Writing Clips Versus Writing Movies

This a clip from The NeverEnding Story, my all-time favorite movie. Yes, I acknowledge it’s an inaccurate adaptation of the Michael Ende novel and I probably wouldn’t enjoy the book because it has a counter message to this movie. I didn’t know that at the time I saw this movie, or for many years later. I don’t “deserve” my version but I will enjoy it since it’s here. That’s not being a hypocrite. I believe the fans of the book and the author have the right to be upset and I’m not against a proper translation. Sorry, where was I?

It’s also one of my favorite scenes in movies. It goes into why I enjoy stories so much, not just books. We’re with the heroes on their adventures, whether it’s winning a true love, conquering a mountain, or defeating a great evil. However, the clip only works because I did live the adventure through the movie, following Bastian as he was drawn into the story of Fantasia, then with Atreyu as he searched for the human child, and then Bastian again as he restored Fantasia through wishes and imagination, to dream of something better. The second movie does note that wishing isn’t enough. You have to make it happen and follow through rather than just wishing everything to happen. The third movie is not worth existing.

I’m seeing a growing trend that writers now seem to be more interested in scenes than full stories. They want people talking about the clip on social media, sharing that big moment with everyone, as a sense of personal validation perhaps. Perch of Comics By Perch even has noted that writers in comics talk about wanting to tell a particular scene, like Superman having lunch with Lex Luthor, and just want to do that rather than Superman doing some superheroics. They want to write scenes people talk about, but I don’t think they understand why those scenes work.

For those of us who share those scenes the moment only works because we’ve seen the full story. We share clips or individual pages/panels because we want to talk about our favorite moments in the story. However, without context nobody else is really connecting to those clips the way we who actually saw it are. Context matters, and while something might look cool I don’t care about the characters unless I’ve seen them in that production or in a different one. Even then show me a clip from the second Beetlejuice movie and it won’t impact me nearly as much as someone who saw it, even though I did like the first movie when I saw it. I kind of parted ways with the cartoon which I think I only watched because I liked where it came from, but it never really grew on me because that’s not my style and when my tastes formed it passed me by. Show me a cartoon clip and I may get it, but it won’t really move me like the scene where Lydia realises Beetlejuice is evil and moves to stop him, and it would still be more interesting than anything from the second movie until I finally get to see it. (I do want to see it.)

An entire movie of just this discussion would be boring. As a moment in a larger book, it’s okay in context.

You can’t really make a full story out of a scene. There’s a reason the Wayne’s World movies are the only attempt to translate a Saturday Night Live skit that people still talk about. I couldn’t tell you how many SNL skits were turned into films, though I know that an animated pilot was made for The Coneheads and there’s a Halloween special for David S. Pumpkins. The rest? Never really translated. The closest that has was for “SNL for kids” show All That and the Good Burger segments. Even that required Kel Mitchell to be partnered with Kenan Thompson, since the two are the rare comedy tag team along the lines of Abbott & Costello, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, or Forrest Tucker & Larry Storch. Thompson wasn’t in the original sketches on All That but the two worked in other skits and in the Kenan & Kel sitcom. If the whole movie was just Ed taking and screwing up burger orders, it would have been boring.

I’ve seen rumors that James Gunn’s Superman by James Gunn all hail James Gunn (did you see the Superman Day behind the scenes video that was more about praising Gunn than Kal-El?) is going to be a series of stories in the style of one of his admitted inspirations, All-Star Superman. The original 12 issue maxiseries looks good (I have the first issue as a Free Comic Book Day reprint) and the direct-to-video animated movie is in my DVD library. However, it only clicks with me because Superman is my favorite hero. You can probably see my lack of enthusiasm in the Golden Age anthologies because I’ve already read the one character I was already interested in, and that’s because I had full Blue Beetle stories with rookie patrolman Dan Garret thanks to the radio shows and know the legacy through Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes, though Dan Garrett the archeologist isn’t the same character, just a namesake who could afford a second “t”. The stories also connected through Superman dying thanks to Luthor’s latest plot, one that’s finally successful but to Luthor’s surprising regret when he realises what a scumbag he’s been all this time. Those stories in the comics were spread out among 12 issues while the adaptation…was an adaptation. I knew what I was getting into and the director chose moments that could flow into a movie, leaving some stories out.

You know why Godzilla movies have human character moments? Because an entire movie of just monster fights would lose steam after awhile. Unless it’s Kaiju Big Battel

What’s to blame for this trend? YouTube and Tiktok. Cartoon Network ran Teen Titans Go! into the ground because it was a series of short cartoons, under the belief that short animations were what people wanted, not that YouTube animators don’t have the time and resources to do a full half hour cartoon every week for three or four months. That’s not helped by the everchanging YouTube algorhythm pushing for longer content more often to push you on the homepage. Jaiden Animations or Let Me Explain Studios don’t have the resources for that as YouTube forgets it was started by smaller creators before now kissing up to Hollywood and their heavy resources and big libraries. Typical for corporate run studios but that’s another article.  They’re convinced today’s audience doesn’t have long attention spans and it’s easier to go along with it and make the problem worse rather than make something that will draw their attention away from their smartphones…unless they’re watching ON the smartphone, of course. Now sure why you would if you had a computer or TV option but that’s also another article. From an old fogey. (Guilty.)

They have an idea for a great scene but not a full movie or comic. Rather than the studios coming up with an outlet for that, they let these people work on the full product with no clue what to do beyond Superman and Luthor having dinner. Meanwhile Michael Bay looks for stories he can inject a scene he always wanted to do into, like the bus-slashing scene in Transformers, or Jon Peters and that stupid giant spider. “Spiders are the deadliest predators according to this documentary so I want a giant one fighting Superman. We can’t make that movie? Fit one into Wild Wild West somehow; it’s not like we aren’t screwing that property and it’s recurring villain up so Wil Smith can save the world again and fight Old West racism.” Does it make sense? No, but neither did anything else in that movie.

This isn’t some huge widespread trend, mind you. It’s simply something I’m starting to see happen and worry this will become the norm because the studios and publishers aren’t giving them that outlet for side stories, which seems to be what they’re trying to force into a full-length tale. This could serve for promoting the larger movies under a director and screenwriters who DO have a full movie in mind, or just keeping the product fresh between major productions in people’s minds. You know, like how the Star Trek and Doctor Who novels and comics kept audiences going while their series were cancelled or new Star Wars stories produced between movies and Disney+ shows. DC could have an anthology title in the vein of the old Showcase series or rework Action Comics and Detective Comics back to anthology style comics to give lesser known characters in Metropolis and Gotham a chance to do something other than die for shock value, fleshing out the supporting cast who can’t hold a full comic on their own. Doctor Who and the Star Trek shows were all doing some kind of short stories like that airing on YouTube or a section of whatever site was hosting and promoting their shows. I don’t know if the “Short Treks” were any good, but they gave fans of Kurtzman Trek (few that there are) something to watch while waiting for the next disaster episode of one of the shows.

I don’t want this to become a trend. Make good short stories and make good long stories. Don’t make good short stories and drag them out to long terrible short stories. In those Golden Age anthologies I’ve seen story ideas that would make for great stories if they had more than 8 pages to work with and I’ve seen stories where 8 were too many pages when it should have been 0. Being longer wouldn’t have helped, but for the stories that are fine at a shorter length, let them be shorter stories. Find someone who can do the longer stories and aren’t just looking to make the next viral clip. Viral clips don’t make good long stories, but they can lead you to one if you make it.