Відео

it's 2024. and lame white dudes are still whining about TLJ. fking hell.

I enjoy dark fantasy. I enjoy realism and complexity in fantasy. But I also like when that includes themes, archetypes and unapologetic acts of good that don't require explanation or answer beyond "<duck>ing empathy".

Hollywood is trying to resist the urge to make a coffee shop AU of <Insert franchise here> but it's letting it's demons win.

Really great video, I enjoyed the breakdown and agree with your points. I really hope that crowd funded media can take a stronger hold on the general populous. Corporate interests are really killing creativity.

Just 13 minutes in and i think that destroying Luke Skywalker was just the icing on the cake. Before that, they totally destroyed the victory of the rebellion by introducing the empire 2.0., just with a different name. Then they destroyed Han Solo, who was not a general any more but a hapless smuggler again. Then they showed us Han and Leia not as a loving couple for ever after, but divorced. And not as a role model for parents, because they gave their child away to this weird wizarding uncle. And i thought, Luke as a disillusioned hermit was at least something new. It may have been justified, because of the failure of the Jedi in the prequels. But showing him attacking his nephew was upsetting. In my head i think that this was Kylos version of the story. In "reality" it was the other way round, that Luke ignored the signs of evil until Kylo attacked him. They destroyed everything from the George Lucas movies right from the start.

Things like Luke looking down on Vaders copped off hand and then to his own robot hand. As a symbol of giving into the darkside and fear and how the same fear that lost him his hand, is the journey that ends with him becoming vader. (Cue the vision scene). Its just such a solid scene with no clunky dialogue or overtunes. I miss that shit!

Maybe Rian Johnson is an accidental hero for killing Disney's Star Wars money machine

I'm glad you can still enjoy the original Star Wars movies. I haven't been able to watch them since the sequel trilogy.

Generic comment for the algorithm.

The biggest problem with fantasy and realism is that they naturally oppose eachother. and for tolkein his stories are built mainly on fantasy or maybe it's realism with fantasy in the bsckground with the way people might have talked back then but now we see it as fantasy because the realism is unrelateable to the modern experience. It is costly to make a fantastic story be realistic if you don't understand what's real and consistent

During the lockdowns I streamed most of Star TrekTOS), including the first six films & am enjoying TNG. Hearing things like this about Star Wars is why: If “The Jedi’s legacy is failure”, that shows me those behind the scenes don’t care about the series ‘ core themes. If they don’t care, I won’t either.

I don't think it's just fantasy that has issues. Sci-fi also tends to suffer from this. People use these settings and simple paint jobs of their fictional world without giving it thought on how said world would actually work. Tolkien's world feels fantastical. Herbert's Dune and Warhammer 40k feel futuristic and grim. Everyone and everything acts according to their settings and you get the feeling it's an actual world. But now we get generic, bland characters that might as well just have been plucked from modern day Earth and put into whatever situation the writer wants them to be in. I'm hoping my novellas won't come out like that.

I appreciate your viewpoints. I honestly didn't expect this level of thought and detail from a video I'd originally dismissed as another clickbait rage video. I'm glad to be proven wrong.

When you realize that Ao3 fanfic writers have better characterization than the pros in charge of billion-dollars IPs. 💀

10:51 not sure why but the moment I heard this story I instantly knew I was going to subscribe

One of the things I loved about the Hobbit that the movies absolutely fail to capture is that it wasn't a world-ending threat. It was a guy who wanted his stuff back. It was a quest to go get some treasure. Yes, there was a big battle at the end, though the protagonist was unconscious for most of it, but that wasn't really the point. The films tried too hard to tie it into Lord of the Rings and missed what made it a worthwhile story on its own.

Companies need to realise that true art, the good stuff, comes from an artist. Just like in the Renaissance when a king wanted a beautiful piece of art done they didnt just buy they commissioned and were patrons and supported an artist and collaborated. It was more than throw money something, there had to be some support and relationship in it and flexibility on timeframes.

Dude: a 50-minute video when you're on 244 subscribers? We want to see whether you add value before we commit that much time.

This is a really informative take! My protagonist I’m writing is a more optimistic interpretation of the hero archetype we might be missing! And I’m committing to a more good vs. evil system of morality in my fantasy novel project!

What pissed me off most about ST Luke was that, while I could totally see TESB Luke pulling his lightsaber on Kylo, ROTJ Luke and beyond absolutely would never do that. They pretty much retconned his character development and replaced it with the vision of new filmmakers, yet even then they couldn’t be bothered to actually show such regression in real-time, just through half-assed flashbacks.

Most fantasy just feels like "their take" on something that already exists. Just "their take" on politics, of a magic system, of RPG archetypes, of their 30 different elf subraces, and meandering adventures and quests. Even thought they are original worlds and works, most fantasy feels like mediocre fan fiction. There are no strong themes, stuff just happens. And sometimes it's fine... for a part of the book. Like for one particular character for one particular story arc. But it feels like there is either too much nonsense plot or not enough of it. En example: I recently read "The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercombie, my first of his. 4,21/5 on GoodReads, raging reviews. Yet... stuff just happens? There is maybe a vague theme and message there kinda sorta that I still don't really know what if was...? I enjoyed the barbarian the most, the grumpy inquisitor who's a horrible bastard was cool too. But... 90% of the time it barely felt like a fantasy book. It was vague swords clashing and some magic. But nothing about it was really fantastical. Not even that "grimdark". People swear, there's some violence... That's it. It's not particularly depressing or mature or apathetic or cynical or anything you'd expect from grimdark. I think people just label it as such when they read about the POV character killing someone mercilessly or one indirect line of a hanged child. It really felt meandering and unable to pinpoint what it wanted to do or say. It's just... fan fiction in Abercombie's homebrew pseudo-medieval world. There is no point. And while fantasy (and fiction overall) is female dominated right now, blessing us with piles of faux-feminist theory with vague dragons, convoluted magic, and vampire white boy twinks pushing consent, I don't like the opposite either which was Abercombie seemingly only being able to describe any female in the entire book as "pretty" and barely nothing else. Yes, you got the angry revenge hungry grumpy lady who avoids the "male gaze", but it's just something reductive that I noticed every time and I began to loathe, seeing it again and again. And this was supposed to be a "classic". One of the best "grimdark" "gritty" "fantasy". All of those are in quotes as it barely reaches for any of them. It felt like a book for teenage boys. Which I've grown out of, unfortunately. And this book came out in 2006... Things are NOT better now.

You're saying that Galadriel's power can be projected in any way? No, she's immensely powerful in a given fashion and its codified in a thing called canon. My disagreement is not necessarily counter-signaling however and I hope that distinction is understandable. It is expensive fan fiction that is utter shit.

Short answer, no, with very few exceptions, they don't

What’s the name of the song at the end of the video?

When I saw the video title, I thought it would be about books and publishing. I've noticed similar patterns in fantasy books. One of the most frustrating patterns I've seen in TV and books is the absence/removal of themes. In TV and movies, themes seem to be pushed aside in favor of political narratives. Star Wars gets a female protagonist - but we can't challenge her, or have her story say anything interesting about good or evil, because then she might be seen to struggle and we can't have that. I find fantasy books now have a problem where themes have been mostly replaced by one of two things: magic systems, or romance. Instead of stories about eternally interesting themes like "Power corrupts", we get stories about magic systems. The authors don't seem to be saying anything with their books, just describing people and events and the rules of magic systems. The latest trend is now "Romantasy" where romance is used in place of themes to tell a story. Instead of a story that has something to say about the tempting nature of evil, or the challenging nature of being good, or the tragedy of having to turn on your family and friends, we get stories about a protagonist whose main challenge is deciding which of the three gigachad love interests she wants to bang, usually all three. It's been the death of themes. Fantasy books, I find, are now very shallow and tend to just be describing what is happening in the moment on that pages rather than tying any events into an overall theme or argument. They don't even use symbols anymore. One of the strongest themes in LOTR, the Uni Sunt theme, that theme of wondering about generations who came before and whether we will measure up to their greatness, a theme strong in Theoden's story, is nowhere in modern fantasy. I often think of an interview with Tolkien. At the end of it he is asked by the interviewer: "Would you rather be remembered as someone who has said something, or someone who has made something?" And Tolkien thinks for a few seconds and gives his perfect reply: "I don't think you can distinguish. The 'made thing', unless it says something, won't be remembered." It's so correct too. We'll remember LOTR forever because it has something to say, and much to say. Rings of Power, these Star wars shows, most modern fantasy books - none of these will be remembered, because they have nothing to say.

Totally off the main topic, but I love your childhood story. I had/have the same issue with one of my eyes, and had coke-bottle glasses on top of that. I didn't handle my situation as awesomely as you did, though, I just stopped looking at people. But later in life, something possessed me to become an English teacher, which daily forces me to get over myself and look people in the eye. Best decision I ever made.

Your title is a bit misleading. It should be “modern adaptions of classic fantasy works”. Modern Fantasy, itself, as a literary genre, is undergoing a fantastic renaissance, in no small thanks to Robert Jordan and George RR Martin. Check out authors like Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, Steven Erikson, Scott Lynch, Glenn Cook, Mark Lawrence, Fonda Lee, Brian McClellan, Matt Dinniman, VE Schwabb, James Islington, RF Kuang, John Gwynne…

I think, that problem with modern fantasy is lack of morals. In Lords of the RIngs main quest is stop Sauron, dark lord, twister of life and puppet master of souls. Star Wars prequels are story about rise of tyrany and original trilogy is warning to not became, what you fight against. Even in the Witcher is in fact story abot power love and friendship.

I feel a lot of fantasy doesnt account for the sheer scale of these worlds and how difficult it may actually be to get from A to B. Especially travelling by carriage, animal or as part of an army.

I'm convinced anyone who doesn't like Luke's change in The Last Jedi just doesn't read that much fantasy. I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but even I thought this was a pretty common trope. If Into The Spider-Vers can do this with Peter Parker, and Logan can do it with Wolverine, then it doesn't seem weird to do it with Luke in Star Wars. You can quibble about it's execution. Maybe it didn't do this trope well, but the idea isn't some huge betrayal of the character or genre or anything. To say otherwise is just ignorance. Whatever have you're upvotes.

There is a way to make the Luke/Kylo thing work. But Kylo needs to be actually irredeemable. The failure of Luke in the Last Jedi would have to be that he's too willing to see kindness and goodness and can't end a threat, a real threat, before it begins. Kylo goes on to be every bit as evil as Vader or Palpatine, without remorse, and Rey has to do what Luke couldn't and kill him. But Disney is cowardly.

Too be fair...Many young ideologic people end up cynical , grumpy & delusional ;)

It's worth noting that yes, Voldemort was misunderstood but that doesn't take away from the evil that he did, the evil that he fomented, nor the evil that he delighted in. He was a victim of an abusive mother who had him after drugging and SAing his father (who rightfully ran out on them when he was no longer being dosed up) and she was using a drug that has a side effect of damaging the soul of any offspring born from such a union. By every right, Voldemort was a victim who was doomed from the start... but he still had agency in spite of the corroded nature he inherited. He could choose to be better than his upbringing and perhaps he would have made the right choices if given the opportunity, but then he was put into a dormhouse full of literal Nazis which made for a very easy opportunity for him to be indoctrinated into becoming Magitler. He may have been a victim, but all that does is serve as a reason and not an excuse. The true issue is that the remake will likely either... 1. Ignore the circumstances of his birth altogether in order to make him even more blatantly evil. 2. Repaint his mother as part of a group that Joanne personally hates in an effort to further her own politics. (Not unrealistic given she's involved in the remake's production and will almost certainly place her thumb on the scale as it pertains to the writing.) 3. Pretend the reason IS a justification. (Least likely outcome honestly given Joanne's received some major backlash from people who her original story has fundamentally said are subhuman because of the circumstances of their birth. I think this is least likely because even though she's deranged, even she's got the awareness to understand that's just begging people to stop having anything to do with her.) But this is me writing way too much over what was an offhanded joke on your part.

I'm wondering if this symbolism vs. psychology hits different on screen than in books. I find myself enjoying books more if the "evil" has a motivation and is relatable, opposed to being evil for the sake of evil. I am no Tolkien expert but aren't orcs tortured elves? This envokes a certain pity in me for them and makes them relatable in the way that harsh circumstances can bring out the worst in people. I think there always have been subtle relatable motivations/backgrounds to evil in fantasy that are rooted in psychology. It just seems that, today, writers don't trust the reader/watcher to pick up on those nuances of humanity in even the darkest of characters, so they put in some on-the-nose clues like that orc baby. But this ruins the magic of developing the sympathy ourselves.

I definitely felt you with that point you made on creators replacing symbolism with psychology and thus abandoning some of the soul of what fantasy is meant to be. I feel that it's important for your protagonist to be flawed. They need to grow somehow in order for their journey to be satisfying, so that makes sense. But in order to grow they also need characters around them to show them ideals - both of how to be, and how not to be. I think a lot of modern fantasy media loses a lot of identity in their attempts to achieve this weird gritty realism that just leaves everything feeling identical to everything else... just one big brown blob of prickly a-holes fighting over magic macguffins

I’m working on it

It's odd to me how I've become sceptical of the quality of anything with big money behind it, If a Netflix or Disney make something I am sceptical that they made anything of it because I don't think they care It's become odd how when something has a high pricetag on it I distrust it's quality. I'm far more far more likely to give my time to something indie or self published.

These videos are interesting because I agree with a lot of the premise but not the entirety of the conclusion I think. Tolkien grappled quite a bit with the nature of the orcs and to balance what he had written against his own philosophies of redemption. I dislike what Amazon did because they do not have *nearly* the philosophical depth of Tolkien and a .9823745 second scene of an orc baby does nothing to honor or reflect Tolkien's conflict and certainly doesn't conclude it. Similarly I would say the elves are actually deeply flawed (I'm looking YOU Fëanor Kinslayer) so they are not aspirational but Tolkien excelled at writing Otherness so they are flawed in the way Odin is flawed or Hades is flawed. Flawed gods from an age when gods *could* be flawed. I think your video hits the mark closer than the one on "mythology vs. elevation" since between Tolkien's actual philosophy and writers like Gene Wolfe, Mervyn Peake, and other "Old Fantasy" writers it doesn't make sense to contrast them as "mythological" vs. "elevated" if "elevation" is described as moral nuance because I don't think that is the actual contrast. I think it is less a philosophical matter (if anything a lot of these old stories have deeper philosophies and greater nuance) and more that modern Fantasy lacks mystery and symbolism that is necessary for a work to actually BE Fantasy. A dragon in Fantasy may be a incomprehensible creature of old, a symbol of greed, or a weapon of war but the one thing that doesn't matter is its biology. Meanwhile Modern Fantasy wants you know that dragons are warm-blooded and have hollow bones but made of substance stronger than calcium and etc. etc. It will explain these irrelevant details to death to make sure you know how Grounded and Real it is and forgets entirely the dragon's *narrative purpose*. I think you see this in GRRM's writing where he wrote a 700ft wall because it is, as something in Fantasy, more a symbol of a wall than the physical thing. Its height is exaggerated. It becomes an image. That this is absurd and non-useful in actuality doesn't matter because that isn't it's narrative purpose. It's an invocation. GRRM's worst mistake imho was trying to walk it back and say he was mistaken and that 700ft. wall doesn't fit into his "very grounded and realistic" story. Although, he seems to waver depending on if people are praising his realism (in which case he leans into it and his *historicity*) or detracting it (in which case he was never actually writing realism he was always writing inspired by historical *fiction*). Overall, George doesn't seem like he knows if he's embarrassed to be a Fantasy writer or not. Similarly, Amazon wants you to know where Gandalf got his staff because god forbid a single thing simply *is* right down to his fancy wizard stick. They want you to know orcs have babies (because they "have to" come from somewhere, it's realistic) but they won't bother with what that means for the *narrative purpose* of orcs. Everything is explained but none of it has a point.

You are giving these writers WAY too much credit. This is hubris. Plain and simple. Writers today (and showrunners for that matter) want to take beloved properties and put their names on it. That's all it is. Rather than honoring the original work, they want to make it theirs. It's not about realism. It's not about pandering to a "modern audience." It's not about politics or agendas or any if that. It's people who think they can do it better than the authors who gave us the greatest tales ever told. It's average gen z/millennials believing they can contend with once-in-a-generation minds, when in reality, these folks all came from fan fiction backgrounds and couldn't tell a compelling or nuanced original story because they've always piggybacked off the work of others. There, I said it.

it's an interesting way to contextualize psychology and symbolism. not as two unrelated forces that share no connection at all, but as two diametrically opposed forces. between which a balance can be found.

Luke saw good in evil. The new movies squashed that and it is poor. Sadly white straight males are being blocked from fantasy publishing. The powers that be are r8cist, but claim they fight it. LOL.

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Modern big corporations have a problem at responsability and quality control. Who's gonna hire good writers or good showrunners? The poeople doing it cannot judge who is good for a job or who isn't, and they're neither competent at finding such people nor at bearing responsability what happens with their IP. They're just paying for a pile of trademarked names and terms and then push out bad content and do not understand why it is bad, just push enough PR buttons and buy critics or push the right buttons to influenco those people... they still don't understand the product. It is hit or miss. If you're lucky they find a guy like the fallout guy who can handle mis material, if you're unlucky they hire guys like those two naive Trop morons!

Your point about fantasy needing to have "dream logic" in order to land successfully. Excellent analysis.

Star Wars is Space Opera which is technically Science Fiction. So Kinda confused here... SF and F are different. I'm guessing you didn't read the Silmarillion? They were made relatable in that book because he wrote it later in his life after WWII. Every hero had a huge flaw in that book. You keep referencing Lord of the Rings without referencing Silmarillion. Seems like you didn't read the source material. A lot of the people were hugely flawed in that work. I would like to point out that Tolkien at the end of his life was trying to ground his world of Middle Earth more heavily in Science which is why the Tolkien estate HATED Peter Jackson's interpretation which heavily used things like Art Deco and Art Nouveau which, truly from the world building that Tolkien did would have irked him heavily. Tolkien was adamant that his world building was pre-colonization, which means the visuals, the dirty atmosphere, etc is more accurate in Rings of Power (11th century) than it is in the Jackson films (He tries for Pre-Raphaelite? 19th century, which is NOT what Tolkien was aiming for). He spends an inordinate amount of time about this in his food systems, and later in life tried desperately to ground Middle Earth in more realism. Invoking Tolkien the way you are kinda contradicts the breath of his work. I kinda think Christopher Tolkien is a better expert on his father and what his father envisioned than Peter Jackson and if the estate objected to Peter Jackson, then helped with Rings of Power, maybe reconsider a little? Tolkien even went into detail later in his life about Orcs and trying to flesh them out. And the heroes are supposed to be complicated, so Aragorn being a murderous G*nocider, given the larger lore and some of the weirdness Tolkien put in, would fit with the complications aspect. Because Tolkien did not write morally straight stories where the hero was everything and grand and great. He wrote them so they were mixed, so even the best of them was also not quite the hero you imagine them to be. If you read the lineage on Aragorn, they becomes very apparent quickly. Yes, in the beginning of Tolkien's work, he was more into the myth, especially as a kid, but when you read his later work, you can see more complex building up of the world of Middle Earth and a man struggling to reconcile magic with science so that the magic can be foregrounded, while the science is just there in the background, which is why he was trying to make the map round and find a way to do that, but unfortunately died before he could achieve it. And he *was* trying to find ways to humanize the orcs, especially in light of WWII because getting complements from literal N--- does something to your psyche and you do want to move away from faceless characters who are all purely bad.

"Washed up bum" - seems to be a thing with Disney. Same situation with Obi-Wan and Indiana Jones.

I've been reading/studying a lot on writing, story structure, creating conflict, etc. I think we have a lot of people coming into positions of power to direct/helm adaptations without any appropriate life experience. They're being promoted without having been mentored properly and spent time in the trenches earning their stripes. Instead, they have these formulas to regurgitate without understanding the deeper context that underpins those formulas. They haven't been allowed to fail on smaller projects first. Failure is a great teacher, but when it happens on such a huge scale, it means that these people become scapegoats for studios who were too cheap/focused on profits to hire people with the appropriate experience.

Great video! Also good to see you shout out the "Josh from XBox Live" video. Another video I'm glad I clicked on.

Luke became Obi Wan, not that obtuse, not very well done either mind but hardly inexplicable.

You just got a subscriber, sir.