Originally published on Medium, 6/4/18
When we consider stories, which have stood the test of time certain authors are more prevalent on the list than others (some by privilege, some by talent), but one who inarguably earned a spot on the list is Charles Dickens. While his prose is often overly descriptive and exhausting to read for any extended period of time, there are few who hold a candle to Dickens’ storytelling. Charles Dickens’ unique and distinct style, much like Orwell and Marquez, led to the creation of new words and genres just to better describe and understand his stories. His most famous story is A Christmas Carol (after all it has been adapted into more films than any other previously published material), but his best novel is Great Expectations.
At its core, Great Expectations tells us what it means to be a decent human being. It’s chock full of life lessons and eternally-relevant quotes like, “Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,” and, “We need never be ashamed of our tears.” The most important lesson of the novel, though, is how we view society and how society views us as people. Human beings are social creatures, more social than any other on Earth. We thrive on interaction and functioning as one to improve our well-being and way of life. Through the eyes of the main character, Pip, Great Expectations very well illustrates that being well fixed in society doesn’t make you successful, intelligent, decent, etc — all of the things we strive so hard to achieve.
Over the last fifteen to twenty years, the quality of storytelling in pop culture has noticeably diminished. While you can’t expect the mainstream to be anywhere close to Dickens, it’s not unfair to ask storytellers to raise the bar. Lately, it seems like they’ve been barely passing under the bar in the world’s worst game of limbo. What’s more upsetting is that we’ve all come to accept what we’re fed. I suppose this is where, “Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,”would come in handy. Let’s look at two of 2018’s most anticipated movies, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War.
The most interesting part of Han Solo is his ying to Luke Skywalker’s yang. Where Luke is the obvious hero — the goody two shoes, the one whose moral compass always points north — Han is the scoundrel — the one who takes the long way around to the right decision, the scruffy looking nerf-herder. Solo manages to undo all of that.
In an origin story about Star Wars’ coolest character, Han Solo is the least cool. Seriously, even L3 — the newest addition to the hall of droids — is cooler. Okay, that may be a bit harsh. Some of the coolest and most beloved characters, like R2, BB8 and K2, are droids. Donald Glover’s take on Lando Calrissian without a doubt steals the show…except when Lando and L3 are on screen together, in which case they collectively steal the show. Joonas Suotamo’s Chewbacca seamlessly rolls into Peter Mayhew’s. Qi’ra, played by the Queen of Dragons — I mean, Emilia Clarke — has a level of comfort in the Star Wars universe that makes us feel like she’s always been there. And even though Woody Harrelson’s Beckett fits, albeit, nicely into the tired trope of cool guy-pirate-mentor, he’s still more interesting than Han. Now let’s get one thing straight, I’m not here to hate on Alden Ehrenreich. Personally, I don’t feel he was right for the part (my pick was Taron Egerton), but if we’re being fair, taking on one of the most iconic roles in American cinematic history is no easy task. So, a genuine kudos, cheers, salute to you, Mr. Ehrenreich. You did a good job of trying to work with what you had, which honestly, wasn’t much. My beef is not with the cast. It’s with the script.
Trust me, I take no pleasure in writing these words. My inner-Jedi/5-year-old wants every Star Wars movie to give me the same feeling I had when I first saw the original trilogy. That feeling of being completely transported to a world, which feels as real, complex and diverse as the one we inhabit. Many would argue therein lies the issue — high expectations and nostalgia. But that begs the question, is it? Is it wrong to want a good story? Is it wrong to ask storytellers to respect their audience and create an inclusive experience for all demographics and fans? The answer is no, it’s not. We should expect interesting characters instead of recycled caricatures. We should expect a story that keeps us on the edge of our seat, savoring every second as it takes us away. For $17.00 a ticket (or more if you go in for 3D), we should walk away from a film feeling like our time was well spent.
What should have been the cinematic equivalent of exploring the great barrier reef is instead 2 hours of missed opportunities (the 15 minutes that takes up the raid on and ultimate escape from Kessel is actually pretty fun). Where was the love-at-first-sight moment with Han and the Millennium Falcon? Where was the High Noon showdown? Where was the moment we see Han become the jaded, rough-and-tumble scoundrel?
A Hollywood action movie that hits the origin-story-nail on the head is Casino Royale, the first of the Daniel Craig era James Bond films. The filmmakers took extra care to plan out Bond’s evolution from rookie agent to the suave, seasoned, unstoppable 00-agent audiences have come to know and love. They even went so far as incorporating the character development into the score. David Arnold, the film’s composer, said, “So if you start playing the Bond theme you’re placing him in the wrong position…and yet, during the film, he earns his stripes as a character…when he earns one of the Bond icons, we give him some of the Bond music — just a hint of it, so we know we’re getting closer.” They made Bond feel fresh and new, while simultaneously hitting those familiar notes everyone wants in a Bond flick. That’s some pretty nuanced storytelling. Solo didn’t just miss the mark, it overshot the mark by three clicks.
Penned by Lucasfilm alum Lawrence Kasdan and his son, Jonathan Kasdan, the script for Solo feels more like it was written by a room of executives who tacked on the Kasdan name. Writing that pains me. Having written The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Silverado, The Big Chill and The Accidental Tourist, Lawrence Kasdan is one of the reasons I even started writing. So, what went wrong?
Studio involvement. And honestly, it’s pretty widely known. All of the illogical plot decisions, hokey dialogue, and boring, tropey characters make it obvious to the audience that Hollywood movies have far too many fingerprints on them these days. I’m not sitting here in a rocking chair giving a lecture about the good old days, but the train does seem to have run off the tracks and onto the ramp over the sharks. The executive mindset is, “We’re running a business, not an art gallery.” Rather than letting the storytellers do what they think, creatively, is best, studio executives will change the product to whatever they feel will make the most money, regardless of quality.
Let’s leave Solo alone and look at Avengers: Infinity War, a movie with unbelievable expectations — it quite literally had a decade of anticipation– which, overall, left me feeling pretty flat. I didn’t walk into Infinity War expecting to have my mind blown. I did, however, expect a decent-ish story. For the Marvel execs, that was asking a lot. At this point, Hollywood expects to flash as much CGI at an audience as possible and then do its best Maximus Decimus Meridius impression. For those who haven’t seen Gladiator, that’s where the, “Are you not entertained,” meme comes from.
While Marvel attempted to do something that had never been done before — and I truly do admire the effort — somewhere along the way they forgot how to tell a story. The first two films we see the character Vision, pretty flawlessly portrayed by Paul Bettany, he is terrifyingly powerful. In Age of Ultron, he’s the only one who can effortlessly face off against Ultron and when he shows up in Captain America: Civil War the other guys scatter. Apparently, that version of Vision got lost on the road to Infinity War. The Avengers’ greatest weapon failed to show up for the sake of being a plot point/twist/catalyst/device for no reason other than the writers said so. Vision is kind of the metaphor for what happened to Marvel movies. And that “twist” ending that we’re warned about every three minutes didn’t exactly leave me feeling all the feels so many movie-goers felt. I mean, it’s hard for me to mourn characters who have confirmed sequels…Characters who should have died because their arc would be complete were kept alive due to contractual obligations and characters who should have lived for the sake of storytelling died because reasons. But hey comic-book movies amiright?
Hollywood was once responsible for putting out films that would eventually be added to the pantheon of cinematic royalty: Stagecoach, Casablanca, The Godfather, Vertigo, Chinatown, and Solo’s predecessor, Star Wars. But Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to tell stories. It is now an expert at one thing and one thing only: conditioning audiences to accept mediocrity.
With the exorbitant amount of money studios spend on these money-grabs, let alone the amount of cash they bring in (the successful ones that is), I don’t think it’s a lot to ask to spend a bit more — money, time, blood, sweat, tears, patience — on the script. But here’s the thing, this is our fault. We bought in. We saw the flashy lightsaber duels, and the cool superhero powers, and the pretty effects they threw in our face, and we bought what they were selling without question. In an age where the film industry is dying, more movies have joined the billion-dollar-club in the last decade than in the preceding century. That’s saying something about us as a society. The only way we’re going to get the stories we deserve instead of the shlock we’ve been getting is by letting our money speak for us.
Because Infinity War is destroying the box office (it’s not too far from joining the $2 billion club joining the ranks of Avatar, Titanic and Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Marvel will continue making their formulaic, slopped together movies until they stop bringing in boat loads of cash. Solo on the other hand will be lucky if it breaks even. Here’s to hoping that sends a clear message to Lucasfilm: don’t phone it in just because of the franchise name. So, call me a pretentious snob, but no, I will not be seeing the next nine Star Wars movies and no, I will not be seeing the next twenty Avengers movies. Or Transformers 8 or San Andreas 2 or a sequel to Bright (Netflix, really, please don’t), or Pirates of the Caribbean 12: The Curse of the…well, you get the idea.