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Tag Archive for space opera

Solo: A Star Wars Story is All About Trust

July 3, 2018 Writing Comments Off on Solo: A Star Wars Story is All About Trust

Trust me.

I want to talk a little bit about trust in the Star Wars Solo movie.

Because, at it’s core, that’s what this whole film is about.  Trust. Trust that Solo will end up where he needs to be to put him on his path to the original trilogy.  Trust between characters. Trust that the filmmakers are going to do right by the audience.

Normally, when you build out a backstory or you build a narrative for a character you spend a certain amount of time reeling the viewer in.  You show them that one time our hero managed to fight off a pack of wild dogs with a stick of chewing gum and a whistle. You show the audience why this hero is the hero and thereby build the tension through camaraderie.  With Solo, the audience knows already, but the other characters in the film do not. The onus of trust, the leap of faith should be placed on the characters rather than the viewers. And we, as the audience, know that our hero is up to the task.  Our joy should come from the rest of the characters finally joining us.

And this is where it gets interesting.  Never, at any point in the film, do we (or anyone in the film other than Qui’ra, who grew up with the guy) get evidence of Han’s skill first. We don’t know if Han is a decent pilot, if he actually knows how to play cards, if he’s even capable of shooting first at this point.  We know he *will be* in the future, but this is a younger man. As an audience we are asked, repeatedly, to trust Han with only foreknowledge at our fingertips, no any real indicator of his past.  We never get to see him gamble until a critical moment depends on it, we never get to see him pilot until a critical moment depends on it, so many of these moments in the movie are relying on the fact that we know who Han will be eventually.  

This entire movie revolves around trust.

In a heist movie full of criminals and bad-actors (the character type, not the actual actors) trust becomes the key central point.  The entire plan holds together remarkably well until the moment that that trust is broken (by the one guy who told us not to trust him).  Roll into that our trust in the filmmakers to get Han where he needs be by the end, to the trust that the writers and the actors understand the archetype rogue that Han Solo has become after so many decades as a part of the public consciousness, this film takes that one core idea and threads it through all levels of the experience.  

 

A Space Opera, a Mystery and an Intrigue Walk Into a Bar

February 5, 2016 future, Writing Comments Off on A Space Opera, a Mystery and an Intrigue Walk Into a Bar
Promotional Image from The Expanse on SyFy

Promotional Image from The Expanse on SyFy

 

It was more subtle than I expected, for some reason.  In the Expanse we are following, essentially, three different types of stories with three different visual directions.

The first is Noir Detective tale about a cop, hard-boiled right down to the hat.  Gritty, morally questionable, bloodied knuckles and twitchy informants, you could separate this tale out and have a tidy, stand along show all it’s own.  Yes, it’s set on a space-station, but you could take this story and plug it into the back-alley’s of any major port city in the world, it would be just as tight as well-handled.

The second is is pure Space Opera.  Borderline dysfunctional crew on an away-mission watches in horror as their ship is blown to smithereens.  As they work together, first towards safety and survival, next towards identifying the target of their revenge, they start to form a cohesive, if wary team.

Third is an absolutely gorgeous Palace Intrigue tale.  Lush environments, vaulted ceilings, wardrobes and fabrics to die for.  No fists, no guns, only words, sharp, lethal, beguiling and clever.  Careers and lives are ended without our characters lifting so much as a finger.

Each story follows its own thread, with the environments and directing styles built to match.  The interior of the Ceres is befitting a noir tale, dark, dimly lit with sharp shadows and more than your usual share of detritus in the corners and alleyways.  In contrast, the crew of the Canterbury goes from the interiors of the Cant to the Scopuli to the Rosinante, always well kept and orderly.  Even the old workhorse of the Canterbury was tidy, even in its moments of disrepair.  The intrigues on Earth take place in similarly appropriate surroundings.

All three stories are following the same mystery from different angles, giving us, the viewer, a complete picture.  A roundabout, if you will, where we can see the same event from every angle and every lens.

The interesting stuff is going to happen (for those of us with a yen for the visual design and thought processes) as these stories collide.  We had our first taste of it here at the end of Season One, where we see our Noir Detective meet up with the Plucky Space Crew.  It’s almost a shock to see those different presumptions, those different visual canons come together.  The same room with the Plucky Space Crew getting shot at takes on an ENTIRELY different light once our Detective shows up, our Detective looks out of place, a Noir character dropped into a blaster-fight in a brightly lit space. Once they ascend the stairs, we have a shift again, we move all the characters over into the Noir where our Detective looks entirely in his own element as they find the room where the person they have been searching for is holed up.

The visual language is just going to get more complex, and I am hugely interested to see if they continue this trend of casting the environments into a different light depending on which character is the lead in any given bit of the story.  I’m hoping they don’t end up with a homogenized look at the end of the day, but seeing it here, in the first season, suggests that the visual designers and directors are telling us this story on many levels, not just with the words and actions of the actors.

 

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