A funny way to tell a story

There’s been a lot of talk lately of MCU style writing, meaning the kind of quip-filled dialogue which doesn’t take the story seriously. Characters behaving like high schoolers made sense in Buffy, where they actually were high schoolers, but is a lot less effective when the mighty Thor says lines that you’d expect from Xander Harris.

Good writers know that their writing must be true, and thus it must include humour because humour is a part of life. Also that the humour must be in-character, not any old joke that will raise a laugh – then it’s not cinema, it’s panto. Thor’s comments in the first movie are funny because they are how an arrogant Asgardian god might see our world. But six years later: ‘He’s a friend from work,’ is the director* sneering at you for taking superhero movies seriously.

That’s the lazy way to get a laugh, which is just to have characters in a fantasy setting use slangy modern idioms. But the writers who began the trend did it with serious intent; they still wanted you to believe in and care about their story. They were looking for ways to make the audience relate to the characters, and clearly lots of ‘Prithee, varlet’ dialogue wasn’t going to do it. There is plenty of humour (I hope you will agree) in Mirabilis, but Leo and I try never to put a line in a character’s mouth if it isn’t true to the moment and spoken in their voice.

Undercutting tension with humour can be very effective if it’s true to character. Look at Steed and Mrs Peel, most especially in the scene at the end of “The House That Jack Built” when the defence mechanism of their insouciance almost breaks down. But for the writer who doesn’t care, it’s a short step from there to having every character reach for the glib line that will get a laugh.

It is unjust to call this MCU writing. The entire Captain America trilogy managed to include humour in a way that rang true. The Russo brothers’ Avengers movies likewise. And in any case, Marvel didn’t invent the trend. Look at the Universal monster series. They start off selling us the story straight with Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy. Four years on, The Bride of Frankenstein is most definitely Whedonesque – or perhaps we should say that Joss Whedon’s writing is Hurlbutian. It took Universal a bit longer to get into their non-stop gag phase but Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein could easily match Thor: Love and Thunder or Willow for hey-it’s-all-a-joke silliness.

And, as a writer, how do you know when that funny line you’ve thought of serves the story and when it’s going to kill immersion? Well, that’s the job, isn’t it? But if you need some pointers, this video by author Brandon McNulty is an 8-minute masterclass in the use of humour:

* Yes, we all know that particular line was suggested by a kid who was visiting the set. But it's the director's choice whether to include it, and it fit in with the tone he decided on for the whole movie.

Loud & clear - but case not proven

I see a lot about “show don’t tell” on the Internet. Suddenly everybody has writing advice to offer, and the trouble is that most of it is wrong. Here’s an example of would-be show-not-tell from Age of Ultron - a movie that I’ve already been thoroughly unkind about but its carcass is still twitching and my blood is up, so here goes.

Spoilers ahead, by the way.

You know the scene I really liked? Thor puts Mjölnir on the coffee table and everybody has a go at lifting it. In the comics (I’m sure you know this; I’ll say it anyway) there’s an inscription on the side of the hammer: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”


Even before making the attempt, Tony Stark proves himself unworthy with his crack about reinstating jus primae noctis. And there’s a lovely character bit a little further on. You know the moment I mean. Anyway, nobody gets to wield the hammer and that’s that. Nice moment in between all the surround-sound action. Except, this isn’t just a character scene, it’s the set-up for something that comes later:


Now then. The Vision gives Thor his hammer back. (Yeah, I did mention spoilers, didn’t I.) You know why that's there. Because Joss Whedon has a dump truck full of characters to cram into this movie. Even worse, the Vision has been created in almost the exact same circumstances as Ultron, and he’s the reason everyone is running about and shouting jokes at each other. So how do we show that the Vision is worthy? Why, by having him pick up Thor’s hammer.

Except – that doesn’t show us, it tells us. When Cap budges the hammer slightly, that draws on many scenes from earlier movies where we’ve seen that he’s just about as decent a human being as you're ever going to meet. (Steve Rogers don't break no bad guys' necks.) There's another one of those scenes later in the movie, when Cap refuses to evacuate Laputa or whatever it's called and leave thousands to die. But the Vision – well sure, I know he’s worthy ‘cause I’ve read the comics. But in the context of this movie, all we see is that he is able to pick up an item that we’ve been told detects a character’s moral goodness. It’s second hand. We don’t see him do anything to earn it. We shouldn’t feel something just because Mjölnir tells us it’s so. Show us the thing itself, Joss, not the label.

There was no other way to do it, of course. The finale was roaring in like a juggernaut (but not the Juggernaut, which would have been fun) and we already know the whole team will have a big CGI fight with lots of jokes and then kill Ultron. So we just need to get rid of the annoying inner voice that’s saying, “What, you’re going to trust this red robot? Sorry, synthezoid. You just met him!” So it’s: look, he can pick up Thor’s hammer. So shut up and eat your popcorn.

As we left he cinema, my friend Rob Rackstraw said, “A movie like that is a hell of a thing to land safely.” And indeed it is. But a dog walking on its hind legs is also doing something pretty tricky, and there I’m with Dr Johnson.

A.I. candy

Age of Ultron, then. I know you don’t want spoilers. How would I spoil it, anyway? You already know the arc of the movie long before you see it, because it’s the arc demanded by the sheer weight of franchises and star contracts, by the simple need to toss bread to the international circus-goers, never mind selling an SUV-load of toys to their kids.

Scientists create an artificial intelligence and it’s benevolent and means only good for mankind. No? How about: scientists create an artificial intelligence, spurn it, and in doing so teach it only to respond with loveless rage and destruction? Uh-uh, for something as sophisticated as that you need an 18-year-old girl. The AI tries to take over the (yawn) world, then. Hilarity ensues. (No, really.)

Taking over the world starts by Ultron getting into the Internet. Possibly that explains why he also becomes artificially dumb, as whatever the software you’re equipped with, the entire Internet doesn’t have the processing power or complexity required to simulate one human brain. That could explain why he wastes time looking for the Pentagon’s nuclear missile launch codes, which even with staff cuts are hopefully not actually connected to the freakin' Internet. And don’t get me started on how a super-genius AI copes with global bandwidth.

OK, so lots of dumb decisions later, the inevitable big-as-Dumbo climactic battle. My main takeaways from this are, first, that robots are pretty fragile, especially the armour-plated variety. You hit them with anything hard, even the butt of a gun, and it’s likely a limb will fall off. Also, they become weaker in proportion to the number of robots in the army. Oh, and they are really, really stupid.

Maybe the problem is villains, period. We know that the world’s problems go so much deeper than one bad apple, so the villain just seems like a trivial and ineffectual pantomime bully. And villains’ dialogue always sucks. It’s like everyone involved knows that the villain is a lame carry-over from moustache-twirling landlords in old silent movies, doomed to talk a good fight till the final prole-pleasing punch. Next up in this never-ending Marvel merry-go-round: acromegalic alien beetroot Thanos. Oh god, kill me now, just don’t monologue like a silkily smooth thesp for five minutes before you do it.

Second takeway: if you’re putting a new superhero into a movie, you really need to give them powers that the viewer can easily grasp. You need it to be show not tell. Spider-Man shoots webs, climbs walls, and is strong and agile. Reed Richards can stretch. We don’t have to know exactly how strong the Hulk is, but we know he can bust stuff up and lift a really big weight. Being flesh rather than metal, no limb will ever fall off him. Well, maybe one tooth, if a building is dropped on his head.

But when we’re told that a character has powers of “telekinesis, telepathy, other psionic effects” then we are never going to have a clue what they can do. Whatever the plot requires, probably, just as long as they prance like a tit while doing it and a CGI geezer is on hand with his particle effects package in Autodesk Maya.

I said hilarity ensues, and I wasn’t kidding - unlike Joss, who never stops. Each character has a stock of quips. It soon feels relentless, as though Buffy Summers has taken over everyone’s heads and given them a snappy teen one-liner to see them through the gruelling times when the sticky tape holding the story together looks like giving way. The cinema audience laughed and laughed, but that doesn’t mean much. The same kind of people also gave a snigger when Nero set Christians on fire. I just thought: Joss, baby, don’t you want me to care? I think he was desperate. In between all the shouting and ‘splosions and the damned soulless CGI, he just clung to what he does well.

What he does well, he does very well. The scene when Cap tries to lift Thor’s hammer, the look on Thor’s face. That’s gold, a lovely character moment. A shame, actually, that it turned out to just be set-up for a payoff scene that came later. The payoff wasn’t nearly as good and in retrospect it cheapened the earlier scene. Oh well, it came towards the end – and then again, the same payoff with added joke, in case we missed it the first time.

And a nice scene between Clint Barton and his wife, gently ribbing him for failing to notice an Avengers office romance. (And by the way I’ve never seen any evidence in real life that women are so much better tuned to that stuff than men. Possibly they’re more interested in feelings, on average, unless that’s a myth too, but they’re certainly no better at intuiting them.) And here I was thinking Joss was really down on gender clichés after his remarks about that Jurassic Park teaser. Anyway, quibbles aside, he does that stuff well and the “Hawkeye” line was perfect.

And then – like hope flitting up from the bottom of the jar – there’s Mark Ruffalo. Oh, such brilliance in every expression, every line reading. He’s worth the price of admission just on his own. If only Joss could give us a Hulk movie. A Banner movie, I mean. Fewer characters, more time to develop a story, more character moments so that when the stomping and growling kicks off we might actually care. That would be worth your 15 bucks for sure.

Look, I honestly don’t have the time or the will to review the movie, but Sady Doyle did and I agree with much of what she said. Here it is if you’re interested, but I know it won't change anything.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I don't want the blog to turn into serial excoriations of the latest bit of entertainment to waste my time. Honestly, I'd far rather read and watch good things (The Shadow Hero, Dirty Snow or Elementary, if you want recent examples) but, having sat through the whole of Agents of SHIELD season one, I feel I owe it to the world to say something.

The great thing about The Winter Soldier is that when you get Fury or other SHIELD agents spouting their ends-justify-the-means doctrine, Cap is there to reground it all with a real moral code - the point of that whole narrative of the movie being, not that a lot of Hydra agents have been pretending to be SHIELD agents, but that SHIELD is Hydra. In the war on terror they have virtually become the same thing.

The TV show, on the other hand, depicts the breakdown of any line between the good and bad guys without apparent irony. On the surface it's about a few stern-parent characters left in charge of a lot of flirty, high-schooly young folks who ought to be partying the night away at the Bronze but instead have been given a plane and as much rope as they like. Agents on both sides are willing, indeed eager, to use or condone torture and killing in cold blood, but Coulson can't provide any counterbalance because he isn't driven by Cap's unalloyed morality. He's your typical self-righteous maverick-with-a-badge who is happy to (ab)use his position of power as he sees fit. It's the kind of show the infantry in Starship Troopers probably watch between battles.

The writing is a curate's egg of the usual Whedonisms (in this case Jed, not Joss). The early episodes have some great unexpected twists such as Coulson's use of the truth serum, but those are quickly forgotten as the story gets bogged down in talk, plans and McGuffins. As the plot spirals in ever-decreasing circles, there's a sense that the writers are barely an episode ahead of their desperate reveals and reversals. By the time we get to the betrayals, which are all easily seen coming, it's starting to feel like Dollhouse season 2 (*Sideshow Bob shudder*)

The plot has become such a mechanical tyrant by the last few episodes that a told relationship like Coulson's and May's is privileged over a shown relationship like Garrett's and Ward's - as if by now the writers had lost any ability to respond organically but were simply sticking to whatever story outline they came up with months earlier. And there is the usual Whedon inability to see a bad guy as anything other than a parrot squawking crazy plans. It's as if, when any character reveals themselves as a Hydra plant, they grow a metaphorical moustache to twirl while gloating. Maybe in a very different show this might have turned into an interesting conflict of ideologies. But no, this is a story in which you are just supposed to root for the people you're told are friends and boo the ones you're told it's okay to despise. The finale is a particularly damp squib, very reminiscent of the Dollhouse finale in fact, and it's not improved for having saved up enough budget to pay for Samuel L Jackson and his gag writer.

Ah yes, gags. In Buffy they served the story. Here, if a funny line occurs to the writers, they use it. Whether it's something that character would actually say, or if it breaks the tension of the story, makes no difference. If only they'd gone the whole hog and remade Get Smart with Maxwell as a SHIELD agent. That might have actually been funnier and more engaging.

When you consider the quality of other shows in the Feds-tackle-weird-shit genre - Fringe and The X-Files especially - Agents of SHIELD looks particularly lame. Its only excuse for existence is to keep the Marvel torch burning between the movies, and great as those movies have been for the most part, so far DC are winning the TV battle by a mile.

Spidey - on the Mirabilis blog?

Well, it's not so strange as you might think. The wall-crawler was my second favourite comic book character as a kid. (The first was Iron Man.) And here he is on the cover of the latest SFX Magazine showing off his classic-design web shooters in such an archetypal Romita Sr/Jim Mooney pose that I'm pretty much ready to start queuing already. And the magazine's feature on the new movie backs up the feeling that this is going to be a glorious return to the angsty alienated-teen origins of the character.

But that's not why I put the cover image of SFX #212 here. Well, you may ask, in that case is it SFX's news of Fringe season four? I'm a big fan, but no, that's not it. Nor the tantalizing peeks at Joss Whedon's Avengers movie - even though that on its own would be worth the cover price. And it's not even the Conan poster, awesome though that is too.

Nope, the reason we're talking about SFX is that this month's issue of the UK's premiere SF/fantasy movie magazine has a review of Mirabilis Winter volume one. A great review it is too, praising the "intriguing story" and rounding off with mention of the "audacious cliffhanger that will leave you desperate to find out what happens next, so let's hope that we aren't kept waiting too long for the second book." I hope so too, and if you still can't find the deluxe hardback edition of Mirabilis volume one in your local bookshop or on Amazon, I urge you to ask for it loud and clear.

In the meantime you can get hold of SFX very easily, either in print or digital form, via the link above. And if you're looking for the best in fantasy and science fiction coverage, not only of movies but games, books and comics too, it's the one to sling your webs at.

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead

To properly appreciate just how disturbing Jefferson Airplane’s "White Rabbit" is, you need to burn all your furniture, daub luminous graffiti on the walls of your house, and crank up the hi-fi to a volume that could liquefy human bone. That’s the scene Michael Douglas comes home to in David Fincher’s The Game. His life is being taken to pieces and it’s going to take more than the King’s men to put it back together again.

What makes Grace Slick’s original version of the song so much more unsettling than most of the "White Rabbit" covers is the way she delivers it so plainly. The tone is hectoring, not haunting; fanatical, not febrile. And that’s what makes it powerful. The stark, shouty simplicity of the presentation. The whole nightmare otherworldliness is right there in the lyrics, and Ms Slick delivers them in a relentless martial rhythm that has its own unstoppable momentum. You are dropping down a rabbit hole and there's no parachute. Dressing it all up in a self-consciously “weird” melody would only weaken it.

Are there other examples of that in other media? There’s a superbly creepy one in The Fearless Vampire Killers. When Alfie Bass sits up on his bier there’s no showing-off in the photography. Polanski films it the scene as plain and stark and shocking as a dream. It’s funny at the same time, of course, but that only makes it more unsettling.

Or how about the ghost stories of M R James? Unadorned prose and almost a humdrum narrative frame from which the supernatural pokes through like a mouse in the skirting board. I find that much more shuddery than Lovecraft’s florid prose, always so anxious to assure us this is all very, very frightening. Likewise, there are more scares in one minute of Let The Right One In than in all the last decade’s output of Hollywood horror movies, precisely because Tomas Alfredson plays it completely unplugged.

The best episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is “The Body” where any attempt to dress up the drama with eerie music and clever-clever direction would insulate us from the raw emotion. Instead, Joss Whedon strips that all away and we’re left with no cosy refuge such as the usual fictional wrapper would provide. Result: forty-four minutes of intense drama that leave you genuinely shaken.

Can you think of other examples from prose, movies, music or comics where simplicity delivers a punch that could not have been achieved through showmanship?

Strictly hush-hush

Good news - though the barest whiff so far - from AintItCool, who have this story that Joss Whedon is meeting with John Landgraf, the head of cable channel FX. I call it a whiff because they're only getting together over a meal at this stage, but after hearing Mr Landgraf's words of admiration for Joss's work I'm sure there'll be candles and music and chocolates.

Seeing as FX are behind the greatest television drama series ever (The Shield, if you even have to ask) and Joss is responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is of course the other greatest television drama series ever, I'm just praying for a quick betrothal followed by the pitter-patter of brilliant new shows. After the tragic demise of Dollhouse, cable is the obvious move for Joss. (Actually, it was the obvious move after Firefly... Joss, for such a smart guy, you took your time, man!)

Grr Argh

Maureen Ryan has an illuminating in-depth interview with Joss Whedon on the Chicago Tribune site. They're mainly talking about Dollhouse, his recently-cancelled show about operatives whose minds are blank until they’re imprinted with the personality and skills required for an assignment. (And if that suggests Joe 90 sitting in the Big Rat, put the image right out of your head; what Echo gets up to in Dollhouse would really steam Joe's bins.) After a couple of early episodes that make you suppose the show is going to settle into a comfortable weekly mission format, Joss takes it off in a whole strange, murky and kinky direction. And then at the end of season one it suddenly goes off the map into totally unexpected territory.

The bit that really got my attention was when Joss starts discussing his plans for more internet projects along the lines of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which has parallels with how Leo and I would like to build up an audience for our comic projects:

Ryan: When I was soliciting questions for this interview, I kept getting, "Why isn't Joss Whedon going to cable or just going off and doing his own Joss Whedon online portal or whatever?"

Whedon: Well I can answer both those questions - because Fox forgot to cancel my show. They looked on their calendars and went, "God, we were supposed to cancel this months ago!"

Nice to see that television networks also operate under the “idiocy of the system” method. Although by some fluke the system hasn’t behaved quite as idiotically as it does in other media, because Fox are after all allowing the show to run until the end of season two. Which is a lot more sensible than just filibustering a project and generally pissing off the people who created it until they wander off to do something else so that the publisher/studio/network gets to keep the biggest slice of an infinitely small pie.

Whedon: The Internet is slightly more interesting [than TV] right now just because I feel like we have to get in there and start figuring out how to create entertainment without the networks and the studios, because they’re basically trying to figure out how to create and entertain without us.

Ryan: Yeah, I think you’re right there, but as you say, it’s not easy to kind of create a new model for how everyone gets paid and makes what they want to make.

Whedon: Yeah, but people aren’t going to make what they want to make anymore. That’s not going to happen. The rainbow, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow got smaller, significantly smaller. […] The artistic community is more and more left out of the equation, so the trick is going to be finding out how to make the Internet work in such a way that people [can get by] because it’s not going to pay TV money. It’s not. In fact, people are going to have to be entering the business less with the idea of making a fortune and more of the idea of just making product, getting it done, getting it out there and then hoping that there is a way in which it can support [a creative community].

If anything, book publishing is further along that curve than TV. People complain about novels “written by” celebrities, but the fact is that an author must first build a platform, as they say, or their opus will assuredly sink in the sea of books being published every month. A soap star is someone who has nailed that obscurity problem, and the fact that they can’t actually write is easily dealt with by bunging a relatively small sum at a ghostwriter. (That's the way producers and editors mostly prefer writers anyway - as hirelings.)

The problem is that ghostwritten novels with celebrity names on the cover will not produce the original content necessary to drive the whole industry onwards. So some genuine authors are still needed – not many, but some. However, those authors too have to build their platform to stand out from the crowd. Networks and publishers should therefore be delighted to see authors willing to strike out and take all the risks themselves on the Internet. Then they can offer sweet deals to the ones who bob up to the surface. It’s like being able to wait and see if a lottery ticket has won before you pay for it.

Anyway, back to Joss Whedon. All this has just reminded me that I still haven’t got around to watching Firefly. The hokey cowboy angle just keeps getting in the way. But I’ll try and get past that because Whedon’s TV shows are like Alan Moore’s comics: even the weaker stuff rewards your time. So if you’ve begun puzzling over Christmas presents, that could be your answer. Dr Horrible is a great laugh, Dollhouse is compelling and thought-provoking, and Buffy is just about the greatest body of work yet made for television. Go on, you won’t be disappointed – and, better yet, you’ll be helping Joss escape the clutches of the networks so he can go on to create even more original stories.