It’s funny how we see the past through the lens of entertainment. We remember it as this perfect place where only the greatest movies and television were produced. Ask any old timer what they think of movies today and you’ll get a 30 minute monologue about how great the 70s were. “Back then it was about the artist,” they’ll claim. “Back then it was about art.” Well here are a few titles from the top 10 of 1971’s box office: “Diamonds are Forever,” “Summer of ’42,” “Carnal Knowledge,” “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song.” I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t exactly say these movies were memorable.
So when I lament on how good TV shows used to be ten years ago (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, The Good Wife, Lost, early Walking Dead), I have to recognize that there were a heck of a lot of bad shows as well. I mean we had alien eye-roller, Falling Skies. That unforgettable foray into the world of air travel, Pan Am. Everybody’s favorite cop team-up, Franklin and Bash. And a million other duds.
So when I wonder aloud why TV seems to suck these days, I’m not sure I couldn’t pick out just as many good shows today as I could a decade ago. Off the top of my head I can think of Succession, Fleabag, and Black Mirror. I love all those shows. So maybe I’m using the same selective memory pincers as those 70s film cinephiles.
And yet it still FEELS different. I think because we’re moving into this new era of Tentpole TV. When you say TV shows are going to get feature level production budgets, expectations rise. That’s the problem. When you tell me I’m going to get, essentially, a new 4 hour Star Wars movie in a season of The Mandalorian, I’m pumped. But when it turns out the only thing worth my time was Baby Yoda, we’ve got problems.
Because I think a lot of shows are using The Mandalorian as their template for creating Tentpole TV. But what if The Mandalorian is the ultimate emperor walking around without clothes? Without Baby Yoda, what is that show? Was there a single other memorable character in it? I’d argue there wasn’t.
Wandavision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn’t do anything to change my opinion. Wandavision was unique. But what have I repeated ten million times on this site? Different doesn’t mean better. Your primary objective when creating anything different is that the difference have a positive effect. That it changes the formula in some way that makes the viewing experience more enjoyable. Wandavision was a mystery where we didn’t care what the answer to the mystery was. It was inert, odd and, altogether, kinda dumb.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier was dead on arrival. It took two characters who nobody cared about other than hardcore Marvel fans and tried to build a show around them using a stripped down version of action movie language (or a souped-up version of action TV show language, depending on how you look at it). The characters were so dull that none of it mattered. Disney made the error of assuming superhero quality action would make these people more interesting somehow. Instead, the opposite occurred. We were reminded, in the increased number of slow moments, just how boring the characters were.
This was always my worry with Tentpole TV. It’s something I brought up as The Mandalorian approached. In big-budget tentpole movies, characters are always speaking under heightened circumstances. “What are we going to do about Galzizar? We only have an hour before he destroys the world!” When you take away the stakes and urgency, all you have is characters talking. And superheroes (or Star Wars heroes) weren’t designed for long-form pontificating. They were designed to be larger than life. To blurt out their philosophies in quick bursts, between fighting Megatron and Count Dooku.
What happens when you put Iron Man in an entire episode of passive conversations? Does he feel like Iron Man anymore?
Which brings us to Jupiter’s Legacy, Netflix’s first attempt at superhero Tentpole TV. I have to admit I was curious when I saw the trailer. Visually, it’s different. These are not your typical superheroes. And how bout those costumes? They might be the most beautiful superhero costumes I’ve ever seen.
I didn’t know anything about Jupiter’s Legacy going into this but it seems to be specifically constructed to fix Tentpole TV’s problems. It’s about a family of superheroes who try to balance their superhero duties with their family life. Passive conversation is baked into the premise.
But boy, the final result is frustrating. It’s not a bad show. I want to be clear about that. The tone is fresh enough that you’re never entirely certain where they plot is going. And that’s a critical component to any good show. We might have *ideas* about where the plot is going. But we should never be sure. Despite that, the show too often took the safe route.
For those who haven’t seen it, Jupiter’s Legacy is about a family of superheroes, the patriarch being Sheldon Sampson, aka, The Utopian. You have his brother, Walter. You have his wife, Grace. And you have his two kids, Brandon and Chloe. We start out with Brandon and Chloe as young kids, playing in the yard, and then, all of a sudden, Chloe gets angry and uses her yell-power, which freaks out the kid they’re playing with, who runs away. Sheldon is mad at Chloe for using her power.
Cut to the present day and we see Brandon, now in his early 20s with his own superhero costume, try to stop an Iron Man type woman from robbing a bank. She’s way stronger than him so she’s about to kill him, and then Superhero Sheldon shows up and saves the day. Afterwards, Sheldon yells at his son, telling him that he’s not ready yet.
After a lot of talking heads scenes, a Thanos-like villain (I think his name was Brainwave) escapes from prison and the entire family, plus a large chunk of fellow superheroes, fight him on a hill. This Brainwave guy is really strong so he’s able to hold everybody off. That is until Brandon breaks the superhero code and (spoiler alert), hits Brainwave so hard he dies. Once again, Sheldon chastises his son. That is until they find out this was not the real Brainwave. Cliffhanger!
Recently we’ve been talking about situations. Situations are clear blueprinted dramatic setups that audiences are familiar with, such as a bank robbery. But there’s a very specific trick to getting them right. You must lead the audience to believe you’re going in the direction they think you are, then take them in an unexpected direction. Otherwise – and this is important so pay attention – WE DON’T NEED TO WATCH THE SCENE.
Why would we need to watch a scene that plays out exactly how we think it’s going to play out? Why are we doing your job for you? Your job, as a writer, is to be ahead of the viewer. Not to be the transcriber of the viewer’s thoughts.
The bank robbery scene in this pilot plays out in too familiar of a fashion. Of course someone saves the doomed son at the last second. Of course it’s the dad. But that’s not the scene that got me riled up.
The scene that infuriated me about Jupiter’s Legacy happens early on in the pilot, in modern day, when the Sampson family is having Thanksgiving dinner. Just as dinner is about to begin, a drunk Chloe shows up. Awkward looks from everyone. She sits down and the dinner begins. I want you to imagine this scene for a second. How do you think it’s going to go?
If you’ve seen any TV show or movie IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE before, you know that Chloe’s going to sit down. She’s going to be mouthy. Because she’s drunk, she’ll be out of control. She’ll start taking digs at everyone. The parents will stay calm at first. But then, eventually, the dad is going to chime in that Chloe’s acting inappropriately. Chloe’s going to shoot back some on-the-nose remark about the lack of parenting coming from Sheldon’s end (something to the effect of, “You were too busy saving the world to save your own children”).
And what do you know? That’s the EXACT SCENE we got.
And as soon as we got it, I knew this show was doomed. Because I knew that any writers’ room that would allow this scene to be written was not capable of creating compelling television. Maybe if this was season three episode six when you’re up against the clock and need to rush a scene out quickly. “Lost” once had an entire episode of Jack flying a kite. But the pilot episode!!?? This is first-time screenwriter first screenplay level stuff. Good screenwriters know that you have to play with the formula, not check all the boxes. You have to ask the question, “What do they think I’m going to do with this scene?” And then, no matter what, DON’T WRITE THAT SCENE. The fact that they still wrote that scene…. I’ve read enough scripts and have seen enough movies to know that shows don’t recover from scenes like that.
Despite this, Jupiter’s Legacy has a cool final scene – the one where all the superheroes are fighting Brainwave. But like I said earlier, we’re still trying to figure out if Tentpole TV can pull off the slower character-driven stuff. And as long as these shows keep making the mistake of writing dysfunctional family dinner scenes (and scenes of that ilk) EXACTLY how we expect them to go, they won’t justify their existence. In a sad way, that could be their legacy.
