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Tag Archive for Star Wars

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.  

 

The Hero’s Journey and Useful Frameworks

December 19, 2017 Writing Comments Off on The Hero’s Journey and Useful Frameworks

So let me talk a little bit about Campbell’s “heroes journey”.  Thanks to Mr. Lucas and a number of other well-known storytellers over the past decades, Campbell’s “heroes journey” has become an easy reference for the uninitiated, a touchstone for critics, for commentary.

The idea of Campbell’s “Monomyth”, the idea that there is one single structure that appears over and over throughout all cultures and narratives is hugely compelling, isn’t it?  That ALL humans have this in common, that any story written to fit this heroic structure is going to instantly connect with every member of the human race.  Like it’s some kind of built-in genetic proclivity.

But look, storytelling is a *profession*.  Whether you’re penning narratives for Telltale’s latest IP-driven opus, orating in a Hellenic-era amphitheater, or trying to convince the innkeeper that you can keep his rowdy customers entertained long enough to be worth the price of a beer and a corner by the fire, it is a craft.  And like all crafts, elements of it become standardized.

Many high-producing authors, writers who crank out multiple books in the year, or journalists who pen ten to twenty pieces per day, have to develop their own process, their own standardized format that they can hang their story on. I would suggest that this is, the fact that storytelling is a business, is the reason the “Hero’s Journey” format still exists.

It serves as a useful tool, a way to frame a narrative in such a fashion that the author knows that the readers will be able to understand it. Most readers have been exposed to it or something very much like it. They may not recognize it as such (much like nobody ever seems to notice that one episode of Colombo that was essentially Macbeth but with early-80’s hair), but they are unconsciously familiar enough to be able to follow the beats. It reduces the workload on a storyteller, they can focus on character building, they can focus on world building, and they can focus on their luscious purple prose without having to worry that the reader will be able to follow the plot.

BUT, as with all such tools, it can become as much of a hindrance as it is a help. Many stories (even different episodes of the same longer storyline) will do better with a different sub-structure, this kind of repetition is an easy way to get Franchise Fatigue. BUT because the “Hero’s Journey” format is such a convenient shortcut  when you’re writing to a deadline (or coming up with a story on the fly to keep the innkeeper from making you sleep in the barn) it has been the default setting for a thousand years or more.

But you know, as creatives, (writers, filmmakers, sequential artists and more) part of our job is pushing the envelope. Stories that once were too experimental (the lunatic structure in Inception comes to mind, as does the “everything’s connected” wrap-ups in Dirk Gently) are cropping up more and more.  Audiences that are getting tired of sequel-itis (oh look, it’s the same as the first movie, with a different bad-guy and more kissing) are starting to look for more surprises in their storytelling, and anyone still relying too heavily on old, unmodified story structures is going to find themselves in a niche market.

 

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