The Continuing Damage Of Modern Epic Storytelling

I’ve written about this in the past, but it continues to happen and continues to worry me as it seems to be getting worse. Last time I was focused on the comics, but it’s moving it’s way through shows and movies now as well. There’s a need to have a big, epic sized storyline and now it’s really getting out of hand.

I find it funny that Marvel Studios is going out of their way to divorce itself from Marvel Comics, which they have outright admitted as is a discussion for another time, and yet this mistake is the one they seem determined to replicate. With CG allegedly being easier and cheaper than practical effects, Hollywood is falling all over itself to make the biggest, flashiest, most action packed scenes they can get away with, or sometimes the trippiest that makes the biggest impact. This is becoming more and more of a mistake, and it’s going to be damaging to sci-fi and even fantasy…not that I wouldn’t believe that to be the goal, but that’s another commentary for another time, as is the start of a trend towards replacing sci-fi with fantasy. (Doctor Who is outright admitting that. Interesting how all the Disney stuff keeps admitting they’re destroying not only their own traditions but the traditions of every license they’re a part of.)

The end result isn’t just hurting storytelling in general, but their shared universes and even their financial bottom line…and it’s programming audiences away from simpler, smaller stories part of a larger whole.

Comics was were I first really noticed this. The publishers saw how the trades were selling without understanding WHY those trades were selling. Stories like “Demon In The Bottle” (chronicling Tony Stark’s fall from alcoholism and rising back after overcoming it) or “The Judas Contract” (Deathstroke’s big move on the Teen Titans by putting a spy in their midst) mattered because they were huge stories by nature. Other collections were focused on the history of a particular character or a particular creator. So DC and Marvel higher-ups, possibly Warner Brothers and Toy Biz at the time, pushed for EVERY series to push trades, leading to four part stories all over. No one-time stories, no moments for the characters to breathe and relax, yet somehow they thought they could still sell both versions to everybody. Instead, knowing the stories were being written with trades in mind, some fans simply waited for the trade collection. There are no smaller 22 page stories in comics anymore. Everything is a multiparter, requiring it to be some big event.

TV and streaming shows are now making the same mistake. Thanks to Netflix’s “binge” model being the rule more often than not you don’t get one episode per story. The only reason there are episodes is to get people to have a place to stop if they want to go to bed, but Netflix will drop an entire seasons. Disney+ and Prime Video seem to release one episode a week but they’re still in an old fashioned TV mindset, and there are exceptions. Possibly to get it out of the way, Disney dropped Echo all in one shot to roaring boos. It doesn’t matter because you don’t have a story an episode anymore. It’s all one long story, and not even imitating Dallas or other primetime soap operas, or daytime soaps like General Hospital. No, some shows do follow that “multiple plots an episode” but the story isn’t going to end in one or two episodes anymore. It’s all events now, with stories bleeding into other stories. This not exclusively how it’s done…yet, but adventure programs on streaming are more and more following, with episodes being more like chapter breaks. TV still follows this, with continuity being running subplots that form a proper timeline. This is better.

I do notice that when it does go the multipart event route it’s in geek media, as if they think we can’t handle a one episode story and continuity connected the episodes into a timeline. It’s not-Tolkien or not-Marvel Universes that get this treatment.

“For the next scene I’ll need to blow up the castle and send you all to the mirror universe. Where your counterparts are all dead and you need to find the people who blew up your castle while avoiding the authorities who think you’re their evil counterparts before the enemy changes history and destroys both realities…”

Movies are also in this trend, and it’s where it’s hitting harder because it’s costing the studios money. Granted, it’s the studio’s fault. Reshoots and highly paid names aside, and all the buying of big name performers for marketing and social points isn’t helping, they don’t seem to think that we can enjoy a good story. We’re probably better at handling a story than they are, because as much as we enjoy the cool explosions and fancy powers, we still want to care about the character. The surface level types think all they need to do is show some cool sequence showing how the Flash’s superspeed works and we’ll be happy. It’s why they still think we want Michael Bay Transformers, the man who made explosions boring by overusing them. They want to show off the cool powers, but in doing so they use so much computer animation that it would be easier to just make it animated already, but their egos will not give up the live-action theatrical status symbol because we need to see “them” and the mind-blowing effects. Except we see so much of them they’re less interesting, so they have to have bigger explosions and bigger depictions of powers in the next one.

This comes with raising the stakes enough to get those flashier displays of power. What little story they have needs to be bigger than the next one. Save the city in movie one (because the neighborhood is too small to start), the planet in movie two (bypassing the country), the universe in movie three, and the multiverse in movie four. Where do you go for movie five? Saving the multiverse already is saving reality. Maybe you throw in time travel somewhere but for the most part each movie, each game, and each comic has to be bigger than the last one. What they should do is make a sequel that feels like a story that should be told, that progresses the universe and the lives of the characters from the first movie, or new characters in the old setting. “Halloween” would be a different franchise if they did that anthology route that was initially planned. If Season Of The Witch had been the second film instead of the return of Mike Myers, would it be more or less enjoyed that the constant reboots?

This is pushing the CG animation studios to their work limit, and that’s before they decide to practically redo the whole movie after everything is done. Reshoots are nothing new in the industry but with the current crop of Marvel and Lucasfilm productions from Disney everything has to be reshot, but still make the original release date as if they’re trying to hide the fact that they redid at least half the movie, probably more. Disney’s effects people actually started a union just to protect themselves from the burn-out inducing time crunches acquisitions from Bob “the one studio to rule them all” Iger has put under the Disney umbrella, pushing out quantity over quality, are forcing on them since being acquired. You can’t have a simple origin. EVERYTHING has to be at stake, and that requires the effect houses to do all the work because practical effects are seen as not flashy enough.

Science fiction, fantasy, and superhero genres do not have to have all the money pushed into it for the largest effects pushed by the largest stakes, but with the smallest of effort, to work. Cinephiles of the geek community point to Godzilla Minus Zero, which had a smaller budget than most Hollywood films but still had amazing effects, but what’s more people who have seen it have raved about the effects as well as the story and presentation. Even the director, Takashi Yamazaki, is making fun of how well his movie is doing versus a lot of US productions with higher budgets but smaller returns. All he needed was to drop Godzilla on Tokyo again for the upteenth time, and people around the world came to the theater to watch. Simple. Easy, Less expensive. Godzilla isn’t threatening all of time and space. Just one island country like he’s done since 1954.

Larger stakes stories should be a rarity, a culmination of every story that came before. Not every story has to be the huge epic adventure. Sometimes you just want to sit back, relax, and read/watch/play a decent story with decent characters and decent effects, then come back to see the next story…not part 18 of 50.