What Makes a Story Interesting?
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- Опубліковано 25 чер 2024
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Which would you rather watch: a poor dude buying groceries or dozens of military ships disembarking soldiers while fighting off nonstop aerial attacks? And could the former even be written in an interesting way? Let's find out!
By examining Peter Morgan's strange choices in "The Crown", we'll see if what makes a story interesting depends uniquely on its subject matter or something else. Hint: Ken Loach is always a bad influence.
And let's analyze John Huston and Arthur Miller's "The Misfits", starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, to see how a great writer can turn ordinary people into fascinating characters (and how a great director can frame them pristinely).
00:00 Dreaming of Falklands
01:42 Waking up for Fagan
03:21 What Makes a Story Interesting?
05:10 Brian Cox's Robert Mckee's Epic Interlude ("Adaptation")
05:58 Frequent Unusual Events
07:14 The Misfits
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Another problem The Crown had was that in addition to being boring, they never factored lighting into their budget. The whole damned episode looks like it was shot in the dark. Is that supposed to be “cinematic”?
It has to look dreary like a rainy day so that you know it's England. Just like how Mexico is actually sepia toned.
It's the British way. Good colors, blue skies, good audio, good pacing just isn't their thing. It's very real tho because it's also very boring, just like real life.
Modern day "cinematography" is trash
Can't that also mean something about his internal world? Like he was seeing the world dark and bleak
I'm just a middle aged woman looking up videos to learn how to make a music video for another middle aged woman......I'm loving your channel it's giving me a lot to think about. Thanks for sharing!❤
Dear Moviewise, as a film student I gotta tell you that what your channel is one of the most useful things ever. Your videos are challenguing, informative and funny af. 👏
Thanks for existing!
Second!
Check Andrew Klavan, he's amazing.
@@victor_2216😅😅😅😅😅😅
Something that makes a story interesting is stakes. You don't need to put the world in danger, you could just add personal or relationship stakes that make things matter to the people in your story.
*What makes a story interesting especially on the first episode/chapter is when the main protagonist isn't trying....the scenario he/she is in specifically fits for them and what they stand for....*
What in the previous 3 series of The Crown suddenly made you think it was going to turn into Game of Thrones? With jets instead of dragons and penguins instead of White Walkers?
If that's what really happened, yes. Theming can go to hell when the actual real life events are that interesting
Yes, pretty much.
I find the idea that a story has to have the most dramatic, unusual events in order to be interesting and enlightening to be frankly childish. I certainly thought the same thing when I was 12.
I would even go so far as to say that if the video essayist actually expected a major war story arc within The Crown series, that also took place at the Falkland Islands, then he did not follow the series thoroughly or did not understand it.
He didn't, I think he was jesting to make a wider point about story-telling, though also there is a satirical point about the "Social Justice Crusade".
Came for the insight about movies, stayed for the excellent summary of the Falklands War.
That war contains all the ingredients for not one, but many gripping and epic stories. Two countries, in economic bad times, their glory days seemingly behind them go to war. One to assert its macho-ness and conceal its atrocities towards its own citizens (Argentina), the other to reassert itself after an afront to its smallest territory (the UK) in the face of an incredulous rest of the world, who think the Brits are clapped out. The UK has EVERYTHING to lose and it's not remotely prepared to fight on the other side of the world but finds the will do do so...that's the basis for a movie right there. If you read about how they assembled the task force, repurposed an obsolete bomber to fly the longest bombing raid in history, took a massive gamble in sinking Argentina's flagship, endured relentless bombing on its ships which they could not afford to lose...and, conversely, the story of the Argentinian pilots who had to fly what became suicide missions far from home in ageing aircraft against the British Harrier, a jet that could literally go straight up in the air to avoid being shot down, the story of Colonel H Jones sacrificing himself to ensure a desperate night battle could be won you can see the narrative possibilities...and that's just the first half of the war! Many excellent books have been written about the Falklands War, but very few films and the best of those is a TV movie called "An Ungentlemanly Act".
But, sure, let's just meander around with a guy down on his luck instead so he can have a bit of a rant about "the message".
In actuality, focusing on another of Britain's endless imperial wars would have drawn attention to some unpleasantries, which is most likely why it was glossed over.
The current ruling system in the UK is maintained by notions of British 'decency', by the idea that the UK is relatively meritocratic, and by the suggestion that this former Imperial power is somehow always the 'underdog' (US and Russian war movies routinely do this too). Other fantasies maintained by UK propaganda include: that UK media is the guardian of its democracy, and that it prizes a liberal way of life - civil liberties, freedom of thought etc.
The film-makers obviously couldn't find a way to deal with the Falklands War without dealing with the incredible jingoism and propaganda that accompanied it. And as 'modern' Britain cannot be portrayed as aggressively nationalistic - or worse, as a violent, rabid imperialist slaughtering conscripts in order to feel good about its fading power - they chose instead to make a classic 'little serf goes to plead with the Czar' fable.
Watch 'RRR' instead. Entertaining as hell - PLUS it gets the British Empire RIGHT.
I'm old enough to remember the 1970s and 80s. I was on the left and my mental space was jam packed with the right wing military juntas in Argentina, and them disappearing their political opponents. Then, April 1982, they invade a windswept back of beyond island of British people, and, in lock step, the left instantly switched to NoCriticismofArgentina. I stared agog...
Now, that would be an interesting episode.
@@Nifter71 tf is RRR?
@@LordVader1094Indian movie about a fictionalized account of two South Indian Telugu freedom fighters against the British Raj in the 1920s. Outrageously over the top movie, but it’s great, genuinely a ton of fun. I went in as the most sneering, elitist British imperialist and was hooting and cheering for the Indians against the British by the end. The movie is best experienced with friends to share in the outrageous spectacle.
The Falkland wars can't be approached by UK media cause it was an unjust and reprehensible act by the UK, aimed at maintaining control over an island territory thousands of miles away from them. The Argentine military was severely disadvantaged, primarily consisting of young and inexperienced soldiers who were sent by a dictatorial regime to their deaths. The conflict is seen as one of the most one-sided and brutal wars, resulting in a massacre.
The UK's government motives were driven by a desire to assert territorial dominance and protect strategic interests, disregarding the loss of lives and the traumatic impact on the Argentinian population. The military advantage that the UK possessed during the war further underscores the imbalance of power and the disproportionate casualties suffered by the Argentinian forces.
It becomes evident that the UK's actions in the conflict cannot be portrayed in a favorable light, and the consequences of their actions during the war are viewed as a grave injustice by almost the whole world.
It's just a very difficult subject to touch without acknowledging all this atrocity and raising a big discussion, and for a big company it would basically make the show hard to sell to many people around the globe.
No reversals. Ideally, every scene should present a reversal. Robert McKee's book 'Story' has reversal as one of his 'principles' of story-telling, meaning, if I recall, that the protagonist's sense of how things -or other people - work undergoes a change based on conflict between what he expects to happen and what actually does.
That sounds like the dogma that's screwed cinema. By the way, which great screenplays did McKee author?
@bobbyjosson4663 that is like asking how many goals has Mourinho scored lol! a better question is - who has he taught to write screenplays ? and Robert McKee's is and has been studied by great writers
This channel is criminally under subscribed.
Getting there!
It kind of shake my bones thinking of the deaths of the teenagers of my country that were forced to fight an unwinnable war, starving and freezing in a land they barely knew anything about as something exciting. I just, I don't understand how can it even be portrayed as epic or exciting.
Depends on the pov how you frame it, from the winners or the losers. Even WW1 has been romanticised for decades.
@@invisibleman4827 the only ones that lost where the young men of Argentina that died and the veterans of the UK. Tatcher and Galtieri never gave a single fuck about them and they sent them to die for their own political advance.
People want "story" like hollywood style. But that´s only could happen in the empire. Latin America has different story with Europe and UE. For them it´s just acctions and blood and "romantaicised" stories. For us, we know what happened in our contries and our people. Our narratives count.
You're small minded if you think every soldier think and feel the same as your own. This is what Bill Hader made fun of in his show Barry, when his actor colleagues translates Barry's first kill in the war as sad and regretful. What actually happens was they celebrated and congratulated Barry as he had done his job
@@stellviahohenheim you seem to know nothing of argentinian history. For your information there was a dictatorship that disappeared any type of opposition. The military was made of inexperienced 18 year olds because of the obligatory conscription. They had no training and barely any equipment or support from the mainland. 649 argentinians died against 255 british. It was a slaughter.
I agree about The Misfits being a great movie. I've seen it twice but the second time was especially brutal when you know the ending. The horse scene is heart breaking. The performances are great, Arthur Miller turned out a great script for the wife he'd soon divorce, Clark Gable was dead within a few months of the movie wrap (the stress of the final scene supposedly hastened his demise), and Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe were not long for this world either. It kind of gives added poignancy to a really taut drama full of interesting characters. The direction is fantastic and the black and whiteness in the age of colour sets it apart as well. I'd highly recommend a watch. Another great video on a top movie topic!
The glorified hissy fit at 5:11 really illustrates the utter lack of imagination and creativity that is Hollywood.
I loved this episode. They tied us into the working-class desperation of Thatcher's Britain, the reggae-ish, punkish vibe that we could hear in certain music from that time. And the final dialogue gave us an idea of how the queen still had some basic concern for people, despite how divorced her experiences were from the reality.
Yes, pretty much.
I find the idea that a story has to have the most dramatic, unusual events in order to be interesting and enlightening to be frankly childish. I certainly thought the same thing when I was 12.
I would even go so far as to say that if the video essayist actually expected a major war story arc within The Crown series, that also took place at the Falkland Islands, then he did not follow the series thoroughly or did not understand it.
@@rolanddeschain6089 “This person expects a show about the royals to be about them and events that happened involving people within their cabinet under their watch? _scoffs_ Must be a twelve year old. I’m an adult. My tastes and expectations are far superior because of it.”
Yeaaaaah, that’s how your comment comes off as being … which is just as pretentious and childish.
Apparently, depicting real life events in history that affected the royals and their cabinet is too “dramatic” and “over the top” for some of you lol. Best we stick to over-exaggerated minor events to twist the way it actually happened to portray them in a certain image that makes everything appear so positive instead - like dangling shiny keys.
The show is Astristro-Trash soap glorifying a parasitic class, meant for women, poor council estates, low grade taste and metro-sexual "men".
@@rolanddeschain6089 Than thank goodness you aren't a writer. At least you haven't matured since 12. Your point only work work for the great Italian Neo-Realism and the kitchen sink dramas of the '50s and '60s. Your last point that it is low grade trash, is well put.
Yes. It's shocking that this video essay doesn't even once acknowledge, much less attempt to engage critically, with these themes. I really love this episode of 'The Crown'.
Superb little video that I run across while looking for other stuff! Going to watch The Misfits again now!
You're absolutely right. If Bond films were about an accountant, no one would go see them--unless they were written in an interesting way.
People come back to watch Jurassic World too. How good is that franchise really?
What if it was about an ornithologist?
I've watched your other video essays, but this one I'm only 50/50 with.
The montage, man, the montage over R.M. Hey, yor channel is giving me motivation to continue with my filmmaking. But this time in 4:3 and classic directing style:)
That’s what I like to hear!
Just found your channel. You're a beast!
Caught that two-second COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO clip. Please tell me you love that film as much as I do!
Found him yesterday, have now watched 6 videos in a row
The kind of depth Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers have can't be taught in film school.
I noticed on the thumbnail to this video you've included the theatrical poster for Dark of the Sun...now THERE'S an exciting movie!
The Mule is a terrific movie.
I mean... You didn't even tried to analyze the episode you were critisizing
Can anyone tell me the name of the song that starts playing at 7:15 and at continues throughout the whole Misfits discussion?
Another great video, by the way.
Thatcher’s effect on common folk in the UK was intense
I have seen nothing of 'The Crown'...however, the title itself should indicate why the episode you mention at the start focuses on the knob who broke into the palace...where the Queen was. Queen wears a crown, 'The Crown' is (probably) primarily about the monarchy and, in regard to the Falklands conflict, the Queen would have held a purely peripheral position with the ultimate decisions being made by government/parliament. Otherwise the UK would still have a functional monarchy rather than the symbolic/hereditary one and all that historical, Cromwellian drama would have been for nothing.
A Jay Peterman reference? How can I not like this video!
Making the audience identify with the hero as he has to make difficult choices "What would you do in that situation." Bruce Dern Silent Running 1972.
Thank you thank you exactly interesting story’s and characters doing the impossible heroics in action thrills adventure and all that great stuff we don’t really see anymore these days
Also raising a question helps making a story interesting. Questions such as "what makes a story interesting?" well played
Well done! Maybe your best video!
Aristotle answered 2k+ years ago
Does anyone know the song at 3:13? Can't remember the movie it's from.
Funny is important
but True is more important than funny
When you have a funny truth then you have something.
You have something here.
Brilliant stuff
Thank you
Don’t mention it! ;)
For someone arguing for what makes a story interesting you sure chose one of the most bloated and boring examples of old school Hollywood to make your point.
On another note, I think the BEST interesting movie that successfully maintains its intruige from beginning to end is DIE HARD. A movie about a cop from New York who travels to LA to see his estranged wife who suddenly gets caught up in a hostage situation as terrorists take over the building of the company she works for during their staff Christmas party.
It is an unapologetic 80s action thriller, but a tastefully made one with an airtight no-nonsense screenplay and zero wasted characters, and is rightfully considered a classic. It is a machine of a script where every moving part has a purpose. And in spite of the plot being an extreme and unlikely scenario, it remains believable by showing a realistic sequence of events that could lead to such chaos and hysteria. Mostly to allow John Mcclain to be a badass and shoot guns without the audience asking "this isn't his business he should leave it to the other cops". His involvment in stopping the terrorists is wholly earned and necessary. And he is a... wait for it... HERO. Impossible to imagine, I know.
Even BEFORE the guns come out, the writers make sure you're interested by showing you how John is seeing his marraige fall apart as his wife changes her last name, and you see this dickhead asswipe that's stealing his girl, giving her a prohibitively expensive rolex watch. It's intense before there is even a hint of danger.
Furthermore, the amount of screen time where action takes place is surprisingly low. Most of this movie is tension and building stakes, and a lot of the time it focusses on characters who have little to no vested interest in the hostages' safety. But it doesn't waste your time because these characters actions MATTER. And when there is a MASSIVE EXPLOSION, and a huge chunk of the Los Angeles SWAT Team is knocked over like bowling pins in a blaze of destruction, it SHOCKS YOUR SOUL.
That is a MOVIE.
Thank you MOVIEWISE THAT YOU EMERGED FROM THE DEEPTH OF THE UNIVERSE with your VOICE!
I wonder what you think of Mike Leigh?
I think he hits a bullseye more often than not. Vera Drake is fascinating, though on paper it would sound like something I wouldn’t defend. Naked is a masterpiece!
This episode was brilliant. The guy isn't a 'poor random loser'. The war is the distraction...an island thousands of miles away to blow money on by a country with vast inequality
Right. I've seen some videos of this channel and he seems to dismiss symbolism a lot. That clearly takes a toll in his analysis.
If you dont know anything about Falklands, from story point of view we dont know, the audinece doesnt know anything. Since its a historical known fact, the showmaker ASSUME everyone does, but thats the mistake.
I loved this episode. Thought it was fantastic, and a standout from the whole series. Oh well.
If we're going to give credit where credit's due, we should note that 'Wall-E' lifted that line from the song 'I've Gotta Be Me,' the Broadway number that Sammy Davis Jr. had a hit with in the late '60s. There, the line is: 'I want to live / Not merely survive.'
Feck!! A critique so lazer sharp the victim has been diced and sliced before he knows it 😅
Feels like parody. So is avengers the best film ever?
As long as it's exciting and following some simplistic good vs evil storyline this guy will be happy with it
Did you even watch the whole video?
John Huston's Moby Dick is interesting because the ship is set up as a microcosmic world, and its sole purpose is to hunt down and kill a certain whale, but instead the what destroys the ship/world and everyone aboard except the guy telling the story.
I bet this guy wouldn't like Moby Dick because it's not exciting enough
Hey you featured two monumental Belgian films in there... Were they an example of boring stories, or ordinary stories made interesting? ,-)
Was that a Rhapsody of Fire song?
Thanks very much for the video I am going to see the misfits it looks good
It’s terrific! Hope the spoilers don’t… well, spoil it.
what movie is at 3:39 with that lion jumping?
That’s the 2014 Hercules, with The Rock. That image is beautiful, but it’s not the best of movies.
@@Moviewise thank you
The future is now old man
I mean the crown thing is kind of a weird opinion of yours...
its about the contrast. yeah, maybe If I hadn't lived in the UK and heard about the stuff shown maybe I wouldn't get that much enjoyment out of it but eh, its about the brits. the story of the Falkland war has been told time and time again, we know it. But not all stories need to be about great things, great people, or great events. Stories don't need to be tales of extremes, extreme evil vs extreme good. That's fairy tales and fables. Modern story telling is a bit more complex.
There's a reason people love Metamorphosis by Kafka so much doesn't have excitement, I mean the biggest crazy action we get is an apple throw. and yet it still captures so many peoples imagination.
sometimes we just need mirrors instead of fairy tales.
sometimes people need to see themselves instead of what they want to be to know how to become what they want to be.
He made that point when talking about The Misfits.
Although not my cup of tea either, "slice of life" storytelling generally doesn't have big epiphanies or highs and lows. They still have melodrama but I think minimalism is generally the appeal of those types of stories. Though any examples I can think of tend be from Asian television. Trying to think of good examples in Hollywood though I guess it's more common in episodic television than cinema.
Loved the video!
Will it be reductive to say that these characters have a strong "want"? And a character without a strong "Want" is very rarely interesting ?
Well the character in the Crown "wants" to have a less crappy life and to talk to the Queen to voice his grievances about that crappy life. So he's not necessarily a bad character but, when compared with the *potential* story happening in the background (the exact same rough and poor people as him but participating in world-shaking events overseas), his story is not compelling.
If this were true, heist movies wouldn't be so entertaining.
@@Selrisitai - interesting. I find heist movies protagonists to actually have a very clear and simple Want (They want to steal the money so they don't have to continue with being a thieve is a common trope).
The editing with the boring movie 1080 dilenme 23😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Any f....cking use for it. 😂😂 Robert Mckee is amazing. And Adaptaion is ome of my favorite movies.
I like your channel a lot although i dont agree with your views quite often. That's kind of impressive
I liked 'The Mule', but I wouldn't go to the theater to see it. It was fine as a TV movie
[02:40] Too funny. And [3:57] is a lesson Chantal Akerman needed to learn. Everything else is a lesson I need to learn.
is this guy Dovahatthy?
Wasn't the first scene of The Crown a depiction of George VI coughing up blood into a dingy bathroom? Fans should know what to expect by now lol.
Awww, why you gotta diss Jeanne Dielman like that? I get it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s not a movie where nothing happens.
YOU ARE DOVAHHATTY!!!
Explosions and shaky-cam.
It's a ball
BEST EXAMPLE OF ALL IS TAXI DRIVER
The whole Falkland War is downplayed in the Crown, maybe because if presented from the perspective of the Queen it should have spoken of prince Andrew, which is not too much politically correct nowadays
Sorry this video has a big mistake.
You said Falklands when in reality it's true name is Islas Malvinas
I thought I saw a short clip from “Marty”. I saw it when I was a boy. Bored me rigid.
Watch it as an adult. Some boys need science fiction and westerns at that age. It will be a revelation.
If you're so bored then play Subway Surfers on the corner of your screen.
You are brilliant but also ADHDAF.
Tom Brooke the nobody from The Crown always looks like he just got punched in the face.
I will watch the misfits simply for that display of tostesterone, and probably appreciate all the other good stuff as well
Ahh yes, Clark Gable - the most punchable face in Hollywood. He never adjusted his acting he just kept his 1930's schtick throughout.
I didn't like 'The Misfits'. The dancing scenes almost went full threesome at some point. It was weird.
It wasn't Gable's worst performance, it kinda reminded me of Errol Flynn's performance in 'The Sun Also Rises'. I guess they knew their livers would fail at any moment and that gave them incentive to give one final decent performance.
Sometimes you have to wear down the actor in order to get to the core of that being and to access good emoting. Stanley Kubrick knew that. Rumor has it that he would often put arsenic in the coffee and serve it to the actors to get them sick and fatigued so he he could get acceptable performances out of them.
Alright I made the last part up, he probably didn't put arsenic in the coffee.
I wish you'd had the opportunity to tell Gable he had a punchable face. Just so that he could have smacked your teeth out of your beta-arse.
And yet he remained the biggest, most consistent draw in box office history.
Moviewise: the standard bearer for all of menkind
you're the type of guy that would include an extra action scene of a teenager murdering someone, in the movie 12 angry men. Some stories don't need violence or action. They are good as they are, or even stronger. Not saying I don't want to see any Falkland war scenes. just not in this episode because its about his POV.
You didnt understand the point of the video
but what if argentinian feelings would've been hurt?
being homosexual was so unusual in those days that "Gay" was a name....
good old times :)
Gay is a word that means happy and joyful. It didn't always mean queer
Bad take, very bad take
„everything what is between good vs bad is waste of time“ works either for children or for very primitive people.
I too love misquoting people
The problem is that showing Thatcher as a badass would have gotten the antimonarchist fanboys who stan The Crown into a tizzle since how dare you make Margaret Thatcher into anything other than an evil politician who hurt the little guy.
ITS NOT FALKLAND ITS MALVINAS
You wish Gringo
Romanians were there before.
@@tamaszlav and dinossaurs before them
@@N_Loco_Parenthesis Its not a plural, its a name, but english isnt my first language anyway... And I am gratuated and have a cool job acctually.
@@N_Loco_Parenthesis seriously that you are using even some effort to defend imperialism?
because he's a criminal, so we have to be shown how society forces him to commit crime, so that when we see a certain ethnic group commit crime, we feel bad for them and the racial explanation is not viable
Your channel is film school. Correction: your channel is what kids should watch instead of going to movie school and spewing woke propaganda.
So caring about how poor people are being treated is woke propaganda? The struggles of everyday life is woke?
I didn't say that. Woke is a deliberate point of view. The subject of how people really live or lived is a universal topic worthy of consideration. What's precisely not fine is to look back at how people lived and imposing a current prism. It's woke to praise a piece of work as great art when it doesn't have those qualities but only covers a topic of interest. @@VixxKong2