The tyranny of the epic
I found this Gamasutra editorial by Chris Remo interesting (and not just because he mentions POP). He dares to ask: Why do today’s video games (and the movies based on them) tend so relentlessly toward the epic, at the expense of other kinds of stories?
Is it because games are often played as power fantasies? Is it because, when the default progression mechanic in most games is combat, grand conflict and badassery just make the most sense?
It’s a good question. I saw Star Trek last week at the Arclight Hollywood with friends whose movie tastes run more towards art-house fare. (I loved it, they didn’t.) After the first three trailers (Transformers, Terminator, and GI Joe), my friend leaned over to me in some perplexity and said: “I feel like I’ve just seen the same trailer three times in a row.”
Coincidentally, Terry Gilliam made much the same remark in today’s LA Times:
Terry Gilliam went to the movies the other night, and this is what he saw. “Trailers from ‘Transformers,’ ‘ G.I. Joe,’ ‘ Harry Potter’; they all had the same explosions, the same sound mix, the same rhythms, it was all the same film,” the director says, still not quite believing it. ” Hollywood’s been doing this for 20 years. When’s it going to end?”
[Small world: Gilliam's new film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, was edited by Mick Audsley, who is also one of the editors of the POP movie.]
Kurosawa once said that he made movies for people in their twenties. For me, that’s the key. Epics are the kind of movies I loved most when I was in my teens and early twenties. I liked other kinds of movies too, but I lived for epics. Movies (and video games) mattered more to me at that time in my life than they ever have since. This being a business, it’s fair to note that I spent a far greater proportion of my time and disposable income consuming them than I do now. So in a way, I’m still making movies and games for my 20-year-old self.
These days, when I go to the movies (or the Xbox), be it Star Trek, Bioshock or whatever, what holds my interest most are the small, quirky, human moments that somehow transcend the familiar epic framework, make it come alive one more time. They’re getting harder to find.
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I have the same problem with the ancient Sumerians, Homer, Wu Cheng’en, Milton and bunch of other hacks. It’s always Epic this and Epic that.
Yeah. They say Aeschylus wrote some great kitchen-sink comedies modeled on his mother-in-law’s family, but they got lost when the library burned down in Alexandria.
Good post!
I wonder, however, about your own PoP film. The one man i associate witht he trends you describe is Jerry Bruckheimer – your producer, I think? Will PoP be a human film – and will it break free of the blockbuster formulas?
I think the issue isn’t that there’s too much epic content though, more that everyone is making the SAME epic content. Harry Potter and GI Joe and so on are all the same kind of epic story and none of them are especially new in their formatting. Epic isn’t a genre in itself; it’s a recognition of scope. Nowadays everyone is making the same kind of epic action and fantasy films, so it’s rare to see epic coming of age films like Bicentennial Man or epic love stories, like What Dreams May Come. And yes, it’s probably coincidence that they both star Robin Williams.
To me though, that’s only a surface issue. The real problem is that as media plays an increasingly influential and prevalent role in society it becomes harder and harder for people to find unique perspectives or influences when creating projects of the kind of scope that films and commercial games ten to be. Everyone ends up citing the same tired references in comedy (Python, Milligan, Morecombe and Wise) while everyone in action does the same.
Don’t get me wrong, there are unique artists out there and there always will be – but as media becomes more prevalent then the market is swamped and it gets harder for people to stand out. That’s the real issue; not that everything tends towards the epic, but that there’s too much out there and that everyone has a very samey-idea of what an epic can be.
On the subject of “sameness”, I have to say that art-house can be as guilty as any type of movie. I’ll be happy if I never see another story about heroin addiction again.
And while I think it’s incredibly narrow-minded to claim two movies are the “same” because they both feature giant robots, this is a great send-up of two would-be summer tent-poles:
Transforminators
“They used to just shoot at us, now they turn into sweet cars…”
Over on the “why epic” note, my guess it’s a deep fantasy of ours to be masters of the world. We would all like to be the alpha male, so when a movie shows you a small number against a bigger one, you’re left wanting to live that.
(epic is pretty much large scale in which you must unbalance the good side to make the exploit look more impressive, it’s lost most of it’s tragicness nowdays).
In games, it’s different, I would ask you, which one is the most epic game you played ? I’m not sure but I’d bet Diablo 2 would take the lead, because you had the land in your palm and could crush everything. And even if you were not allowed to do anything in town, you knew that you could kill everyone if you wanted. So there’s something to think about in my opinion about what makes games special : they don’t leave you wanting to do the same thing as in your game, why, because you just did ! You accomplished what happened on the screen.
So as most game designers leave us with dull stories and mechanics, they have to rely on other things to make us play games, that’s the epic part.
Being the alpha male is reason enough, in and out of itself, you barely need a story to tell you why you’re crushing the world. Epic is a good way to not have to write a complex story. And tell me what you want, Diablo 2 had a pretty linear and dull storyline (although, for no apparent reason, I love it).
Very intriguing post and something I have considered often. I agree that the younger population consumes more media in general so the media mostly appeals to them. And when you are 13 or 14, the romance, the excitement of rapidly approaching adulthood, the promise of exposed mysteries, and risk that comes from being an adult and being able to start defining yourself dovetail easily into the giant action stories along with the overwhelming physical sensation of sitting in a theater with a 120 foot screen and surround sound.
But it does all seem the same to me now as well. I think it’s a byproduct of getting older that the focus changes a bit. I’m not saying it’s for the better, but what you want to consume, what you need to nourish you changes.
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