hey, mom,” to “The demon inside me almost killed you, mom” in one minute and eighteen seconds.

I mean . . . maybe slow down a little? Cause if you had her say, “It’s because you’re afraid of me,” and her mom just knelt, took her hands, started praying, and you ended the scene there, I would’ve been so intrigued.

Instead, someone came in with a 2×4 with “THERE’S A DEMON INSIDE HER OR SOMETHING!” written on it and hit me in the back of the head with it. Eight times in a row.

Them: “ARE YOU GETTING IT!?”

Me: . . . <unconscious>

Them: “THERE’S A DEMON INSI–

(9:46) That said, I would gladly watch an entire Raven TV show and, based on the last few minutes, I really wish that’s what this show was.

[A few minutes later, at 11:20] Yeah, if this entire show (or episode at least) was devoted to Raven, her plot could slow down and we wouldn’t have to experience it at this insane, break-neck pace.

Like, if nothing else, this moment is a great example of bad plot balancing. Or bad prioritizing of plot threads. Robin’s pseudo-Batman stuff? What-the fuck-ever. I’ve seen it a million times. Go watch any Batman show or movie, or go watch Arrow. But this superhero who has dark powers she doesn’t understand and can’t control? Wa-a-a-a-ay more interesting in my opinion.

(12:48) We’re in a tropey-as-fuck drug exchange scene. Gang A gave Gang B a duffle bag full of plush dolls and, obviously, the drugs or whatever are in the dolls.

But, fuck, I would give everything if the one guy in Gang B cuts open the doll, looks at the stuffing inside, and is like, “Synthetic stuffing.” And the other guy is like, “Grade A. Only the best.”

Gang B: “And they’re all cute animals.”

Gang A: “As requested.”

Gang B: “Deuce, give this man his money.”

And e-e-e-e-end scene!

(13:21) After Robin drops down and demands everyone drops the drugs and guns, one of the thugs starts looking around like, “Where’s Batman?” and, on behalf of the entire audience, yeah, same, dude.

Cause even I, a longtime Robin fan, think this Robin sucks.

He just looks terrible. They had an opportunity to give him some sick new outfit, maybe some mash-up between his old Robin suit and the Nightwing outfit, to make it clear he’s already going in that direction. But, nope, they gave him the half-cape, full-bangs treatment that Tim usually gets.

He’s wearing kid-Robin’s look and thus looks like kid-Robin.

Just the worst choice for him.

(13:40) And here’s why I could never write Batman. Cause, however many years into his campaign, criminals are still, to this fucking day, falling for this smoke pellet bullshit.

If I wrote Batman, criminals everywhere would operate with gas masks and infrared at the ready. Because, even outside of Gotham, Batman’s techniques would be recycled by amateur vigilantes so often that fucking no one would fall for Batman Gadget #1 anymore.

Them not learning is the equivalent of real life criminals never thinking to wear bullet proof vests. It just does not make sense.

(13:55) Ah, yes. That new-age Batman thing where he and other Bat Family members use guns all the time and just murder people.

Them bats gotta grit, I guess.

[After watching to 14:02] Okay. Robin is . . . actually murdering these guys, and like . . . <looks around> Is this shit for real? Like, actual Batman, as I know and love him, would hunt this Robin down. I know in new movies he doesn’t give a shit, but my Batman–TAS and JLU Batman–would not stand for this shit at all.

And just . . . Why this? Why is this the turn all of this Batman shit is taking?

Why are we leaning into murdering these criminals the heroes know nothing about?

At this point, you have to ask, “How were Silver Age characters more progressive about the treatment of criminals than modern heroes are?”

(14:03) I actually just laughed aloud, because they try to do that thing where someone rakes a bad guy’s face against something sharp or dangerous, like broken glass or the road from a moving car. Only, here, it’s boney-ass Robin raking a guy’s face against . . . the alley wall? And, like, apparently half of his face comes off on that wall? Bitch, was his face cake? Is that the plot twist of the show?

Batman drops down and is all, “Yes, Robin, the criminals are all cake!”

And Robin is like, “Wha–What!?”

And the Cake Boss or whoever the fuck pops out of the trunk like, “Crime is cake, Robin! All crime is cake!”

And Twitter is like, “omfg i cant whats real”

(14:26) Also, I thought this show was going to rip off Daredevil with Robin’s fights, but, instead, we just have the same over-choreographed fights we’ve seen in everything else.

I guess that’s not fair–there’s no winning for DC in that scenario–but, I mean . . . I could’ve won. If they’d ripped off Daredevil, I would’ve laughed really hard at least.

(14:36) Robin catches the child abuser he came out here for, and–after killing, like, 5 guys in this alley–he cuts this guy’s face and says, “If you ever touch your kid again, I’ll find you.”

Like, “Hey, uh . . . Robin? That one guy who you stabbed in the throat with part of a gun? He was just someone’s cousin who didn’t even know he was going to a drug deal tonight. That guy was terrified before you even got here, and you murdered his ass in cold blood. But this actual child abuser who you know is evil . . . gets to go free?”

Just what the fuck even are these priorities?

(15:07) The infamous “Fuck Batman” from all the marketing could not have been delivered at a stranger place. It’s supposed to be a reply to the one guy who was like, “Where’s Batman!?” but that was, what, five minutes ago? Just didn’t stick the landing here.

(15:33) Okay, I wasn’t going to say anything, but holy shit, Robin’s apartment looks exactly like Daredevil’s. What the fuck even? They show a longshot of the living room, and the only difference is there’s no neon sign outside–just dirty, mute white windows, which actually draws a perfect comparison between Netflix Daredevil and this Robin now that I think about it.

(16:00) I know they’re going for “gritty badass hero” here, but it re-e-e-e-eally just comes off as “young serial killer” using his vigilante work as a vehicle to commit his murders . . . And, actually, ya know what? I’d watch the shit out of that show.

Sidebar: Okay. Gonna dial it back here because I’m commenting on things every 30 seconds, and I can’t spend five hours doing this today.

(21:43) Okay. Okay. So excited, because Starfire’s intro is, like, the closest we’ve come to really rad cinematography and I’m pumped.

(29:49) Okay, eight minutes later, it’s cool that she is clearly socially and physically powerful.

But I’m disappointed that she has an amnesia plot.

And that amnesia plot is also gritty.

I don’t know why I expected anything different though.

Whatever. Getting into the craft of it, we’re already working with one mysterious past with Raven, so the fact that we have another is annoying. Especially because Starfire is someone I just want to have clarity on immediately–mostly because I’ve never had to wait on her premise before, in anything I’ve ever watched. Starfire has always just been an alien from another planet and that was always fine. I’m not sure why we need this gritty, origin-like preamble for a character I always expect to be a source of comic-booky levity with no origin whatsoever.

But, even ignoring all of that as my preference (which it absolutely is), I think it just does a disservice to the dynamic of the of the characters to have character A in a mysterious past plot, character B in a detective work plot, and character C . . . doing detective work to figure out their mysterious past.

Starfire looks dope, acts dope, but the plot they gave her is weirdly samey.

(33:36) Robin describes Batman as a “stop-at-nothing guy who solved everything with his fists,” and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a worse description of Batman in my entire life. Not because that isn’t what Hollywood has made him into, but because that isn’t all Batman is supposed to be. The idea that Robin described him like that means the Titans Batman has to be the worst piece of shit on Earth. Basically a rich boxer who goes out to beat the shit out of people every night. No thank you.

(35:52) Okay, I’m officially sick of this damsel-Raven bullshit. Like, I get we’re doing an origin story here, but this girl just needs to be more aggro. And, sure, creator’s choice, but if she, at least, tried to fight back when someone tried to force her into a car against her will, it would feel more like I was actually watching Raven. I mean, isn’t this supposed to be a gritty TV show for angsty teens? Why the fuck isn’t Raven like, “Hey! Get your fucking hands off me!” or something? Why can Robin kill people but Raven can’t “cuss”?

Whatever. In the end, this is a case of source material balancing: do you make her completely different from all the source material? Totally similar to the way she was in one piece of source material? I would argue that, because the cartoon was pivotal in making the Teen Titans popular, it would’ve done them a service to make her a little more like that interpretation of the character.

Cause this interpretation just feels like a helpless kid and it sucks.

(40:13) Starfire giggles at the dude she just burned alive and . . . cool. Great. So, the team of fun, teen heroes I loved so much are all total sociopaths in a hyper gritty world.

Fucking . . . lame.

They took all of the sullen bitterness out of Raven, doled it out to everyone else, and then turned the contrast up to ultra-max, so she’s the innocent, helpless one and all the other characters are edgy, gritastic murderers.

And it just fucking sucks.

I could write an entire post about this alone, and maybe I will.

Because I don’t understand how you could so thoroughly and absurdly kill an entire team’s dynamic.

It would be like if they redid Guardians of the Galaxy and everyone was a large bruiser with daggers while Drax was made into the pilot of Quill’s ship.

Just fucking why?

(44:16) If there’s one thing I wanted to see, it’s this shot right here: Raven, with the full black eyes, kicking ass. I just wish this could’ve happened way more often. Slower plot, but maybe with one more instance of her actually fighting people off instead of crying for help.

Also, I don’t want to sit through another 8 episodes of damsel-Raven learning to control her powers.

(48:34) Oh nah.

Nah. They did my Beast Boy dirty.

He looks . . . terrible.

And his weird, gross, slow, bone-breaky transformation means he’s going to be locked in as the one animal per fight?

I– . . . I’m sorry. I’m out. I’ve seen a way better version of this character already and I refuse to downgrade.

In fact, I’ve seen better versions of all of these characters.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep watching and maybe do more of these posts, but the answer is a firm, resounding “no.”

Instead, I’m going to go find out where I can watch Teen Titans and wash away the grim dark.

~~~

Thanks for stopping by. I don’t do A Writer Watching too often, because they take way longer to write than it seems. However, I did one on Solo: A Star Wars Story, and another on the first two episodes of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the follow-up for which became my first Edited in Post.

If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to Like. If you agree with any of it, or if you want to argue why I should finish watching Titans, feel free to Comment down below (and also, absolutely drop spoilers if you want, cause I’m pro-o-o-obably not watching more of this, even if you tell me I should–no shade, just being real). If you want to be notified when I post again, you can Follow me via the button on the left side of the screen on PC, or via the hamburger menu on the upper right on mobile.

But, no matter what you do, please stay safe, and take care.

Edited in Post – The Rest of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

It’s been over two years since I did the first “Writer Watching” for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. While rereading it, I had a bunch of nervous laugh moments whenever I’d said shit like, “I’ll talk about that next time!”

Yeah, I have no idea what “that” was.

What I do know is that it was always weird for me that I just never came back to finish the series.

In one part, it was because it just felt weird–I was voicing really reactionary opinions on the first and second episodes of a TV show; it felt like I should finish the season and then comment.

But, on the other hand . . . it just felt like watching it while nitpicking was making me like the show less. Like, significantly less.

And, finally, it felt like the feminist angle of the show actually required more patience than a 30-something man, writing on his blog, could give it. Basically, I reached Seahawk, initially hated how he was handled, and decided to back away instead of writing a whole thing about how much I didn’t like him.

Well, I’m still in lockdown. It’s 2020 now, and, seeing as all of my time is spent in the one room, working or watching things on Netflix, I figured it was the perfect time to actually return to the series and finish what I started.

Instead of being absolutely insane and commenting on specific things, however, I’m going to try something new.

As I’ve said on this site before, I am a really intense self-editor; I will mercilessly edit and rewrite my own work, which is a double-edged sword because A) there’s always going to be room for improvement and, B) the new additions I make will always have grammatical errors of their own (it’s a thing).

A vent for that reflex (or maybe a result of it), is that I love imagining edits for existing works that I think can improve with a few tweaks (or, in the case of Episodes VII – IX, a ton of tweaks).

So, considering that She-Ra and the Princesses of Power triggered that reflex, I figured, “Why not write a whole post about it?” A post that I’m making the first in a new series: Edited in Post.

To be clear, my goal here isn’t to “improve” on the story as a whole; I am not conceited enough to think my edit of She-Ra would be better. All that I can say objectively is that A) it would be different from the end product we got and B) it would be how I would’ve edited the end product if I was in the writer’s room. Ultimately, this is just an editing exercise and a way for me to consider my identity as a writer.

All of that said, let’s start by establishing a really healthy baseline with . . .

What I Liked

1. Adora

Of all the things I didn’t think I would like in this show, Adora herself was probably number one. In my original post, I talked about how much I disliked the White Savior vibe I was getting from the pilot two-parter. I was super glad to see that problem didn’t persist because the show spends a lot of time with Glimmer, Bow, and other non-white characters.

Beyond that, however, I still didn’t think I’d like the no frills protagonist of any Fantasy show that much; I have become hard-wired to expect the typical batch of issues a protagonist has (like trying to understand their powers, trying to figure out a mystery left for them by an ancient race, etc.). For sure, Adora has that same batch.But . . . she still manages to be incredibly likable on her own. She’s funny, a terrible actress, cocky in a dorky way that’s super fun to watch, and–more interesting than anything, else in my opinion–she’s su-u-u-uper prone to making mistakes (which is probably the freshest breath of fresh air). Like, I often consider protagonist fatigue; whether they’re men or not, the lamest thing in the world is the no frills protagonist who just does everything right. Adora is not that character.

And, because it needs to be acknowledged, she is not that character in massive part due to Aimee Carrero’s performance.

There were . . . so many moments where I laughed out loud just because Carrero’s delivery was so good.

“I’m a triple may-zhor, and I also teach, unless that’s not a thing students do. Is it hot in here?”

“Ah ha ha ha ha. Is that a good laugh or a bad laugh? Ha ha ha . . . Well, the longer it goes on, the more I think it’s a bad laugh.”

Really early on in my watch, I started getting super excited for Adora dialogue in fun situations.

2. Scorpia

The greatest failure of my life is that Scorpia isn’t real and she isn’t my best friend.

I’m not kidding; I’m actually sad that I can’t be woken up by Scorpia every morning, rushing into my room to ask if I’ve breathed in the new day yet (which I would absolutely hate coming from anyone else).

I think that in the great array of strong female protagonists, ranging from Super Sexualized to Tough and Angry, Scorpia is something completely different. She’s this extremely hug-able, determined, compassionate woman who’s also always the strongest non-She-Ra person in the room, and she has the freedom to be all of those things because her character is not her charging into a room, tackling the nearest man and flexing like, “I am Scorpia! I am strongest in the world!” Like . . . she’s just a character and her being a buff giant just adds to that character. I just love it. I’m here for Scorpia. I stan her and I want to see way more characters like her.

3. Basically the Rest of the Cast (and their Fun Drama)

I really enjoyed the majority of the Princesses and other characters (some more than others naturally; it is a cartoon show after all).

Mermista was the real standout for me, and she’s the one who made me realize why I liked the cast so much; they all had some low stakes drama with each other on occasion, and every instance of that was extremely fun and fresh to me (i.e. Mermista deciding that she was Sea-Ra, just straight up jacking Adora’s alter-ego for her character in the D&D episode). I really lived for those moments–those brief, beautiful nuggets of petty that really gave the characters life.

Those dynamics, and the show’s ability to showcase that drama, were great.

Okay. There’s a lot more I liked, but I have to start trying to shorten these posts. Suffice it to say I liked the show a bunch, but to get into the edit, here’s . . .

What I Didn’t Like / What I Would Change

1. The Not-So-Fun Drama

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the show wasn’t able to handle more complicated friendship drama later on. I felt Season 5’s Adora/Glimmer beef was a little exhausting–especially after it seemed to be solved by the end of an episode . . . but was still there in the next episode. I’m definitely not saying I didn’t want to see those characters fight; I just got incredibly tired of watching them voice the same issues, over and over, without working on them, which even the show points out is strange.

2. The Pacing on Catra’s Arc (and thus, for a while, Catra)

It must be reverse day, because of all the things I thought I’d love for the entirety of the series, Catra was number one.

When I first watched the show, I absolutely loved her. I enjoyed her attitude, her design, how her situation was understandable, so you wind up feeling for her.

But then the show shoots way past the point where she’s understandable . . . and the plot just keeps supporting her, for way too long.

It isn’t until Season 4, Episode 10 where she actually starts losing, and, as a person who’s experienced the full spectrum of gaslighters, it feels like it took way too long for her to be redeemable. Like, she opens a portal that almost destroys all of reality because she’s a jealous brat, and it is pretty impossible to forgive that.

It doesn’t help that the plot support came in ways that seemed over-the-top and devalued other characters.

Scorpia and Seahawk share an episode where they vent about the treatment they’re getting from their special someones. Seahawk leaves that episode triumphantly proclaiming that, fuck it, he doesn’t care about what Mermista thinks of him. Scorpia left that episode . . . determined to devote herself to Catra’s bullshit no matter what?

Hordak also, weirdly, winds up bowing to Catra because she rips out a gem powering his new exoskeleton . . . but then gives it back to him? So, like, he’s in charge, but really she’s in charge? The thing is, I wouldn’t have even minded her just straight up becoming the leader of the Horde, but it was done in this weird way where she still gets to be angry about being subservient . . . while also calling the shots? Why didn’t she just kill Hordak? Why didn’t the show just shift her into Queen Catra mode and give her a dope new outfit?

In the end, I just got tired of it. She stopped being relatable, the drama between her and Adora stopped moving, and her drama with almost every other character stopped feeling logical.

3. The Rest of the Pacing Too, Actually / Why Did They Save the Good Part?

This is not my first rodeo when it comes to Netflix Originals from Dreamworks. They usually have pacing issues. And weird half-seasons. I get it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem that needs fixing.

Particularly because . . . the last season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is fucking awesome.

If you’re not aware, the last season is actually the season that most resembles the intense, desperate-rebellion energy of the original show. The stakes are insanely high and it absolutely rocks.

The fact that it’s only the last fifth of the show will always feel like a weird mistake to me. Especially because the middle seasons just spun wheels on a lore-based plot twist that just didn’t feel unique (basically a perfect example of the “mystery left for protagonist by an ancient race” plot line that’s already deep into trope town).

The Edit in Post

Okay. So, how would I have reorganized all of this?

Delete a lot of the plot mystery: I liked Mara and thought some of the lore episodes with her were amazing. But I would completely cut the Heart of Etheria plot line. By the end, it got super convoluted, and the plot twist that the Princess’s energy was meant to power a weapon that would destroy the planet was weirdly antithetical to the message of the entire show. Other details, like the planet being in another dimension, are such weird, late-game additions that it just felt like the writers were hitting points on a checklist of “Things We Have to Do Because the Original Show Did Them.”
Move up Horde Prime–and thus the stakes–by, like, 2 seasons.
Move up Catra being exiled from the Horde and make it permanent.
And I mean move her exile up to Season 2 so Catra and Scorpia take over the Crimson Wastes. Catra builds her gang by stealing Horde tech, or maybe finding a new character to enlist. This results in a new faction that fights both the Princesses and the Horde. Would actually be way cooler to see Catra build a stronger army than the Horde, come back, and beat Hordak.
Move up Double Trouble’s intro. Absolutely introduce her in Season 2, in the Crimson Wastes, and have her work for Catra. Give the audience a slower, better burn on the mystery of who she is among them and let her work more subtly on putting a wedge in the gang. It would be . . . such good drama.
Give us a full season at least of Entrapta and Hordak. Just bolster the idea that Entrapta would actually, logically decide to stay with the Horde because she and Hordak are the most adorable friends ever.
Pad out everything with new episodes of good filler that explore character relationships and drama (i.e. gimme that Bow and Glimmer flashback solo adventure!).

So, to be clear, my changes would’ve looked like this:

Season 1: Introduce main characters and setting. Establish stakes early early with Entrapta getting captured way sooner. Use remaining episodes to establish Entrapta / Hordak friendship via B plots. End season with Catra beating the gang, who narrowly escape, and then she takes over for Shadow Weaver.

Season 2: Establish early in the season that Catra is tired of Hordak. She miscalculates a first attempt to manipulate him (or maybe trying to fight him), gets banished to the Crimson Waste. Catra, Scorpia create a new faction via B plot, gaining power with Double Trouble’s help. Plot A remains the cast fighting the Horde, but maybe also getting infiltrated by Catra’s faction? Establish that there’s some super powerful Old One’s weapon (basically, the Heart of Etheria minus a bunch of lore episodes), and the season ends with all three factions fighting for it. Hordak is defeated by Catra, but he hints heavily at Horde Prime’s arrival.

Season 3: Catra as Queen of the Horde, fighting She-Ra for the season with Shadow Weaver drama and question of how to get the weapon to work. Full season of peak Catra / Adora drama via “Catra, why the fuck are you fighting us when Horde Prime is on his way!? Goddamn!” but worded differently. Also peak Entrapta drama as she joins Catra to “keep working on tech,” but is really trying to figure out how to free Hordak. Peak season for the drama. I imagine that right as Entrapta is freeing Hordak, Horde Prime shows up and handily defeats everybody. Hordak goes to Prime, his mind gets erased, and Horde Prime captures both Glimmer and Catra.

Season 4: Basically the same as the Season 5 we got, only with Catra ingratiating herself to Prime at the beginning. I’d love to write her being frustrated at having to be subservient to Hordak again. But, more than anything, I’d love to write the argument where Glimmer tells her, “If you had just helped us fight him, none of this would’ve happened.”

Again, this outcome would’ve been different (not necessarily better), but I can say that I absolutely would’ve loved to write it and watch it.

~~~

It was weird to write this out (this is usually just an exercise I perform in my head for a week after watching something), but I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please consider Following the House of Error; the field to do so is to the left side of your screen on desktop, or in the drop down menu (i.e. the hamburger icon) on the top right on mobile.

Next week is going to be a post about my writing process–the ways in which it’s similar to and differs from Brandon Sanderson’s. Until then, stay safe, everyone!

A Writer Watching – Solo: A Star Wars Story

I made the mistake of watching Ant-Man and the Wasp a few weeks ago.

Which sucks, because, had I not watched it, that movie could still be whatever I’d imagined.

It could have, for example, been the awesome heist film I was imagining, heavily involving the Quantum Realm in an effort to rescue Janet Van Dyne. Not a full 2 hours with only 5 or so minutes spent there–no, it could’ve been a strange road trip into the void, reminiscent of a heist in the sense that the cast would have to manage a bunch of details, in both the normal world and Quantum Realm, to ensure their escape.

It could have also built on the narrative of the first film in interesting ways by advancing the cast’s relationships.

And it could’ve corrected the weird, casual racism of the first movie.

Watching Ant-Man and the Wasp, however, made it an inescapable truth that it was none of those things. It was, instead, a weird, boring mess that was massively disappointing even though I came in with low expectations.

At the end, I thought, “Man . . . I should’ve done a Writer Watching for this.”

And so, we have last Tuesday morning, when I was home, having thrown out my back, and thought, “Let me watch Solo, since my friends said it was good the other night.”

A minute . . . and thirty three seconds.

I got a minute and thirty three seconds in before I hit pause and said, “Yeah, I’ll do a Writer Watching on this shit for sure.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoy nerdy film crit, cause this one’s a heckin’ chonker. It’s A Writer Watching – Solo: A Star Wars Story:

(1:33) The inciting moment. Han Solo hangs up his stupid, golden dice on the rear view . . . of the . . . speeder he stole?
. . .
Does he do this with every vehicle he steals? Ya know, to make it incredibly clear that, “Hey, that one idiot kid who loves these stupid dice stole this one”?
Sorry, but fan service that blatant and nonsensical infuriates me.
(3:45) Alien Thugs: “Han! You got our money!?”
Han: “Uh . . .”
Alien Thugs: “Whatever! This is a shake down! Search him!”
They find nothing.
“Hmmm. Okay! Whatever! Let’s go see Lady Proxima!”
Logic: “You guys, uh . . . not gonna also shake down this other character who’s with Han?”
Alien Thugs: “Lady Proxima, here we come!”
Logic: “But, guys, like, that doesn’t make sense. That’s definitely not what–”
Alien Thugs: “IT’S PROXIM-A’CLOCK, BABY!”
(5:54) Ah, yes. Finally. A good shot of Lady Proxima.
. . .
She looks terrible.
Like, the idea of a sentient, aquatic alien crime boss is awesome . . .
. . . but Proxima just looks terrible.
And don’t @ me with that bullshit, Rogue One excuse of, “She’s supposed to be boring! She’s only in the movie for 5 minutes!” cause, just fucking no. Bad character design is never justified in any story.
(7:20) Wow. I actually have to say, this chase scene at least feels like a new scenario. I know we’ve seen people chase each other in speeders before, but this scene still feels unique. Like I’m actually watching a fun new Star Wars film.
(9:15) I’m a writer who focuses a lot on realism. Yes, I write fantasy, but within my fantasy stories, characters have to make choices that are realistic. When watching any movie, there’s usually a part where I say, “I could never write that,” about something that happened on-screen, because it makes absolutely no sense in the context of the world, scene, or characters.
Han, with these dice, is a great example of something I could never, ever write.
Because he’s attached to them, right? He clearly has a thing for them.
Then why the fuck would he ever, in a million years, hang them up on a speeder he stole on a whim?
Especially when that act results in him having to brave blaster fire to take them back not even ten minutes later?
Realistically, the learned tendency would be to keep them in a pocket. Maybe to hang them up on his coat or something–not to proudly display them on a stolen vehicle that he abandons among his thieving peers moments later. Especially if doing so puts him in danger–even once.
The idea that a criminal would treat an important momento the way Han is treating these dice . . . just doesn’t make sense.
(9:50) Am I the only person who’d like to see a Papers, Please-esque movie about the Empire’s strict immigration protocols?
Or even just a movie about normal people living in the empire, trying to survive its corruption?
(10:39) When Han gives Qi’ra his lucky dice: I would give anything for Qi’ra to be like, “Ugh. Not your stupid fucking dice again.”
(11:51) When Qi’ra is being dragged away at the travel checkpoint, and we see that she still has Han’s dice: I would give anything for Han to be like, “No! Don’t take my dice!”
(12:16) “And for my next trick, I will pull a coat out of thin-fucking-air!”
To be fair, I’m sure they filmed a moment when you saw him take whatever clothes off of a cart or something, but whichever editor decided to leave that on the cutting room floor made a bad choice.
(13:00) Wait . . . is the Imperial March actually playing on that in-universe propaganda?
Really?
It’s been the actual theme of the Empire this entire time?
Well, shit, now I understand why people keep joining the Empire.
(14:00) Yeah, see, this whole stupid, terrible explanation for Han’s last name? You should’ve cut that instead.
That was just high school fan-fiction levels of bad.
If you ever have the opportunity to avoid a genuinely terrible explanation for something in your writing, stop to ask yourself, “Do I really need to explain this?” If the answer is “no” (i.e. “Han’s last name could just be ‘Solo’ for no special reason!”), then just don’t explain it.
(14:31) Han’s Commanding Officer: “Solo! Get up! We’re almost there!”
Han: “Almost where? Where are we going?”
Why is he screaming this like he genuinely has no idea? I understand that he might not have been briefed, but if that’s the case, three years of training as a soldier in the Empire would mean that he wouldn’t be at all indignant about not knowing where his platoon is headed. Either he would know where they were going, or he would know better than to question it.
Instead, this moment is written like he just fell into this scene, experiencing the same cut the audience just saw. Because lol, what a funny, clueless rogue he is! That Han!
Definitely dampens the idea that he served in the Empire for three years. And, if there’s some canon rule stating that Imperial recruits spend 2 years and 10 months training, then having him serve for only 3 years was an enormous mistake.
(16:48) Kinda weird how . . . Rebel-like all of these characters look.
Like, for whatever reason, we’re getting a bunch of maskless characters fighting on foot . . . instead of Storm Troopers in high tech walkers, ships, etc., so it doesn’t actually feel like we’re watching characters in the Imperial Army.
It’s disappointing, because I always thought it was really interesting that Han was in the Empire . . . But now it turns out that he was only in the Empire for three years and . . . wasn’t a Storm Trooper?
I guess there’s a time paradox to look out for: Han can’t have crazy detailed knowledge of how the Empire operates because he never displayed that knowledge in the original trilogy. But eh . . .
If only George Lucas were still in charge . . . He’d be able to add new, not at all glaring shots of a completely CGI Han saying things like, “Luke, at the Imperial Academy, we learned that the AT-AT’s armor is weak on it’s underside!” or whatever.
(18:40) Wait . . . He got kicked out of the Imperial Academy for having a mind of his own?
. . . Then what the fuck is he doing in the Imperial Army?
I don’t think that’s how the Empire’s supposed to work. I’m not sure that’s how any military works.
“Well, he’s being super subversive, so we don’t want him flying ships . . . but eh, fuck it, give him a gun and put him on the front lines with our boys anyway.”
(21:41) I . . . hate this Han / Chewbacca fight.
So . . . Han Solo . . . can speak Wookiee . . . and he knew that Chewbacca was a Wookiee when he came out of his mud hole to presumably eat Han . . . but, instead of immediately talking to this Wookiee . . . Han decided to . . . fight him?
I . . . hate this.
That entire fight was such a goddamn contrivance. No one in their right mind would ever decide to fight a giant monster before talking to it . . . if they knew it wasn’t just some brainless fucking monster.
It’s the equivalent of a character from Star Trek being thrown into a pit with a Klingon, knowing about the Klingon, but . . . deciding to let the Klingon nearly kill them for a few minutes before talking to them.
It’s just a classic case of plot twist fallacy.
Writer A: “And ‘the monster’ is Chewbacca!”
Writer B: “Genius! So Han and Chewie fight!?”
Writer A: “Yes! Cause, like, Han doesn’t know Chewbacca; he just sees him as a monster!”
Writer B: “OMG! So fun! How will he get out of the fight though?”
Writer A: “Uh . . . Oh! Han can speak Wookiee!”
Writer B: “Genius! No contradictions there! We can even have him call Chewbacca Kashyyykian, making it clear that he even knows the name of the planet Wookiees come from!”
(23:28) So . . . This new alien they’re introducing . . . is basically a talking monkey?
Phew.
Man . . . Yeah, the alien designs really do just suck in this movie.
. . .
WAIT.
Hold on.
Louis examines his star charts.
Yes.
Squints at an equation. “(Normal Animal + Human Voice) Pilot / Space =”
Yep.
He’s just a rip-off of Rocket Raccoon.
This stupid monkey alien dude is pop culture’s first Rocket Raccoon rip-off.
I would not be surprised if his early draft name was Missile Monkey.
He’s even a pilot like Rocket. For fuck’s sake.
(23:48) Wait. Wait. So, this dude that Han tried to ingratiate himself with before . . . turns Han in . . . and Han runs back to him anyway?
Why?
That makes no–
Okay. Ya know what? I need a break. At this point in the post, I’m stepping away, because I’m actually getting frustrated.
(24:10) Why the fuck does Missile Monkey keep pronouncing it as “WOO – ki”?
It’s like if a new character showed up and started pronouncing it “jahDYE.”
No. It’s “wook – ee.” It’s always been “wook -ee.”
(25:48) Originally, I had a rant here about Chewbacca not saying his name, creating a weird language paradox where there was a Kashyyykian word for “Chewbacca,” and how stupid that was.
But then, I rewatched this moment . . . and Chewbacca literally says “Chewbacca” in Kashyykian. And it’s so well done that I genuinely didn’t realize it the first time.
And, just like . . .
. . . I understood Chewbacca.
You guys, seriously . . . I know this is really, really stupid and probably one of the most fanboy emotions I’ve ever felt . . .
But I’ve been listening to Chewbacca grunt for over 30 years without ever understanding what he said.
But this time, I did understand. . . and I actually have feelings about it.
Probably because there is no other experience I can compare it to.
This movie is a mess, yes, but there’s something simple and wonderful about this one moment, when I finally, briefly understood this character I’ve loved my whole life.
(29:42) Woody Harrelson: “All you need to do is do what I say, when I say it . . .”
Logic: “Oh, cool. Han has demonstrated that he’s really good at taking orders.”
Also, what a lazy origin for Han’s blaster.
It’s another thing that didn’t need an origin, but especially not when the origin is “Some dude gave it to me–cause I needed a gun, I guess.”
Also . . . Could you, uh . . . give me the extra parts that make it a sweet sniper rifle, too?
Kinda feel like those would be super useful.
(31:08) Woody Harrelson: “Or blow us all to Hell!”
Hell exists in the Star Wars universe?
(31:21) I can’t wait for Missile Monkey to die. It literally can’t happen quickly enough. They tried so hard to pour so much charm into him that I can’t stand it.
(31:45) Okay. I gotta say . . . These action scenes are consistently good. Easily the best part of this movie.
(32:00) But this attempt at generating tension by showing Chewbacca in danger is funny.
Oh no! <gasp> Will Chewbacca die, and then not be in all of the future movies he’s already in? The suspense!
When you have a time paradox like this, you need to create tension in other ways. The audience knows Han and Chewie aren’t going to die, so you have to either create new characters who are likeable enough that the audience would care when you put them in danger (which this movie failed with, in my opinion), or, easier, you set up a villain the audience really hates, then create tension with the possibility that that villain will win. And, sure, they won’t, but, “Gah! It doesn’t fucking matter, ’cause, ugh, I just hate him/her so much!” This movie, at least to this point, has also failed in that respect unfortunately.
You could relate everything to Han’s mission, or showcase a pre-established bit of lore in an interesting, enthralling way, but this movie dropped the ball in those regards as well.
(Sidebar) Okay . . . I took a day off, and something interesting happened.
I’d paused during the heist scene, so when I hit “Play” today, I jumped right into the action . . .
. . . and I just fucking loved it.
That heist was fun, and pretty much all of the scenes after it were fun. There was even a moment where Alden Ehrenreich had such natural banter with Chewie . . . that I actually felt like I was watching a movie about a young Han Solo.
At the moment, I’m enjoying this, which is great because I also have to cut down on the notes, or I’ll be writing this until April.
(Sidebar 2) Also, I was ready to hate whatever villain this movie threw at me, but I actually like Dryden Vos. He’s a great mix of normal and terrifying. He feels, at once, like an authentic, believable crime lord while also being a dude with weird scars on his face that get red when he gets angry because . . . the blood rushes to them first?
(51:04) Vos: “He is arrogant! And he is . . . hungry!”
Me: Ugh.
This is one of those lines you squint at after you’ve typed it. “Does that sound weird?”
Yes.
(59:30) Okay. I also enjoyed the entire Sabacc game and every moment with Donald Glover’s Lando.
But . . . here’s where things take a massive, massive dive.
I’ve realized this weird tendency lately for issues of diversity to be pushed onto other races. Bright had orcs. Extinction (another meh Netflix original) had synths. Overwatch has omnics. And, while having these races and embroiling them in races issues isn’t a terrible thing, it leads to genuinely bad ideas and habits. For example, after I complained about Overwatch adding two new white characters last year instead of more ethnically diverse characters, some of my friends balked, “Yeah, and when are we going to get more representation for omnics!?” I remember blinking in that moment. I wanted to say, “Why the fuck does the race of robot people that doesn’t exist . . . need more representation that brown people like me?” There’s such a bizarre loss of priority there that my head is spinning.
And I suspect that, no matter how innocent the intentions, it’s the fault of shit like this stupid fucking robot-rights character.
Why the fuck is civil rights parodied in this movie? What is this fucking trend with trying to make racial tension a gag?
I absolutely hate it. Like the Latin lover and the Hispanic drug dealer in every goddamn movie, this “goofy social justice warrior” bullshit makes me absolutely livid in its irresponsibility.
(1:01:57) This moment is so strange. We take a minute or so . . . for Lando to be upset that there’s a boot on his ship . . . Then Woody Harrelson says he’ll remove it, but reduce Lando’s cut . . . and Lando basically says, “Okay.”
. . . That is prime cutting material right there. A solid 40 seconds that did not need to be in this story.
[Edit: It’s weeks later, and I’m editing through one more time before posting this, and I have to say that, yeah, having finished the movie, there’s literally no payoff, whatsoever, for this scene. It’s a perfect example of a useless scene, and I will use it as such for the rest of my life.]
(1:14:18) Here, Qi’ra becomes every strong-female-character-in-a-male-driven-movie ever by exhibiting that she is not only hot but also a karate master.
Seriously, they elected not to show her fight because either A) it was impossible to get anyone to move fluidly in that admittedly next-level-badass outfit she has on, or B) they did film it and realized it looked exactly like every other strong-female-character-in-a-male-driven-movie fight scene since the beginning of time.
Seriously, if you’re worried you missed anything, here’s what happened:
1. Qi’ra did a roundhouse kick.
2. Qi’ra did a cartwheel.
3. Qi’ra locked her legs around the alien’s head, leaned back, and threw him with her legs, striking a pose afterward. I have this reflex to link a YouTube video of the move I’m talking about, but you know exactly the move I mean, because you’ve seen it 40,000,000,000 times.
(1:20:26) Man, Wookiees look terrible without hair on their faces.
Sure, I get that maybe this is some other race of Wookiee, or Chewie and his family have hair on their faces but not all Wookiees do.
Still, these clean-shaven Wookiees . . . really just look like sasquatches. And it sucks.
(1:22:33) After Lando picks up L3, gets shot, and then get’s picked up by Chewie: I would give anything for Chewie to get shot in the leg so Han has to pick him up. But then Han gets shot in the shoulder so Qi’ra has to pick him up. Then Woody Harrelson picks her up, and so on, and so on, until we have a tower of Star Wars characters teetering toward the Millenium Falcon, with, like, Hoar at the very bottom, holding Baron Papanoida.
(1:24:03) Okay, I’ll say it.
One of the things a lot of reviewers were really vocal about was their hatred for Lando’s romance with L3.
And now, having watched it . . .
. . . who cares?
It wasn’t remotely obstructive or gross. It wasn’t played for gags. Hell, it wasn’t even definitively shown!
Why were people so pissed about this?
Also, L3’s a droid, Lando. You can just repair her.
(1:28:26) Man . . . They are just burning through all of the classic John Williams themes during this Kessel Run sequence.
Seriously, there are samples of songs from the entire original trilogy in this one scene, and, for a soundtrack nerd like me, it’s incredibly distracting.
And also a little shifty.
They’re trying to work that nostalgia way, way too hard.
(1:38:53) Yeah, see, I would love a smaller Star Wars story that was just set in places like this weird, ocean-side, desert town.
(1:41:00) I’d heard this reveal of the marauder boss was weird . . . and it so is.
The music swells like the reveal is going to be someone the audience knows. The staff made me think, “Wait, is this Darth Maul?”
No. It’s a woman. For some weird reason, there was some huge build-up for the badass marauder captain being a woman.
And, for a moment, I was seriously like, “Wait . . . Do I . . . know her? Is she a character from earlier in the movie . . . ?”
No. Star Wars was seriously just like, “Look, fellas! He was really a dame the whole time!” and I was like, “Whoa, whoa–wait–why the fuck is that surprising? This movie came out in 2018, dude. The badass being a woman just isn’t a plot twist anymore! Women are badass!”
It’s also just kind of weird that they went with the “still untouched” look for her. If I’d have designed this woman, she would’ve had the scar over one eye, grey hair. Maybe the eye with the scar would’ve been dead. I know those things are cliche, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a skilled fighter also being beautiful (see Qi’ra). But if I’d designed this character, I would’ve made her thicker, older, scarred, maybe all of the above because A) she just would’ve looked more badass, B) she would’ve been the first battle-hardened, scarred soldier lady in the entire Star Wars universe, and C) I probably would’ve loved her immediately.
Don’t get me wrong–strength can absolutely coincide with perfectly permed hair.
But it doesn’t have to.
(1:50:06) So, this reveal that . . . (fuck–I still don’t know his name) . . . Woody Harrelson is a traitor is very poorly composed. And it’s poorly composed in such a way that hints at different drafts crashing together at this point.
He very easily could’ve come out and been like, “Kid, I’m sorry. I can’t run forever. There would’ve been no escape. I begged you not to betray Dryden,” etc. And his very first line when entering the room (“I am . . . sorry, kid.”) makes it sound a lot like that’s what he’s going to say.
But then, he spouts the line, “You weren’t paying attention. I told you–don’t trust anybody,” which is a pretty cliche parlor scene line for a traitor . . . and which was also seeded earlier with a single line from Woody that didn’t fit at all with his previous actions (i.e. he’s working with two long-time partners at the beginning of the movie, one of whom he had an intimate relationship with, and then gets incredibly upset when they die–not the actions of someone who trusts no one).
I would not be at all surprised if an early draft made Woody Harrelson’s character too redeemable, so whatever happens to him by the end seemed cruel, so, on a later draft, they went back, added the single, incongruous line from Becket (I googled it) about not trusting anyone, and then modded some dialogue here to make him easier to dislike.
A little rough, yeah, but Star Wars has been using space nazis for over 40 years. The series just isn’t used to grey-area villains.
(1:54:30) I probably shouldn’t . . . but I love Dryden’s weird, stupid, goth rave daggers.
(1:55:04) Uh . . . guys?
This, uh . . .
This whole thing . . . with Qi’ra about to kill Han . . . and her mentor being like, “I know her well!” and her being like, “I’m now going to kill my enemy” or whatever . . .
. . . Yeah, that’s the same thing they did in the throne room scene in The Last Jedi.
Seriously, it is almost the exact same moment.
(1:57:00) Huh. Dryden’s corpse is all grey now. So he was an alien of some kind then?
Also, seriously, Paul Bettany, baby, why does this keep happening to you? First in Infinity War, now here? Jeez. Greyscale Sean Bean over here.
(1:58:00) Okay.
Okay.
It is cool seeing Darth Maul again. Sure.
However, what I actually love about this is the idea that there are former Sith out there, in the galaxy, being evil.
If only this was what always happened with the Sith–canonically–the Star Wars universe would be way more interesting. Not like it isn’t already, but the idea of former (fallen?) Sith being left for dead–abandoned by their mentors–and so set loose on the galaxy, has so much potential.
At the very least, it has more potential than the actual Sith rules (only two–a master and apprentice, the apprentice eventually killing the master to take his place and find an apprentice of his own), which we have only seen play out a single time, in The Last Jedi, the movie 50% of humanity hated anyway. I’d prefer having Count Dooku and General Grievous still out there. Not that I loved either of them, but there’s potential intrigue to be had.
(2:00:30) Oh yeah, Han shooting first would’ve just looked flat out evil if they didn’t make Becket look like a scummy, traitorous bastard, first.

And that–finally–is it.

I did not think this movie was two hours long, for some reason. I also didn’t think I’d have this much to write about it.

Overall, it’s a strange prequel story with some minor time paradox issues–still exciting if you let the moment and classic music sweep you up. Not the best movie I’ve ever seen, though.

From a writing standpoint, it’s a great case for opening in medias res; the exposition was mostly bad, giving a ton of set up that just didn’t need to happen–especially Han’s five seconds in the Empire. For a franchise like Star Wars, and a movie about young Han Solo, I’m sure they felt like they had to show every well-known bit of Han’s past, but this story would’ve been much tighter if it had just started with Han somehow falling in with Becket. Maybe Han could’ve been angrier and more sullen at the beginning, explaining his past with Qi’ra and Corellia to Becket and the others in their campfire scene, then changing when he met her again on Dryden’s ship.

Also, in the case of Becket and his “never trust anyone” line, it’s an interesting look at what quick, patchwork edits can do to a story. A reminder that if we ever decide to go back and make a minor change to a character’s tone, it’s always worth going back through the manuscript and making sure it fits.

And, finally, seriously, 1:01:57. If you have problems deciding what to cut out of stories–if you find you have a tendency to entertain every idea with no concern for their purpose–then jump to 1:01:57 in Solo: A Star Wars Story. This scene, which I’ve already dubbed “The Boot,” is the perfect example of a scene none of us should ever write.

~~~

Anyway, that’s it for me. If you read this far, thank you; I really appreciate it. Also, holy shit–you’re a trooper.

If you enjoyed this novel’s worth of film criticism, and you’d like to know when I post again, feel free to click the subscribe button on the left side of the screen. Or follow me on Twitter @LSantiagoAuthor.

Either way, take care, and write well.

A Writer Watching: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power – Episodes 1 & 2

She-Ra_TitleScreen

There were a bunch of times when I wanted to return–when I considered writing posts about whatever sparked my interest. But nothing really pushed me like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power did. Not because I’m an insane person who thinks the show is bad . . .

. . . but because the angry, trolling manlings of the internet really came out in full force for this show–a reboot of a cartoon from the 80’s that was never made for them in the first place. Seriously, the unbridled privilege in action there is astounding.

So I thought, “I watched the first two episodes, and I liked them. Why not make a whole viewing journal, written as I watch the rest of the season, so I can dish on the stupid incels who hate anything remotely progressive or feminist, while talking about what the show does right and wrong?” And here we are. Full disclosure, I originally planned to make this one huge post–for the entire series–but I quickly realized that would be insane, so, instead, I’m going episode by episode (or potentially arc by arc [I’m playing it by ear]).

*Disclaimer Though: Seriously, I criticize absolutely everything. It’s just what I do. I expect the incels to already be gone at this point, but if you don’t want to see this series honestly criticized for the things it genuinely does wrong, you should probably leave as well. I like it–I don’t watch TV shows I don’t like–but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of criticisms to make. Why make those criticisms at all, you ask? Because I’m a writer. Because maybe you are too. Why shouldn’t we be able to critique this show that’s great–but flawed–and aspire to make our own work better?

Anyway, enjoy!

Episode 1 – “The Sword Part 1”

(1:00) First thing–what I saw a bunch from the incels was that the animation was terrible. We’re ten seconds in, and, hey, incels what in the fat hell are you talking about? I get that there are some small animation errors here and there, but there are with every animated show. This is very obviously high-quality from the get-go.
(4:50) Goddammit, Shadow Weaver looks awesome. One of those times I wish I’d designed a character.
(4:51) Here’s where they revealed that Adora is a soldier for Hordak, something I absolutely fucking love, because it sets the show up to transcend the “one-a the guys” feminism of comics or other shows. Adora starts off the series being the no-nonsense, sparkle-free, princess-hating super soldier that most feminist characters are–characters who I’ve grown to think of as “one-a the guys.” Obviously, “one-a the guys” female characters are far better than hyper-sexualized, man-focused female characters, but there’s still room for improvement. “One-a the guys” are still geared to be relatable to men, and that’s always weird to me.
Anyway, I digress. My original point: it’s interesting how Adora starts off this show as “one-a the guys” while she’s working for Hordak, who lies to her about who she is and what she’s supposed to want.
I’m really hoping this show did that intentionally, and that it proceeds to promote being girly and being strong at the same time–as opposed to either being a woman who is tough, never acts girly, and has sex only with other women (ya know, things that are obviously not bad on their own, but that are very often bundled into the “strong female” archetype), or a woman who acts girly, and is either obsessed with a man, or needs to be saved by one.
Again, I’m not sure that She-Ra is actually eschewing the “one-a the guys” thing, but it seems to be with this exposition, and I hope it is. Because we need strong, female characters who exist somewhere in the middle of the “girly damsel”-and-“perfect, man-like ultra-badass” spectrum.
(9:11) Kinda weird how these Dreamworks shows keep starting with protagonists–who are training in the military–stealing a speeder . . .
(10:43) . . . and then, while joyriding in it, finding the show’s macguffin by accident.
(12:20) Having watched a few episodes of the original show years ago, one of the things I was super curious about was whether or not Bow would still have giant red hearts on his outfit. I love that he still does.
(14:19) Oh no–no, no, no, no. I don’t like this weird, Catra sleeping at Adora’s feet, on her bed, thing, and it’s not–I repeat, it’s not–because I’m some kind of stupid homophobe. No, there’s just something really, really gross about it, from a friends-perspective.
Never, ever be such a shitty friend that you let your bestie degrade themselves for you. Seriously, I know it’s small–I know that they were trying to do a cute thing with her being a cat–but this moment has the potential to foster really bad interpersonal habits. Seeing the protagonist sleeping while her friend sleeps at her feet, like an animal, probably gave a bunch of kids the wrong idea about how devoted a best friend could be.
(17:07) “Light Hope.” I . . . love how unapologetic they are about sticking to all of the original names.
(20:25) Okay. It’s about time to talk about it.
This show . . . absolutely, 100% has White Savior Syndrome.
That is the massive flaw of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. There are characters from different races, but they all play second-fiddle to a pretty, white protagonist who has shining, blonde hair and glowing, blue eyes when she uses her powers. She-Ra looks great, but she fosters a trend I’ve seen of empowering white women . . . at the expense of minorities–the result of creators saying, “Well, we want to be forward-thinking . . . but we don’t want to make the protagonist a minority!”
This scene, with Adora being shown a town destroyed by Hordak’s forces, embodies that white savior vibe perfectly.
The white protagonist is shown how these poor, othered minorities are losing their war. If only there was a strong white woman, privileged with the power to be better than all of them–by right of just being born–who could save them all!
Maybe that trend sticks out to me because I am a minority, but this show will forever be an example of it. I’m sure it’s well-intentioned, but it’s weird that Catra, Glimmer, Bow–they’re all nice and tanned . . . while Adora and the queen, Angella, are fair-skinned.
(22:09-22:30) Light Hope: “Adora . . . will you fight for the honor of Grayskull?”
Adora: “For the honor . . . of Grayskull!”
The writers could’ve made that smoother.
Look, I’m a fantasy writer. And a very, very intense self-editor. Things need to sound natural.
That did not sound natural at all.
Light Hope asks our protagonist a question, and she’s all, “Yes, I will! But I’m not going to actually say yes, even! I’m just going to say the catchphrase that I suddenly know! Or, like, I’m just gonna repeat the last part of that full question you just asked! For no particular reason, really! I’m not even gonna be like, ‘Wait, what’s Greyskull?’”
Just sayin’, you get one chance to make a moment like that perfect. One chance to bring She-Ra back and make it absolutely seamless. But that one moment–which should have been flawless, even if the rest of the show wasn’t–was messy.
(22:44) She-Ra really does look so awesome though. She triggers such a child-like awe in me. I’m a man in my mid-30’s, watching her transformation like, “Whoa-a-a-a-a. Her hair is so pretty!”

Episode 2 – “The Sword Part 2”

(1:12) Such a good move making Adora unable to control her She-Ra powers. Giving protagonists a learning curve for their power set is always great when those powers are crazy.
(8:07) They’ve been mentioning it for a while, but I appreciate that Glimmer also has a learning curve with her powers. It gives her some obvious room to grow, and I assume that, like Adora, she’ll grow as a person as she gets more powerful.
(8:14) I sure hope that Bow, who seems to already be an expert with his bow, gets the same treatment. I sure hope that, in this show that’s trying to be progressive, we don’t have a male character who’s just static comedy relief. His growth wouldn’t need to be tied to his powers, of course, but it would be kind of shit if he was just there to make the funnies. Ju-u-u-u-ust sayin’.
(10:18) This scene . . . really annoyed me.
Shadow Weaver: “Where is Adora!?”
Catra: “For the last time, I don’t know! . . .”
Shadow Weaver: “. . . Have it your way. I already know where she is. We’ve been tracking her.”
Me: . . .
Catra: “Uh, then why’d you ask me?”
Me: Exactly.
Shadow Weaver: “Because you’re going to get her back!”
Me: That makes . . . zero sense.
Don’t send some new, badass, genuinely threatening villain to capture Adora. Don’t create drama by having Catra intervene somehow.
No, just send the one under-performing warrior-in-training, who has clear issues with authority, to do it.
I always hate contrivances, but I especially hate them when they require characters to make incredibly stupid choices.
(11:04) Interesting how, even on this show, set in a really sparkly world with lots of pinks and purples, our magical girl protagonist hates pink flowers.
Do ya . . . Do ya see what I was talking about earlier? Isn’t it weird that this show is designed to appeal to people who like bright colors and sparkly transformations, but the protagonist hates that shit cause writing trends dictate that she should?
Maybe I was wrong about that “one-a the guys” thing, but I’m still hoping Adora changes as the series progresses. I’m hoping this is more of an “I was raised by Hordak to hate those things” kind of situation. I mean, Adora does lose it when she sees a horse for the first time, and loving horses is traditionally a girly girl thing.
(11:52) Ahhhh . . . C-Cool. The minority people in this town are, like, half-animals . . .
. . . Cool.
Yeah, ya know the way Catra, Adora’s best friend who has tanned skin and sleeps at her feet like a fucking animal, is, in fact, part animal?
Yeah, these other tanned-skinned people are animals too.
great
just . . . just great
(16:30) I haven’t seen past this episode yet, so I have no idea how this Catra / Adora friendship thing plays out. She-Ra is a Dreamworks animation, and they are awesomely brazen with the sexual diversity of their characters, so I genuinely have no idea if they become a thing or not. Either way though, here’s how I feel about this:
If Adora and Catra are friends, I like the friends angle, but I hope there’s some actual romance somewhere else in the story. Whether it’s with a male character or a female character, it would be cool to see the tough, boss-bitch character at least invest time into a romance.
If Adora and Catra are more than friends, that would lean into the “one-a the guys” trend, but it would still be awesome if it got into the emotions of the relationship (instead of the comic book approach of showing the two hot chicks naked in bed together and that’s it–not like this show would do that anyway). If I got to see the relationship that was denied me with Korra and Asami (and which is still being denied me with Shiro and Keith [#keiro]), I’d be happy.
(19:26) Holy shit! There’s a magical girl transformation! A-a-a-and it’s legit as fuck!
(20:20) Yo, can we take a moment to acknowledge that Bow was straight-up just ready to die fighting the Horde right here? That’s . . . That’s fucking awesome. This dude was just ready to die saving people–in the second episode. Nobody gonna talk about that? . . . No? . . . It was just posed as comic relief? . . .
great
(20:45) I’m sure the incels would whine about She-Ra being OP and immediately knowing how to use her powers, but she clearly dips into something like the Avatar State here, where she’s amazing and terrifying, and I love that. It does make things convenient for writers, yes, but there’s also something rad about your protagonist going mute, growing 4 feet taller, and having giant, golden hair that’s awesome (just fucking try to come at me about that last part when y’all motherfuckers know you love Dragonball).
*I watched ahead a bit . . . More about this topic next time.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for dropping by! I don’t update on a regular schedule; I’m a man trying to get his life in order and get published at the same time, so posting on this site is limited to whenever I have time and really, really don’t want to write. Or just relax.

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