It seems like these days, even the basic elements of storytelling are becoming a dying art. Join me as I break down the concept of setup and payoff, and how today's writers seem to have forgotten how to use it.
It seems like these days, even the basic elements of storytelling are becoming a dying art. Join me as I break down the concept of setup and payoff, and how today's writers seem to have forgotten how to use it.
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Ok
Love you dranker. Great work.
Or maybe, just maybe, you and I are to old for this modern times generation movies. What we liked most are often movies we have seen when we were a lot younger. So they make new movies for younger viewers and....I,. in their eyes, I am an...old man..They don' give a shit about me. Maybe thats it. And young people are brainwashed these days.
Ever watch Remo Williams?
Would be nice if you could review the movie 1408.
The director of Joker said the only way to get a film made in today's climate is to dress it up like it is a superhero film to fool the producers.
Yeah, that's probably a big reason why it was able to gross more than $1 billion despite the fact that it was basically just a gritty psychological drama with a budget of only around $50 million.
When did he state this? He actually planned for the film to be a Joker origin story from the beginning. All the left wing journalists tried to claim its a dressed up Martin Scorsese flick but its not-Todd said a year or two before Deadpool that he wanted to try the idea out but Warner was iffy on it-then Deadpool and Logan came out and that’s when they thought about that offer and decided to start giving new ideas like that a chance.
Well played.
@@christopherregan1654 please it was just babys first taxi driver blended with joker. It was a good film and very timely but taxi driver is very good and it rides the line of rip off and homage
@@Dev-zr8si are you a journalist?
"Not winning any Oscars" is a compliment at this point, not going to lie.
True
Yep, means you actually made a real film
Word.
Like winning an Oscar means anything anymore.
Same bs as most Rock n Roll Hall of Fame intros nowadays. I avoid that stuff since some years.
Just watched the kung fu panda series and its pretty insulting that these kids movies deliver so much more on their setups and payoffs than the whole sequel trilogy.
Culture is literally changing and Media reflects that but Media is also the Cause, cause it's all symbiotic. For example, Quotes from the 12.Doctor: "Oh, the Mechanized Space-Suits malfunction and attack us? That's funny cause that means we're like Anyone-else Everywhere-else: We're fighting the Suit!" 12.Doctor:"What makes you feel so superior? It it the good House? But Human-Progress isnt measured by Industry, it's measured by looking at a Life. An unimportant Life... a life without privilege. 13.Doctor: "OMG, OMG, OMG, have you heard of Space-Amazon? Amazon is so epic, everyone who disagrees with that is a literal PIG. We should all stop criticizing Amazon forever." I kid you not, they said that. Holy Penguin, wtf. And yeah, Critical Drinker's massive Success with his 'Why modern movies s-ck'-video-SERIES speaks for itself. People DO want Quality back.
King Fu panda is a legend who deserves all the best, but there are so many ways the Star Wars sequels could have been good and none of them were achieved.
Kung Fu panda is so genius in so many levels that we mortals cannot fully comprehend it's awesomeness
To be fair, Kung Fu Panda was always one of the best animated movies out there. Up there with the first 2 HTTYD, Coco, Spirited Away and Watership Down.
@@utisti4976 the whole panda trilogy is so consistent with its themes throughout. Po goes through a a satisfying arc and really grows as a character, a true hero by the end.
The problem: “I (the writer) want the worms to find them in the store, but the worms only detect vibrations and the heroes know that and avoid making vibrations” Good solution: “introduce a broken fridge early on, a background thing, that vibrates when it malfunctions. They’ll forget about it because of the stress of the worms and their focus on being quiet themselves. They’ll think they are safe because they’re doing everything right, but there’s something they didn’t account for” Modern solution: “um… they get in a fight and start wrestling, and that attracts the worms” I’m so tired of protagonists acting like idiots just so the plot progresses
Literally every daniel Craig bond movie
@@nickfunkhouser7096 When Drinker makes such Analysis-Video as this here, his resemblance to youtubers like Hbomberguy, Some More News and Madvocate Peaks.
Wouldn't the good solution be _fridging_ the scene?
Tremors 🖤🖤🖤
yes, you understand the writing process
Leia: "They're not monitoring for small transports" A New Hope literally begins with the Empire tracking escape pods FROM HER SHIP!
Up to and including if there were lifeforms on them.
@@michaelplowman8674 good memory bro!
Look at the continuity at work lol.
Your not supposed to remember that far back ;P
And they were so casual about it, despite it being a situation regarding the stolen Death Star plans, that they didn't bother shooting the pods if there were no life signs. It's like EVERYONE took several steps down in intelligence after only about 30 years.
I love how The Last Jedi has come to be used as a reference for everything not to do for creative writing.
Because it is and almost every movie or TV show follows this trope like Masters Of The Universe, Space Jam A New Legacy, etc.
Yeah, it's that Rian Johnson effect. He even screwed up the entire plot of one of his allegedly good films with the way he ended Looper.
Like the one movie professor that used it as an example on how NOT to make a movie.
It’s the only good quality about it, really
We spend was to my time in my creative writing classes picking apart the new trilogy. It’s made us all better writers
I remember when Die Hard was considered a dumb action movie. Just re-watch it and compare it with almost any modern action movie, and you see how neat and clever it is in comparison.
It was based off of a book too, so it's a lot more detailed on what goes on
Back then, a bad movie was still a pretty good movie. Now it's the other way around.
@@dani_i8942 Not really lol
@Sean Deli What's wrong with Eagle Eye?
Dan Harmon would approve of this comment. He uses Die Hard extensively in his discussion on the Story Circle structure.
I'd always thought it was quite clever how in the film, "The Incredibles", there is a piece of dialog that sets up two payoffs later. Mrs Incredible and her son Dash, who has super speed, argue that he should be allowed to compete in a running race if he promises not to use his super powers. She says it's unfair on the other boys, Dash says that he's special and she replies that everybody is special. Dash responds that that's just another way of saying nobody is special. Later in the film Mr Incredible is up against the bad guy who says he is going to sell his super hero tech so anybody can be a superhero and if anybody can be super then nobody will be super. So that leads back to the earlier conversation. Even later in the film, Dash is allowed to race but is mature enough to hold back so he doesn't win. So that setup dialog leads to two payoffs later. I just hadn't thought of it in those terms.
Animated movies tend to be better about this sort of thing because they have to be planned and storyboarded so meticulously. You can't just do reshoots, and cuts have to be made early on so as not to waste resources animated scenes that won't make it into the film. So with that super-robust pre-production phase, it's no surprise that there tends to be stronger setup and payoff. IMO The Incredibles' most iconic use of setup and payoff is the cape gag! Edna's rant and the accompanying "vintage footage" is so funny and surprisingly dark that nobody suspects it's doing anything but providing a laugh. But of course, it's there for a good reason.....
@@RisingSunfish yes the "no capes" rant was also a setup with a later payoff in that movie.
He isn't mature enough to hold back so he doesn't win, his parents tell him to hold back and then to go for a 'close second'
@@30noir By the end of the movie, he's mature enough to know to hold back and to trust his parents. His parents have told him why it is necessary, and he's learned to acknowledge their point of view. He'd also finally found an outlet to express his super-speed over the course of the previous few days. The ending scene actually shows that fairly well. He's running *just* fast enough to beat everyone else, despite there being an enormous gap between how fast he has to run to win and how fast he can run, because by this point he no longer feels the need to be or feel special, he just wants to participate. Then, when his parents are cheering him on and then back-pedal and tell him to go for 2nd, he's initially confused, but trusts and respects their decision, rather than defy it.
The fact that such a grandiose payoff with Syndrome gets set up by a simple “ride home” conversation between a mother and son adds weight to the family theme. Love love love this movie.
"A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." -George Lucas (of all people)
George Lucas has always been an amazing story teller; however, his special effects used in the prequels were sometimes.. bad, to say the least. However, let’s just say that this quote alone is enough to distinguish the Star Wars prequels from the Disney sequels.
@@soundwavesuperior28 The prequel special effects were amazing for the time. At least those movies tried to tell a story, even if the result wasn’t perfect. Disney Star Wars has no story to tell.
@@-.-.11 Disney Star Wars, at least the sequels, feels like they were written and directed by eight year olds who wanted to see space battles and lightsaber duels and that's about it. Absolutely zero thought for character development or believable plot.
Here is one ironic thing I noticed. Many people cited Lucas’ overuse of CGI in the prequels as a prime example of him betraying the premise of his own quote. Yet, when the sequels came out, numerous people acted like the sequel trilogy having better practical effects was one major reason it was automatically better than the prequels. Presuming some of those were the same people in both groups, I think it begs the question of who is really putting special effects before the stories they are supposed to help tell. If people act like the sequels are better, singlehandedly because of the production value and not the stories they tell compared to the original/prequel trilogies, they make themselves seem guilty of doing exactly what they accused George Lucas of doing back in the prequel era.
@@-.-.11 For the time? They're amazing _to this day_ So far, the only movies that have been able to top them are super high-budget Marvel flicks.
The Last Jedi has become the standard-bearer for how not to write a script. These days there’s too much ego, too many agendas and too much interference from executives.
Not only that, the 2nd movie is the standard bearer of how not to choreograph a fight scene. At this point they're even outclassed by Michael Bay movies.
Agreed if your going to tell a story then tell it but if there’s no reason for it to exist why force it
I dont know how anyone with half a brain can watch the last Jedi and see a quality script. Practically everything was botched at the writing stage. The movie is visually striking... That's it. That's all I can give it.
@@AndreNitroX Is it visually striking though? The lazars look more realistic but can you actually watch it without thinking "wow, those (not) stormtroopers on the (not) death star are really giving those (not) rebels a run for their money!"
One thing that really bugs me,is that I really enjoyed Knives Out. Rian Johnson seemed to put his all into that movie. But with the Last Jedi ,it seemed like he really didn't care ,and actually seemed to hate it to its core. I don't put that all on him though. Kathleen Kennedy really does hate Star Wars, and its fans. How is it that really hateful people were put in charge of something beloved by so many?
Aristotle said there are 6 elements of Tragedy: Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song and Spectacle. They are always listed in this order. The more you invest in the plot, and the others toward the beginning, the less you need of spectacle and the ones toward the end. With a great plot and interesting, well developed characters, you don't need to sing while blowing shit up. CGI has made the industry lazy.
I totally agree -- but you (and old Ari) got one thing wrong: character fuels plot. If not, your plot is dull. The character's decisions fuel the direction fo the plot. Without it, you're simply watching a comic strip...
The ancient Greeks even complained about hack writers! That's where "deus ex machina" comes from. Hacks write themselves into a corner and are forced to rely on the spectacle of dropping a god onto the stage, via a crane, to resolve the plot and entertain the audience. We've come over 2,000 years in storytelling, and NOTHING has changed.
@@coachd1433 Culture is literally changing and Media reflects that but Media is also the Cause, cause it's all symbiotic. For example, Quotes from the 12.Doctor: "Oh, the Mechanized Space-Suits malfunction and attack us? That's funny cause that means we're like Anyone-else Everywhere-else: We're fighting the Suit!" 12.Doctor:"What makes you feel so superior? It it the good House? But Human-Progress isnt measured by Industry, it's measured by looking at a Life. An unimportant Life... a life without privilege. 13.Doctor: "OMG, OMG, OMG, have you heard of Space-Amazon? Amazon is so epic, everyone who disagrees with that is a literal PIG. We should all stop criticizing Amazon forever." I kid you not, they said that. Holy Penguin, wtf.
@@coachd1433 Yeah, Araki (JoJo's BA) also said that when you have great characters there's not even a need for a great story or setting and that a good story and setting won't make up for bad characters.
damn... this comment was really helpful and it's giving me new ideas to try out, thank you!
Writing is all done by focus group now, which is what makes the storytelling so bad. My brother worked for MPC. While there, he worked on Ad Astra (he is in the credits). The entire orangoutang scene (which has nothing to do with the plot) was added because focus groups said the first half of the movie was too boring.
omg
That's so annoying. Got any other interesting tidbits about all that?
The monkey might be the best thing in that movie. :)
Interestingly enough, I thought the monkey scene was great. BECAUSE it made me ask unending questions about capitalism and pharmaceuticals and corporate interests in the universe that these monkeys would be where they were, and while the film did occasionally nod at how those things are shitty, the film never really comments further on those topics beyond just how empty capitalism makes everything feel. My point is it was great as a scene if it was built on later but it was just abandoned. So many American films try to have depth by suggesting that it might have some social commentary or something worth saying and they always stop short of having an opinion and puss out.
@@fenderslasher5538 "So many American films try to have depth by suggesting that it might have some social commentary or something worth saying and they always stop short of having an opinion and puss out." You cannot be serious. I refuse to believe it's possible for someone to be this stupidly ignorant. ALL movies have Leftist political garbage now. ALL movies try to criticise Capitalism (as they get rich from Capitalism). With how daft you are it's not surprising you fell for the anti-Capitalism meme.
When I was a kid, I was genuinely excited about the future of special effects. Now, in the era of perfect CGI, I realise that not once did I ever contemplate that writing would become a lost art.
unfortunately the importance of the story is also lost on video games.. graphics are the top priority now while in most games the story line gets second or worse place
Cgi also makes everything look plastic, uncanny and floaty. Just souless trash
@@SatanenPerkele cgi is best for things like backgrounds and stuff. It can be used really well, but when it comes to actual living characters, it still falls flat every time.
It's not CGI's fault. It's a tool that's intended to enhance the credibility and enticement of the storyline, but people are using it as the main event. The expense of CG didn't remove costs from old school film effects, but instead made them stupid expensive. Unfortunately, it's drawing funding away from other aspects of film, namely quality. Hopefully, this ship will right itself soon so summer blockbusters will be the worth the money being charge dat the venue.
Have you ever played the game Seventh Guest? It came on CD's. Many CD's. In a time where graphics were getting decidedly better. Yet as more and more of these games came out, that looked great on the surface, but had no substance people started demanding games that were actually good. You can see it today, in the lo-fi movement, where independent game studios produce pixel art games, except despite the blocky art, the games are actually very good and extremely playable. For that reason, many peeps have started to look at pixel art as a sign of quality, even though it was a major limitation in its time.
This reminds me of an interview they did with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on how they write South Park. They said when they story board an episode they never use the word "then" for a next scene, they always have to use the words "Because". This makes South Park such a great show because the stories in each episode have situational humor that builds on itself on an insane but rational way.
Causality and believability...so important.
Family guy says hold my beer 🍻 and it's the complete opposite higher ratings
@@emojimr4427 That is true but Family Guy knows its extreme non-continuity and makes that part of the humor.
South Park, the last great cartoon.
Okay, the grade school kids swear in this scene BECAUSE the audience is dumb and it works every time. Yeah, GENIUS.
As Chekhov, one of the best play writers, put it: “If there is a rifle in the room, at some point it must fire” :)
A. Thanks for letting me know who said it! I'll be able to credit him whenever I use it now ^-^ B. I use a slightly different version that goes "if you show a gun in act 1, it must've fired by act 3" (in Spanish).
On the other hand I am also completely tired of very lazy implementations of "Chekhov's gun", where the setup is so obvious, that you can see it from miles away and pretty much predict a big outcome of the whole movie because of it. A setup needs to be clever and used in multiple ways to work properly.
@@Brainfracture have you seen ‘Kin dza dza’? kzhead.info/sun/eL2BppydgaSNZZE/bejne.html It’s most intricate implementation of Chekhov’s gun through out the movie. It’s a clever Sci-Fi comedy, but there is no action though.
@@Hella333 No I have not :) Will see if I can find a translated version :D
@@Brainfracture you can turn English subtitles on following that link! I doubt there is a translated version, but anyway, there is not much talk in this movie and the plot is quite strange and weird, subtitles should be enough:)
10:28 - "...you chip away at your audiences investment in your story, because they realize that at any moment, some random bullshit device or character that's never been mentioned before could pop up and completely undo everything that's happening." Nailed it.
"Somehow Palpatine returned" Atleast give us some reasoning. He was brought by the Dragon Balls or he had the monkey's paw up his ass anything but "somehow"
Thought it was the resurrection stone 🤣
It's like they're not even trying. It's so insulting to the audience.
(improbable army pops out of nowhere with improbable planet-killiing weapons) "so that's how they want to play it"
In all due fairness to this much maligned film, I have to tip my hat to J.J. Abrams for "The Rise Of Skywalker." In many blockbusters, you have to wait an hour or two before you realize you're watching a load of crap. Not this time! Abrams lets the cat out of the bag during the opening credits crawl.
They used the mother box 😆
It's gotten so bad that I've almost completely given up watching new movies and gone back to just rewatching old ones again..
Watch movies from other countries than your own. 👍
Ditto. I barely go to the cinema anymore.
The Daily Wire has started producing films. They are shooting one in Co now I believe. I assume they will be different from the Hollywood crap.
The Koreans are putting out some great series and movies
Same I basically given up on movies I don't even know where to go for good ones anymore.
Something that i live by when building a story: the best Chekhov's Guns are ones people think have already gone off. You THINK the squealing cooler is just there to show the relationship between Walter and the duo of Val and Earl. So you write it off as a story element that has fulfilled its purpose. Fast forward and the group has forgotten about the cooler, you've forgotten about the cooler, and when it starts screaming as they're hunkered down to avoid the graboid's notice, their 'oh shit' moment is also your 'oh shit ' moment.
This is such a good point! It has to act as a story obstacle in itself, so that it looks like the gun has gone off already.
Does anyone else admire the fact that the laser-missiles being shot from the Empirial ship have a downward arch to them just like a projectile shot on Earth would have? I didn't know there was gravity in space to pull those lasers downward..
Of all the outstanding issues with that movie, that never even registered for me. What a facepalm. Yikes.
wonder if its some sort of homing laser missile
Maybe they were just bombs Glowing,probably nuclear bombs..
@@g0blinboi415 that doesn't suddenly mean there's gravity in space making the bombs arch
@@jsw973 ah my bad, Theyre glowing,nuclear AND fake bombs (joke)
"They aren't looking for smaller ships." Literally the first scene of the first movie involved the Empire monitoring for escape pods to catch anyone trying to flee from the attack on Leia's ship. This is specifically why she gives the Death Star plans to a droid, so they would think the pod was empty and not blast it out of the sky.
Lol
Entire plot (the last remains of the resistance continuously pursued by superior enemy fleet) was directly stolen from Battlestar Galactica
Given the history of imperial starships and battle stations being destroyed by small snub fighters, you would think that this “first order” would be looking out for small vessels at all times! This is just one of the many incongruities with “Star Wars” canon that make me classify this drek as its own franchise I call “Disney Wars” - the writers obviously didn’t pay attention to anything that supposedly came before, so I assume that none of the real “Star Wars” plot actually occurred in the “Disney Wars” universe as there’s no way that rational characters can respond to those events in the way the “Disney Wars” characters do…
they could literally have said something stupid like "we sabotaged their high resolution scanners" and that would still be better than "they no lookie"
@@DSkulle1 I was thinking that the big ship should just overload it's systems and create some sort of interference to mask the small ships from the enemy's scanners/sensors. The small ships are too small to be seen visually. The big ship is in the center of the interference, so it can still be targeted. Once the big ship turns around to ram, the small ships are too far away from it and can be detected.
Even the 'rock, scissors, paper' device in Tremors is more interesting that most of what you find in modern Holywood films.
The first Tremors movie was actually fun
"Yes!" "No.... Rock rips through paper."
Most underrated movie of all time
@Suddenly Is that the theme song for Cuties?
@@vergilvalerian3755 well that joke's still funnier that the shit in GB2016
The fact that they came up with the idea of Palpatine being Rey's grandfather in the last minute should speak volumes.
Palpatine had a kid? I just assumed he was a villain because he never got laid. 😆
@@GenerationX1984 no, he had clones and one of the clones had a kid. Honestly, this would have been an EXCELLENT premise for Rey and if done right it could have properly explained every one of her Mary Sue moments, leading into a climax where she learns to accept that she's a Palpatine, but that her heritage doesn't have to make her Sidious 2.0. The sequel trilogy was full of some great ideas that never got any setup OR payoff, which is the real tragedy of the thing (Finn as Force-sensitive ex stormtrooper turned Resistance commando or something would have been a character that could sit right with the Star Wars greats).
@@sethb3090 When I left the cinema after EP VII I was actually exited about all the open questions that were not answered and I was sure they´d answer them in Ep VIII and IX. Turns out they´d not even use the stuff they did set up and came up with stuff out of nowhere. The only hope is now with Bad Batch and the Mandalorian they do the setup of the events in the sequels, which they do seem to do with all the focus on cloning in both series
@@sethb3090 finn could and should have been a great character. Only thing original in episode VII and they quickly destroyed his character in episode VIII.
@@turbo8628John Boyega got shafted so hard with the new Star Wars movies, they had a good thing going with episode VII and it got squandered
I'm a musician and everything you said about the movie industry of today applies to the music industry as well. All the mainstream "artists" are nothing but a sludge pool with no creativity. The actual good music is hiding in lower budget tier where artists are still trying to create good stuff for the audience. I guess that's why I can appreciate good B movies over any overbudgeted AAA title out there. Same applies for video game industry as well.
Yep. Personally these days I play about 90% Indie games, only barely touching AAA games every now and then when something really special comes out, like Breath of the Wild.
Music, like movies, has become disposable. Put out some generic autotuned single, get a few million downloads and plays on Spotify, and then move on to the next generic autotuned single. It works for the record labels, but there is nothing that would be remembered in a year by anyone with even a slight appreciation for good music making.
The snes games is better than those news games.
💯
@@fishingthelist4017Hey, remember those songs "Tiimmy Turner" and "Panda" by Desiinger, if you even remember who that rapper is?
The fact that a B rated movie in the 90s is 1000x better than anything “mainstream” today tells you everything you need to know.
Well, for one thing, they didn't have to check off a million & a half stupid check-boxes to placate a zillion different special-interest groups in those days... They just made movies.
@@MrPGC137 so sad. those were truly simpler and purer times. the 80s and 90s were peak human civilization, and you can never convince me otherwise.
@@Sliider36 True; that's one of the few reasons I don't really miss going to the movies that much anymore. There's just nothing worth seeing anymore, besides a bunch of dumb cookie-cutter comic-book movies that are all the same. The last really good movies I saw within the last 5 years or so were, "Joker," Ford vs. Ferrari," "Stan and Ollie," "1917," and "They Shall Never Grow Old," the last of which wasn't even a 'movie' per se but a documentary. And that's _IT._ I personally wouldn't give a ha'penny for the total combined output of all Hollywood put together in all that time otherwise.
tremors is so underrated.
@@creativeideas5985 Its not I like it.
As a lifelong Tremors fan, I am deeply proud of that film for being ranked as the diametric opposite of The Last Jedi. EDIT: fine, film not franchise, whatever. Frankly I'd rank any of them as better than TLJ.
Your on the money Z.
Not gonna lie I even like the direct to video sequels. Aftershocks is genuinely just about as good as the original in my book. And the rest are all guilty pleasures, but not cuz they're terrible and bad but because they're cheesy and stuff
The spin off TV show was better than the Disney soy wars
@@jkfozul2316 I love Aftershocks as much as the original. Tremors 4 is a close third, with Back to Perfection in fourth and the rest collectively share fifth place. Iconic series.
Here's another setup & payoff example from the franchise: Setup- Tremors 1, Val to Earl: "Shit, for all you know they can fly." Payoff- Tremors 3 Back to Perfection: flying ass-blasters
I always loved about Tremors was the 3 leads working together to get across the boulders. They actually planned and tested stuff. Then, when they made their move, you cheered because you saw them figure it out. It wasn't the scientist girl just saying "This is the entire back story of these creatures and I'm the only one who can save us!"
I like the setup in Aliens involving the power loader. They make sure to explain at the beginning that Ripley gets a job in the loading dock. Then a bit later she shows sarge and Riggs that she can use the power loader by moving a crate which we know she can do because of her work in the loading dock. Then at the end of the movie... the showdown in the power loader against the queen. No need for Ripley to be some kind of savant that knows how to do everything automatically; it's all taken care of.
Agreed. It's all organic. She has to take a job as a loader because she's banned from ship work, and we know enough about her to know she wants to be useful to the Marines. It all fits together nicely and is just great writing all round.
Now let's take a look at how that would play out if the movie were made today. Marines: "Oh no, the alien queen. What should we do?" Ripley: "I could use that power loader over there to punch her really hard." Marines: "Do you know how to use that thing." Ripley: "Nah, it'll be fine." Ripley jumps into the power loader and jumps and moves around like a Kung Fu master.
Basic coherent storytelling is somehow becoming a lost art. Too many movies are compiled from inividual scenes so focused on a visual set piece or a witty piece of dialogue that they neglect the importance of the scene to be part of a greater story. Important parts of the story end up on the cutting room floor but the unnecessary 5 minute fight scene that ultimately ends with everyome back where they started is kept in because it is surface-level interesting.
@@turbo8628 This is one of my biggest problems with modern movies, especially the Marvel type movies-the action scenes go on for too long, and I understand why movies are that way, I just don't like it, which is why I usually avoid Marvel type movies.
Recently watched Alien and Aliens again. The vibe I get from older movies is that they pull you into the story whereas modern movies are pushing you into the story.
Astute observation!
And old movies aren't trying to debauch popular culture for subversive political motives. Taking something people love, and making it into a joke to humiliate them.
@@richardcrook2112 to be honest i don't think political messages have to be a bad thing. Eye in the Sky is an amazing film with a really interesting messge about the use of drones in warfare. However, I think what separates it is that the commentary it gives doesn't tell you whether it's good or bad, just presents you with the facts and goes 'have a think'
@@commanderpuffin4953 It's not just politics, it's deliberate debasement.
@@richardcrook2112 you're gonna have to prove you're not an incel at this point because yeeeeeesh
"But ultimately, we're the ones who let them get away with it." A truism that applies to everything, including politics.
I boycott stuff that I know will be crap. I still haven’t seen any of the recent Star Wars films. My time is too valuable. Game of Thrones sucked me in with the first six seasons enough to watch the concluding two, which pissed me off immensely.
We let them get away with it because there are few alternatives. The movie industry is one giant good ol' boys club.
@@hendrikscheepers4144 I think doing Disney+ and supporting good Star Wars is fine. Just don’t see the bad ones in theatre. Mando and bad batch and clone wars all make me happy :)
@@Steven-nd1pz few alternatives? Are you kidding? The amount of entertainment available now is more than anyone could ever consume in their entire life, even if no other movies are ever made. There are enough good movies and TV shows that already exist that you could never watch one made after say the year 2000 and still never run out of things to watch. Or you could just do something besides sit in front of a screen if you had to. There are innumerable alternatives.
@@craigwelter5862 he meant alternative big budget films.
A good example of set-up and pay-off is 12 Angry Men. When Juror #3 is talking about his son, we think that it’s just a piece of exposition for Juror #3. But then at the climax, we learn that his fractured relationship with his son was what was ultimately driving his actions throughout the film.
I still cannot comprehend why people would even still try defending Last Jedi despite the fact it's literally one of the worst movies ever written, especially by a person who does not really respect Star Wars at all, he himself even admitted it in a Knifes Out interview that he wanted to write his own story and admitting to disregarding continuity in the process. It fails to apply even basic understanding of Physics and Logic, no Rian Johnson, ships don't suddenly stop moving forwards once they run out of fuel in a vacuum where there is no air resistance and gravity is negligable, so in a logic applied scene, the ship would maintain it's velocity regardless and it's shouldn't drift back when it came from once it runs out of fuel. Also turbolaser bolts don't curve in vacuum How did the First Order somehow take over the Galaxy that quickly with relatively no opposition? Thanks to RJ for negating the use of Starkiller Base, they could've just used their ships to take over the New Republic, (I still don't get why suddenly the New Republic left itself to be so weak, suddenly corrupt and suddenly dies out after Hosnian Prime is destroyed without any introduction in TLJ, I didn't care about the planet that was destroyed by Starkiller Base) During the Last Jedi opening, Why use Large, slow, moving Bombers that could easily be taken out by a Tie fighter; a Tie fighter crashing into one was enough to destroy Three, this is just hilarious. Why couldn't they use smaller, faster, more manueverable and way harder to hit fighter squadrons with split up payload which could destroy the Dreadnought quickly rather than having to sacrifice a squadron of heavy slow bombers and the A-wings accompanying them? And why were the Resurgent Star Destroyers just sitting behind the Dreadnought doing absolutely nothing while the Dreadnought was attacked, they could just form a perimeter around the Dreadnought, no fighter and heavy bomber would be able to pass through this or at least be very hard now. And the First Order could easily strike down the Capital ship Raddus or destroy the transports during the evacuration effort when they are at their most vulnerable. Also they had to violate an established rule in Star Wars, the fact that Holdo can just casually ram the Supremacy with no second thoughts just means that Hyperspace can be easily weaponised which ruins every Star Wars battle, there would no reason to Why the Separatists would have to hijack a Venator and fill it with fuel when they could just ram the Venator in lightspeed into a Battlestation instantly killing everyone in that one Clone Wars episode, you just a ram a Venator into Admiral Trench's flagship without having to overfire your reactors to break the blockade, overall, sides and groups participating in a galactic-wide conflict would just create weaponry which sends projectiles and missiles through Hyperspace threatening entire Worlds. Also, the Canto Bight plot was awful, it added nothing to Movie, it was only there to increase the run time just by 40 minutes and it was only included to lecture people about Slavery. I forgot about the entire plot, I cannot tell you anything else. They also ruined important Characters and Rey is just perfect example of a Mary Sue. Hux who was a serious, competent First Order officer in the Force Awakens is now an incompetent moron in the Last Jedi giving cliche generic villain dialogue about destroying the Resistance, humilated by both Snoke and Poe, cries a lot and just cast aside by Kylo Ren as nothing important. They ruined Finn, he is just now played for cheap laughs and following a strong woman like some puppy, how would Rose easily taze him despite literally being a child soldier who was trained from Birth to Adulthood to be a deadly Soldier for Empire 2.0 instead is easily taken down (wait was he retconned in TFA to be a janitor?). Finn is literally not allowed to have his moment, (who would've had his head melted off anyways from that beam), he has to be saved by Rose because we need to save what we love, despite the fact Rose literally prevented Finn from saving the Resistance now allowing the First Order to get inside. Poe didn't receive much justice, he no interesting qualities that makes makes himself stand out, he has no struggles, no conflict that he has to overcome. This had been said countless times but I have to repeat: Rey is literally a Mary Sue character, she is literally perfect which is bad, since she does not forgo any struggles whatsoever which means she is unrelatable and simply unlikeable. She is simply the best at everything, she can pilot the Millenium Falcon better than Han Solo, knows the Millenium Falcon better than Han Solo, somehow be able to take down Kylo Ren in the first movie without any experience with a lightsaber without much difficulty, removing any credibility of Kylo being a threat to her, able to take down 8 highly-trained guards with Kylo in a poorly choreographed fight scene, and also able to life dozens of tons of rock with one hand with minimal effort. The list literally goes on, she does not experience any defeat or loss which impacts her severely or causes her to change because she is a perfect character. She has no character flaws, she isn't impulsive, nor reckless, nor naive or ignorant nor arrogant. Snoke just dies in an unsatisfying way, worst way possible, we know nothing about his backstory despite being portrayed as an important overarching main anatagonist in the Sequel trilogy, if we have known what his motivations and backstory was about in the Movie, and if Snoke dies in an actual conflict between Rey and Kylo, his death would've been much better but we had none of that. Also Kylo is just a ripoff of Darth Vader, he has no origin to justify who is he and why he is, he is just evil because he wants to be, he did not suffer any tragedy down the road which causes him to be evil, he did not become evil because he believed what he did would benefit the people of the Galaxy or usurp power to establish an order which he believed to benefit everyone's good. He has none of the complex motivations, ultimately making him a flat villain. Also he did not defeat Rey at least once to make him a strong villain. and no longer intimidating, he just throws temper tantrums around. Final point, Luke Skywalker's arc was undone for no reason, he was a wise, compassionate, calm, forgiving Jedi Knight/Master, now he is just a pessimistic asshole who just rants about why the Jedi was the cause for everything bad that occurred, he attempted to murder his nephew in his sleep instead of attempting to prevent him from falling to the dark side and it's silly since he has learned to not allow impulses control his mind ever since his duel with Vader at Bespin and managed to defeat the temptations of the Emperor by refusing to finish off Vader and staying true to his good-nature, believing that his evil father can still be redeemed. He loses to Rey who is a strong woman despite the fact that Rey has absolutely no experience with the force and Luke being an adept Jedi Master. He also does not try to redeem his Nephew, he just says sorry and fuck you, he just humiliates his Nephew in front of his officers when he should try to turn his back into the light. Yet despite of all this, TLJ defenders are quick to worship Ruin Johnson as some God-like figure, quick to dismiss criticism as being racist, sexist, part of the alt-right, "yOu jUsT d0N't l1KE sT0ng wOmEn", or "n0 oNE hAtesS sTAr WaRs m0re tHen sTar WArS fANs", or attempting to insert their own superiority complex over others or attempt to make the Prequels or even the Originals just as bad to somehow make their Trilogy or TLJ better. I can rant about more things but this would be a 50,000 word essay so I won't do it.
Spot on friend 😎🤩😇✌️👏 TLJ alongside Get Out were the two worst (+ ridiculously overrated and overpraised! 🤮👎) movies of 2017! 🤔☹️👎 Get Out a supposed horror comedy that is neither scary nor funny! 😕🙄 Basically it was just Critical Race Theory: The Movie as well as a love letter of sorts to Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton - and ironically it's more or less preaching against interracial/interethnic relationships and marriage...yet Jordan Peele himself is mixed-race and married to a white woman with whom he has a child by! And like you say about general and fair criticism about TLJ being grossly distorted as sexism, racism etc I find the same thing about Get Out - it's pretty much totally absent! 🤔🙄☹️
I'll be honest, I read like 1 paragraph, but I can say with certainty I agree with everything you said.
Your paragraph about Luke in particular is almost word for word what I’ve been preaching to anyone who will listen for the last 4.5 years. Luke was railroaded and shit on in TLJ and that is completely and utterly unforgivable.
Go outside lol
@@user-ky1gh1es7b You some TLJ defender who is butthurt because what I said or are just some troll just commenting something totally unrelated?
_"We plan ahead - that way we dont need to do anything right now..."_ I've been using that line for damn near 25yrs 😂
Good motto to live by 😂
We have the "paralysis by analysis thing" around here.
JJ Abrams: I'm gonna make a trilogy of movies for one...no, two of the most popular franchises, which should respect the legacy of predecessors, so I'm not gonna plan even the first movie through and rewrite my scripts every day while shooting! What can possibly go wrong?
Same. 😂
I've been using another of Val's line for years. The one after they killed the first graboid right after he said "cold my ass, he's dead"
The worst part about the new Star Wars is that for a movie that's supposed to be about heroes, there's no heroes. There's no discovery of the weakness of self, becoming a student of something bigger, fighting and losing against what you fear before triumphing. You can't have good dialogue without a real story. I think even George Lucas said something along these lines back in the 70's.
Yet Lucas gave us the Prequels... Meesa love the dialogues!
They even ruined the old Star Wars. You can't get the original (where Han shot first and without Jabba added in) except on VHS.
luke lost his uncle/aunt/home, his hand, the horrible realisation of his father. what did Rey lose (other than the background, I'm an orphan which is offscreen)
George Lucas read books like Joseph Campbell - he understands the hero’s journey. JJ Abrams obviously doesn’t. He has no idea how to come up with a good ending.
@@bigneiltoo word to the wise: "despecialized"
One example of setup and payoff I really liked was in Encanto. Near the beginning of the film, when Mirabel is just about to start singing "Family Madrigal", we can see a crack in the wall showcasing the Madrigal family tree. Later, when she's talking to Bruno Madrigal, she realizes that the crack is there so that Bruno can still sit with his family at the dinner table, despite being ostracized by them. It's all subtle (I didn't even notice until my 8th time watching), and it's brilliant.
Yeah, Encanto really had great foreshadowing and payoff.
Films have always reflected the mood and atmosphere of the time, I think. Film makers know what sells films. And I propose to you that today more than ever this rings true: dodgy, corrupt politicians; seemingly mindlessly rich and greedy multi-billionaires; over-exposure and normalisation of celebrities and sports stars; together with social media making us all quasi-famous, in an era where the news and the future seems confusing, dystopian and problematic, we're all looking for superheroes, even at the expense of things making too much sense.
Even the beginning of Tremors has Val waking up Earl by pretending that there was a stampede going on. And he thinks back to it when using the dynamite at the end as well. What a great film.
Still one of my favorites.
There were so many seemingly throwaway or irrelevant beats in the first 20 minutes of that flick, and almost every one of them comes back into play later
It's so funny how that movie ended up being such a cult classic. It's a total B-movie but somehow it works and keeps you entertained.
Man now I wanna go watch it again
@@logicaldude3611 B movie from the 80s. Has better acting, writing, special/practical fx, directing... It's really sad how far, downhill the movie industry has gone in the past 10-15years.
One of my favorite examples of planting and paying off is in "Aliens", when early on, Burke mentions that Ripley's had to take a job operating power loaders and tries to entice her to join the mission by saying the Company will reinstate her flight status. While he says that it's great she's keeping busy, he's definitely implying that she took a job beneath her skills. So not only is it a great example of planting, it's a great example of story irony in that Ripley, having to had to take a job that's beneath her, actually learned how to use the machine that will allow her to defeat the queen alien.
Not only that, we get Burke mentioning it once in 1 sentence. Then we see Ripley demonstrating that skill herself later. So we get 2 seeds...and 2 hours to almost entirely forget about it...and then the movie reminds us that it was important *in the entire climax of the film.* God, that setup/payoff is glorious.
Wow... you figured that all out by yourself??
Great observation and it it so smooth it just goes through like good whiskey.
@@brandonice9137 it's called illustrating a point. Don't be a dick. It's unprpvoked and uncalled for.
@@Theomite Not only that but it also sets the piece on how she gains the respect from the most important members of the marine squad that she is going to accompany on the mission by showing how she's willing to get her hands dirty.
I’m currently getting my MFA in screenwriting and we’re told that the Marvel movies are the pinnacle of good writing ….. if that answers anything
Oh what fresh hell 🙄
Which exactly? I mean I'd consider most pretty good
Yeah, the future of cinema is fucking bleak.
Depends on which Marvel movie you're talking about. Winter Soldier= 😁. Shang-Chi= 🤷. Love and Thunder= 😖
It depends on the Marvel movie. Iron Man? Captain America: The Winter Soldier? The Avengers: Infinity War? Spider-Man: No Way Home? The Guardians of the Galaxy duology? Maybe even The Avengers: Age of Ultron for the villain alone? Because everything else is either eh or complete dogwater.
Tremors has a few good set-ups in it. it's a really well put together film. The ending scene is set up right at the start of the film and you see the moment Val remembers that earlier scene and uses it to overcome the last monster.
Culture is literally changing and Media reflects that but Media is also the Cause, cause it's all symbiotic. For example, Quotes from the 12.Doctor: "Oh, the Mechanized Space-Suits malfunction and attack us? That's funny cause that means we're like Anyone-else Everywhere-else: We're fighting the Suit!" 12.Doctor:"What makes you feel so superior? It it the good House? But Human-Progress isnt measured by Industry, it's measured by looking at a Life. An unimportant Life... a life without privilege. 13.Doctor: "OMG, OMG, OMG, have you heard of Space-Amazon? Amazon is so epic, everyone who disagrees with that is a literal PIG. We should all stop criticizing Amazon forever." I kid you not, they said that. Holy Penguin, wtf.
What's more, his fawning over blonde babes is what sets up his character arc where he appreciates the leading lady for her daring and intelligent personality instead of looks alone
"Writing is the one thing you have complete control over." That's not really true. Big Hollywood movies pretty much always have last-second rewrites due to studio-mandated changes. "This focus group didn't like the ending." "Put this in there so we can sell toys based on it." "Censors in China won't like this." "This actor just got cancelled on Twitter, so cut all of the scenes he's in." "This character is popular, so make his part bigger." "This actor put up money for this movie, and he wants to be the main character."
This has now become the sad reality. Where movies are churned out like fast food. But I think there’s light at the end if the tunnel. I think producers and studios will eventually realise that no one’s interested in their BS and will eventually fall back to the old days..but it will take at least another ~ 10 odd years
@@shiladitya_biswas Im sure thats what some thought 10 years ago, and yet here we are. Worse off than we were before. =/
You forgot the most common one. Netflix: "Uhh, so it has no gay, trans or black people? How about we just make the previously white guy black?"
Oh sweet! Possum’s here! 😁
The reason behind this are trends. Trends sell movie tickets, not quality. I blame us (the viewers), because the majority just blindly consumes every piece of crap big studios present to us. If the majority doesn't care (or maybe they do care but still go to pay for the movie) abour good writing, good storytelling and consistency, guess what, neither do producers . I won't even comment merchendising, recycling, woke crap and China
Classic Star Trek would have said something along the lines of "they have likely calibrated all their sensors to more effectively track large ships, small transports at this range may not show up on their sensors at all", then when they figure it out someone would say something like "recalibrate our sensors to their normal wavebands!". Instead we got "lol they're not looking" and "run our anti-scan cloak decloaking scan", like they made it a point to write dialog using only the 1000 most common words in English.
This is an excellent underlying point. Appeal to the target audience. It's almost as if people are proud of their lack of intelligence.
@@SchiesterMalG You'd be more sure of your statement reading current events...
Classic Star Trek had writers on staff and was overseen by one of the most forward-thinking creative minds of the 20-th century. With good writing you can have a set constructed of painted shower curtains and salt shakers. With bad writing even the best CGI in the world won't save you.
Leia: Aktivate ECM, and start the evacuation. First order sensor officer: We lost track becuse of enemy jamming. Hux: NO! Get a target lock on them NOW! First order sensor officer: Do not worry sire, give the battle computer 5 min to analyze the jaming and we can counter it. Leia: All transport ship, stop the engines and go dark, they will soon overcome our jaming. First order sensor officer: Enemy jaming defeated, you have your target lock now on the last enemy ship sire.
But the cloaking scan cloaks the scan, so..........
1 major problem is everyone's trying to build a universe and make a movie open for sequels when they just need to do 1 movie right and have it flow organically that makes people like it enough to warrant a sequel.
Tremors is such a classic that has tons of set ups and pay offs mixed in with humor. And the basement scene is a great example of great set up and a surprise twist. Spoilers: The whole movie before that point, the grabboids were scene as invincible. The only one that had die before that point ran full speed into cement. They have tried using guns before to no avail. The movie also set up that the couple were the usual Texas gun nuts/end times preppers. Before that scene, you have scene the grabboids not only kill people, but have taken down a car as well (and just one of their tongues help back a pickup truck for a few minutes). It seemed that only full run into cement can kill them (you also know that even the roofs aren't safe as the grabboids shall stay by you until you die of thirst). So, with everyone else on the roofs, Burt and his wife are in their basement (about a mile or two away from the town) mixing ammo (which causes a lot of noise) and, using binoculars and a radio, wondering why everyone else is on the roof. The town folks tried to warn them but it was too late and you see it burst through the wall, the camera cuts to the two main heroes, you here Burt swear, and the radio is cut off. For just a couple of seconds, it makes you feel like the couple who would best be able to defeat them just were killed. But then...well...just watch this clip yourself :) kzhead.info/sun/frKoqbesjZyNeX0/bejne.html
"Snarky humour" Is what well and truly bothers me about movies nowadays. Modern Star wars is a perfect example of this.
Unwatchable cringe.
It's ""humor"", a very weak banter made of one-line comments
@@uzytkownik15 Agreed, its banter without the humor IE moaning knobheads, can't stand it
Sassy banter lol. Screams "millennials are in charge now".
The original Star Wars was full of that. The banter between Han and Leia is a prime example.
I watched Iron Man for the first time in years and noticed a nice little set up/payoff in that. After returning home from captivity, Tony replaces the arc reactor in his chest with a superior model. He tells Pepper to incinerate the old one. She ignores this and later gives it to Tony as a present which informs a lot about her character. This later proves pivotal to the story when Obadiah steals Tony's arc reactor and leaves him to die, as Tony is able to retrieve it to save his own life. This scene is also combined with Dummy getting something right for the first time by passing Tony the reactor when he is too weak to get to it. This lower powered reactor also put Tony at a disadvantage in the final battle. I was impressed with how well this one object is woven so neatly throughout the whole story.
That’s why I love the first Iron Man as it was the beginning of the MCU and the start of the Infinity Saga.
@@JonathanGaeta *Sad Hulk noises intensifies*
That's a perfect example of setup/payoff! And it event lasts all the way to the end of the saga to drift away in the memorial to Tony.
@@JonathanGaeta .....good boy..... *smash*
@Sam Sparklebot Imagine how hopeful the fanbases would be if Favreau was in charge of Star Wars and/or Marvel.
Funnily enough you reminded me of playing Earthworm Jim on the MegaDrive when I was a kid. The very first obstacle you come across is a refrigerator suspended over a log that has a cow standing on the other end. You hit the fridge, causing it to fall on the end of the log, which launches the cow. Later in the game you see the same cow randomly flying by in the background. Then at the end of the game after you beat the final boss the Princess you've just saved goes to kiss Jim and gets squashed by a falling cow. You get all the way to the end of the game only to have the girl you're out to rescue crushed by your solution to the game's very first problem... Thanks for reminding me of this :)
On the other hand I am also completely tired of very lazy implementations of "Chekhov's gun", where the setup is so obvious, that you can see it from miles away and pretty much predict a big outcome of the whole movie because of it. As you said - a setup needs to be clever and used in multiple ways to work properly.
I see Checkov's gun as a necessary evil. It's not good because it telegraphs the plot, but it's needed as a consequence of both setup/payoff and the law of conservation of detail, as we can assume such "guns" are important to the plot as a decent writer wouldn't bother wasting our time if they werent.
Depends how they do it. If they make it too obbious then it is awful, but if they are subtle about it then it can be brilliant.
@@turbo8628 absolutely, but I think it is really hard to pull of properly.
@@Brainfracture definitely not easy to pull off. Even if it doesn't work exctly as planned though, it at least shows they have some idea of what they are doing, and can always be passed off as foreshadowing. The lack of it just comes across as the disjointed storytelling abilities of a toddler.
I remember watching Tremors back in the 90's, going into it I thought that it might be a bit B grade, but it quickly revealed itself to be the diamond that it is.
Never seen it but it looks great! :-) "Jaws where you can't get out of the water" is a great description.
Every time it aired on tv my siblings and I would be tiptoeing around the house the rest of the day.
For a while, I thought it might be just me, kind of a guilty pleasure, but a little more analysis explained how it's a really, really good movie. One especially nice touch, and kind of a sign of how much care went into the script, was after their first encounter with the Graboids, and the geologist girl gets tangled up in the wooden post w/ barbed wire. She has to escape by taking her pants off. Then later, when they've made it back to the store, her FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS is to find some jeans and put them on. I thought, "That may be the most realistic thing I've ever seen in a monster move including blue skies and parallel parking!" It is indeed a diamond.
The scene where Reba and her husband blow like 600 rounds into a worm that broke into their basement while is just sits there and wiggles a little bit for like 5 minutes is pure garbage, and I thought so the first time I saw it in the theaters. Do these things have a survival instinct or not? Other than that, I thought it was pretty good, certainly entertaining. Good characters, well acted. Creature effects didn't age well, but they were pretty effective at the time.
It's a B grade premise with S grade writing.
"There's no real incentive for them to be better." That sums up movies for the last 20 years.
That's what happens when a company ownes practicley everything. Why should they try hard when they have little to no competition?
Exactly. Sad part is, so many sheep just keep going to the theatre and paying to watch these dumpster fires. It would change overnight if people just said no and didn't pay. But they do. So here we are.
@@ejcheli If people would stop watching everry movie that comes out it could change. But it's like people never llearn and keep watching annything that will be regretted afterwards. But people seam so hungrey for entertainment thru movies they will keep watching garbage. I have a huge veriety of dvd movies not found on online tv programs and I enjoy these more then manny moderne tv programs.
And that's people's fault. They still pay even if it's crap. It happens with all kind of products. This is why the concept of "working hard in order to success" is just BS.
Still, i would assume the cheapest part of making a movie is hiring a good writer?!? (Maybe i am wrong on that). These fucked up star wars movies cost hundreds on millions. How much of that budget was spent on writers???
Tremors is such an entertaining, well-made and all around fun movie that didn't take itself too seriously. The 90's really knew the true meaning of "show don't tell" - especially when it came to female characters. The entire cast of characters in this movie are so well-written! The movie really gives a sense of complete, multi dimensional "real people". Charming, witty, intelligent protagonists make all the difference when it comes to relating to a story. The tone is surprising light considering its technically a "monster movie". Love this flick and is definitely a go-to I've seen way too many times!
Holy shit man, this was really well done and makes a lot of sense. In the back of my mind, I knew something was wrong with a lot of today's movies, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what. I wouldn't say ALL of today's movies lack the setup though. We have a ton of very well crafted movies that are being made, some of which are even big budget. 2016's Arrival is a great example, I think. I'd love a review of that with an eye toward setup and payoff.
Yeah I think this is a great example of survivorship bias
The Last Jedi actually uses anti-setup, where an early scene establishes that a later event makes no sense: 1. Early the resistance has a portable phone to easily call maz kanata on a distant planet, later they need a special giant transmitter to call for help. 2. Early Leia gives Rei a tiny bracelet to track her ship through lightspeed, later they don't understand how the enemy tracks ships through lightspeed.
Wtf lol... wtf lmao
I hate this film so much. Maybe the only one (certainly the only recent one) that's had me actually shouting at the screen whilst watching it for the first time. (the scene where Holdo inexplicably refuses to explain her plan to one of her highest ranking officers despite obvious discontent brewing amongst the rest of the crew - and why did she refuse to explain it? Actually no reason at all. GARBAGE! UTTER FUCKING GARBAGE!)
Entire plot (the last remains of the resistance continuously pursued by superior enemy fleet) was directly stolen from Battlestar Galactica
@@albogypsy2842 Only that episode of BSG (“33”) wasn’t shit.
@@KindredBrujah And yet, we all go watch the next SW movie ;)
Good points. I think the fear of failure is part of why many films succeed, especially in a filmmaker's early career. Take a look at Jaws, arguably one of Spielberg's best films and it's nearly 50 years old. He had NO budget, not one hit under his belt so he had no power, AND the shark wasn't working. He had to use ingenuity to make an entertaining film with heart and good characters. Old-school film making.
Good old-fashioned adversity. Making both movies and people smarter since the beginning of movies and people.
Another good example of this was Rocky. It had almost zero budget but the limitations of it bred creativity. I remember the scene in the skating rink. That scene was supposed to be filmed set during operational hours so that meant hiring lots of extras and needed a lot of lighting. They couldn't afford that so they switched it up and made Rocky go there after hours. But it turned to the movie's advantage as the scene felt more personal with just Rocky and Adrian, and marked the beginning of their relationship.
Clerks has entered the chat.
It helped Spielberg had Robert Shaw and Richar Dreyfuss as main characters.
I was stationed in Germany in the late 80's. Our base had 1 movie theater and there was a video tape place nearby. After a while you've seen EVERY movie on tape and are grateful for whatever movie plays in the base theater. Sometimes it was Robocop or Top Gun, but many more times it was movie like Some Kind Of Wonderful (🤢🤮). My point is that today the tables are turned: there's SO MUCH stuff to watch that WE HAVE TO BE picky! We don't have enough TIME to watch every movie that's out there. I'm grateful to Critical Drinker and other reviewers for saving us TIME. I just saw The Northman after seeing CD's review. That was an awesome movie! Thank you CD.👍
As a veteran of Uncle Sam's big boats club, I can vouch for SciHeart's testimony. Those crappy movie's being shown on the mess deck every day. When they FINALLY did rotate films with other parts of the fleet (instead of sister ships) we thought we died and went to heaven. If only they had streaming back then.....
12:00 Movies in the 1930s, 40s, etc... were more focused on the story and dialogue. "The Third Man" springs to mind. A great movie that stands the test of time.
I remember watching Tremors and when the characters took a course of action, I would think "that's what I would have done" No stupidity, just lots of common sense
I felt the same way when watching the first Phantasm movie. It's one of the few horror movies I know of where the first thing the characters do is go get guns.
It's why it holds up so well despite being low budget. It's also why "The Thing" is such a masterpiece. Both are very well done monster/horror movies. The characters act rationally and do what they can to protect themselves and fight back. People still get scared, hurt, and die but it's not from stupidity. They act how clever people would have acted in the same situation, but they still might lose. Which is what makes them actually scary. It's the same reason I can't take Halloween seriously. I don't care how big, strong, and evil Michael Myers is. He's still one guy with a knife. Bullets beat knife every day.
@@blakethomas5637: I loved that flick. Foremost that the audience had to slowly piece together what was happening and who was who. Things like the "tuning fork" to another dimension and how they negated it, and of course the silver sphere, which turned out to be autonomous or pre-programmed. Who was the Tall Man, etc. Even at the end there were some mysteries, which I liked.
When I watched it at the cinema in 1990, the scene that really had me cheering was when my expectations were happily subverted after one of the graboids breaks into the Gummers’ armoury. I was fully expecting the gun nuts to fall easily to the creature as per the genre cliche, but - NO! - they deploy enough firepower to take the fucking thing down. As Burt says: “Guess you broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn't ya?”
A stark contrast to what passes for horror today - mostly characters doing dumb shit for the sake of advancing a plot that wasn’t particularly well put together…
This is why I loved the movie Rocky so much, the film sets up this simple yet loveable man who knows all he wants in life is not to be “just another bum” by going the distance. And when you hear that final bell ring, you are cheering for him!!!!
...and managed to get me emotional every time I watch it!! Masterpiece!!
Same with karate kid too
Exactly Chuck it gave the viewer a realistic goal that the character could achieve. Even at the beginning of Part 2 where Mickey says I don't care what anyone says this guy right here won the fight. It leaves it up to a judgement call, building into the next film. Where Apollo says "I won, but I didn't beat him" great dialog. Smartly written and extremely believable from his point of view. Rocky has so many great scenes that build into one another setup and payoff done correctly. Where Rocky forgives Mickey after he is walking away after his "I ain't got no locker" scene was so moving and you can tell it hurt Rocky and he needed to let it out before he could forgive Mickey and let him train him. Modern filmmaking has almost none of that kind of depth. Like the Drinker said all flash and action no substance.
it's more of a character study without a true villain, per se, rather a 'man v. self' tale.
@kevin barker just like Rocky said "I ain't mind being simp for Adrian" lol
On the matter of them failing to scan for small craft... In the first movie, within the first few minutes, an operator takes the time to inform Vader of an escape pod despite his readings telling him there isn’t even anyone onboard.
This is going to make me sound so much nerdier than I actually am: In the first movie, they were scanning for life forms, as in living organic creatures. R2D2 and C3P0 were the only ones onboard, so their presence did not register. I think I see your point of an operator informing Vader of an escape pod even if it was seemingly empty.
I remember watching Tremors and wondering why it seemed so good when it was obviously just a silly popcorn movie. Watching much later it still held up very well while other silly popcorn movies of my youth like Army of Darkness…..not so much. I still love AofD for the nostalgia but it didn’t age as well as Tremors.
Army of Dark. was a movie meant to be watched - 2 times MAXIMUM. Anything more than that..... It's like paying triple every time you ride the same stupid ride at the county fair, FROM THE LAST TIME you rode it.
Old movies: we need a really good script and some great actors make a great movie. Current movies: we have some analysis of audience preferences that says we can make at least $900M worldwide if we make a movie about zombie urban teens and include a female lead who fits these particular demographic categories, plot that involves 3 international locations, story that is accessible and generic for consumption of international tastes, and work in some considerable explosions in case there’s any gaps in the dialog. at least 7 quotable lines for the trailer even if they don’t make sense.
Except that nobody quotes movies anymore since they are so boring and actors are so lifeless nowadays.
@@ryanjacobson2508 Jeez, you guys are cynical. A lot of people still quote films nowadays. Have you seen any Edgar Wright movies, The Lighthouse, 1917, any MCU movie. You cant clump ALL movies that come out into the bad movie pile, cause that's just unfair
You can’t judge old and modern movies as a whole, there are hundreds of shitty old movies and also hundreds of great new movies
@@kadiriolanipekun6486 I feel the exact same way, my friend.
I thought the explosions were for the audience with short attention span.
As someone who fell out of love with movies after studying film at university, thank you for making them interesting again Drinker.
same after one film class in hs i fell in love and always went to the movies. I don't go at all anymore.
Took a screenwriting course a long time ago. Can not look at movies the same after that. I would rather throw bird seed and scraps out in my back yard and watch the wild life picking at it than watch the crap on screen these days.
Started film in high school a month ago and I agree
Isn't that true for everything? Once you see behind the curtain, the appeal is lost.
@@rikrob5172 you do not want to see how the sausage is made.
I definitely understand with what you mean with 'spectacle'. When I have to choose a movie that I wanna watch, it's easier to just go for something that is more action-packed. I started watching all the Tarantino movies lately, and I realize that it is much more interesting to notice the subtle funny connections between scenes or characters. Tarantino movies are still super bloody, and full of action, but the dialogue is set up in such a way that all characters are trying to go for each others throats, without them actually using any violence.
Tremors is my all time favorite movie. I squealed so hard when he used it as a good example in this video of set up and pay off. I have always said that Tremors is a perfect movie. It encompasses most genres (horror, drama, comedy, romance, action, thriller, sci-fi), well casted and acted. The writing is surprisingly great and the characters are loveable and completely believable. I 100% believe this little desert town exists when I'm watching it and so few movies allow me to immerse this well.
We’re all looking forward to that “Tateyana backstory payoff” Drinker.
How is Tatiana a live-in now? I thought she was just down at the club, not a mail-order bride. Drinker himself needs to keep his stories straight.
I love how Tateyana basically started as a joke, but has become a solid character on the Drinker's life.
The sad part is is that we'll probably get it in a Mauler centric episode
@@Vesnicie maybe he offered her an upgrade, and she decided that one cantankerous pissed up jock was easier to manage than 15 a night?
@Myrmadon That really depends on where the chick's from) Russia - Tatyana. Ukraine - Tetiana.
Rey in TFA: My parents were nobodies Rey in ROS: My grandpa was emperor palpatine Lmao what is that
Bad Death Sticks trip. Obi-Wan should have warned Luke about the dangers of Death Sticks smh. I reckon he learned his lesson after hallucinating the entire sequel trilogy tho.
Idk if the writers know this but in Vadar the comic SPOILER The Emperor turns out to be Anakin's father, thats a good story however.
@Raphael Castel Morano If I'm not mistaken, Daisy Ridley herself said that they wanted Obi-wan Kenobi to be her grandfather in TFA, then nobody in TLJ and only in the last movie did they decide it would be Palpatine. I mean, WTF? It was an entire trilogy that cost millions of dollars and they still hadn't even written the basic plot structure!
The Last Jedi actively ignored the setup from The Force Awakens. Why was Max Von Sydow on a backwater planet with a piece of the map to Luke Skywalker? Why did he just happen to be that close to Rey? Why did R2 only activate when the lost piece of the map and Rey were both in the same room as him? Why the hell would Luke leave behind a map to where he was going if he didn't want to be found!?
#1 It could be a sign the trilogy was completely unplanned #2 It could be seen as one of the not so subtle FU to Rian Johnson in the script.
Doc: I'm sorry Marty, but the only thing capable of generating that sort of power and sending you back to the future is a bolt of lightning. The trouble is, you never know when or where one of those will strike. Screenwriter: Got you covered on that one Doc
That one was set up well though. Earlier in the movie, before the time travel, it is mentioned that a lightning hit the clock tower and that it still hasn't been fixed after 30 years. The same lightning that lets Marty go home.
Bad example, as the lightning strike was set up very early in the movie.
@@sidnew2739 Yes, that was my point. The screenwriters covered it, as in they set it up.
@@Rubbersoulful Oh, ok. I thought you were using irony. Damned internet.
"Back to the Future" is an absolute masterclass in set-up and pay-off. Everything that happens in the first half hour is set-up and there is a pay-off to it later in the movie. There is also set-up and pay-off outside of the first hour too, but that where the bulk the set-up happens.
I love that 5 minutes of this video was devoted to the genius of Tremors. well done.
"Measure seven times, cut once" (russian saying). Endless expensive and time-consuming reshoots (which end up not being of any use) would benefit from an adaptation: "Review your script seven times, shoot once". They will only do that when they are so deep in red ink they have no other choice.
Seven? Sounds like some commie math. Americans only have to measure twice.
JJ Abrams: I'm gonna make a trilogy of movies for one...no, two of the most popular franchises, which should respect the legacy of predecessors, so I'm not gonna plan even the first movie through and rewrite my scripts every day while shooting! What can possibly go wrong?
They cant say no to the diversity hires or they will sue.
@@mesasavage Pre-commie. In russian history, those who made mistakes seldom got a second chance. To live. Made for a very paranoid, grim mindset. Commies just went with the grain.
Modern Hollywood script writing is more like: "Dammit! I've cut this board three times already, and it's still TOO SHORT!"
Tremors also had a "subverting expectations" moment that was done perfectly. Burt Gummer as the walking caricature of an 80's survivalist/prepper meant that any modern movie would demand his death. The whole "all that paranoia and guns couldn't save him anyway" shtick. All those sequences showing (or in Edgar's case, telling) us the graboids shrugging off bullets, it was all but certain. Even the heroes on the rooftops looking down and dejected when they start hearing gunfire echoing from the Gummer bunker. But then.... Burt and Reba just shoot the ever-loving sh** out of it until it stops moving. Made for one of the finest sequences of the movie, gives us more lore-filling about what the graboids can take, and instead of mocking or emasculating Burt, gave us one of (if not the most) memorable characters of the franchise a chance to expand.
Yes -) You can't deflect bullets without the heavy and dense armor! The movie managed to mix (absurd) comedy, horror and realism in exactly the right proportions. It's almost a legend ^^
It's great that they establish an upper limit for the durability of the antagonists, before the final confrontation. It's important and a lot of writers, especially in horror movies, fail to include it ahead of time. Leaves you going "Wait, why did _that_ work?" when previous durability feats are far more impressive. Well, bad horror movies do it that way.
Though in the third one, making a logical conclusion that the assblaster will reproduce fast if they have his food ends up destroying his home for the wrong idea
Their characters were devices to help the story along. They first used them to show the town as peaceful and safe setting up suspense. Then they used them to set the tension. If prepared peppers had a hard time killing them then they are really dangerous. Then they used them to set the final battle by giving the heros an idea how to defeat the graboides.
Yeah - we need more Gummer-type characters in film today.
The strange thing is that from the new Star Wars movies, Rogue One is for me personnaly by far the best. Based on this video I should rewatch it and maybe in this movie they followed the basic elements of storytelling. Btw: you're using The Last Jedi as an example. But what about The Rise Of Skywalker?
I admit I was brainwashed by Force Awakens and Last Jedi but Rise of Skywalker was truly awful.
Agreed. Because the rest of the Disney Star Wars movies are such hot garbage, Rogue One by comparison is elevated out of the sludge. Kinda like being the best basketball player on the worst team.
It's because Gareth Edwards is a Star Wars fan himself. He respected the story AND the fans.
Setup and Payoff was one of the first things the professor went over in my college screenwriting class. I can’t believe professionals at the highest levels of the industry can fail so badly at it.
“Somehow Palpatine returned.” -The modern state of Hollywood Reboots and what happens when you don’t have a setup and the payoff is not even worth it.
And he was defeated because two light sabers make you stronger. The payoff was just as bad.
@James Scott So...if the Force is female, it brought him back to life and gave him offspring...that means Palpy fucked the Force?
Yup. In "A New Hope" we are told what a good pilot Luke Skywalker is FOUR times during the movie. So at the end, we don't need to ask why he's in the cockpit of an X-Wing. Setup. Payoff. In "The Force Awakens" Rey flies the Millennium Falcon, a ship she has never flown before, with precision and balls. In fact, we have no reason to think she has ANY experience flying ships at all. (Also in "Rise of Skywalker" she scores a triple kill in one shot, from a gunnery chair she's never sat in before). These abilities are never set up. They're just things she can do now, because JJ thought it "looked cool." That's his only criteria for writing scenes.
Cloning technology was advanced during the Clone Wars years.
Palpatine should never have returned!
When I clicked on the video I definitely didn't expect to see tremors as a positive example but I agree and I loved everything about the movies and the series. In one of the behind the scenes it was said, that people had to crawl into previously dug holes in the sand to move the Graboid dolls from below. Overall, I noticed the great effort of everyone involved, which everyone seemed happy to invest.
Just to add a bit more: a common trope that perfectly illustrates setup and payoff is Chekhov's Gun (your example of that defective cooler is an excellent example of that trope). Back in 1911, Anton Checkhov said this: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must absolutely go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." This shows another issue with modern films, particularly Suicide Squad if I remember correctly: you talk about having a payoff with no setup, but there are also setups with no payoff, rifles that are shown but never get fired, if you permit the analogy. Giving a payoff to your setup is important for two reasons: not doing so is unsatisfying and frustrating, and it leaves questions in the mind of the audience. They'll go "but what about this? What happened to this? Won't you revisit it?" A larger example of a setup with no payoff that comes to mind is in The Last Jedi: Rose and Finn learn that the Resistance and the First Order buy their weapons from the same people. This should be a massive revelation and could potentially take the story in a whole new direction as the main characters discover about a new enemy. However, in Star Wars, they brush over it and never talk about it again outside of showing that their code breaker didn't care about both sides and did whatever he wanted. Other than that? Nope, let's just pretend that revelation never happened! They could've had a sub plot about taking down a military complex that intentionally sets up wars that kill millions just so they could make more money (though, considering how powerful the US military complex is, along with this subplot potentially being used to criticise the evils of a capitalist system that favours profits over human life, I doubt this idea would ever be greenlit). They could also use this knowledge for a future plan, about how they could try cutting off part of the First Order's military supply, but then realise the plan would actually backfire as they would also be cutting off their own supply. The First Order could learn about this and sacrifice some of their supply to cut off the Resistance The Resistancs could use this knowledge to attempt to buy some of the gear the First Order uses while contacting their own suppliers, assuming this alternate script allows them to afford it So much could be done with that piece knowledge, there are so many opportunities for a payoff! I'm sure a more competent writer could come up with better ideas than I did here too! But no, in the actual trilogy they just completely forget about it, and you end up with a setup with no payoff. On a more positive note, EmpLemon's recent video on Talladega Superspeedway has the single greatest setup and payoff I have ever seen on KZhead, give it a watch!
This reminds me of the 3 most common defences of each of the films in the Sequel Trilogy: 7: It will make sense when we have seen 8. 8: It will make sense when we have seen 9. 9: It only did not make sense because of 8.
7) Right.. kind of a reboot but 8 will go in a cool new direction! 8) New direction is so fucking bad... the same old was better... 9) Nothing works at all.
"Somehow Palpatine returned" Now there's a set up and pay off.
Lol in one and a half words each
Yeah and it became a magic wizard movie and not a space movie. And then there was somehow a bazillion Star Destroyers with full crews of humans above and somehow they built them all above a planet with no resources and was barren. Then they all just blew up and crashed because of the force or something.
In fairness, that was the Force of desperation. TFA set up a villain, a conflict and a hero's journey. TLJ killed the villain, made the conflict an unclear mess, and the hero went off and did the thing with a flat character arc. To get people into the theater he needed something people would care about as the villain and conflict and with Kylo being the only one alive and hardly threatening, Surprise Palpatine was the only option available that an audience was primed to care about.
Bowser has more justification for coming back time after time.
The dark secret about the sequel trilogy is that it should have never been done in the first place. Return of the Jedi closed most of the Star Wars loops very well. You cannot just go revisit the well like they did. You might could start an entire new conflict with a new generation. The First Order itself makes 0 sense in that the Galaxy was probably tired of the Empire at this point and there is no way the First Order is allowed to survive or easily take over planets. Planets would be rebelling, splintering off, etc. Even if the Republic failed to protect them, I see a natural destabilizing and breakup in the Star Wars Galaxy were planets and factions go rogue to do their own thing. They should have skipped multiple generations in the future and just closed the book on Luke's generation. Even then, any sequel trilogy just comes off as a stupid cash grab.
All good points... As I'm listening to you, I can't help but think of the book "Pirate Latitudes" by Michael Crichton. I would love for this to be turned into a movie as it has the exact kind of masterful setup that you are describing.
An excellent example of set up and payoff is in “My cousin Vinny” the diner scene when the cook tells him all about grits
I can't believe I didn't notice it until now, but by the end of the film, Val and Earl have swapped mindsets. Earl wants Val to use their last bomb to distract the last Graboid so they can get to the rocks, but Val points out that they'd die of dehydration within three days. So instead he plans ahead and uses the bomb to lure the Graboid off the cliff using the stampede tactic that were both established at the very beginning of the movie.
There has always been soft place in my heart for Tremors.
And that, my friend, is why that movie is an underrated GEM.
Same. I'm also kind of in the minority that I like the second one more but both are incredible.
@@ignatiusj.reilly1197 Tremors is on my top 10 favorite movies ever. It's a fun masterpiece.
I like this kind of thing. I guess I really starting consciously thinking about it somewhat recently after watching Cop Craft. It does the concept quite a bit more blatantly, by making the two main characters have to use each other's weapons at the end, but it was neat to see. I wonder what you would call this trope?
"We'll use small transports, they won't be looking for them" _"Nuh uh, we're scanning for lifeboats"_ "Nuh uh, they're cloaked" _"Nuh uh, we have de-cloaking scanns"_ "Nuh uh, you wouldn't know to run them in the first place" _"Nuh uh, we have a spy that told us"_ and so forth
"And I brought my dinosaur, who eats force-field dogs"
Honestly sounds like two children fighting. Not that far off, sadly.
Nuh uh, those were all clever 'gotcha' moments made to subvert the audience's expectations :D
It's awesome that you used Tremors as the "good" example. I always loved that movie as a kid and took forgranted the excellent writing it had. Another great review by the Scott
I love this channel! I've been saying exactly the same things for years and everyone just wrote me off as a crank. I love that you are the crank now.
"We let them get away with that." Pretty much. The minority of people are really critical of the media they consume, specially in my country. I'm from Brazil and in here the VAST majority of people liked The Last Jedi, that includes the critics, and it baffles my mind. When that film ended I knew it was the worst Star Wars film ever made, but in here the critics were giving praise, and I couldn't for the life of me fathom why. That's the reason I started checking critiques from outside and I found this channel, Mauler's and others, who I was on the same page with. My theory is that most people are highly emotional and not very rational, wich is why media consumption became sort of going to a roller coaster, they feel but don't think, and that's why CGI extravaganza with bombastic explosions and deeply emotional pay offs - even without coherent set ups - are more well received than a tighly structured, intelectually satisfying narrative. That's the reason they don't care about improving.
I'm from Brazil too, and when I watched TLJ for the first time, I kinda liked it. But as time went on, I began to realize the cracks in it and began to actively dislike it. When I thought about why I liked it when I first saw it, it was because of the themes of both sides doing shady things to win a war. That's it. That's a theme that's better explored in other Star Wars media, especially Clone Wars. I was also 16, so my critical thinking has evolved quite a lot. I think you're spot on when you say that people here are more emotional than logical. I kinda realize that when talking with people on the street.
um brasileiro com bom senso, que raridade 👏🏽
You are not talking about a site named after a recipe made primarily of eggs, are you?
I don't think people are as bad as you think. Many of the woke, badly made movies have flopped in recent years. People are learning and they aren't spending their money on trash for the most part. Even Disney Star Wars lost half its paying audience from the first movie to the last, and even had a genuine flop with Solo. A collapse is coming for Hollywood and it is going to hit hard.
Even if you ignore every other fault of TLJ... it was the worst middle-of-a-trilogy movie EVER. You just DON'T kill off the main bad guy in the damned MIDDLE of things... and TLJ was always supposed to be the MIDDLE... And I don't doubt for a second that it's the reason JJ brought back Palpatine... because there wasn't time enough to introduce and build up tension and fear for a new arch villain... unless they'd decided to add a fourth movie in order to CREATE the time to do rebuild suspense.
It's basically simple. Tell a good story, make it organically interesting, and at all times use subtlety and don't pander to the lowest common denominator.
Sadly, appealing to the lowest common denominator is how studios make money. Selling 100 million people something to kill a few hours of their time will always be more profitable than touching the hearts of 10 million.
So many commenters have remarked on the Chekhov's Gun concept. This is something I never knew about until now. Thanks, educated viewers! On that note, I remember the first Equalizer movie. When Robert McCall (our hero) walks into the Russian Mafia's office and takes note of who and what are in the room, suddenly EVERYTHING becomes Chekhovian.
What killed TLJ for me was the fact that the entire plot hinges on a no-stakes, low speed chase, completely manufactured on the basis that the transports could not outrun the First Order but were somehow not in proper range of their weapons. “Welp, let’s follow this thing until it runs out of gas,” which is basically the theme of the franchise at this point.
Not exactly the same thing, but one of my favourite “subtly telling you things you need to know” scenes is from The Terminator (1984). The scene in question is early in the movie when Reese drifts off into sleep and has a remembered dream/nightmare about something that happened to him in the future war. He’s out with a female soldier, and they’re trying to take down an HK tank with an explosive charge of some kind. They succeed, but the soldier is vaporized in the process. Reese flees to a jury-rigged car with a top mounted plasma cannon. He drives it away while another resistance soldier mans the cannon. A flying HK approaches, hits them, and the car flips. As flames rise up and Reese tries to free himself, yelling in pain, Reese in 1984 snaps out of the memory and wakes up. What is this scene doing? Several things. First it gives us a glimpse of the future war, the deadly grimness of the world, the lethality of the HKs, how tough the fight is. It shows us how Reese got the burn scars we'll see later. It shows that women fight alongside the men, and that when Reese tells Sarah later that the women in his time are “good fighters”, he means it. Everybody fights. But the really subtle and clever thing the scene does is that it shows us Reese driving a car, making use of it as a weapon of war. Without this scene, our brains would be bothered by the fridge logic of a man transported from a post apocalyptic world where humanity seems to spend most of its time hiding underground yet being able to drive a car with competence around the streets of L.A. For a movie with several major car chases it’s vital that we don’t question this. Because of this one scene, the danger that we won’t accept it is headed off at the pass. You never question it, and you probably don’t realize why.
Yeah! There's also the famous one where you see few seconds of Arnold's leg heavily damaged when he disembarks from the trailer truck, so that the audience won't be bothered by the stiffy movements of the Terminator skeleton's stop motion animatronics.
Brilliant observation.
I just figured it as an epic scene to get us immersed into a world ruled by Skynet, setting up the stakes of what the world stands to become and being sort of the "high point" of the film's tone. But you're right, it specifically sets up Reese's driving skills. I'd figure it also shows the odds he's used to fighting against and just how far he'll go, even with the PTSD associated with it. Goes to show how what is effectively a video game cinematic can still have some good story and character setup.
Nice catch. I never questioned his driving skills, I guess we just take it for granted. Also this scene could show how they used improvised explosive devices to take on skynet machines. A key point later in the movie when you begin to question how they could possibly take this thing down.
EXCELLENT POINT VERY GOOD OBSERVATION about The first Terminator
You want to know why storytelling is so crappy today, especially with these mega blockbusters? Compartmentalization. You'll have so many ppl working on a script, that a lot gets lost in translation. With too many independent minds trying to make sense of a simple, single narrative. And not only that, but the studios don't even trust the sensibilities of their own writers, and they'll run multiple study groups. That throws even more white noise into the picture. It reminds me when I was going to a school to design video games. I was part of a team to develop a game. And the group thought, "more opinions = better story." WRONG! The story got dragged all over the place with everyone feeding their own whimsical ideas to throw it off course. We were making a platformer, and I remember that one girl that said, "I like doggies, let's add a doggy as a companion character" (a companion character in a platformer, no less). All of us then looked at each other, and realized maybe this wasn't that great of an idea. Basically, what I'm saying is, this is why I believe in auteurship. One guy in charge of all the executive decision making. One that will know the focus of their story, and how to drive it center. And all this compartmentalization needs to be thrown in the garbage disposal unit. Of course, I don't want to say you can't benefit from outside input, but as long as the main auteur still makes the decision to go with another idea or not. Plus, the auteur has to be fully confident with what they want to tell in the story. I mean, it's their story, and only they can truly know it inside and out. Too much conflicting opinions will just come off as being schizophrenic.
I second this whole essay.
@@equalsnein a creative director needs to have vision. A profound idea of what they want to do that would merit any work to be done really. Once the audience sees this, they tend to openly accept what has been created. And, sure, put it through the wringer, it'll still come out favored by most, seeing how earnest the creator is in creating something good. Take the Star Wars sequels. Want to know what I found fundamentally flawed with the movies? They were nothing more than a cash grab. No original vision had been dreamt up by Disney to create additional installations into the series. But Disney had bought the series, and wanted to start making money from it. So, everything was contrived to repeat the same steps as the first three movies. And it showed. Gorge Lucas at least understood the necessity of an envionary idea, hence why his sequels would have delved into the story of the medichlorians. Good or bad, it was something new. This is why the Prequels have aged better and are now more accepted by fans since initial release. Fans can clearly see how the prequels had vision, even if badly executed, compared the Disney sequels. Which I don't believe will age well. What works about auteurship is the level of understanding of a vision. Only a single mind can do so, personally. And the more participants you add into the mix of being in charge of the vision, the more you won't see creators seeing eye to eye. One will want to go this way, the other that way. This is why compartmentalization fails so badly, no one has an idea of what they're doing overall. And there's too many independent thought put into it, making the work feel schizophrenic. If anything, look at it like a two headed ogre. Who's really in charge of the body? You can only imagine the level of infighting that goes on with simple act of deciding where to go for lunch.
I believe the running joke about this in most screenwriters' circles is known by the phrase, "you know what this movie needs?! It needs ______!"
Hence the proverb "Too many cooks spoil the broth".
I've said it before, I'll say it again: a simple solution to the Resistance's problem would have been to launch the escape pods and do the exact same thing with the escape pods that General Purple Hair did with the big ship. Body count on the good guy's side? Zero. And they still get the big ship.
I've loved your stuff for a while, but the fact you used Tremors to show setup and payoff earned you a new subscriber. I love that movie - it's very well written and acted. A classic
“Every word in the script should either reveal character or push the story forward, ideally both.“
Okay, and?
@@Dragonage2ftw Yeah, I probably should have included some more context. Just wanted to share some wise words I’ve learned. Enjoyed Drinker’s video and wanted to contribute.
In The Force Awakens, when faced with the possibility of a gas attack, Finn says the stormtrooper helmet only protects against smoke, not gas. I thought "well why the fuck not?!!" They had gas masks back in WW1. Why not incorporate such a useful feature? Because the writers were shit.
What's funny is that the original stormtrooper armor protected them from even the vacuum of space! Who the hell decided it would be a good idea to downgrade FO Troopers' armor like that, and why did that even become a plotpoint in the movie???
They should just wear a neck gator.
JJ Boredoms strikes again!
Don’t forgot about them forgetting jet packs existed as it was implied in the sequel trilogy that they were never used/invented before the FO.
@@igniskitsune887 Then what the hell was Bobba using in the Mandalorian? The whole "I gotta get me one of those" meme
You know I was just watched “The Legends of the Fall” last weekend (I hadn’t seen it since a kid) and it really hit me afterwards how much modern movies miss the mark when it come to writing genuinely wholesome and captivtivating stories for their films. If anything, they are few and far in between. I gotta say it was a nice change watching a movie that wasn’t filled with heavy violence, extreme gore, NO superheroes for goodness sakes, and no filthy banter thrown around every 5 minutes. Not that I watch any of that crap anyway, but I get tired of trying a new movie or TV show to only find out it’s pure garbage. Sick of it. Nowadays I seem to either stick to older films or the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit trilogies. LMBO.
same happen to me. I watched he Legends of the Fall when i was a kid and i always had it in high regards. i watched it a couple of months ago and damn, still amazing movie and many times better than most movies today. I have recently found myself looking for movies in the 90s. Even the "mediocre" ones are thousands of times better than most of movies today.
Completely agree. Some friends were trying to make me watch that Peacemaker show when it came out a few months back, and whilst I enjoyed some of the music in it the show itself was utterly vile. Meaningless excessive violence and gore, endless disgusting swearing, language, and imagery as a substitute for "jokes" or wit. Just gross. Also of course it was just more superhero rubbish. I was entirely tired of superheros after seeing Daredevil back in the early 2000's, I can't believe we've had 20 years of this complete anti-entertainment dominating the industry and people are still lapping it up.
There are numerous YT channels where you can find lots of entertaining genre films from the 40s - 60s. I recently came across one channel which shows mostly gritty British noirs from the 50s -60s, most of whom are very obscure to we Yanks.
Eve Online solves the "big ship seeing little ship" thing with something that could have easily been adapted into Star Wars. In effect, there are two things that determine how well a ship locks onto another ship. Scan resolution and signature radius. Scan resolution is, loosely, how quickly your ship can lock onto another ship. Small ships have high scan resolution, large ships have lower scan resolution. Signature radius is how "big" your ship is to other ship's scanners, small ships have small signature radii, big ships have big. Large ships, with their low signature resolution (larger sensors can't work in granularity very well or something) cannot quickly lock onto small ships (with their very small signature radius). All they had to do for this film was go "we have to create a window of opportunity to jettison the transports. They won't be able to lock onto the smaller ships as quickly and we have an opportunity to escape." And then come up with some sensor jamming / place the big ship between the bad guys and the small ships / literally whatever, but instead we get "decloaking scan" when they're clearly not under cloak. These writers have zero passion or knowledge for/of scifi, or what could even pass as modern day electronic warfare.
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Wow! That's actually a smart idea.
It's hard to get invested emotionally in a story when you know they can throw in something with no setup at any time. It reminds me of stories where characters keep dying and coming back to life, which makes it hard to take conflicts seriously.
Deus ex machina
Dothraki
Like kidding on you've killed off Chewbacca, when you literally had him in the trailer in the fucking Falcon with Lando?
Elite squads of armored soldiers with the ability to wirelessly relay information and protected by metal dinosaurs being defeated by teddy bears with sticks wasn't really better.
There's a reason why movies have become more about style and less about substance. It has to do with getting an agent. You see, the only way to get a job in the film industry is to get an agent first. You can't send anything directly to them; they send it back saying "No unsolicited materials." The primary way people get in is through film festivals. Throughout the '90s and '00s, I went to a lot of them. Everything I saw that got accepted was sleek, good looking, with no substance. I knew of other films that didn't get accepted that were more like movies from the '70s; lots of substance but didn't look as sleek. Those who were accepted in the festivals got agents. Those who weren't, did not. As such, Hollywood became filled with filmmakers who were all about style and no substance. Additionally, there were the people who slid around the festivals who got in because they were good at schmoozing. They got writing jobs and the like; and they got them by being good at kissing up to the right people. Thus, you are now left with ass kissers and style over substance filmmakers.
thanks now that makes a lot of sense to me
This is a fascinating insight, thank you for this.
'Looking sleek' is not and never has been any part of my definition of good style
I wonder if Disney's current rejections of top-notch film scripts because the authors are of, um, the wrong color, have anything to do with lousy writing.
You can see it in other aspects of society as well. The ability to sell has become more important than what is being sold. In recent years I've been looking for job opportunities to learn newer, more relevant tech and skills, and one thing I noticed strongly in almost all job interviews is that my technical knowledge, analytical talent, logical reasoning, and ability to learn, seems hardly relevant during the interview. I just need to give an impression that I know what I'm talking about. And that it has to "look and sound" authentic. Whether or not I actually have these talents and knowledge doesn't matter. It just needs to sound right. It seems that the more my story in an interview sounds like a confident sales pitch, the more likely i am to get hired, even though a talent for sales is one of the least important in my profession.
This is incredibly well said 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. In recent years there’s been a serious lack of good writing. Movie studios MUST hire excellent writers if they hope to make a real impact on its viewers.
But they don't want to. They only want to make a real impact on their wallets.
@@MaiAolei I know that, I can understand the mindset of wanting to save money. But if the movie makers want to improve their films and reputation then they have to hire good writers.
@@katesansom3841 I completely agree. But I was referring to the viewers' wallets, and that all the true virtues you list (real impact, improvement, reputation) are all distant seconds behind easy money.
@@MaiAolei Ah I see, sadly I cannot disagree with you. That is the way things tend to be.
And the really frustrating thing scriptwriting is far the cheapest part of making a film. It costs peanuts to get a good script in comparison with every other aspect of filmmaking, but all those other things fail very expensively without that script. Flipping that more positively, my favourite example is Shakespeare In Love. Most everything about that movie was objectively mediocre. But Tom Stoppard's brilliant script turned it into something very enjoyable (not deserving all those Oscars of course - but enjoyable).
Dude. Such insight. As a 50+ year old movie watcher you speak the truth. I hope the industry hears you.