If you'd like to join my Discord server where we chat about our writing projects, workshop ideas, and the movies/shows we love, here's a link you can use to join. My Discord: discord.com/invite/aJpYPQX Keep writing! - Henry
Here's a problem with Rebel Moon and Zack Snyder. He said he wanted to create his own Star Wars. Here's the problem Zack Snyder can't do hope he's too much of a cynic. Star Wars has started now pulling back the curtain and showing more of the citizen of the rebellion and conflict within the government. They show much more of how bad it is within the structure of society in Star Wars. But that requires layers of nuance that a lot of writers have trouble with today. Nuance is difficult for anyone Zack Snyder doesn't do new ones. The man is pure on the nose writing. Plus Zack doesn't know how to write hope. It's just not his thing. He tried to do Star Wars and it came out looking like 40K. Because that's what it is it's Warhammer 40K fanfic. The main character is basically a sister of battle. She's hiding out on a agrarian world that would exist in the 40K universe and look exactly like the ones in the 40K universe. The Aesthetics of the how the military looks the cybernetic gothic look. All of it screams 40K which is right up Zach's alley. Does 40K have nuanced storytelling? Yes most definitely but do you have to write it? No not at all there is plenty of zero nuance writing in 40K. And it's still good and honestly if he had just focused on that he would have been fine. Zach is a nihilist. Who believes in the same political views as I can't remember the actress's name. But she's from the 50s or the 40s. She was one of the actresses from Beverly Hillbillies. The really old grandma. Apparently she is extremely conservative but she has a certain brand of conservatism that isn't what we're usually thinking of. It's very much a combination of bootstrap politics and the strong stand with the strong kind of stuff in the week and just left to die or something like that. I don't know I have to go back and look into it. But that's Zack's way of thinking that's why he made Superman the way he did. It's the reason why his Justice League was so weird. He's not a hopeful person. You can't have a Luke Skywalker character without hope. And it's pretty clear that this movie series was just made up of his political views in sci-fi form. That's why Watchman was so good. If he was making the story of Watchmen starting from the beginning and not the end of the story. Like when everything is falling apart. The reason why he's so good at that. Is because that's how he thinks. The happy superhero stuff he not about that.
Any chance you'll make a video about Madame Web? I recently watched it, and it seems like you could really dig into that movie, like a lion to a gazelle. Not just in that you could savagely rip it apart, but that you could also derive a lot of value from from it, for yourself, for your channel, and for us viewers. Watching it, I noticed how the scenes and plot overall were much like its dialog: unnatural in progression, poorly ordered and structured, and not carefully catered to best serve the story. The themes were unconnected and barely fleshed out, too. Like, there's just a lot there to break down (as well as a lot of unnurtured potential for an actually good movie. I mean, it seriously feels like the writers compiled a bunch of good ideas to put together into the prerequisite of the first rough draft just in time for Sony corporate to say "Yeah, that's good enough. We just need to *make* a movie, it doesn't have to be a *good* movie." Ok, I'm digressing now, but) I really want to hear your thoughts on it; after watching it, I just thought it was a movie perfectly suited for your stylings of analyses. Also, I love the improving graphics and editing in your videos, it really stands out in this one. I don't know if you're doing all the editing, or if you've hired someone(s) else, but whoever is responsible requires compliment for it.
There’s a piece of advice that applies here that goes “Don’t follow in their foot steps, Seek what they sought” from Marty O’Donnell. Instead of stitching together disparate elements because you like them, it asks you to figure out what the point, what the goal of the story you like is, then ask yourself how you yourself would solve that problem. It’s an almost effortless way of creating something with your own spin because now you have a compass to decide whether or not something should be in your story
I agree with the caveat it doesn't apply to new creators, only well-established ones. People who are new in a craft need to start somewhere. For them, tracing someone else's path is probably the right choice, because forging a new one is legitimately far too difficult for a new person to do.
I agree, think of the story I want to tell, then look for elements I can use to tell that story. And then tweak each element i took inspiration from to make it my own, to fit my story, and to make it harder to spot.
Absolutely! When experiencing a story you might experience it as having several great moments, but you have to understand whatever else happened in the story to make them work. You can't just take and keep the highlights while ignoring the less flashy parts as those parts are vital to make the highlights work. I think this is why cliches can become problem. Sometimes it's just because they're overdone, but I feel often it's because it's just copying the surface without considering what made those moments work. If you know why it works the idea can also be more effectively subverted into something meaningful. Rebel Moon is an obvious example, but even within Star Wars itself it's a problem. "I am your Father" is amazing and is really memorable but it doesn't work because "it's so cool that the villain is his dad". It's a moment that contextualises so much for the character's motivation and goals. Even one movie later Luke and Leia are sibilings now and... do we really care? It's something which Star Wars fans (and at this point also some of its creators) don't seem to be able to learn either. There's so much theorising (and teasing) about potential family connections but without any groundwork for how to make such a revelation meaningful.
I can't wait for Zack's 14 hour director cut to reveal that the water girl that almost got wrapped by the soldiers was secretly Martian Manhunter all along, tying this poetic story together somehow
@@DenysBuryi As explained in the video, A New Hope took many inspirations to tell a story in a new way, instead of just taping a bunch of things together.
Star Wars already was inspired by Kurosawa films so not a bad idea. Unfortunately expecting Hollywood not to ruin good ideas in this day and age is expecting a lot.
That is exactly right. the Reznor version was the final track on the album called "The Downward Spiral". It was like Trent had reached the end of the spiral.
17:01 After that scene with the giant bird creature was over, I remember saying out loud "That was just the scene from How To Train Your Dragon but bad."
I'll always remember this quote from George Lucas. When ILM was making the Hoth Battle scene for The Empire Strikes Back, Joe Johnston (the storyboarder for the scene) was having a discussion with Lucas on what the scene should be (this was before the script was even finished). Lucas suggested that Johnston and company take influence from ice battle scene in the Sergie Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky (1938). But Lucas speciffically instructed Johnston saying "I don't want it to look like this, I want it FEEL like this".
You'd be surprised about how many movies do this. Most movies will straight out STEAL scenes from other movies, but you wouldn't notice because the emotions that it conveys are unique to the film itself.
@@nemowindsor8724 that was always true. the OG SW was a generic sci-fi movie.... or what people back then saw as a generic sci-fi movie. Nowadays it's this weird retro thing that still has that era's aesthetics.
rebel moon is like trying to build a brick wall without cement you’re stacking all of the bricks on top of each other but not reinforcing them, or binding them together with cement so eventually no matter what it will all collapse
The Cement that's missing in it is the Theme, which we'll find in the Directors cut. One cruicial part that's missing from the film is Sexual expression and consent. Which is a theme that exists in the shorter version, but is not emphasised enough. The film is about owning ones own body, which is the issue every single character in the movie has. I assume the extended version will flesh that out more. The Novel certainly does
Yes, and sometimes half the fun can be smooshing two different stories together. Eg. "What if we merged two completely different Kevin Costner movies, The Bodyguard and No Way Out?" Boom, you've got the BBC miniseries Bodyguard.
My spite for this movie was elevated by the fact I watched Seven Samurai a literal week prior. It literally felt like they were trying to make Star Wars if the plot was based off that instead of The Hidden Fortress.
Snyder's visual style was fun and interesting one time in 300, just like M Night's twist writing worked once in sixth sense. You need more than one trick.
@@brianbadonde9251 I mean normally I encourage people to go with their own flow but in this one specific instance I might agree with the people you know. About it being stupid.
@@shockmesane4158no, Snyders visual style was good in 2 movies, 300 and legend of the guardians. One of the most unique animated movies I’ve ever seen.
I laughed so hard when you talked about a Bug’s Life, because every time I sit down to watch a Bug’s Life I think, “Hey, why don’t I watch Galaxy Quest instead, it’s basically the same movie and it’s funnier.” So then I sit down to watch Galaxy Quest and immediately think, “Wait, let’s watch the Three Amigos instead, it’s basically the same movie and it’s funnier.” And then I’m happy I did because the “My Little Buttercup” scene makes me laugh every. single. time.
22:39 - I’m far from the first one to point this out, but that moment in FOTR is a beautiful demonstration of how to use slow motion correctly. Up to that point, Boromir’s fighting has been shown at normal speed to show off his strength and courage as he fights the Uruk-Hai. It gets our hopes up, as a flawed man strives to redeem himself after being tempted by the Ring (to the point of almost killing Frodo). Then the arrows start to pierce him, the scene goes into slow motion, and we realize that Boromir is doomed. The lingering reaction shots of him wincing in pain as each arrow hits home use slow motion to emphasize the tragedy and sorrow of a brave man paying with his life while trying to atone for his mistakes. The visual technique wasn’t used just because Peter Jackson thought it looked cool. It was used for specific, story-based reasons, which was why it had so much emotional impact. Another great example: the Matrix Trilogy. In the first movie, the shot of Morpheus staggering and falling after being punched into a bathroom wall by Agent Smith is in slow motion not just because the Wachowskis thought it looked cool, but because it emphasizes the peril our heroes face. In the sparring scene, we saw Morpheus mop the floor with Neo. So it’s jarring, and deeply frightening, to then see Morpheus get smacked around like a piñata - and the slow motion in that specific moment after Smith punches him and he flies backwards into the wall, collapsing to the floor in visible pain, helps emphasize that. Later, in the subway duel, the shots of Agent Smith punching holes in the concrete pillar are shown in slow motion - once again, to graphically display how overmatched Neo is and to heighten the tension. In the highway scene in Reloaded, there’s a slow motion shot in which Morpheus uses a katana to slice through the tires of the Albino Twins’ car, then spins around holding the sword in one hand while using the other to hold a Glock 18 while mag-dumping into the car’s gas tank as it flips over. The moment works so well not just because it looks cool, but because it’s the satisfying conclusion to an entire sequence in which the Twins have been relentlessly chasing Morpheus, Trinity, and the Keymaker; and almost killing them too many times to count. It’s a thrilling “yeah, how do ya like me now?!?” payoff after several minutes of unrelenting tension at the hands of two seemingly invincible enemies. In other words: take notes, Zack!
Related: it's easier to get away with lifting ideas in the 1970s with an audience that only has books and three channels of network TV than it is in 2023 when just about any piece of media made in the last fifty years is instantly available online. But as you say, some do it far better than others. :)
But also it is easier to notice the copied ideas if the work copied is popular. And copying a work to make another in the same genre is a bad idea. Copying Star Wars to make a Star Wars movie/clone is the dumbest idea possible.
@@oliverford5367 You don't need originality for the sake of originality--trying too hard to outfox the audience just gives you the last season of Game of Thrones. People are okay with knowing where a story is going if the ride is fun, and the familiar beats are executed well. "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" is a good example--we kind of know where the story is going, and it's very obvious how it tugs on our heartstrings, but most people enjoyed it anyway because the story was told well, with sincerity and good performances.
Thanks for reminding the audience that all plot points are a variation on a theme. "Creativity is not having ideas pop out of nowhere.... Creativity is making connections between already existing ideas that nobody has made before..." I absolutely love it? Thanks a million!
Also worth considering that Luke looking at the planets was probably also inspired (intentionally or not) by Christina's World, a painting of a farm girl. With maybe a bit of Wizard of Oz thrown in in the acting. As far as I know, the girl in Rebel Moon CHOSE to be there, so that's not her emotion set.
She was on the run. I don´t think she cared much about where she was, as loong as it was far enough from Imperial Forces. Deserter/fugitive/veteran/trauma survivor. So yeah, no, her mindset would have been a little different from Luke´s.
12:52 Steve Jobs says "good artists copy, great artists steal." But the original quote at 13:05 says "great poets imitate (synonym for "copy"), whereas small ones steal". I think Jobs misunderstood the quote or mixed it up.
I didn't know those movie existed at all somehow, and just seeing the title here now i thought "did i somehow miss a whole star wars movie coming out?"
A while ago I decided to read the Barsoom series, the adventures of John Carter on Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. When reading it I constantly thought: 'oh, so that is where George Lucas got that from...'.
It is said that the eventual John Carter Of Mars movie was made way too late, because by then everyone had already ripped off the books for their own movies.
@@originaluddite I think the Barsoom series could still be made into a tv series, covering all the eleven books, if it were made by a director who has a passion for the source material, like Peter Jackson had for Lord of the Rings.
@@lastfullast8819 It's a shame then that Edgar Rice Burroughs is not generally remembered as the founder of science-fiction in the way Tolkien is to fantasy.
Zack Snyder makes badass visuals and action scenes, but dear god if he's freaking awful at writing. Bro seriously needs actual competent writers to help him write good stories.
Also, his epic shots get overshadowed by his overuse of slow-motion. There is never a cool slowmo moment for me because he does it so often I get annoyed or burst out laughing each time
It is worth noting that the only two Snyder movies that credit him as the cinematographer are Rebel Moon and Army of the Dead. Rebel Moon feels like a parody, a reckless abuse of the style that Snyder is known for, and Army of the Dead is genuinely one of the most visually unpleasant movies I've ever watched. Just some food for thought.
It's also just not a rip off, people who say that have just outed themselves of having an extremely surface level understanding of storytelling. There's a desert planet. That's it. That's where the inspiration ends largely. Dune is a vastly different story than star wars.
12:47 Adding something to your story because it's cool is like throwing a pit of paint at a wall because you like the color red. Okay, cool, you've got red on your wall, but you need to finish painting the rest of the wall so it fits together. Otherwise all you've got is a splatter. There's nothing necessarily wrong with adding something just because it's cool, but you need to fill in the story around it to fit with that.
The worst pancake pile of stale cliches and stereotypes and overused tropes ever. The introduction with the honest, friendly, serene, good poor innocent farmer village...blaargghs, guys, really, give me a break, this is not what a hardworking life looks like, not remotely. ....
I think the issue here is that Snyder took (and I do emphasize on the word, *took* ) from Seven Samurai and Star Wars is that both have different levels of stakes and scale. One takes place on the fate of a single village and the other on the fate of a galaxy. One intimate, the other on a *literally* universal scale. In isolation, either works. But when you push both into one story, It’s protecting a village *and* fighting an empire. Things don’t mesh. Like for instance, why does this village matter? Why does the empire want to take the surplus food from this one village when it supposedly has many other villages and vassals it could take resources from? Why does the empire wait for 10 weeks to attack the village and not just attack right now? Why should Kora even have any concern for this village, when her beef is more so with the empire than the safety of her village? But most importantly, why should I care about this tiny village in this wide-spanning galaxy? This movie seems way more interested in making a universe that *sounds* cool on paper, than a coherent one. But instead what is made is a world that is too vast to be intimate, but too shallow to explore anything. Or in other words: *wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.*
Speaking of borrowing I think I saw somewhere that Kurosawa was inspired to make movies like Seven Samurai by Westerns. They tend to be about one town, one ranch, one small fort, one stagecoach and one small in the scheme of things villain. They are not epics. Now it’s possible to set a western in the SW universe, just keep the empire away from the protagonists and keep the stakes less than the fate of the galaxy . But Zac cannot do that.
This is a problem I consistently come across when I worldbuild in interstellar/galactic settings. Space is just too damn big and technology would logically be too advanced for problems we deal with in the real world to exist in a post-scarcity one.
The thing is you could potentially make it revolve around something so small if this village had access to a vital resource. Perhaps they would be only a fee left with the technology and skills needed to refine something that runs their ships, and no not coal. Though even literal coal miners would’ve made more sense than grain. It’s like Snyder copy pasted the bit in Seven Samurai where the bad guys want the grain with a note to replace grain with something rare and science-fictiony then just forgot to.
23:32 that's a good point. Synder fundamentally does not respect other movies or artists. There were all those BvS and Watchmen interviews where he talks about how he didn't care about comic books unless they has sex or rape scenes in them. Or how "Batman could get raped in prison on my movie" He really has then juvenile belief that art isn't important unless it's 'mature' and his definition of mature is just violence, or as it was eleuently put "cool scenes" He thinks that is the highest form of cinema and they just KEEP GIVING HIM MONEY
“[Zack Snyder] didn’t care about comic books unless they have sex or rape scenes in them.” Thank God he never got the job to adapt Garth Ennis’ ‘The Boys’! Can you imagine how much more awful it would be if he did?
This video was the most helpful to me yet! I've been so afraid of copying others in my project that I usually avoid seeing other media altogether, for fear that they'll taint any "original" ideas I have. The more I tie ideas into my project, the more I realize it's been done before, and the more discouraged I get! But you've given me a new perspective on it now. I'll try to accept inspiration from now on, while conveying my ideas in my own way! Thanks for the advice
Some of the greatest stories ever told have been the result of writers wanting to put their own spin on a particular idea. An example, one of my favorite books of last year was Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson has been open about his inspiration for the book- namely that he watched The Princess Bride with his wife and was disappointed by how inactive a character Buttercup was (he still loved the movie; put the pitchforks down). So he wondered: "What would happen in the Princess Bride if, after hearing that Wesley got kidnapped by pirates Buttercup set out to rescue him"? And that was the basic inspiration for Tress of the Emerald Sea, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts! So don't be afraid to take inspiration, my friend. Rebel Moon fails not merely because it copied Star Wars, but because it does so without doing anything interesting of its own.
One of my favourite creators is hideo kojima, and he himself admitted being inspired by "escape from New york, " "terminator," and "full metal jacket," which he used to create metal gear. If you play the metal gear games having seen these movies, it's very clear where he took inspiration... ...that being said, he didnt JUST do "escape from new york" but kojimas version, which is why metal gear is a beloved franchise
@@TheCloserLookYou're about the only analyst who gets the level of abstraction right. I find Save the Cat/Hero's Journey structures too vague because they try to be all encompassing. You analyze things at the right level, seeing the patterns between things without trying to build universal structures: which aren't that useful.
I watched Rebel Moon stoned with my dad and I got the vibe that every scene was written, directed, and edited by a different group of film students as a $166 million end of term project.
I have another six minutes in the video, but I wanted to write this while I was thinking about it. I think this movie is the one that finally showed me exactly why Zack Snyder does have Talent as a Director, but why he is utterly at sea in a rowboat as a writer. He does have the ability to identify moments and sequences from things that he likes, and can replicate much of the pacing and aesthetic and style of those things he likes, but this only works well from a directorial perspective if you actually have a narrative which functions in a beautifully impactful, cohesive way before you ever have to commit it to the screen. For example, if he were given a script of rebel moon that was an excellent story, I think his ability to reference and hijack elements from other things would serve to elevate the subject matter as it is translated into a visual medium. But when he is coming up with the story as if** it is already just a storyboard for a visual translation**, it completely disintegrates because there is nothing underneath it. It’s like he’s an architect who tried to build a building without ever hiring a single engineer. Not the best approach for building a building which has any utility outside of inevitably killing everyone inside of it.
I love the way you put the person reading a quote at the bottom as well as their channels icon. Ive always hated having to cross reference who was reading it. Especially if its someone whose voice i recognized. A lot of people are getting better about this but i like yours the best so far since it highlights the person reading it. Feels less like a neat little cameo and more like a way to help cross-promote if only just a smidge.
This video brings to mind how Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, and then Spec Ops: the Line each pulled so directly from the one before it. Maybe it had more to do with taking advantage of their medium, or just adapting the same story to the contemporary. But it's interesting to see the juxtaposition between them.
In this example we can also see what The Closer Look is talking about HoD and AN (I'm not familiar with Spec Ops so I can't say anything about it) have the same plot of "a guy makes his way down a river in search of a charismatic mad genius lost in a crazy, savage land". However, not only Apocalypse adapts it wisely to a new setting (as in, makes sure the plot doesn't feel out of place), but both stories use the plot to explore different themes: while they both explore the idea of losing oneself in the wild, Heart of Darkness is also about the dark side of European colonialism, while Apocalypse Now is about the senseless brutality of Vietnam War. Rebel Moon is the plot of Seven Samurai copied and pasted into a space opera setting without any consideration of how much it changes the situation. As a result the whole thing is disjointed and messy. For example: the idea of defeating a gang of XVI-century bandits by hiring a handful of capable warriors? Believable and reasonable. Defeating a garrison of a galaxy-spanning empire with the same strategy? Yeah, you have a week before more more soldiers come and they nuke your village from orbit. TLDR: the difference between stealing a plot to tell your own story and just stealing a plot
Gladiator is a perfect example of this because it took a lot of inspiration from Kubrick's Spartacus. There's a lot of shared concepts and character arcs. But it didn't just copy scenes and story beats. It innovated upon the original concept and did something different. And few people even noticed the similarities. That's the point. Take inspiration, then innovate. Do not imitate.
That arc is fucking trash what are you talking about. Every character arc while she was recruiting was incredibly stupid and shallow. Christ I've never been so bored.
I've always liked the dialog between the fighter pilots in A New Hope (and Rogue 1), it just seemed more realistic than what you see in other star wars movies where its more like a bunch of teenagers making sarcastic quips at each other. The tone is serious and professional, they're communicating useful information. The fact that its lifted from a WW2 movie word for word doesn't surprise me.
There's an episode of Clone Wars where Anakin and Obiwan end up in a farming planet where the people are being tormented by space pirates, the people on the planet hired some mercenaries to fight off the pirates but eventually they realize they can't depend on mercenaries to keep the pirates away forever and so it's decided that Anakin and Obiwan are going to teach the farmers how to fight so they can defend themselves from the pirates and any other threat that comes to the planet. There's a lot of interesting questions that this episode raises like, is it really a good idea to introduce warfare to a society that was so peaceful before? They'll use it to defend themselves now but will they use it to attack others in the future? Rebel Moon seems to me like a more dilluted and hurried version of that one episode of Clone Wars.
Not considering the fact that Hondo (the pirate and recurring character that was the villain of the episode) was a much much better villain that general whatever in Rebel Moon
@@whysoserious652 Yeah, as far as I'm concerned that episode of Clone Wars (went back to check, it's called Bounty Hunters) is the definitive sci-fi adaptation of seven samurai for me. Filoni used to be so good, I don't know how but Disney found a way to suck all the talent out of him.
@@annika3265 wait till upcoming projects drops: 1. Harvey weinstein's ex personal assistant's show, 2. grand jedi master samurai knight King Kong godzilla Rey movie. 3. Mando and grogu movie (even after the disaster of bo katan show aka mando s3).😑😑😑 Disney kept milking star wars without zero creativity and efforts.
Zack Snyder is the filmmaker version of a little kid playing with action figures. This approach worked well in a movie like 300, where the entire thing was centered around badass Spartans fighting a specific battle against the odds. He had a loose idea to work with and nothing concrete to base things on, so going for cool moments was, well, cool. However, the DC superheroes have very specific, lengthy, varied, and nuanced backstories that have been in the hands of countless creatives who have all contributed their ideas on who Superman and Batman are at their core. But Zack Snyder is still smashing his action figures together, so he needs to have them fight for some reason and look very cool. He ignored all the complexities and facets of these characters and just went for aesthetic. This is also what happened in Justice League, even though his cut was better than Whedon’s, it was still an incomplete movie that shoved a bunch of characters together that almost nobody knew yet so that there could be cool moments and a reason to introduce more films. Each of these other characters needed their own films and their own space to breathe. Even Superman and Batman hadn’t gotten a chance to breathe and be people yet, and now here’s a bunch of other people you don’t know, let’s watch them fight Steppenwolf and the Parademons! There’s so much depth to be had, and Zack Snyder fundamentally misunderstands that at every turn. 300 didn’t need that. But superheroes need at least a little bit.
I'd add that Snyder doesn't appear to understand dramatic stakes. His DC movies were ambitious in elaborating on the heroes' capabilities, but there's no sense of what's in the balance if they fail. Instead it's stories with false starts and shifting motivations.
My dad has been saying the thing about Star Wars being basically just The Hidden Fortress in a different font for YEARS now and for some reason I never looked into it. Thank you for finally making me understand exactly what he was talking about! Great video as always! 👏👏👏
not really because he makes the common mistake of assuming that Princess Leia is based on the Princess from The Hidden Fortress when its Luke who is. Han, Chewbacca and Leia have no counterpart and the plot is basically completely different by the time they get to the Death Star when it starts ripping of a different Kurosawa film (Tsubaki Sanjuro) until it just turns into Dam Busters.
As someone who is writing my own book, I find George Lucas so inspiring. When he made Star Wars, he just made a version of all the things he liked. You could feel the love and passion for his interests in Star Wars. I love that part of Lucas. No matter how insane bad his writing was, you could feel the love and creativity for his art on screen.
This writing philosophy of "see a bunch of cool things you like and copy them into your story with no cohesion" has been annoying me for years now, ESPECIALLY when the work in question professes to be "heavily inspired by" or "a spiritual sequel to" something, yet borrows its most superficial, visual elements. Roadside Picnic is my favourite sci-fi novel and a genuine literary masterpiece, but the pop-culture discourse around it has turned it into little more than a moody aesthetic. Today, whenever someone says they're "inspired by Roadside Picnic", it basically means "my story will have a spooky field where supernatural stuff happens" - themes, philosophy and compelling character arcs be damned.
10:44 - look at Top Gun: Maverick. The final act of that film is very similar to the Death Star trench run from A New Hope. But it’s still awesome, because TG:M made the effort to justify its own existence with its own unique characters, intense emotional impact, memorable dialogue, and resonant themes, ideas, and lessons. It has many similarities to Star Wars (and, of course, to the original Top Gun) but it’s still a different story.
5:00 - 633 Squadron also has some very close Trench Run parallels and is often cited by folk. I love De Havilland Mosquitoes and so should everyone else.
I was part of an international program in HS where we do research and write essays and so on. These essays would get marked by foreign professors and certificated educators. One rule we had was if your essay exceeds 12% similarity of one source, it’s plagiarism.
Do you actually know what checkovs gun is? Checkov wrote short stories, in short narratives that's when you want to eliminate all the unnecessary elements and tighten up the writing. When you include detailed and don't address them, that can be used for effect too, like a red herring, foreshadowing for a futher installment. Or even just a thematic metaphor.
12:05 That's what Snyder loves to do. In BVS, it was more than obvious he saw Mad Max: Fury on Road and wanted to incorporate the desert theme but didn't know how to incorporate it well, so the result was a badly put dream sequence with Batman on broad daylight looking ridiculous.
8:09 is an absolutely brilliant but of insight. I enjoy how the creative side works when writing, but connecting ideas, and making them matter to the characters and also remain narratively relevant, is honestly pretty hard. It's easy to get caught up in cool moments (short stories / films are a great medium for this IMO) but when done right, they are super satisfying. I appreciate that video essayists break this down, it helps with the learning aspect and also identifying it in other creative media. Great video as always!
God, that scene from Mos Esley. I think the fake CGI dinosaur mounts are actually different fake CGI dinosaur mounts than the last time I saw this. He changed it TWICE?
he changed it a lot more than twice. I wouldn't mind D+ having a whole large options menu for which version of star wars you want to watch given how much George fucked around fwiw I remember a version of them just driving in and the "several shorts of them dodging shit in mos eisley with comic relief in all of them" version, which I think was part of the "low poly jabba" 20 year remaster
Rebel moon feels like, no, is definitely a rushed one shot ttrpg campaign where the dm has spent weeks planning each character introduction scene > waste too much time on one character > remember that they are promising a one shot > rushes through every thing else.
12:27 This is my entire beef with Snyder's filmography; he simply cannot make a film without it feeling like a 10-year-old boy repeatedly and excitedly saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if..."
Well, Rebel Moon was originally written to be an R rated Star Wars movie, but Disney rejected it because they didnt WANT to make an R rated star wars movie. Another producer wanted the rights though, so Snyder decided to change some details and make it anyway. It might've been pretty dope if the original vision wasn't changed
Very good video BUT I can't believe you got all the way through it without talking about Battle Beyond The Stars from Roger Corman, who was the first person to say "What if we crossed Star Wars with Seven Samurai?" OR talk about The Three Amigos, which is where A Bug's Life got its bumbling actors turned heroes slant.
20:18 - random example: Michael Mann’s Heat. That movie is quite long, but it never really feels like it because each scene has a logical connection to the one that came before it while properly setting up the one that comes after it. The focus may be split between two protagonists, but the pacing is sharp enough, and the writing is disciplined enough, to make each element in the plot serve a purpose that is both logically sound and dramatically satisfying. No element is wasted. Nothing is in Heat just because Michael Mann thought it looked cool. It’s “cause and effect” storytelling at its finest, with the consequences of each character’s choices being both clear and compelling. {spoilers below, for a movie that came out in 1995…} Cheritto volunteering for the bank heist because “for me, the action is the juice” is a choice consistent with his character, while also sealing his doom. McCauley choosing to confront Waingro is also in character, since it’s a matter of personal honor to avenge his friends (who died as consequence of Waingro’s psychopathic behavior), and a matter of professional responsibility to clean up loose ends - and we’ve seen multiple times that honor (albeit, a ruthless, streetwise honor born out of surviving Folsom Prison) and professionalism matter deeply to McCauley. But this choice directly leads to his final, fatal showdown with Hanna. This meticulous structure of escalating choices and consequences, without the distraction of any extraneous plot points or character moments, is why the downtown shootout is so memorable. Every prior scene has been steadily building towards this confrontation, taking one more step closer to bringing the literal cops and robbers to exchanging fire, while fleshing out their motivations for doing so. By the time Shiherlis is strutting out to the getaway car, unaware that he’s about to see LAPD officers pointing guns at him, the tension is almost unbearable because none of the prior story beats have been wasted. Every minute of runtime before the shootout was well spent on the specific plot points and character developments needed to bring us to this gunfight - nothing more, nothing less. So when Shiherlis starts to drop brass and all hell breaks loose, it’s not just *pew pew* because Mann loves him some gunplay. It’s the eruption of a conflict that’s been brewing the entire movie - or at least from the moment Waingro murdered the armored truck guard, setting off the chain reaction that unfolded for the rest of the movie. Short version: Michael Mann is a great storyteller. Zack Snyder needs to sit in his classroom and take notes. (Sorry - I love ranting about my favorite movies. Especially Heat!) 😂🤣
Hildegard von Blingen’s Bardcore rendition of ‘Hurt’ was very good and unique also. The accompanying artwork links the song to a kingly character (possibly The King of the Dead from LotR) who has passed into death and un-death, lamenting his betrayal of his allies and the ruination of his kingdom. The lyrics “my empire of dirt” hit a bit different in that version.
One of my cats did a massive spew on the carpet tonight. Like it ate an entire serving of tinned food in one go and just vomited it all up again in the middle of the hall. Having to clean that up was more enjoyable than sitting through this movie.
Something worth noting is that Halo Reach also took the idea of 7 Samurai (they were going to do 7 Spartan's and Noble 8)... but they DID remove some extra characters because they couldn't squeeze them all in.
Honestly, the Star Wars-Gladiator blend could be a genius story. Maybe instead of defending her village, Cora’s goal could be revenge on the empire. She recruits all of the cool side characters because all of them have two things in common: nothing left to live for, and a grudge against the empire. But instead of bringing them all together in a Justice League style team-up, she has them work separately so that the empire has the impression of multiple rebellions, not just one. So we have a gladiator story, a samurai story, a How To Train Your Dragon story, and a Star Wars story all rolled into one cohesive, glorious “fuck you, evil empire”. It could be great. Also, there is a shortage of female strategic masterminds in mainstream entertainment, and I think changing Cora’s character to be more of a strategist would make her stand out against a backdrop of skilled fighters. Great video, as always!
Great essay! Rebel Moon was so bad that I was literally predicting scenes before they started. A movie with Kora, the robot, and maybe a farmer would be a much better film! You're right there. (Though, I would argue that A Bug's Life is actually The Three Amigos.)
16:09 - you’re totally right!! Bug’s Life was one of my favorite childhood movies, and I hadn’t even considered this until you brought it up. Thanks so much! 😄 PS: Hopper is still one of the best Pixar villains of all time. Yes, I will die on this hill.
I was so confused that we just left part of the group in the village. it would have made so much sense that half the group was already assembled with Kora, the grain guy, the Jimmy bot, the kind soldier, and even the young sweet girl who bonded with the bot. but nope, only kora and grain guy go (i literally cant even remember his name or anyone else from the final group) I know the next movie will bring them back, but it felt so weird to develop these relationships to the point I thought for sure they were going to be the main crew only to drop them for the next movie and force the audience to care about a completely new set of people. Even Den! he's described as a great hunter and it seems like they were trying out a love triangle situation with him, kora, and grain guy, so including him could have been interesting as well. It can work in other stories, but the fact that the entire group are basically strangers just doesn't work in getting me to care about them. they have no connection to each other so why would I care about any of them. Its been said a good story can be ruined by bad characters, and good characters can make a bad story worth watching. this movie failed on both fronts
One of my creative writting mentors once said "All artist are thieves; the good ones will create something new, the best will make you forget they're thieves in the first place". Now i know where he picked that up.
The human brain do not make a completely new thing out of nothing, it took from something they know then twist it so in a way became something new. When making art we still took inspirations from the real world we can't make a new thing out of nothing.
As an author with a half-finished novel, you inspire me to pick up pen again and keep refining and finishing my story with the wisdom you pass on to me.
That "no cohesion" thing has also long been at the core of how I've explained to people when putting something common into a fantasy or sci-fi work feels like a cliche. It's when you put a per-existing popular thing from another work into your own work, but it no longer serves the function to the world that it had originally, and is not given a new function or role to fill. It's just in the work because it's cool.
For me, Snyder peaked with "Dawn of the Dead" and I'm sure that is in large part due to him not being the writer. Glad I didn't waste my time with this one, though I can't help but wonder if he borrowed anything from the low-budget king of Star Wars/Seven Samurai rip offs, "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980). I half expected to see that movie show up in your video. ;)
Two other things I will add: Reading and knowing history are equally important in storytelling! As a reader of sci-fi, I've started to notice so many similarities with Star Wars. it's not crazy to say a young George Lucas would have read these same classic sci-fi (and fantasy) novels. For example, I'm reading Ursula Le Guin's stuff. In one of her books (the left hand of darkness), there is a literal land that is called the Sith ! In her Earthsea fantasy series, there are wizards (duh), but the topic of light vs dark, good vs evil, is very prevalent. In another Le Guin novel, the Word for World is Forest, the Athsheans are literally described like the Ewoks from SW (mind you this book came out in 1972)! This is also the book that seems to have inspired James Cameron's Avatar (it's literaly the exact same story). There's also huge inspiration from the Dune books, and Asimov's Foundation (heavy emphasis on politics, mention of an Emperor, mention of a planet called Corellia, mention of Inquisitors, etc.). There's also the typical hero's journey from The Hobbit (hesistant hero gets pulled into an adventure and has an old wizard as a mentor). So George knows his classics (or at least his writing team did as well). This also includes the truest of the classics, the Odyssey and the Illiad. There are also sooooo many cool historical events, some that are super unknown to the wider public, and as a history student I have jotted down so many ideas from the stuff I learn in school or read in articles. Watching movies to get visual inspiration is one thing. Reading books to understand proper storytelling is another. Knowing history to base your stuff in reality pulls everything together! I only watched Rebel Moon for Charlie Hunnam
You know, it's worth noting that A New Hope was the only Star Wars film to feature realistic flight combat chatter and it just so happens to be the one ripping off all its dialogue from another movie. I always thought it was interesting how nuanced the world of Star Wars was, but the longer it exists the less realistic it gets
I would say a big thing for me is all the star wars characters are very memorable in their own way. No rebel moon character is memorable; at the start of the second movie i had forgotten everyone but kora’s name. Thank you for the great video!
Great video! I didn't realise quite just how much Lucas derived from for A New Hope, but I think that's part of why Rebel Moon is so criticised. Back when A New Hope came out, people didn't have such open access to every film ever (or analysis of every film ever) like we do today. Unless you'd just seen Dambusters before watching A New Hope, or happened to recognise something similar and have a copy at home that you could play to check, you wouldn't have known it was derivative. And even if you did realise, it's not like that had social media to tell everyone all about it. And let's face it, films like Dambusters never had, arguably couldn't have, the rabid fanbases like certain big franchises do today. Star Wars got away with it back then because it could. Today's filmmakers have to be far more subtle in pulling from their inspirations, just because audiences are far larger and far more connected to media than they ever used to be. It doesn't change the point you're making, but it's interesting how the context of the era something comes out can have such an impact on it's reception.
the lack of rabid fanbases cuts both ways. people take from star wars to enjoy its mass appeal. lucas took from dambusters despite its lack of appeal, because it inspired him. similar to tarantino taking things from obscure films due to their content, not marketability.
Probably worth noting that the “new spin” that A Bug’s Life puts on the Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven plot had already been put on it by The Three Amigos (and would again be put on it by Galaxy Quest later)
21:11 In "Sucker Punch" I really was not interested in the action scenes because the audience was told from the start that they were not real and the CGI made them look fake too. So I just checked out for them. 5 minutes of actual story later and the movie was over. Only then did I realize the point of the movie was just a bunch of action scenes that had no place in a real movie so they just cobbled them together with a thin veiled excuse of a story. But by the time I realized it, the movie was over and I had not paid attention to anything.
Zack Snyder really bought into his own hype coming from his cult of fanboys and lives under the delusion that he’s some kind of artistic genius whose films have layers of deeper hidden meanings. And if you criticize one of his films or think it sucks then you just didn’t “get it.”
I started watching your videos for fun and because I like watching videos that make fun of movies I don't like, but I've started applying your advice to stories I write for fun!
Also also regarding the robot: he kiiinda reminded me visually of zenyatta from overwatch (before I looked him up to remember what he looks like lol), who is also a robot that advocates for peace
If you'd like to join my Discord server where we chat about our writing projects, workshop ideas, and the movies/shows we love, here's a link you can use to join.
My Discord: discord.com/invite/aJpYPQX
Keep writing!
- Henry
Meanwhile, 17 sequels, prequels, & tv films later & yet Episode 4 A New Hope is still the best Star Wars film.
@@jessetorres8738 I'm sorry but you are wrong. Empire Strikes back is the best one
Can you do a video on how to write dark fantasy in a modern world?
Here's a problem with Rebel Moon and Zack Snyder. He said he wanted to create his own Star Wars. Here's the problem Zack Snyder can't do hope he's too much of a cynic.
Star Wars has started now pulling back the curtain and showing more of the citizen of the rebellion and conflict within the government. They show much more of how bad it is within the structure of society in Star Wars. But that requires layers of nuance that a lot of writers have trouble with today. Nuance is difficult for anyone Zack Snyder doesn't do new ones. The man is pure on the nose writing.
Plus Zack doesn't know how to write hope. It's just not his thing. He tried to do Star Wars and it came out looking like 40K. Because that's what it is it's Warhammer 40K fanfic. The main character is basically a sister of battle. She's hiding out on a agrarian world that would exist in the 40K universe and look exactly like the ones in the 40K universe. The Aesthetics of the how the military looks the cybernetic gothic look. All of it screams 40K which is right up Zach's alley.
Does 40K have nuanced storytelling? Yes most definitely but do you have to write it? No not at all there is plenty of zero nuance writing in 40K. And it's still good and honestly if he had just focused on that he would have been fine. Zach is a nihilist. Who believes in the same political views as I can't remember the actress's name. But she's from the 50s or the 40s. She was one of the actresses from Beverly Hillbillies. The really old grandma. Apparently she is extremely conservative but she has a certain brand of conservatism that isn't what we're usually thinking of. It's very much a combination of bootstrap politics and the strong stand with the strong kind of stuff in the week and just left to die or something like that. I don't know I have to go back and look into it. But that's Zack's way of thinking that's why he made Superman the way he did. It's the reason why his Justice League was so weird. He's not a hopeful person. You can't have a Luke Skywalker character without hope. And it's pretty clear that this movie series was just made up of his political views in sci-fi form. That's why Watchman was so good. If he was making the story of Watchmen starting from the beginning and not the end of the story. Like when everything is falling apart. The reason why he's so good at that. Is because that's how he thinks. The happy superhero stuff he not about that.
Any chance you'll make a video about Madame Web? I recently watched it, and it seems like you could really dig into that movie, like a lion to a gazelle. Not just in that you could savagely rip it apart, but that you could also derive a lot of value from from it, for yourself, for your channel, and for us viewers. Watching it, I noticed how the scenes and plot overall were much like its dialog: unnatural in progression, poorly ordered and structured, and not carefully catered to best serve the story. The themes were unconnected and barely fleshed out, too. Like, there's just a lot there to break down (as well as a lot of unnurtured potential for an actually good movie. I mean, it seriously feels like the writers compiled a bunch of good ideas to put together into the prerequisite of the first rough draft just in time for Sony corporate to say "Yeah, that's good enough. We just need to *make* a movie, it doesn't have to be a *good* movie." Ok, I'm digressing now, but) I really want to hear your thoughts on it; after watching it, I just thought it was a movie perfectly suited for your stylings of analyses.
Also, I love the improving graphics and editing in your videos, it really stands out in this one. I don't know if you're doing all the editing, or if you've hired someone(s) else, but whoever is responsible requires compliment for it.
This movie is just "and then and then and then." It felt like random clips just firing off.
"If you ever find yourself saying and then, you've probably written a bad story"
~Trey Parker I think
@@kylespevak6781South Park writer? If so you’re right
@@chordalharmony Yeah, one or the other said it
It’s like the sort of story a five year old might make up on the spot.
but it was all COOL and MYSTERIOUS right? right? what do you mean it was all flat?
There’s a piece of advice that applies here that goes “Don’t follow in their foot steps, Seek what they sought” from Marty O’Donnell. Instead of stitching together disparate elements because you like them, it asks you to figure out what the point, what the goal of the story you like is, then ask yourself how you yourself would solve that problem. It’s an almost effortless way of creating something with your own spin because now you have a compass to decide whether or not something should be in your story
Well said! Everything on screen should serve the story.
I agree with the caveat it doesn't apply to new creators, only well-established ones. People who are new in a craft need to start somewhere. For them, tracing someone else's path is probably the right choice, because forging a new one is legitimately far too difficult for a new person to do.
I agree, think of the story I want to tell, then look for elements I can use to tell that story. And then tweak each element i took inspiration from to make it my own, to fit my story, and to make it harder to spot.
Start with a collection of ideas, but then make them your own, add twists, change it, don't just knock it out.
Absolutely!
When experiencing a story you might experience it as having several great moments, but you have to understand whatever else happened in the story to make them work. You can't just take and keep the highlights while ignoring the less flashy parts as those parts are vital to make the highlights work.
I think this is why cliches can become problem. Sometimes it's just because they're overdone, but I feel often it's because it's just copying the surface without considering what made those moments work. If you know why it works the idea can also be more effectively subverted into something meaningful.
Rebel Moon is an obvious example, but even within Star Wars itself it's a problem. "I am your Father" is amazing and is really memorable but it doesn't work because "it's so cool that the villain is his dad". It's a moment that contextualises so much for the character's motivation and goals. Even one movie later Luke and Leia are sibilings now and... do we really care?
It's something which Star Wars fans (and at this point also some of its creators) don't seem to be able to learn either. There's so much theorising (and teasing) about potential family connections but without any groundwork for how to make such a revelation meaningful.
I can't wait for Zack's 14 hour director cut to reveal that the water girl that almost got wrapped by the soldiers was secretly Martian Manhunter all along, tying this poetic story together somehow
Peak cinema
Rebel Moon was the name of his sled.
I can't wait for all the in-real-time walking scenes.
I'm waiting for Sofia Boutella to finally fire her agent. Mygawd, she only starred in one good movie.
Truely cinema of our time.
The plot felt like an RPG where you pick up side characters along the way, but with just the cutscenes and none of the gameplay
That’s an insult to those RPG’s.
😂😂😂😂😂❤❤❤
There WAS a game like that, I forgot the name though
It was missing the cut scenes too.
@@ArariaKAgelessTravellerLike A Dragon?
They really told ChatGPT to put Star Wars and Seven Samurai together
With a bit of Warhammer40k sprinkled on top
Doesn't ChatGPT do what Lucas did though?
ChatGPT is at least quick to the point, whereas Synder is tedious.
@@DenysBuryi As explained in the video, A New Hope took many inspirations to tell a story in a new way, instead of just taping a bunch of things together.
Star Wars already was inspired by Kurosawa films so not a bad idea.
Unfortunately expecting Hollywood not to ruin good ideas in this day and age is expecting a lot.
10:15 best way I’ve seen those two covers described.
Reznor’s version is a suicide note.
Cash’s is a eulogy.
That is exactly right. the Reznor version was the final track on the album called "The Downward Spiral". It was like Trent had reached the end of the spiral.
And he's still alive lol. Like a moody teenager asking for attention
@brianbadonde9251 it's a concept album telling a story...
17:01 After that scene with the giant bird creature was over, I remember saying out loud "That was just the scene from How To Train Your Dragon but bad."
Lol, you're absolutely right
@@TheCloserLook whole rebel moon is "that was just from **** but bad"
Or from Harry Potter.
funny i thought of the first avatar XD
@@Sanliontiger Avatar suffers from the same issue exposed in this video
I'll always remember this quote from George Lucas. When ILM was making the Hoth Battle scene for The Empire Strikes Back, Joe Johnston (the storyboarder for the scene) was having a discussion with Lucas on what the scene should be (this was before the script was even finished). Lucas suggested that Johnston and company take influence from ice battle scene in the Sergie Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky (1938). But Lucas speciffically instructed Johnston saying "I don't want it to look like this, I want it FEEL like this".
Which ended up making it more impactful!
the beauty of SW is that it lifts so many references and remixes them altogether, it becomes something entirely new and entirely familiar.
You'd be surprised about how many movies do this.
Most movies will straight out STEAL scenes from other movies, but you wouldn't notice because the emotions that it conveys are unique to the film itself.
Ehhhhh it was too obvious in most cases. SW is not terribly creative and it’s painful at times.
@@nemowindsor8724 that was always true. the OG SW was a generic sci-fi movie.... or what people back then saw as a generic sci-fi movie. Nowadays it's this weird retro thing that still has that era's aesthetics.
That's the idea he's getting at when he says great poets steal and make the work better.
@@nemowindsor8724 TBF, SW was the first someone really took all the new film technology at the time to make a space epic.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." As a student of classical music, I was taught that Stravinsky said this! 😅
They're all wrong - I said this quote!
I feel like you could make a good analogy using Legos as well.
That's the beauty of this line: it is attributed to great artists
Wrong, it's from Thomas "Tomska" Ridgewell.
No I said it
rebel moon is like trying to build a brick wall without cement you’re stacking all of the bricks on top of each other but not reinforcing them, or binding them together with cement so eventually no matter what it will all collapse
With blurry shots
The Cement that's missing in it is the Theme, which we'll find in the Directors cut. One cruicial part that's missing from the film is Sexual expression and consent.
Which is a theme that exists in the shorter version, but is not emphasised enough. The film is about owning ones own body, which is the issue every single character in the movie has.
I assume the extended version will flesh that out more. The Novel certainly does
Best part will be that the bricks will fall in slow mo
@@IronSuns lmao
@@haalandfilms1695If This version is trash many people will not come back to watch a longer version of The same movie.
Paul Schrader said that inspiration should be like shoplifting. You always wanna shoplift from a different store so you never get caught.
💀
Strangely specific
Yes, and sometimes half the fun can be smooshing two different stories together. Eg. "What if we merged two completely different Kevin Costner movies, The Bodyguard and No Way Out?" Boom, you've got the BBC miniseries Bodyguard.
My spite for this movie was elevated by the fact I watched Seven Samurai a literal week prior.
It literally felt like they were trying to make Star Wars if the plot was based off that instead of The Hidden Fortress.
Same. He missed all of the moments that make the final battle also poignant
and there is an Anime which literally did that allready....
@@jeremielebrun3637what anime is that?
@@blakemcmillan5680 "Samurai 7" from 2004
Magnificent Seven, and freaking Battle Beyond the Stars did it better than Rebel Moon
Snyder's visual style was fun and interesting one time in 300, just like M Night's twist writing worked once in sixth sense. You need more than one trick.
Hey! M Night's twist worked really well in Unbreakable
@@trequor Because it wasn't merely a twist, there was actual thematic weight behind it
It worked in the village too. I know people say it's stupid but I did really blow my mind back then
@@brianbadonde9251 I mean normally I encourage people to go with their own flow but in this one specific instance I might agree with the people you know. About it being stupid.
@@shockmesane4158no, Snyders visual style was good in 2 movies, 300 and legend of the guardians. One of the most unique animated movies I’ve ever seen.
I laughed so hard when you talked about a Bug’s Life, because every time I sit down to watch a Bug’s Life I think, “Hey, why don’t I watch Galaxy Quest instead, it’s basically the same movie and it’s funnier.” So then I sit down to watch Galaxy Quest and immediately think, “Wait, let’s watch the Three Amigos instead, it’s basically the same movie and it’s funnier.” And then I’m happy I did because the “My Little Buttercup” scene makes me laugh every. single. time.
bugs life IS seven samurai down to specific sentences
Galaxy Quest is better than both of those movies
@@randomguy6679let's not get crazy
@@brianbadonde9251 Yeah, people get upset if you're too truthful.
farly Farly FARly FARLY...HAFAAAAARRRR! 💀💥🔫
22:39 - I’m far from the first one to point this out, but that moment in FOTR is a beautiful demonstration of how to use slow motion correctly. Up to that point, Boromir’s fighting has been shown at normal speed to show off his strength and courage as he fights the Uruk-Hai. It gets our hopes up, as a flawed man strives to redeem himself after being tempted by the Ring (to the point of almost killing Frodo). Then the arrows start to pierce him, the scene goes into slow motion, and we realize that Boromir is doomed. The lingering reaction shots of him wincing in pain as each arrow hits home use slow motion to emphasize the tragedy and sorrow of a brave man paying with his life while trying to atone for his mistakes. The visual technique wasn’t used just because Peter Jackson thought it looked cool. It was used for specific, story-based reasons, which was why it had so much emotional impact.
Another great example: the Matrix Trilogy. In the first movie, the shot of Morpheus staggering and falling after being punched into a bathroom wall by Agent Smith is in slow motion not just because the Wachowskis thought it looked cool, but because it emphasizes the peril our heroes face. In the sparring scene, we saw Morpheus mop the floor with Neo. So it’s jarring, and deeply frightening, to then see Morpheus get smacked around like a piñata - and the slow motion in that specific moment after Smith punches him and he flies backwards into the wall, collapsing to the floor in visible pain, helps emphasize that. Later, in the subway duel, the shots of Agent Smith punching holes in the concrete pillar are shown in slow motion - once again, to graphically display how overmatched Neo is and to heighten the tension.
In the highway scene in Reloaded, there’s a slow motion shot in which Morpheus uses a katana to slice through the tires of the Albino Twins’ car, then spins around holding the sword in one hand while using the other to hold a Glock 18 while mag-dumping into the car’s gas tank as it flips over. The moment works so well not just because it looks cool, but because it’s the satisfying conclusion to an entire sequence in which the Twins have been relentlessly chasing Morpheus, Trinity, and the Keymaker; and almost killing them too many times to count. It’s a thrilling “yeah, how do ya like me now?!?” payoff after several minutes of unrelenting tension at the hands of two seemingly invincible enemies.
In other words: take notes, Zack!
Meanwhile, in Rebel Moon: slo-mo farming!
Zack taking notes: "Disrupt the flow with more slow-motion where it makes the least sense possible, got it"
Related: it's easier to get away with lifting ideas in the 1970s with an audience that only has books and three channels of network TV than it is in 2023 when just about any piece of media made in the last fifty years is instantly available online. But as you say, some do it far better than others. :)
It's the difference between an excited "I see what you did there!" and a bored "I see what you did there..."
Every year as more stuff comes out, original ideas are harder to find!
But also it is easier to notice the copied ideas if the work copied is popular.
And copying a work to make another in the same genre is a bad idea.
Copying Star Wars to make a Star Wars movie/clone is the dumbest idea possible.
@@oliverford5367 You don't need originality for the sake of originality--trying too hard to outfox the audience just gives you the last season of Game of Thrones. People are okay with knowing where a story is going if the ride is fun, and the familiar beats are executed well. "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" is a good example--we kind of know where the story is going, and it's very obvious how it tugs on our heartstrings, but most people enjoyed it anyway because the story was told well, with sincerity and good performances.
@@paulgibbon5991 On the other hand, Rebel Moon is familiar and people call it an SW rip off. There needs to be some originality in the premise.
there's probably a crossover fanfic out there that does what rebel moon wants to do, better than snyder ever could
I think you're 100% right
Thanks for reminding the audience that all plot points are a variation on a theme. "Creativity is not having ideas pop out of nowhere.... Creativity is making connections between already existing ideas that nobody has made before..." I absolutely love it? Thanks a million!
Also worth considering that Luke looking at the planets was probably also inspired (intentionally or not) by Christina's World, a painting of a farm girl. With maybe a bit of Wizard of Oz thrown in in the acting. As far as I know, the girl in Rebel Moon CHOSE to be there, so that's not her emotion set.
Those weren't planets, those were suns.
@@Edax_Royeaux With something unusually unique added to the mix to top it off!
@@Edax_Royeaux Fair enough.
She didn't choose to be there, but she definitely doesn't want to leave
She was on the run. I don´t think she cared much about where she was, as loong as it was far enough from Imperial Forces. Deserter/fugitive/veteran/trauma survivor. So yeah, no, her mindset would have been a little different from Luke´s.
I remember Trent Reznor said “Hurt use to be my favorite NIN song, now it’s my favorite Johnny Cash.”. Cash really did right by that song.
12:52 Steve Jobs says "good artists copy, great artists steal." But the original quote at 13:05 says "great poets imitate (synonym for "copy"), whereas small ones steal".
I think Jobs misunderstood the quote or mixed it up.
Can't believe no one picked up on this. Two very different quotes.
using the screenwipe transition at 5:57 after mentioning it earlier was so good and made me chuckle
It's not Star Wars without a screenwipe.
I didn't know those movie existed at all somehow, and just seeing the title here now i thought "did i somehow miss a whole star wars movie coming out?"
A while ago I decided to read the Barsoom series, the adventures of John Carter on Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. When reading it I constantly thought: 'oh, so that is where George Lucas got that from...'.
It is said that the eventual John Carter Of Mars movie was made way too late, because by then everyone had already ripped off the books for their own movies.
@@originaluddite I think the Barsoom series could still be made into a tv series, covering all the eleven books, if it were made by a director who has a passion for the source material, like Peter Jackson had for Lord of the Rings.
@@Johnny-Thunder I really should read some of them. I've only read some of his Pellucidar stuff.
And not only Lucas. When I was reading about Atmosphere Factory, I immediately remembered ‘Total Recall’ ending.
@@lastfullast8819 It's a shame then that Edgar Rice Burroughs is not generally remembered as the founder of science-fiction in the way Tolkien is to fantasy.
Zack Snyder makes badass visuals and action scenes, but dear god if he's freaking awful at writing. Bro seriously needs actual competent writers to help him write good stories.
Too true
Agreed.
Also, his epic shots get overshadowed by his overuse of slow-motion. There is never a cool slowmo moment for me because he does it so often I get annoyed or burst out laughing each time
It is worth noting that the only two Snyder movies that credit him as the cinematographer are Rebel Moon and Army of the Dead. Rebel Moon feels like a parody, a reckless abuse of the style that Snyder is known for, and Army of the Dead is genuinely one of the most visually unpleasant movies I've ever watched. Just some food for thought.
@@megashark1013 Army of the Dead was so hyped up and when I watched it, it was just disappointing...
Your explanation of "Inspiration vs Plagarism" is why I don't agree with people that Star Wars is a ripoff of Dune.
It's also just not a rip off, people who say that have just outed themselves of having an extremely surface level understanding of storytelling. There's a desert planet. That's it. That's where the inspiration ends largely. Dune is a vastly different story than star wars.
Yeah, it’s insane that people think that, and sometimes people even call Dune a rip off of Star Wars
People who thinks Star Wars is a ripoff of Dune never read Dune lmao because HOW?
I've never even seen Dune and I even know that's actual insanity. Things can be similar without being copies of the other
@@mailliww Dune can’t be a rip off of Star Wars because the Dune novel came out over a decade before the first Star Wars film was released.
12:47 Adding something to your story because it's cool is like throwing a pit of paint at a wall because you like the color red. Okay, cool, you've got red on your wall, but you need to finish painting the rest of the wall so it fits together. Otherwise all you've got is a splatter. There's nothing necessarily wrong with adding something just because it's cool, but you need to fill in the story around it to fit with that.
What I found interesting was that this isn’t just a Star Wars copy but a warhammer copy as well
Yeah, it feels more like Warhammer
I got MAJOR ‘Dune’ vibes from it. A poor man’s ‘Dune’… even David Lynch’s version is still far superior.
I, so badly, wanted this movie to be good. Visuals were really awesome but other than that… wow.
The worst pancake pile of stale cliches and stereotypes and overused tropes ever. The introduction with the honest, friendly, serene, good poor innocent farmer village...blaargghs, guys, really, give me a break, this is not what a hardworking life looks like, not remotely. ....
Not surprising Zack Snyder is an awful filmmaker.
Zack needs a better scriptwriter.
@@har5814 Zack needs a scriptwriter.
“This is not a hardworking life looks like” what the hell do u mean? This supposed to be some “harsh truth”’ moment?
I think the issue here is that Snyder took (and I do emphasize on the word, *took* ) from Seven Samurai and Star Wars is that both have different levels of stakes and scale. One takes place on the fate of a single village and the other on the fate of a galaxy. One intimate, the other on a *literally* universal scale. In isolation, either works. But when you push both into one story, It’s protecting a village *and* fighting an empire. Things don’t mesh. Like for instance, why does this village matter? Why does the empire want to take the surplus food from this one village when it supposedly has many other villages and vassals it could take resources from? Why does the empire wait for 10 weeks to attack the village and not just attack right now? Why should Kora even have any concern for this village, when her beef is more so with the empire than the safety of her village? But most importantly, why should I care about this tiny village in this wide-spanning galaxy? This movie seems way more interested in making a universe that *sounds* cool on paper, than a coherent one. But instead what is made is a world that is too vast to be intimate, but too shallow to explore anything. Or in other words: *wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.*
Speaking of borrowing I think I saw somewhere that Kurosawa was inspired to make movies like Seven Samurai by Westerns. They tend to be about one town, one ranch, one small fort, one stagecoach and one small in the scheme of things villain. They are not epics. Now it’s possible to set a western in the SW universe, just keep the empire away from the protagonists and keep the stakes less than the fate of the galaxy . But Zac cannot do that.
This is a problem I consistently come across when I worldbuild in interstellar/galactic settings. Space is just too damn big and technology would logically be too advanced for problems we deal with in the real world to exist in a post-scarcity one.
The thing is you could potentially make it revolve around something so small if this village had access to a vital resource.
Perhaps they would be only a fee left with the technology and skills needed to refine something that runs their ships, and no not coal. Though even literal coal miners would’ve made more sense than grain.
It’s like Snyder copy pasted the bit in Seven Samurai where the bad guys want the grain with a note to replace grain with something rare and science-fictiony then just forgot to.
23:32 that's a good point. Synder fundamentally does not respect other movies or artists. There were all those BvS and Watchmen interviews where he talks about how he didn't care about comic books unless they has sex or rape scenes in them.
Or how "Batman could get raped in prison on my movie"
He really has then juvenile belief that art isn't important unless it's 'mature' and his definition of mature is just violence, or as it was eleuently put "cool scenes"
He thinks that is the highest form of cinema and they just KEEP GIVING HIM MONEY
“[Zack Snyder] didn’t care about comic books unless they have sex or rape scenes in them.”
Thank God he never got the job to adapt Garth Ennis’ ‘The Boys’! Can you imagine how much more awful it would be if he did?
13:11 fun fact: the background music for the MTV "don't pirate stuff" ad was itself pirated to use in the ad
This video was the most helpful to me yet! I've been so afraid of copying others in my project that I usually avoid seeing other media altogether, for fear that they'll taint any "original" ideas I have. The more I tie ideas into my project, the more I realize it's been done before, and the more discouraged I get! But you've given me a new perspective on it now. I'll try to accept inspiration from now on, while conveying my ideas in my own way! Thanks for the advice
Some of the greatest stories ever told have been the result of writers wanting to put their own spin on a particular idea. An example, one of my favorite books of last year was Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson has been open about his inspiration for the book- namely that he watched The Princess Bride with his wife and was disappointed by how inactive a character Buttercup was (he still loved the movie; put the pitchforks down). So he wondered: "What would happen in the Princess Bride if, after hearing that Wesley got kidnapped by pirates Buttercup set out to rescue him"? And that was the basic inspiration for Tress of the Emerald Sea, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts! So don't be afraid to take inspiration, my friend. Rebel Moon fails not merely because it copied Star Wars, but because it does so without doing anything interesting of its own.
One of my favourite creators is hideo kojima, and he himself admitted being inspired by "escape from New york, " "terminator," and "full metal jacket," which he used to create metal gear. If you play the metal gear games having seen these movies, it's very clear where he took inspiration...
...that being said, he didnt JUST do "escape from new york" but kojimas version, which is why metal gear is a beloved franchise
Kojima admitting he might have been inspired by late 20th century american cinema is the understatement of the last two centuries.
I'm always excited when "The Closer Look" uploads, I just find his takes so intriguing!
Glad you like them!
@@TheCloserLookYou're about the only analyst who gets the level of abstraction right. I find Save the Cat/Hero's Journey structures too vague because they try to be all encompassing. You analyze things at the right level, seeing the patterns between things without trying to build universal structures: which aren't that useful.
I watched Rebel Moon stoned with my dad and I got the vibe that every scene was written, directed, and edited by a different group of film students as a $166 million end of term project.
I never thought I would hear someone say that they were stoned with their dad in my life
@@jethromcgl3697it’s not *that* uncommon, i knew people who got their weed from their parents
Wake up babe, funny movie man just posted!
Damm you beat me to it
I have another six minutes in the video, but I wanted to write this while I was thinking about it.
I think this movie is the one that finally showed me exactly why Zack Snyder does have Talent as a Director, but why he is utterly at sea in a rowboat as a writer.
He does have the ability to identify moments and sequences from things that he likes, and can replicate much of the pacing and aesthetic and style of those things he likes, but this only works well from a directorial perspective if you actually have a narrative which functions in a beautifully impactful, cohesive way before you ever have to commit it to the screen.
For example, if he were given a script of rebel moon that was an excellent story, I think his ability to reference and hijack elements from other things would serve to elevate the subject matter as it is translated into a visual medium. But when he is coming up with the story as if** it is already just a storyboard for a visual translation**, it completely disintegrates because there is nothing underneath it.
It’s like he’s an architect who tried to build a building without ever hiring a single engineer. Not the best approach for building a building which has any utility outside of inevitably killing everyone inside of it.
16:18... wait a damn minute... that's the Three Amigos! 😮
But with insects
It’s The Bug’s Life.
I love the way you put the person reading a quote at the bottom as well as their channels icon. Ive always hated having to cross reference who was reading it. Especially if its someone whose voice i recognized. A lot of people are getting better about this but i like yours the best so far since it highlights the person reading it. Feels less like a neat little cameo and more like a way to help cross-promote if only just a smidge.
20:17 that small but subtle Windows XP log off sound effect killed me hahaha
This video brings to mind how Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, and then Spec Ops: the Line each pulled so directly from the one before it. Maybe it had more to do with taking advantage of their medium, or just adapting the same story to the contemporary. But it's interesting to see the juxtaposition between them.
In this example we can also see what The Closer Look is talking about
HoD and AN (I'm not familiar with Spec Ops so I can't say anything about it) have the same plot of "a guy makes his way down a river in search of a charismatic mad genius lost in a crazy, savage land". However, not only Apocalypse adapts it wisely to a new setting (as in, makes sure the plot doesn't feel out of place), but both stories use the plot to explore different themes: while they both explore the idea of losing oneself in the wild, Heart of Darkness is also about the dark side of European colonialism, while Apocalypse Now is about the senseless brutality of Vietnam War.
Rebel Moon is the plot of Seven Samurai copied and pasted into a space opera setting without any consideration of how much it changes the situation. As a result the whole thing is disjointed and messy. For example: the idea of defeating a gang of XVI-century bandits by hiring a handful of capable warriors? Believable and reasonable. Defeating a garrison of a galaxy-spanning empire with the same strategy? Yeah, you have a week before more more soldiers come and they nuke your village from orbit.
TLDR: the difference between stealing a plot to tell your own story and just stealing a plot
Gladiator is a perfect example of this because it took a lot of inspiration from Kubrick's Spartacus. There's a lot of shared concepts and character arcs. But it didn't just copy scenes and story beats. It innovated upon the original concept and did something different. And few people even noticed the similarities. That's the point. Take inspiration, then innovate. Do not imitate.
That arc is fucking trash what are you talking about. Every character arc while she was recruiting was incredibly stupid and shallow. Christ I've never been so bored.
I've always liked the dialog between the fighter pilots in A New Hope (and Rogue 1), it just seemed more realistic than what you see in other star wars movies where its more like a bunch of teenagers making sarcastic quips at each other. The tone is serious and professional, they're communicating useful information. The fact that its lifted from a WW2 movie word for word doesn't surprise me.
What? Which Star Wars movie has pilots sounding like sarcastic teenagers other then the shitty ST?
There's an episode of Clone Wars where Anakin and Obiwan end up in a farming planet where the people are being tormented by space pirates, the people on the planet hired some mercenaries to fight off the pirates but eventually they realize they can't depend on mercenaries to keep the pirates away forever and so it's decided that Anakin and Obiwan are going to teach the farmers how to fight so they can defend themselves from the pirates and any other threat that comes to the planet. There's a lot of interesting questions that this episode raises like, is it really a good idea to introduce warfare to a society that was so peaceful before? They'll use it to defend themselves now but will they use it to attack others in the future?
Rebel Moon seems to me like a more dilluted and hurried version of that one episode of Clone Wars.
Not considering the fact that Hondo (the pirate and recurring character that was the villain of the episode) was a much much better villain that general whatever in Rebel Moon
you mean seven samurai.
@@whysoserious652 Yeah, as far as I'm concerned that episode of Clone Wars (went back to check, it's called Bounty Hunters) is the definitive sci-fi adaptation of seven samurai for me. Filoni used to be so good, I don't know how but Disney found a way to suck all the talent out of him.
@@annika3265 wait till upcoming projects drops: 1. Harvey weinstein's ex personal assistant's show, 2. grand jedi master samurai knight King Kong godzilla Rey movie. 3. Mando and grogu movie (even after the disaster of bo katan show aka mando s3).😑😑😑 Disney kept milking star wars without zero creativity and efforts.
Zack Snyder is the filmmaker version of a little kid playing with action figures. This approach worked well in a movie like 300, where the entire thing was centered around badass Spartans fighting a specific battle against the odds. He had a loose idea to work with and nothing concrete to base things on, so going for cool moments was, well, cool.
However, the DC superheroes have very specific, lengthy, varied, and nuanced backstories that have been in the hands of countless creatives who have all contributed their ideas on who Superman and Batman are at their core. But Zack Snyder is still smashing his action figures together, so he needs to have them fight for some reason and look very cool. He ignored all the complexities and facets of these characters and just went for aesthetic.
This is also what happened in Justice League, even though his cut was better than Whedon’s, it was still an incomplete movie that shoved a bunch of characters together that almost nobody knew yet so that there could be cool moments and a reason to introduce more films. Each of these other characters needed their own films and their own space to breathe. Even Superman and Batman hadn’t gotten a chance to breathe and be people yet, and now here’s a bunch of other people you don’t know, let’s watch them fight Steppenwolf and the Parademons!
There’s so much depth to be had, and Zack Snyder fundamentally misunderstands that at every turn. 300 didn’t need that. But superheroes need at least a little bit.
Brilliantly put.👍
I'd add that Snyder doesn't appear to understand dramatic stakes. His DC movies were ambitious in elaborating on the heroes' capabilities, but there's no sense of what's in the balance if they fail. Instead it's stories with false starts and shifting motivations.
My dad has been saying the thing about Star Wars being basically just The Hidden Fortress in a different font for YEARS now and for some reason I never looked into it. Thank you for finally making me understand exactly what he was talking about! Great video as always! 👏👏👏
not really because he makes the common mistake of assuming that Princess Leia is based on the Princess from The Hidden Fortress when its Luke who is. Han, Chewbacca and Leia have no counterpart and the plot is basically completely different by the time they get to the Death Star when it starts ripping of a different Kurosawa film (Tsubaki Sanjuro) until it just turns into Dam Busters.
As someone who is writing my own book, I find George Lucas so inspiring. When he made Star Wars, he just made a version of all the things he liked. You could feel the love and passion for his interests in Star Wars. I love that part of Lucas. No matter how insane bad his writing was, you could feel the love and creativity for his art on screen.
Sincerity is so underestimated as a key part of good scripts.
Holy cow! How did I never see the Bug's Live and 7 Samurai connection 😂
This writing philosophy of "see a bunch of cool things you like and copy them into your story with no cohesion" has been annoying me for years now, ESPECIALLY when the work in question professes to be "heavily inspired by" or "a spiritual sequel to" something, yet borrows its most superficial, visual elements. Roadside Picnic is my favourite sci-fi novel and a genuine literary masterpiece, but the pop-culture discourse around it has turned it into little more than a moody aesthetic. Today, whenever someone says they're "inspired by Roadside Picnic", it basically means "my story will have a spooky field where supernatural stuff happens" - themes, philosophy and compelling character arcs be damned.
10:44 - look at Top Gun: Maverick. The final act of that film is very similar to the Death Star trench run from A New Hope. But it’s still awesome, because TG:M made the effort to justify its own existence with its own unique characters, intense emotional impact, memorable dialogue, and resonant themes, ideas, and lessons. It has many similarities to Star Wars (and, of course, to the original Top Gun) but it’s still a different story.
5:00 - 633 Squadron also has some very close Trench Run parallels and is often cited by folk. I love De Havilland Mosquitoes and so should everyone else.
I was part of an international program in HS where we do research and write essays and so on. These essays would get marked by foreign professors and certificated educators.
One rule we had was if your essay exceeds 12% similarity of one source, it’s plagiarism.
wait-how was the 12% calculated? this sounds like an interesting method
Would that be the IB?
your breakdown of creativity, connections, and even "Hurt" by Cash, is so good
Maybe Synder heard about Checkovs Gun, and made a movie determined to disprove that concept.
And instead proved it entirely lmao
Do you actually know what checkovs gun is? Checkov wrote short stories, in short narratives that's when you want to eliminate all the unnecessary elements and tighten up the writing. When you include detailed and don't address them, that can be used for effect too, like a red herring, foreshadowing for a futher installment. Or even just a thematic metaphor.
This is like divine intervention. I had this on my mind.
12:05 That's what Snyder loves to do. In BVS, it was more than obvious he saw Mad Max: Fury on Road and wanted to incorporate the desert theme but didn't know how to incorporate it well, so the result was a badly put dream sequence with Batman on broad daylight looking ridiculous.
8:09 is an absolutely brilliant but of insight.
I enjoy how the creative side works when writing, but connecting ideas, and making them matter to the characters and also remain narratively relevant, is honestly pretty hard. It's easy to get caught up in cool moments (short stories / films are a great medium for this IMO) but when done right, they are super satisfying. I appreciate that video essayists break this down, it helps with the learning aspect and also identifying it in other creative media.
Great video as always!
God, that scene from Mos Esley. I think the fake CGI dinosaur mounts are actually different fake CGI dinosaur mounts than the last time I saw this.
He changed it TWICE?
he changed it a lot more than twice. I wouldn't mind D+ having a whole large options menu for which version of star wars you want to watch given how much George fucked around
fwiw I remember a version of them just driving in and the "several shorts of them dodging shit in mos eisley with comic relief in all of them" version, which I think was part of the "low poly jabba" 20 year remaster
12:45 nailhead, meet hammer.
"but only if it managed to break free from the shadow of the movie that inspired it"
Creativity is the art of hiding your information.
Rebel moon feels like, no, is definitely a rushed one shot ttrpg campaign where the dm has spent weeks planning each character introduction scene > waste too much time on one character > remember that they are promising a one shot > rushes through every thing else.
Great video, was shocked you didn't mention Magnificent Seven when talking about Seven Samurai.
I think it says something that Snyder’s best movies are the ones that are adaptations of someone else’s story lol
12:27 This is my entire beef with Snyder's filmography; he simply cannot make a film without it feeling like a 10-year-old boy repeatedly and excitedly saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if..."
Wouldn’t be a surprise if Disney sues them for copying their homework.
Disney: “You’re trying to kidnap that which I have rightfully stolen.”
Well, Rebel Moon was originally written to be an R rated Star Wars movie, but Disney rejected it because they didnt WANT to make an R rated star wars movie. Another producer wanted the rights though, so Snyder decided to change some details and make it anyway. It might've been pretty dope if the original vision wasn't changed
Very good video BUT I can't believe you got all the way through it without talking about Battle Beyond The Stars from Roger Corman, who was the first person to say "What if we crossed Star Wars with Seven Samurai?" OR talk about The Three Amigos, which is where A Bug's Life got its bumbling actors turned heroes slant.
20:18 - random example: Michael Mann’s Heat. That movie is quite long, but it never really feels like it because each scene has a logical connection to the one that came before it while properly setting up the one that comes after it. The focus may be split between two protagonists, but the pacing is sharp enough, and the writing is disciplined enough, to make each element in the plot serve a purpose that is both logically sound and dramatically satisfying. No element is wasted. Nothing is in Heat just because Michael Mann thought it looked cool. It’s “cause and effect” storytelling at its finest, with the consequences of each character’s choices being both clear and compelling.
{spoilers below, for a movie that came out in 1995…}
Cheritto volunteering for the bank heist because “for me, the action is the juice” is a choice consistent with his character, while also sealing his doom. McCauley choosing to confront Waingro is also in character, since it’s a matter of personal honor to avenge his friends (who died as consequence of Waingro’s psychopathic behavior), and a matter of professional responsibility to clean up loose ends - and we’ve seen multiple times that honor (albeit, a ruthless, streetwise honor born out of surviving Folsom Prison) and professionalism matter deeply to McCauley. But this choice directly leads to his final, fatal showdown with Hanna.
This meticulous structure of escalating choices and consequences, without the distraction of any extraneous plot points or character moments, is why the downtown shootout is so memorable. Every prior scene has been steadily building towards this confrontation, taking one more step closer to bringing the literal cops and robbers to exchanging fire, while fleshing out their motivations for doing so. By the time Shiherlis is strutting out to the getaway car, unaware that he’s about to see LAPD officers pointing guns at him, the tension is almost unbearable because none of the prior story beats have been wasted. Every minute of runtime before the shootout was well spent on the specific plot points and character developments needed to bring us to this gunfight - nothing more, nothing less.
So when Shiherlis starts to drop brass and all hell breaks loose, it’s not just *pew pew* because Mann loves him some gunplay. It’s the eruption of a conflict that’s been brewing the entire movie - or at least from the moment Waingro murdered the armored truck guard, setting off the chain reaction that unfolded for the rest of the movie.
Short version: Michael Mann is a great storyteller. Zack Snyder needs to sit in his classroom and take notes.
(Sorry - I love ranting about my favorite movies. Especially Heat!) 😂🤣
Hildegard von Blingen’s Bardcore rendition of ‘Hurt’ was very good and unique also. The accompanying artwork links the song to a kingly character (possibly The King of the Dead from LotR) who has passed into death and un-death, lamenting his betrayal of his allies and the ruination of his kingdom. The lyrics “my empire of dirt” hit a bit different in that version.
One of my cats did a massive spew on the carpet tonight. Like it ate an entire serving of tinned food in one go and just vomited it all up again in the middle of the hall. Having to clean that up was more enjoyable than sitting through this movie.
😹😹😹 Glad I turned this movie off, I was soooo bored
Something worth noting is that Halo Reach also took the idea of 7 Samurai (they were going to do 7 Spartan's and Noble 8)... but they DID remove some extra characters because they couldn't squeeze them all in.
Honestly, the Star Wars-Gladiator blend could be a genius story. Maybe instead of defending her village, Cora’s goal could be revenge on the empire. She recruits all of the cool side characters because all of them have two things in common: nothing left to live for, and a grudge against the empire. But instead of bringing them all together in a Justice League style team-up, she has them work separately so that the empire has the impression of multiple rebellions, not just one. So we have a gladiator story, a samurai story, a How To Train Your Dragon story, and a Star Wars story all rolled into one cohesive, glorious “fuck you, evil empire”. It could be great. Also, there is a shortage of female strategic masterminds in mainstream entertainment, and I think changing Cora’s character to be more of a strategist would make her stand out against a backdrop of skilled fighters. Great video, as always!
Sounds good; are you gonna write it?
@@joringedamke5597 As soon as I finish college and the nine other novels I have in my head! It’s definitely going in my permanent file, though
Great essay! Rebel Moon was so bad that I was literally predicting scenes before they started.
A movie with Kora, the robot, and maybe a farmer would be a much better film! You're right there.
(Though, I would argue that A Bug's Life is actually The Three Amigos.)
16:09 - you’re totally right!! Bug’s Life was one of my favorite childhood movies, and I hadn’t even considered this until you brought it up. Thanks so much! 😄
PS: Hopper is still one of the best Pixar villains of all time. Yes, I will die on this hill.
No need to die on it, because we all agree with you.
I was so confused that we just left part of the group in the village. it would have made so much sense that half the group was already assembled with Kora, the grain guy, the Jimmy bot, the kind soldier, and even the young sweet girl who bonded with the bot. but nope, only kora and grain guy go (i literally cant even remember his name or anyone else from the final group) I know the next movie will bring them back, but it felt so weird to develop these relationships to the point I thought for sure they were going to be the main crew only to drop them for the next movie and force the audience to care about a completely new set of people. Even Den! he's described as a great hunter and it seems like they were trying out a love triangle situation with him, kora, and grain guy, so including him could have been interesting as well. It can work in other stories, but the fact that the entire group are basically strangers just doesn't work in getting me to care about them. they have no connection to each other so why would I care about any of them. Its been said a good story can be ruined by bad characters, and good characters can make a bad story worth watching. this movie failed on both fronts
It was amazing Snyder tried to set up a love triangle that…was straight up abandoned in five minutes.
Crazy to think that if Lucas had made Flash Gordon, there may never have been a Star Wars.
One of my creative writting mentors once said "All artist are thieves; the good ones will create something new, the best will make you forget they're thieves in the first place". Now i know where he picked that up.
Sucks you probably won't see this, but, even Einstein said, "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
The human brain do not make a completely new thing out of nothing, it took from something they know then twist it so in a way became something new.
When making art we still took inspirations from the real world we can't make a new thing out of nothing.
@@WaltzerCerealMuncher Just say it like Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
@@Azradok you know a lot of quotes from scientist.
@@WaltzerCerealMuncher I have a PhD in physics. It comes with the territory :)
@@Azradok you're smart,do you write any paper?
As an author with a half-finished novel, you inspire me to pick up pen again and keep refining and finishing my story with the wisdom you pass on to me.
Hey, can we get an analysis on Person Of Interest?
I know it's a TV Show, but it was ahead of its time.
That "no cohesion" thing has also long been at the core of how I've explained to people when putting something common into a fantasy or sci-fi work feels like a cliche.
It's when you put a per-existing popular thing from another work into your own work, but it no longer serves the function to the world that it had originally, and is not given a new function or role to fill.
It's just in the work because it's cool.
creativity is about creating. mashing ideas together is just that.
19:22 that sound traveled from one ear to the other and it surprised me so much it felt like I got shot by it.
For me, Snyder peaked with "Dawn of the Dead" and I'm sure that is in large part due to him not being the writer. Glad I didn't waste my time with this one, though I can't help but wonder if he borrowed anything from the low-budget king of Star Wars/Seven Samurai rip offs, "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980). I half expected to see that movie show up in your video. ;)
Two other things I will add:
Reading and knowing history are equally important in storytelling!
As a reader of sci-fi, I've started to notice so many similarities with Star Wars. it's not crazy to say a young George Lucas would have read these same classic sci-fi (and fantasy) novels. For example, I'm reading Ursula Le Guin's stuff. In one of her books (the left hand of darkness), there is a literal land that is called the Sith ! In her Earthsea fantasy series, there are wizards (duh), but the topic of light vs dark, good vs evil, is very prevalent. In another Le Guin novel, the Word for World is Forest, the Athsheans are literally described like the Ewoks from SW (mind you this book came out in 1972)! This is also the book that seems to have inspired James Cameron's Avatar (it's literaly the exact same story).
There's also huge inspiration from the Dune books, and Asimov's Foundation (heavy emphasis on politics, mention of an Emperor, mention of a planet called Corellia, mention of Inquisitors, etc.). There's also the typical hero's journey from The Hobbit (hesistant hero gets pulled into an adventure and has an old wizard as a mentor). So George knows his classics (or at least his writing team did as well). This also includes the truest of the classics, the Odyssey and the Illiad.
There are also sooooo many cool historical events, some that are super unknown to the wider public, and as a history student I have jotted down so many ideas from the stuff I learn in school or read in articles. Watching movies to get visual inspiration is one thing. Reading books to understand proper storytelling is another. Knowing history to base your stuff in reality pulls everything together!
I only watched Rebel Moon for Charlie Hunnam
You know, it's worth noting that A New Hope was the only Star Wars film to feature realistic flight combat chatter and it just so happens to be the one ripping off all its dialogue from another movie. I always thought it was interesting how nuanced the world of Star Wars was, but the longer it exists the less realistic it gets
Check out the old EU books. It works pretty well. If you want fighter pilot stuff, check out the X-Wing series.
I would say a big thing for me is all the star wars characters are very memorable in their own way. No rebel moon character is memorable; at the start of the second movie i had forgotten everyone but kora’s name. Thank you for the great video!
Great video! I didn't realise quite just how much Lucas derived from for A New Hope, but I think that's part of why Rebel Moon is so criticised.
Back when A New Hope came out, people didn't have such open access to every film ever (or analysis of every film ever) like we do today. Unless you'd just seen Dambusters before watching A New Hope, or happened to recognise something similar and have a copy at home that you could play to check, you wouldn't have known it was derivative. And even if you did realise, it's not like that had social media to tell everyone all about it.
And let's face it, films like Dambusters never had, arguably couldn't have, the rabid fanbases like certain big franchises do today. Star Wars got away with it back then because it could. Today's filmmakers have to be far more subtle in pulling from their inspirations, just because audiences are far larger and far more connected to media than they ever used to be.
It doesn't change the point you're making, but it's interesting how the context of the era something comes out can have such an impact on it's reception.
the lack of rabid fanbases cuts both ways. people take from star wars to enjoy its mass appeal. lucas took from dambusters despite its lack of appeal, because it inspired him. similar to tarantino taking things from obscure films due to their content, not marketability.
Probably worth noting that the “new spin” that A Bug’s Life puts on the Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven plot had already been put on it by The Three Amigos (and would again be put on it by Galaxy Quest later)
"[Rebel Moon's characters] are all equally valuable to the story", as in not at all. Just a bunch of cardboard standees.
21:11 In "Sucker Punch" I really was not interested in the action scenes because the audience was told from the start that they were not real and the CGI made them look fake too. So I just checked out for them. 5 minutes of actual story later and the movie was over. Only then did I realize the point of the movie was just a bunch of action scenes that had no place in a real movie so they just cobbled them together with a thin veiled excuse of a story. But by the time I realized it, the movie was over and I had not paid attention to anything.
Zack Snyder really bought into his own hype coming from his cult of fanboys and lives under the delusion that he’s some kind of artistic genius whose films have layers of deeper hidden meanings. And if you criticize one of his films or think it sucks then you just didn’t “get it.”
I started watching your videos for fun and because I like watching videos that make fun of movies I don't like, but I've started applying your advice to stories I write for fun!
Snyder started his career as music video director. What do you expect? His talent is all about "cool moments" and that's it.
We also already had a good retelling of seven samurai in a sci-fi eske anime in the early 2000s called Samurai 7.
17:01 That's Harry (Tarzan) Potter riding the hippogriff.
Also also regarding the robot: he kiiinda reminded me visually of zenyatta from overwatch (before I looked him up to remember what he looks like lol), who is also a robot that advocates for peace
I'm definitely gonna read "the hero with a thousand faces", i tend to like the books my favorite youtubers recommend