And a review of House of the Dragon!
I was watching The Critical Drinker talk about The Acolyte yesterday. By the way, it’s impossible to trust these guys anymore. They make SO MUCH MONEY from trashing Star Wars that it’s in their best interest to trash it whether it’s good or not.
But, anyway, he was asked what he would do if he ran Lucasfilm. He said the first thing he would do is fire everyone. Get rid of the rot. As over-reactionary as that sounded, he’s probably right. A lot of the people in Lucasfilm right now aren’t focused on the most important thing for Star Wars – which is to make the best Star Wars stories possible.
I think that most of them do care about good stories. But to varying degrees, they’re also focused on things like diversity and using stories to promote alternative lifestyle choices. Which is noble. But what people in Hollywood constantly forget for some reason is that – THIS STUFF IS HARD.
It’s really really really hard to write a good story. REALLY HARD. The more I do this, the more I realize just how difficult writing something good is. And if your focus isn’t 1000% committed to that, and that alone, you’re probably going to fail.
I don’t think Acolyte is that bad. The last episode is actually pretty well-structured. It’s just that it’s constructed within a flashback that you don’t need. So the whole episode feels unimportant.
But I do think that Leslye Headland and, to a certain extent, Kathleen Kennedy (since she greenlit this show so vociferously) are more committed to the overall message behind the show than they are writing the best story possible. And because they’re focused on that, they’ve written a show that doesn’t attract male viewers and, according to a lot of the data, isn’t attracting straight female viewers either. So who’s left to watch the show?
Which is why I think Critical Drinker is right. You can’t have this message-first thinking if you want to write good Star Wars movies. You just can’t. It’s hard enough to write something good WHEN THERE ARE NO RESTRICTIONS. So, yes, you probably need to fire everyone. Even Dave Filoni. I know everybody loves him. But I think we’ve all realized at this point that his talents are relegated to animation. Not live-action.
But what then? We’ve fired everyone? What next?
I actually don’t think who you hire to replace Kennedy is a big deal. As long as they’re someone whose only goal is to make good Star Wars movies, that’s what matters. Because, then, every decision they make will be motivated by that directive. That alone will result in better movies and shows than have been made under this regime.
But here’s the golden ticket. Here is what’s going to lead to the success of Star Wars going forward. You need a great new trilogy. None of these one-offs that are floating around, and then, if they work, maybe we do more. That’s mostly how the last trilogy was made.
Instead, you bring in the top 50 writers in Hollywood and you have them all pitch their next Star Wars trilogy. You then hire the writers of the five best pitches. You tell them, this is going to be a Battle Royale. Over the next 2-3 years, you will develop all five projects individually. At the end of 3 years, whoever’s project rises to the top, that’s the trilogy we go with.
Now you may say, “Do you really think A-list screenwriters are going to dedicate themselves to a 3 year development process where it’s not even guaranteed that their movie will be made?” Yes, you know why? Cause you’re going to pay all of them 5 million dollars each. Trust me. They’ll do it. And you can do that because you’re Lucasfilm.
The reason paying 25 million bucks to write one great trilogy is financially smart is because a good Star Wars movie can make 25 million dollars in a third of a day at the box office. So you’ll get that money back and a lot more.
The issue with all these Star Wars projects is that you announce them 3 years ahead of time and then, whatever script you come up with, even if it’s bad, is what you’re stuck with. This eliminates that problem. Not only are you not stuck with a bad script, but you get 5 choices.
This is the way.
It is the only way. Because The Acolyte is causing massive damage to the Star Wars brand. It is trending for all the wrong reasons. Screenwriting is here to save the day if you let it. Will you let it, Star Wars? Or are you going to put your head in the sand and pretend like none of this is happening?
There’s been a lot of talk about bad Star Wars writing lately.
But people say that and 99% of them have no idea what it means. They vaguely point out that the “dialogue” is bad and that’s their definition of “bad writing.”
So a good way to create context around “good” and “bad” writing is to show what good writing looks like. And to understand why it’s good.
That’s the attitude I had going into tonight’s viewing of House of the Dragon, Season 2, Episode 1.
I wanted to be able to point to something that definitively conveyed good writing. Was I able to find it? I’ll tell you in a sec.
Most of my viewing experience of the premiere had me trying to remember who was who and how everyone was related. What makes it tricky is that when I see blond-haired people, I expect them to all be one family. And when I see brunettes, I expect them to all be one family. But the brunette kids in this show are members of blond-haired Rhaenyra’s clan and the blond kids are Queen Alicent’s. Or, at least, they’re part of her kingdom.
So that was confusing. But anyway, writer Ryan Condal took a huge gamble this episode. The entire episode is setup and exposition. We’ve got a lot of people in small rooms (sometimes big ones) talking about the upcoming war between the two kingdoms.
As I was watching it, I was thinking, “Come on guys. You need to give me a scene that I can point to and say, “This is clearly better than the writing in The Acolyte.” But I wasn’t getting it.
There was the hint of a good scene early in the episode when the new king flirts with a “Joe Pesci in Goodfellas Do I Make You Laugh” moment. He nearly makes one of his cabinet members embarrassingly take his young child for a pony ride during the meeting. But they stop before it happens. I don’t know why. I think it’s because this new king isn’t Joffrey. He’s supposed to be kind of good.
Which leads to my first complaint about the show, which is that there’s nobody who’s bad!!! This is the exact mistake Star Wars has made. Every character lives in the middle now. They’re all “gray” rather than good or evil.
But Star Wars flourished when it was clear who was good and who was evil. Its downfall is connected, in a lot of ways, to everyone being gray. The audience loves to root for the good guy and against the bad guy. That’s what takes us on that roller coaster of emotions that all good stories achieve. If our emotions always live in that middle area, we’re never really feeling anything.
I was getting more and more frustrated about this as the episode went on. But then, as those of you who saw it know, we got that whopper of an ending. Believe you me, this was a calculated move by Condal. He knew he could not write one hour of exposition and setup unless he gave us the ending of all endings. Which is exactly what he did.
(Spoiler) If you haven’t seen it, Prince Daemon hires two dumb assassins to kill the 18 year old heir to the throne. These two idiots infiltrate the castle and get to the sleeping quarters. But there’s no heir there. There are, however, two young children sleeping, one a boy, and therefore the 4th heir. The killers decide that one of them will do. But since they’re young, they don’t know who the girl is and who the boy is. So they demand the mother tell them. The mother then must choose who to save basically (she can lie if she wants). A true Sophie’s Choice.
And unlike in other shows, nobody comes at the last second to thwart their plan. A 4 year old kid gets his head cut off. Luckily we only hear noises. But they’re not pleasant!
By the way, they use a clever little writing trick here. They prep the audience for something they’re okay with. Killing this 18 year old dude isn’t going to move the “grossed out” needle. So we feel safe in a way.
Then, when we get to the room and we see the kids, we realize this is waaaaayyyy worse. And that’s when we internally say to ourselves, ‘Nooooooooo. They’re not really going to do that. Noooooooooo. No no no no no way.’ If Condal had prepped us for this moment, we would’ve been more ready. It hits us hard specifically because he waited to spring that on us at the last second.
So, I’m on board! They did it. And even though I didn’t get my scene that I wanted to use to demonstrate good writing, I got something close – a writer who clearly understood how much exposition he had to pack into the first episode, and what he would have to offer the audience in order for them to excuse that exposition.
Can’t wait til next week! :)
