How not to script an action climax

Picture this . You’re at a Hollywood pitch meeting: "And as the LEM descends towards the moon, Armstrong has a crisis of confidence. 'I can't do it, Buzz!' he says. But then he has a dream in which he's standing in the Midwest somewhere with a baseball bat, and Chuck Yeager is there dressed as a giant eagle and he's about to pitch the ball. Neil drops the bat, but Chuck tells him to pick it up, he can do it. And as he reaches for the bat we're back on the LEM and he's reaching for the controls. Determined look from Neil, admiring look from Buzz, swelling music, and then we cut to Houston and after a long tense pause: 'The Eagle has landed.'"

That’s terrible writing. Yet it’s the sort of thing that’s all the rage in superhero movies. We’re at the climax and the hero is on the brink of defeat. They go into a dream sequence, get a pep talk from a (usually dead) mentor, then snap back to the present and "with one bound" they’re free and turn the tables on the baddie. Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, you name it.

To be clear, I'm not complaining about mentors (though they are overused because every screenwriter swears by Joseph Campbell these days), I’m complaining about the interior vision in which the hero is given a boost of wisdom or courage: ‘Here’s your elixir like Campbell talks about on page 497. Now get back and fight.’ It's lazy writing. The dream sequence approach is no different from fixing all the loose ends in a story by dropping a god out of the machinery.

It’s bad writing because it’s telling, not showing. It kills momentum by building to what ought to be a nail-biting moment and suddenly swerving off into a fantasy scene. In effect, rather than crafting the story, the writer is taking a time out to try and convince us why his or her story should work. Those writers are so used to notes and rewrites that they don’t know that’s not how the finished thing should look; it’s as though you arrived at a building and found the only way to the upper storeys was by way of scaffolding left by the builders.

Good writing would be to have already done the work throughout the story so we are able to see the character’s arc leading inevitably to this point. Examples: Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger. Or, returning to the building analogy: put the bloody stairs in.

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.

TKO

O magistri sapienissimi,

In a fight between Hercules and Thor, who would win?

Yours, Piers Craddock and Will Rice,

St Paul’s School,

Hammersmith

Dr Clattercut replies: Ah, doesn’t that take you back, Bromfield? In one’s schooldays the world seems so simple, every problem so black and white. Well, Masters Craddock and Rice, I have to tell you that even in the Year of Wonders, reality is a little bit more complicated than algebra books and rugger pitches may have led you to believe.

Prof Bromfield: Quite. In any case, Thor would obviously win, being a god.

Dr Clattercut: The matter is entirely hypothetical, but even so I don’t think it is as clear cut as you say, Bromfield. Hercules’s father is Zeus, king of the gods.

Prof Bromfield: He’s half-divine, then. But still only mortal. And wrestling a few boars and oxen and whatever — all those tedious labours—hardly puts him on a par with the god of thunder. Remember that Thor’s hammer is so heavy that only he can lift it…

Dr Clattercut: What about when Hercules took the entire weight of the heavens off Atlas’s shoulders? I daresay that’s a greater burden than any hammer.

Prof Bromfield: Well, there you have it. The hammer’s the key. Big biceps aren't going to matter a jot after a clonk with a weapon like that. You know the Norse myths, full of giants falling like skittles. Think what it sounds like when a thunderclap goes off right over your head. Rattles the furniture, eh? Well that’s Thor’s hammer heard at long distance.

Dr Clattercut: It’s hardly an even contest if Thor is going to use his hammer. I’m saying that without the hammer, a straight grappling match — then Hercules is bound to be the victor.

Prof Bromfield: Why would the god of thunder agree to fight and leave his hammer at home? Not that he needs the hammer to defeat a Greek strongman, seeing as he actually is the mightiest of all the Aesir.

Dr Clattercut: But that’s…

Prof Bromfield: And I haven’t even mentioned Thor’s magic belt yet that doubles his strength. Or his iron gloves that double it again.

Dr Clattercut: I give up.


Prof Bromfield: As would Hercules!

A magical glow

Working on a comic book gives you a strange sense of multiple realities. I'm writing the first part of Mirabilis issue #12. Meanwhile Leo, fresh back from cycling around Norway, is inking the middle of #10. Mike Toris has just finished flatting #9. And before heading off on vacation, Nikos just had time to complete the coloring on his very first new Mirabilis page since he took time out to remaster the Thor Omnibus featuring Walt Simonson's standout run on that book. (Yeah, we're a little overawed about that, but fortunately Nikos and Mike aren't the sort to get big-headed.)

There's a big temptation to start showing off these glorious pages as they arrive back from Athens, but that would spoil the surprise. So here's one little peek at an awestruck London audience getting their first up close and personal experience of how the green comet will be changing their lives in Mirabilis: Spring.

Front row seats, or up in the gods?

About half way through the Thor movie, I started noticing the Dutch tilt. That’s where you cant the camera over at an angle, as in the trademark shot above from Carol Reed's The Third Man. It’s a trick that works great for creating unease, or even outright panic when you combine it with tracking in and out. (Optional corkscrewing is for mad zombie pics only.)

The best example I know comes near the end of Brief Encounter, where Celia Johnson seems almost to fall across the frame as she runs to the platform edge, completely out of control, propelled by destiny in the form of the skew-whiff gravity of the canted shot.

Thor has quite a lot of tilted shots, especially after Loki has taken over Asgard – which I don’t think is a spoiler. (You already knew that, right? He is the god of mischief.) I don’t want to put anyone off going to see it. It’s a good, fun movie and one of the best Marvel Comics adaptations so far. Now that I’ve pointed out the Dutch angles, you might notice how many there are. Or maybe you won’t. I’m probably a little over-tuned to looking for composition and framing since my day job involves sketching a lot of storyboards.

The point is that tilting the camera, like any technique for creating intensity in a shot, loses its bite if used too much. Same with low angles, short lenses, extreme close-ups, and constantly moving cameras. You have to pick your moment. It has to be when you really need to disturb the viewer or reader. And you need to have done the establishing work first; otherwise that sense of aggravation you’re building up won’t feed back into the story, it’ll all be directed at you.

“Ramp up [the intensity] too much and you get an incomprehensible jumble. In such cases, the intensity of the work as a whole can actually go down. After all, if every panel is turned up to full volume at all times, any hope of dramatic contrast is lost. […] It’s in the variation between panels that true dynamic effects are created.”

- Scott McCloud, Making Comics

The trade-off between camera tricks and solid establishing shots illustrates a dichotomy familiar to comic storytellers. Scott McCloud talks about the opposing poles of intensity and clarity in his book Making Comics. If you don’t own a copy, go to your local bookstore and look at pages 48-49, where he illustrates the point by rendering a sequence of panels several times over from different points on the clarity-intensity spectrum.

I’ve done the same thing in the single panel below. We have a scene where a boat is approaching an island. The low-angle shot would be my usual preference, not simply because it is more dramatic but because it locates the reader right in the story. On the other hand, turning the dial all the way over to full clarity, we get a seagull’s eye view. All is clear, serenely so.

Intensity doesn’t care about being serene. It’s all about the subjective view. In the climactic scene of Rear Window, as Raymond Burr comes to kill James Stewart, we don’t see one master shot. It’s all close-ups and jarring cuts. Because that’s how it feels if a guy is trying to throw you out of a window, said Hitchcock.

It helped that Hitch had the previous 100 minutes to establish the apartment where Stewart is holed up with a broken leg. Establishing shots can be as simple as those building exterior inserts that you get in TV comedies – the coffee shop, the apartment block. Television audiences like to know where they are at all times. And why not? Clarity was the first rule that Jim Shooter used to impress on new artists at Marvel:

“He always stressed that the essence of good storytelling was in the establishing. He had it almost down to a formula; every two or three pages he wanted to see a wide shot of where you were, so that the reader never has to stop and wonder. […] |He was, ‘Be specific, be strict.’”

- John Romita Jr talking about Jim Shooter, Artists on Comic Art

“The reader never has to stop and wonder.” Yes, that is important. But important too is that the reader is smack dab in the thick of things – not just observing the story but experiencing it. Too great an emphasis on clarity can feel a bit like you’re playing a Sims-style computer game: detached, intellectual, dispassionate. Arguably, a comic striving for absolute clarity would even present you with The Sims’ “chemistry set” interface of character needs and moods. You’d never need to stop and wonder, but – oh boy.

Of those thumbnail examples, which is better? The first thing I’d ask is what’s important to the story. In this case, the panel has to establish that the setting is a remote island. Is that clear from the first picture? Although the framing is more dramatic, probably not. The second version leaves the reader in no doubt. And because that clarity creates a sense of isolation out in the middle of the ocean, an emotion that feeds into the subsequent scenes, I’d come down in favour of that version of the shot.

If it were a movie, of course, I could have both. But in comics we have to kill a few more darlings in order to hit that page break.

Sometimes it doesn’t even come down to a trade-off. Think about your scene and you may find a way to frame it that is both lucid and involving. But more often it seems there is a law in the physics of storytelling that says the balance between clarity and intensity has to be a zero-sum game. It’s the trade-off between objectivity and subjectivity. Hitchcock says never to confuse an audience because when they’re confused they aren’t emoting. Despite the Rear Window example above, that seems like a clear vote in favor of clarity. On the other hand, what counts for Forster is not precision and logic but emotional engagement and intuition. Which is why he tells us: “Only connect!”

And you know what? They’re both right.

Princes, kings and heroes

“It’s usual in these stories,” David Fickling reminded me, “for the hero to be marked out by destiny. Often he’s a prince, for example.”

I didn’t want either Jack or Estelle to be predestined for greatness, preferring instead to explore the idea that the hour (or year, in this case) produces the man (and woman). On the other hand, I wanted Mirabilis to be commissioned for The DFC so I probably tried to get away with a noncommittal “Um.”

The heroes of fairytales are often royal, a shorthand for them being the sons of gods as they are in myths, because if you take a scion of royal blood and have him brought up in a woodsman’s hut you’ve got immediate rooting interest. The tension in such a gross disturbance of natural law means that the story practically tells itself, unfolding nicely until the lad sits at last on the throne that was always meant for him.

That seems too easy though. I would’ve preferred it if Arthur was not born to draw that sword, had been just a clever peasant who rose to the occasion. People who crown themselves, as Napoleon knew, create a more lasting myth. Likewise when Don Blake saw the inscription: “Whoever wields this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor” it seemed to say that an ordinary man could achieve greatness. It was only later that we found out he’d been Thor all along.

Leaving aside the X-Men, for whom destiny was in the double helix, most of the old Marvel heroes had heroism thrust upon them and had to grow into the part. Peter Parker may have been the archetypal orphan, but there was nothing special about him until the spider bit his hand. That’s what I liked, but it seems from Wiki that they since retconned it:

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski began writing The Amazing Spider-Man with #471. Two issues later, Peter Parker, now employed as a teacher at his old high school, meets the enigmatic Ezekiel, who possesses similar spider powers and suggests that Parker having gained such abilities might not have been a fluke - that Parker has a connection to a totemic spider spirit.

Totemic spider spirit..? Ugh. Just, ugh.

Princes in fairytales embody the archetypal hero in rejuvenated form. “His greatest virtue is intuition,” says J.E. Cirlot (A Dictionary of Symbols) and who can doubt it: Arthur handing Excalibur to Uryens, Alexander taming Bucephalus, Luke deciding to just go with the Force. Each shows that, whatever wise gray heads may think, youth is stronger for not knowing what’s impossible.

Yet maybe the facile storytelling trick of having your hero royally born to greatness is wearing thin with today’s sophisticated audiences. Harry Potter, who appears at first to have everything including the birthmark, turns out merely to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, his special seal of greatness being earned not by birth but by accident and the magic of a mother's love. Likewise Lyra in His Dark Materials - despite being a Moses-like foundling, and having the requisite exceptional upbringing, she is after all just an ordinary girl. Her personality, not her pedigree, is what makes her special.

That’s how I think of both Jack and Estelle: exceptional but no more exceptional than anyone else might be. You will find little nods throughout the Mirabilis story in the direction of a kind of kingship. I won’t give any spoilers here, except to say that they all tie in to the question of whether one can be born heroic or must struggle with one’s self-birth as a hero. Neither Jack nor Estelle has any midichlorians (ugh, again) in the blood, no royal birthmarks, no prophecy to make their greatness a simple matter of jumping through hoops. In the end, we're all princes if we want to be.