Imagine a murder mystery where 3/4 of the way through the detective finds out his mother has died from cancer and he needs to see his father and attend the funeral. He hands over the investigation over to another detective. The rest of the story is following him dealing with his family and the loss of his mother, and we never find out who the actual killer is. How many mystery readers would be ok with a book like that?
Good point. It's pretty bad when it seems Tommy Wiseau has more of a grasp on story focus than Abrams and he never claimed to understand mystery, suspense, or even drama.
It's worse than that. Much worse. Chekhov promoted the general rule that if you show something in your story you should come back to it because there is an implicit promise that it will be used/important. But you can actually build a good story through using a false lead. In these cases you are aiming for a clever plot twist where you had your reader/viewer focused on one thing (while leaving very subtle hints towards something else) and the true reveal will come late in the story. And so, in these cases too, there is still a conclusion. But there is never a conclusion with Abrams' philosophy. Everything is left inexplainable.
Alexander Norman You I sometimes always appreciate the subtler Chekhov’s guns. A good example is the Dark Knight Trilogy. The Dark Knight establishes Batman gave Gordon and the MCU irradiated bills trace where the mob holds their money. Then in the Dark Knight Rises, Bane turns an experimental reactor into a nuclear bomb. How does the GCPD track the bomb? Why with the Geiger counters they got to track the marked bills.
More like Chekhov's gun that's introduced and then forgotten about complete about halfway through the story because of all the fucking distractions that popped up for some reason - only to be revisited in later stories where the gun then goes off, then is retconned into not going off and then goes off again...
“Chekhov’s Shiny Wall Decoration” (Overly Sarcastic Productions) still has value as a MacGuffin. Abrams’s mystery box is so much worse than that. Example: Someone lays a gun on the table, and it’s never fired. However, the story is more focused on the people around the table, and how they react to the gun, who would want to use it, and how they’d use it. In this instance, it’s not about the gun, but the people, so it’s fine if it’s never used. However, if the story promises over and over again that the gun will be used, but then it never is, that’s lazy writing. Especially if the beginning of the story states explicitly that the plot can’t be resolved unless the gun is fired. There’s a lot of ways to screw this plot up, and Abrams’s mystery box is one of them.
The author if the TV show Babylon 5 (J. Michael Strazynski) said much the same thing. He created a bunch of mysteries in the show... and slowly answered them over the course of the shows run. Some times in a random episode, some times in the mid season break, some times in the season finale. But he answered them. But... he would replace one question, with another. So even though you got the satisfaction of having something answered, usually in an ironic fashion, you still got the high of an unanswered mystery. He was a master. J.J. is a fraud.
And he had trapdoors ready for every main character that answered some of the connected mysteries, but allowed him to remove the character from the show in one episode. In the case of Sinclair he did it without even needing the actor to do it. The recording of the message Garibaldi gets in 'The coming of Shadows' was an actual recording they filmed during the making of the first season. Now that's planing ahead.
The difference is that J. Michael Strazynski actually KNEW the answers to the questions he was raising. He had those figured out before he actually started writing the scripts. He knew why Babylon 4 had vanished, and what was under Vosh's armor. JJ just creates a mystery, but he has no idea what the answer is. He just hopes that he'll be able to figure one out later. He never had any real idea why the plane crashed in Lost. He never really had any idea who Rey was, who Snoke was, or why Luke had run off. He just figured that whoever the next script writer was might be able to do something with his EMPTY mystery boxes.
@@liljenborg2517 Thats because J.J. is a terrible writer, he needs to be the guy in the back of the room that goes "what if there was a mystery surrounding X?" adn then real writers take that and flesh it out. instead he's the guy in the front of the room going "there is a mystery surrounding X!" then does nothing with it, it's mystery for the sake of mystery.
@@thedisgruntledjedi8637 JJ's Mystery Box "technique" is JJ simply claiming that his lazy writing is actually writing genius. The scary sad thing is that people bought his con.
Mysteries calls people attention because they want to know the answer to that mystery, but when you don't give them the answer you just let them confused and not getting anything about it and they get disappointed. There are some mysteries that works to audience perspective, like Inception ending, but not everything has to be like that. That's why Cloverfield Paradox sucks, because you get confused about everything and you don't know what is happening because they don't get the time to explain it.
The Doctor's origin should have remained a mystery, because it was never important to the story, he was a mad man with a box who dropped into your life like Mary Poppins and was then just as suddenly gone.
Yes and any mention of his backstory (2nd doctor onward) never really gave the Timelords a complete explanation just enough to not make it unreasonable.
This should have been the Master's origin. A quick cameo of Missy delivering the line, "The Timeless Child was me", before morphing back to the current Master. That would both explain the Master's hatred of Gallifrey, and explains why no one simply shoots the Master (it wouldn't do any good). But that would make Jodie less than absolutely the speshulest.
@@nk_3332 Why is it, that even with the worst stuff they do, fans and people find twists they could have don that would have worked infinitely better than what the 'professionals' have done? The Master has been abused by the Timelords before and this would give one of the greatest villains in Doctor Who unlimited regeneration's and as you mentioned motivation. And they can surprise us when the current regeneration's of the Doctor are used up how and why he gets a new set, even if I think they should come up with a better idea than last time.
@@grayscribe1342 Because the fans respect the property, and the audience. Star Trek was political, but they rarely said 'you were wrong to have done this' they said 'you need to outgrow this'. The effect is the same, but the tone is very different.
As a writer, the questions you bring up often need to have hints woven within the story, it’s such a delicate blend. You cannot be too obvious as to insult the reader, and too subtle or worse no hints at all that the reader feels cheated out of the answer. The mystery box is lazy, because imagination is powerful. It can be done right, Lovecraft and as you mentioned V, do a good job at raising up questions that are fun to the imagination, but the overall themes are never jeopardized by.
That's why I can't get the light novel series So I'm a Spider, So What? out of my head. When I first read the story there were many scenes where I had little idea what was going on, but I could tell the author was hinting at something important. Later, in the story, when a major reveal happened, it felt simultaneously like a complete shock and completely obvious. But it was never enough to answer all of the questions I had, and it keeps you wanting more. Even the major reveals, just gave me more questions and made me want more. I keep going back and rereading the series after each new book, knowing where the series is going and seeing all the subtle clues I missed or misread. It is impressive all the little details the author was able to sprinkle in.
@@justinfarischon7868 Reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's novels, particularly The Stormlight Archive or the Mistborn series. There's generally a big twist at the end, but there are little things that hint at the twist so that it isn't a copout. There are questions asked, but there's an answer planned ahead of time, even if it takes a couple books to reveal the whole truth (Why is Vin able to sense through Copper Clouds? Book three of Mistborn answers that in a satisfactory way with info already revealed about the power systems in the book). It makes it so that there are a lot of bonuses to reading/listening to the books more than once. There are so many things you notice the second time through that you didn't see before (references to things called Koloss in Mistborn 1, along with the appearance of TenSoon and mentions of Kandra, both of which show up more in later books).
The worst part of Abrams' mystery boxes is that I never once, in ANY of his work (and I was a big fan of Fringe's first couple of seasons), got the impression that even HE knew what was in the box, what the answers were. Star Wars was worse because the plan wasn't to have an overarching plotline, but for Abrams to set up the pins and then hand it over to someone else to decide how to knock them down. I get every impression that there may have been a discussion early on between Abrams and Johnson that sounded like, "The answers can be anything you want. I'm excited to see what you'll come up with." ...And then Johnson decided he'd rather play curling on the bowling lane and just swept aside all the pins like he had some actual, personal axe against the game of bowling.
I 100% agree, Fringe at first seemed like an X-files knock off, and it probably is, but there was that mystery to keep you invested for that whole first season...until it lost the plot and I gave up in season 2.
I've been told there are a lot of cases where a writer can get away with not revealing details so long as the audience can tell the writer themselves knows. To be fair, this was NOT meant to apply to important plot points. It was more about worldbuilding and stuff that would be interesting to know, but not necessary to the story. Like the contents of that briefcase.
When an author proposes a mystery in the beginning of a story, the author is making a promise to the reader that the author knows the answer to the mystery, and when the reader finds out what it is, it will blow their minds! This entices the reader to follow the characters through the story to discover the answer at the end. The problem with J.J.'s execution of the mystery box theory is it became obvious that the author did not know the answer to the mystery, because he was more in love with the infinite possibilities than revealing the solution to his own enigma. Once the audience realized this, many concluded the mystery box was ultimately empty and not only lost interest, but became perturbed at being misled into following an unrewarding wild goose chase. To me, as an author, it is fine to use the mystery box technique IF the author ultimately knows what is in the box and, (if the contents is pivotal to the character's development), is prepared to reveal it to the readers.
Kaedis mystery box is also acceptable if you’re a Game master for a tabletop rpg. You’re going to develop lore at times on the fly and you should go ahead abd put in the world what appeals to you and sounds awesome. The answers as to why those things are will come later and will sound cool if you’re players ever hear of them
@@Sellipsis Tabletop games are inherently improv based no matter how much the Game Master has planned out beforehand simply by the reactionary nature of the game, ergo it's an apples to oranges comparison between them and more conventional stories.
To be fair, it is possible to promise a mystery that you don't know the answer to, you just have to write a lot to figure it out. Ken Levine is a great example of this, as, if you follow the development of Bioshock Infinite, it becomes apparent that Levine didn't know the answers at first. Of course, he definitely knew what the answers were before the game was released, due to all the writing and rewriting.
@@GameCat16 That is exactly the point. If the writer presents a mystery to the reader, knowing what the solution is, it is not too hard to drop clever hints along the way to the big reveal, delighting as your audience, (hopefully), marvels at your brilliance. However, if the writer presents a mystery, not knowing what the solution is, chances are he/she will be doing a lot of re-writes to try to pull meaning from details in their own story and sew it all up into a resolution that makes it LOOK like he/she knew what they were doing all along. It all depends on where a writer would rather spend the majority of their time, in planning or in re-writes.
@@GameCat16 Strongly disagree, Bioshock Infinite was disjointed and it shows, people just like to forget about that because it gave them "the feels" or made them feel smart for thinking they understood it. It's held together better than most other stories with it's level of obvious rewrites and ideas that seemed cool but then don't go anywhere, because there was a better than average effort and talent to tie all the fragmented ideas together but it's still easy to see the stitching if one looks.
I think the best example of the "Mystery Box" theory is the original Alien. Where they purposefully don't show the monster, because whatever we are imagining is infinitely more terrifying than realizing it's just a dude in a rubber suit.
@@peteg475 Oh, I agree... to a point. Throughout Alien, we only got either very tight shots or mere brief flashes of the xenomorph. This built up the tension and terror. And yes, the full reveal of the creature at the end does show a very scary looking monster, but it still reminds us that it's just "a dude in a rubber suit." The reason Jaws worked so well was a combination of what we are talking about, ie just short glimpses of the creature, and a VERY realistic looking creature effect. I'm reminded of an old episode of the cartoon Doug, where Doug is terrified of a monster from a movie called "The Abnormal." And he's scared because he closed his eyes every time the creature was on screen. When he finally DOES peek, he sees it's just a cheap suit, and therefore nothing to be scared of. I'm sure there is some example of a movie where they never fully reveal the monster, but I honestly can't think of one. My overall point is pretty much what LD said: the mystery is great, but a payoff is needed. The question becomes simply how MUCH do you pay it off, or reveal?
Jake The Army Guy i agree... but I am not sure if it counts as a JJ mystery box - he likes to leave people hanging on too many different pieces in his films and for no good reason than mystery’s sake. Whereas the mystery created by not revealing much of the xenomorph (or explaining everything) in Alien was confined to the early part of the film and actually had the purpose of letting the audience’s imagination fill in the gaps. There were no other large mysteries that were left unanswered by the end of the film either - we even learn why they were woken up so far from home to go check out the signal.
@@JakeTheArmyGuy not a movie, but a VN, "Saya no Uta" does this, but what the monster actually looks like isn't important to the story, so it never needs to be revealed.
@@JakeTheArmyGuy Jaws also makes a great example of a director being forced to make the best out of the situation he is in. The shark looked great, but malfunctioned often since the water screwed it up badly. Spielberg literally had to use the beast as little as possible to avoid making it look strange and created greatness out of adversity.
The feeling I got from Abrams' Mystery Box TED talk was that he relishes in the wonder of the mystery along with the audience, while he's the one who's supposed to be in charge. It's like being a passenger on the plane, and the pilot sits next to you. You ask the pilot something like: "who's flying the plane?" or "do you know where we're going?" And the pilot answers: "I have no idea! Isn't that great? Let's find out together!"
@@gonzalo7591 Maybe the last scene of Episode 9 should have been JJ sitting in a chair saying, "This is a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' movie. For each one of you in the audience, Rey's parents are whoever YOU decide they are." Okay, thanks, JJ.
@@UTU49 Rey doesn't have parents. Like Anakin, she doesn't come from a mother-father relationship raising a good kid, but she comes from messing around with midi-chlorians. She's a genetically engineered clone with a massively enhanced midi-clorian count. So instead of thousands of them in each cell, she has tens of thousand or more. Basically, she's a walking midi-chlorian that is amnesiac until the opening events of the trilogy begin to wake her up to what she is. Yes, I am being facetious and sarcastic. The character of Rey was ill-conceived at best. Yes, the irony and the pun were intended.
_J._ _J._ _Abrams_ _after_ _the_ _audience_ _sees_ _the_ _mystery_ _box_ _is_ _empty:_ "What are you doing? Stop it! I... I... We are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you."
But the cake wasn't a lie, it was down in the basement the whole time. GLaDOS never said it was for you. But in this case, the cake really is a lie, because J. J. Abrams can't even be bothered to bake one in the first place.
Someone cut the cake. I told them to wait. Hello? You're not even going the right way. You should've turned left, there. Hello? You shouldn't be down here. Good people don't end up here.
I think one reason J. J. Abrams' mystery box theory doesn't work is because he didn't plan, or at least know, an ending to his work. That's one rule a lot of writers are taught for short stories, and series too. If you don't know where everything will conclude, then everything your story's built up to, whether it's plot, characters, theme, or setting, comes to nothing. But endings also require inevitable consequences of a kind, usually a sacrifice via death or something else. Which is the very thing Abrams, and writers like him, find hard to accept. Not necessarily because they're attached to their characters, but more because they always want them to win WITHOUT sacrifice. And for that, we get TRoS, where the only characters who do die are hardly connected to the new ones to feel like a true loss, but rather a wasteless demise. Except for Kylo Ren, but that's was just done in an attempt to try and please both crowds in the divided fandom.
Well, considering they were still revising the last movie after it went to post....yeah. Abrams had no plan. And one has to wonder whether he even cared. Because you get a distinct feeling even going back to The Force Awakens that these movies are being written and directed by people who simply didn't care.
Yeah, in cases where the mystery box works well the author clearly has the contents in mind from the get go and drops little hints here and there for the audience to chew on while they wait for the reveal. In TFA there are little hints dropped that to me suggested she might have been a younger sister to Ben Solo (the way Leia and Han responded to her) and I’d theorized she could even have been Ben’s start of darkness, with him being jealous of the attention she was getting from their parents while he was training with Uncle Luke and then when she also started training the attention she was getting from Luke as a novice that needed more direct supervision than the better trained Ben. But then TLJ did the equivalent of ripping open all the mystery boxes and revealing there was nothing there, jossed all of that fan theorizing that took place following TFA and the shit hit the fan. Then in RoS they tried to fix things but it was too late.
Cathy Grandstaff No that is not a mystery box is a mystery box is when you set up a mystery before you know how to conclude it. When it is planned ahead of time, it is just a mystery.
Into Darkness and Force Awakens are mystery box stories at their worst. Rather than reveal information piece by piece giving you the grander picture over time, they keep you in the dark until the 11th hour and throw everything at your face at once. Or in the case of TFA don't reveal anything and kick the can down the road to the next guy, hopefully he'll have the answers right?
@@nightwishfan1991 It feels like the writers are stomping their feet shouting, "but answers are hard!!!!! I just want cool things, why can't I just have cool things?!"
Abrams saying that the mystery (or lack of information which is not all that a mystery is) is more important than the story (or information) . . . sounds like someone trying to sound edgy by misusing Zen riddles in place of actual writing talent or knowledge.
@@UnusVita Absolutely! I watched his Ted Talk and as a writer I kept going, "That's not how plot works, that's not how mystery works . . . dude, did you ever take single creative writing class?" Hey, J. J., what is the sound of one hand clapping in the wind? (smacks the back of his head) That.
If there is one work of fiction that comes to mind for me after watching this, it's the 2017 anime _Kemono Friends_ - a show with such a limited budget that you couldn't use it to buy a turkey sandwich, but which became one of the most popular shows in Japan precisely because the writer/director Tatsuki knew how to use these ideas of "mystery" perfectly. At first, we are kind of given a "Mystery Box" right out of the gate: a young girl named Kaban wakes up in an abandoned safari park filled with anthropomorphic animals, and she has no memory of who she is or what she is. She wants to find out what kind of animal she is, setting her narrative in motion, but this "Mystery Box" isn't so mysterious to the audience, who figures out she's a human being literally within minutes. So that seems like it doesn't leave us much to look forward to since we all know the inevitable reveal. But Tatsuki is nothing if not brilliant. He shifts the focus of mystery off of Kaban herself and onto the world she is in (and boy are there strange and fascinating clues regarding the park and its origins). When I first watched it I thought she had gotten lost as part of a research team to the abandoned park and maybe hit her head or something resulting in amnesia. So imagine my utter surprise when we learn the fact that it's likely all of humanity on earth has been completely annihilated by an unknown terror. Suddenly the mystery goes right back to Kaban - for while she is still searching for _who_ she is, we - who know she is human - are suddenly wondering _why_ she is. It's amazing how there can be two mysteries going on side by side - one the protagonist is trying to solve and a different one the audience wants to solve. Fortunately her "Box" is finally opened and who she is and where she comes from are revealed, exactly as they should have been. As for the origins of the park and of humanity's fate, they are still a mystery. But those questions aren't important to the main plot of the show - like this video recommended, they don't form the narrative focus. So no one is bothered by that and it gave us something to look forward to. That is, until Tatsuki's bosses fired his ass and decided to take the franchise in a completely different direction. And as for the second season - well, let's just say they may have profited from watching this video.
The greatest failure with Rey is that her inconsistencies were easily remedied with small explanations. Her experience with mechanics, flying and scavenging could be answered by providing a relationship with her carer: Unkar Plutt. Her force powers could be explained after TLJ from having the film dedicate its time on Rey being trained by Luke. Although, Rey still needed to lose to Kylo. This all could have been remedied.
As someone who's writing a story, there's an incredible appeal to the use of mystery boxes in the cake formula style and somewhat like pulp fiction. Have a device be a part of the story that could be relevant, with undisclosed details that eventually amount to nothing, but ends up being just a mean to a character's resolve. "The true x is the friends we made along the way" is something that comes to mind almost instantly, the device just fulfills it's intended purpose without being detailed but is still teased as something valuable/important thorough the plot. Reminds me of One Piece too.
TLDR: Do not use mystery boxes if their specific answer is deeply connected or relevant to the plot or protagonists. A mystery box must never be the centre of attention.
It can be but only when you have an answer. If you don’t know what. Your villains origin is going to be, don’t set it up as mystery just leave it. That is why V’s face and the briefcase work they are not set up to be important to the story.
@@emberfist8347 In the original script of Pulp Fiction, the briefcase was filled with gold. Tarantino only decided to make it a mystery during filming.
Meanwhile, Dr. Who went and did the opposite: Instead of keeping the Doctor's past vague and simple to allow for imagination and endless story threads, they went and gave her a definite backstory which now narrows the stream and potential, and radically shifts the context of all the Doctor's actions and conflicts in a bad direction. Wouldn't be surprised if this next Season goes and gives the Doctor a definite name as another nail in the now excessively sealed coffin.
The funny thing there is that the story of Gallifrey was finished, that story had already been wrapped up in a satisfying way without needing to give any answers, they had to actually go back and erase that satisfying conclusion just so they could insert bad answers that made the entire franchise seem small and ridiculous.
The mystery box is literally the Kings new clothes. He never wears luxurious robes, rather he walks around naked and expects everyone to be content worth the possibility of what he might be wearing
I do wonder if the mystery box should be reserved to non-plot essential items/ideas, kinda like the suitcase from Pulp Fiction, or V's identity. I mean, after all, a car can run great without a passenger seat or a backseat driver.
@@rya3190 I think it can be very effective to leave some mysteries unanswered... but only if it is being done decisively FOR THE BENEFIT of your audience. If the author leaves mysteries unanswered for a long time or forever, because he is just procrastinating making a decision, then he is a shitty writer.
Yes, J.J.'s flawed mystery box notwithstanding let's not forget this disaster of a trilogy is the result of multiple factor and putting a different director in charge of the middle episode was not the least. A lot of poor production decision are to blame for all this mess.
It's remotely possible Abrams had a satisfactory answer before Johnson screwed things up. Ah, who am I kidding? No one had any sort of plan for anything.
@@nathanbrown8680 Considering the bad taste Abrams left in... well, I won't speak for anyone else... my mouth after _Lost,_ I don't expect so. He also hasn't exactly wowed me with his other cinematic outings. Also, it's not like he completely lost control. Yeah, he had a huge interruption, but he had one movie to set up and another to satisfactorily end plot threads.
I'll be honest, I think Johnson did the best he could with what he was allowed to do. I don't think *any* director could have done better in his position. He got a story that had several important characters who had barely any characterization. He wasn't allowed to give the new characters significant flaws.He was in a position where he was told he should push the idea that anyone could become a force user.. And to top it off he had to have an interesting story. So he basically had the work of two movies that he had to do in one with some serious limitations. As near as I can tell, his biggest mistake from a story view is the Holdo maneuver, and, to non fans it was probably the high point of the movie. The rest of the major issues come to what he was told to do and what he was not allowed to do. Thus, those can almost certainly be laid at Kennedy's or Abram's feet. That said, TLJ is *not* a good Star Wars movie but it is far better than either 7 or 9.
Rey being unusually great at everything reminds me so much of when I used to play pretend with my friends, especially when we were very little. We would always come up with interesting conflicts, but our characters found a solution too easily, probably because we basically imagined our little story like a mix of cartoon and video game. But like, we were 10 when we realized how boring being overpowered like that was in the long run.
This reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's rules for this. You can promise the audience a truck, and then give them a truck. You can promise them a truck, and then give them a really amazing truck. You can promise them a truck, and then give them a kick in the face. But you can't promise a truck and then give them a bike.
Well said, and well laid out. I am forever sad at the unopenable mystery box of what the Star Wars sequels could have been if a competent writer had been involved. I would even say that The Force Awakens could have worked if there had been something inside that box. At the end of 7, there was still potential. Here's an example of how Rey's currently inexplicable abilities could have been explained: Imagine this one change to Episode VII: At the end of the movie, when Rey finds Luke and stretches forth his lightsaber, he looks back at her, and says, with a measure of reverent surprise, "Rey?" Imagine what goes through your mind then. Clearly Luke knows her. Perhaps her abilities have an explanation after all. Then, Episode VIII can explain to us how Rey was a fully trained Jedi, Luke's first, but when he sensed the Dark Side beginning to appeal to her, he used the force to do something terrible, which he would regret and never forgive himself for: he wiped her memories. He tried teaching her again, she learns quicker, and her abilities become stronger, but once again she begins to be drawn to the Dark Side. After a few more attempts, each try ending with her fascination in the Dark Side, he wipes her mind one final time and leaves her in the care of foster parents on Jakku, vowing to return once he becomes a better master. Then, when this pattern repeats with Ben Solo, we begin to understand how Luke could get to where he is, and why he has exiled himself. He sees himself as a failed trainer, incapable of rising the next generation of Jedi without inadvertently leading them to the Dark Side. He blames his own heritage as a child of Darth Vader, believing that the Dark Side is innate within himself as well. But now, here is Rey, older, mature, and good, finding herself mysteriously strong in the Force and seeking a master to train her. Different story now, isn't it?
While I still have a problem with Luke doing dark side stuff, he is the guy who forgave darth Vader after all, it would very much be a more satesfying movie that the rubbish we got.
I would like to add that this idea is the least intrusive to Episode VII. I still hate that episode for one very important reason: it completely undoes everything accomplished in Episodes IV-VI; character growth, world building, and plot, all cancelled. This is how you can know that Disney never intended to make sequels. This is actually what is called a soft reboot. And I hate it.
@@voivodadracula1936 Biggest example is Ava. Most annoying character in all Borderlands games, by far - gets another character killed off then blames another character for it, game consistently kisses her ass despite her doing nothing useful, writers deflect criticism of her.
JJ Mystery box doesn't work because JJ doesn't know whats in the box. Its Schrodingers box. Was there ever a cat in it? Did the cat escape? Is the cat still there? Is it alive or dead? It doesn't matter because the box is no longer important as we have a new mystery box.
I think the whole problem is a lot simpler: Things can be interesting by being left unexplained. It adds an element of mystery. But it does NOT add suspense. Suspense comes from not knowing something AND expecting to find out. There is anticipation there. So if you use mystery to drive suspense, it's because you've MADE the audience care about the answer and it's implications to the remainder of the story. When you as a writer do this, you are forming an implicit contract with the audience - that the questions raised WILL be answered and that the answer will be satisfying and narratively cohesive. The 'Mystery Box' is not a flawed concept. It's just a stupid and terrible one. The idea of using mystery as suspense is okay. The idea of using unanswered mystery for interest is okay - see all soft magic systems. But writers already do this naturally. The Mystery Box is explicitly building suspense with a mystery WITHOUT THE AUTHOR THEM-SELF knowing the answer. This means that you're dooming yourself to breaking the promise you made with the audience. Because now you can do one of two things. One, you can just never provide an answer, which means you cashed in on people's suspense to draw excitement and interest and never delivered. Two, you can eventually give the answer - but since you never knew the answer yourself, whatever answer you give is unlikely to be narrative coherent or live up to the suspense built around it. You're just making a cliffhanger with no followup because: "Cliffhangers are exciting, right!?" No, Cliffhangers are FRUSTRATING. The EXCITEMENT is in the ANTICIPATION of knowing YOU WILL GET the answer. There is ZERO benefit to the mystery box method in terms of story quality over an author who builds mysteries around questions THAT THEY KNOW THE ANSWER TO. Either they never reveal the answer to the audience, and the result is identicial, or they DO reveal the answer to the audience and it is satisfying. The only advantage is to the writer, who gets to build suspense and implication and excitement around absolutely nothing, requiring no talent or effort. The Mystery Box method is just a writer being a lazy asshole and deliberately planning to break a promise to readers while cashing in on excitement and suspense that they did not earn.
A mystery box leaves a question hanging in the air for the reader to speculate on, however it can go bad when it is integral to the plot as it will make one aspect of that plot feel shallow and dumb. It will make the reader wonder why the plot is happening without telling them and making the story feel incomplete or bad. This was what I learned, thank you for the video!
The mystery box was at best an interesting theory that in practice proved to be little more than an idea you get when you're high and try to implement while you're still high.
You deserve waaay more subscribers. This was a really well put together video and it really made me finalize why I didn't like JJ's idea of the mystery box.
Personally, I thought the big mystery box of Force Awakens was "who are these First Order clowns and why are we rehashing the power relationship of A New Hope?" I really wasn't that interested in Rey's parents because it didn't seem all that important for moving the plot. Hell, seemed like it was a device to keep the plot from moving in a contrived attempt at The Refusal. As for mystery boxes as a concept, I think what most has people in arms against them is how the sequel trilogy appears to cynically use ambiguity to trick audiences into projecting their own personal meaning in lieu of having something of substance to say about the human condition.
Rey’s wasn’t even going to be a series long thread. Rey accepted they wouldn’t be coming back for her and moved on. However the idiots who live on tumblr thought this was going to be a plot thread and then Rian Johnson decided to “subvert expectations”
To be fair, some of this harping on Rey's heritage was the fans trying to fix a massive fuck up of the writers. Of course Johnson would miss that point entirely in his response. They don't know what they're doing, but they're hella smarmy about it.
A really good example of that cake theory is the lore of dark souls. We know the stuff important for the plot but not much else. We know that Gwyn Lord of Sunlight sacrificed himself to keep the Age of Fire going, but we do NOT know if he did it out of duty to his people or out of fear of those who would rule the Age od Darkness
"How do you make your family hungry? You make them wait four hours for dinner." This explains the grind in JRPGs! Just kidding, great video as always Literature Devil.
The analogy you used about dreaming of writing a novel but never actually following through with it because imagining of what could be is sweeter really stuck with me. I really want to be a good writer, and I have several book ideas in my head, but I don’t actually write them because imagining how good it could be is sweeter than actually going through with it and receiving criticism. Man, I really need to write...
I like how you always end with a clear-cut point, as if answering the question you asked at some point in the video. But, I'm curious to see how you'd handle an open-ended closure. To ask the audience to close the question for you. How to wrap an episode like that.
3:46 The difference with the mystery in pulp fiction and v for vendetta when compared to jj abrums is that the characters know what is inside the box or behind the mask. They know what the answer to the mystery is and they are satisfied with it so we don't have to know the answer. We know the answer is good so we don't necessarily need to know what the answer is and will be satisfied with not knowing and then guessing about what the answer to the mystery is will become fun.
The Mystery Box hypothesis (not "theory") failure is this: mysteries need solutions. Just look at any good classical detective story (Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe). Those stories had resolution when the mystery's solution was presented. Even if it was flawed or made no logical sense, at least the reader came away with some satisfaction because the mystery had been solved, thereby giving the story a conclusion.
Rob Boyte As LD said, that is indeed the case as long as the mystery is the focus of the story. Though I am not sure if Abrams ever intended for Reys backstory to be of importance. Maybe he was just actually bad at writing.
@@mayhemivory5730 For a series or serialized properties, yes, you can keep the audience guessing. But, you must ultimately resolve matters because, as LD has gone over in other videos, a question (mystery) is a promise, which the writer must keep (solution). Abrams' writing is flawed because his initial storytelling approach is flawed.
The thing with Mystery box is that it's the poor man's mystery. It's essentially the illusion of a real mystery, only for the mystery to merely be an excuse to do all kinds of weird stuff to get the audience guessing with no concrete answer. A well constructed mystery is great where you can watch it a second time and see all the clues you missed, where the mystery box is never intended to be intelligent TV, it's designed for a simpleton audience looking for random shock value.
But also the mystery box is gay trans disabled and black even though none of these facts were hinted at or described in the actual text, and some of them were outright contradicted.
I personally have never made any connection between Abrams and Hitchcock. [snaps fingers] Hitchcock's bomb story: A time bomb set for five minutes is placed in a room and two characters enter it later and time advances over that five minutes. Hitchcock knows what will happen, he lets the audience know what's going on RIGHT NOW and it's the characters who have no idea. Hitchcock: 100% in control, Abrams... I don't know how much control he has, it's a mystery.
@@tskmaster3837 In Abrams' version of this story, they'd probably just yeet the bomb out the window after taking 7 minutes, and it'd explode harmlessly once removed from the immediate proximity of the protags.
I'm pretty sure his views on the Mystery Box have been shaped by his failures of the past. I present exhibit A - the TV series Lost (Abrams and Damon Lindelof). That show spent like 4 seasons piling the mystery boxes up, writing IOUs to the viewers. Then, as they started opening these mystery boxes, the contents kinda sucked and the viewers were furious. I'm pretty sure Abrams learned his lesson - but it was the wrong one. He seems to have understood it as "don't open the mystery boxes" rather than "don't overpromise - a mystery only works if it serves the story and makes sense".
Yes, the things that bothered me when watching The Force Awakens were, how was Rey so powerful with lightsabers and using The Force without any training, especially when fighting Kylo who was highly trained in these things? And how did Snoke and The First Order arise out of the ashes of the defeated Empire we saw at the end of Return of the Jedi? I assumed that "dinner would be served, or at least the first course of it" in the next movie. However, with Rian Johnson's obsession with subverting expectations, he did not serve us dinner, not even an appetizer, worse yet, he basically said "there is no dinner to be served" ("you're parents were nobody's) and killed Snoke without giving us any more information about him (the cake was a lie!). And that is why I absolutely hate Disney Star Wars since I saw The Last Jedi. Also, that "wonderful tasting meal" of seeing our beloved hero, Luke Skywalker, at his best again was a lie, all we got was a bad taste of sour green milk from a spacecow's udder as we saw a character assassination of our favourite hero who Mark Hamill says he had to think of as "Jake Skywalker" rather than "Luke Skywalker" to be able to act the character's part since this version of Luke was so different than the classic Luke we all grew up with.
This is my favorite video of yours as it puts something ive been trying to get across to people for years. A mystery is only worth while when there is a pay off. An unsolved mystery is like a battery with no charge. The only time its acceptable is when its not essential for something to function
The Mystery Box is JJ's equivalent to Shamylan's 4th act twist. Once you realize that's it's his primary writing tool that he uses as a base for everything he does, it devalues the effectiveness of that tool. It's a crutch that both of them found effective, but their adherence to those techniques is what holds them back as storytellers.
Yes. Yes... someone should kidnap them both and subject them to an in-depth curriculum that teaches all aspects of writing good stories in all mediums. Then they can be released into the wild again. Of course, there will be essay tests (along with other questions) for every unit of every course of the curriculum. That might keep them out of Hollywood for the next 15-20 years.
I don't think the act of using a tool consistently devalues it's effectiveness if it's truly effective in the first place. pure originality isn't what makes things great, there is true merit to using a tool repeatedly and improving and refining it. the problem with those specific tools is that they promise something and then don't deliver, and the first time that happens you get fooled into thinking the first half of the movie means something, but you don't fall for their same trick for the first half if that specific tool is the one that they rely on.
15:45 One other way to put it is that the cake formula will make you wait for hours for dinner and then reveal a cake, where the mystery box makes you wait four hours for dinner and then gives you a bag of flour. If that.
The mystery box is okay...as long as there is an answer to the mystery in the WRITERS mind. For instance my favorite crime series Columbo use Mystery boxes in novel way. We already know who the killer is. The mystery is how the bumbling detective zeroes in on the killer and makes the killer confess or get caught in their web of lies. So the Hero antagonist is this ever shrinking mystery box that grows more and more threatening as he goes. The audience along side the villain antagonist has most of the answers the mystery is how Columbo figures it out.
If there's an answer to the mystery it's really not a mystery box anymore, it's just a mystery story. The mystery box tactic as defined by JJ is essentially creating the illusion of a mystery that the writer hasn't thought out an answer to yet. And when such things come to an end, either the answer is terrible or the box never gets opened. Usually in Columbo, he knows who the murderer is early on, the challenge is proving it. You watch to see how exactly he ends up outwitting the criminal to prove him guilty. It's sort of the opposite of the mystery box, because most of the details are already revealed to you. The entire plot format is "X killed someone. Columbo eventually catches X" and the part the writers fill in is how A goes to B.
@@taragnor The end result is enviable. the way the "Mystery box" comes into play is which if any of the threads presented to Columbo does he take to get to them. We the Audience along with the villain protagonist we've followed think we know the answers. In many stories HOW columbo found out how to do it isn't important (as its often a baldfaced lie) but what impact does it have on the villain is what is important.
Yes I've been waiting for this! I've thought this for a long time, but it takes me a while to crystalize my thoughts. Let's see if this helps, and we are on the save wavelength!
It would have been fun if Abrams would have thought about the movies even a little more... The loss of potential is staggering. Imagine if only Rey would have been a proper clone of Palpatine instead of a granddaughter, now that would have made many heads spin.
"I wanted an Empress, a near equal subservient to my will. When I abruptly was discorporiated, the fools raised her as their own. Willfully ignorant that the force would bring my instrument back to me." - The Emperor answering Rey's origins in a better script for RoS.
Fantastic analysis! There's one approach that you didn't directly approach, however, and (if used properly) I think it's the best of both worlds. And that approach is: presenting the mystery box, actually putting something in the mystery box refusing to tell what's in the mystery box, but planting just enough clues for somebody to figure it out. This is the Lee Child Cake approach, just more subtly, but it leaves the "endless possibility theorycrafting" of Abrams' idea largely intact. It's the satisfaction of the Mystery Box with the satisfaction of the Lee Child Cake. Take Dave Filoni when talking about Star Wars: Rebels. He was once asked who was in the Sith Holocron from the end of Season 2. He said "Good question. I know who that is, actually. And I'm not going to tell you." Knowing Dave, he actually does have a fascinating backstory cooked up for her. He used a similar approach for Ahsoka's fate(s)-while he did eventually answer the questions in really unexpected ways, he deliberately laid breadcrumbs all along that, with hindsight, show he knew what he was doing. It BUILDS TRUST BETWEEN THE STORYTELLER AND THE AUDIENCE-if we can trust the storyteller to actually have something amazing inside the mystery box, we're more willing to accept the mystery box. Toby Fox uses a similar technique in Undertale. For Flowey (the first real time he uses this) he creates a mystery box...but then actually answers it when you least expect it: it becomes the fulcrum of the story when you initially thought it was a plot-hole. Once that trust is established, he's able to use it more subtly with Sans (leaving incredibly difficult to find hints, but just enough of them to get an outline of the general sort of thing that might have happened to him) and Gaster (the most Abrams-esque mystery box in the game, and one that even if it's never answered still utilizes the trust he's built up elsewhere.) A thousand other great works use it sparingly. I think the best mystery boxes are the ones that clearly have something in them, but that make you WORK for what's in them. To learn Gandalf's past, you have to actually read the Silmarillion. To learn about the VOID in Hollow Knight, you have to beat the Pantheon of Hallownest. To decipher Termina, you have to dig through lines of cryptic dialogue and piece it together into something cohesive. Just do it right. Put something in the mystery box. (Or, if you're a lazy and bad writer who can't be bothered, at least put enough clues in for people to fill it for you. At least somebody will get a good story out of it, then.)
And this is what happens to your fans! SMASH! This is what happens to your franchise! BOOM! And this is what happens to the future of your CEO! BANG! Any questions?
I like how Dark Souls did it. They wrote a complete lore then took little bits out to make a mystery. That way they avoided the "just making random shit up without any concern as to whether it makes sense" problem.
Jokes aside, I believe that the best way for the "Mystery box" to work is if it creates conflict *without ever solving it.* And that is difficult without entering into MacGuffin or "Diabolus ex Machina" territory.
Another great video and glad about the store. However, when will you sell merch with some of your silhouette figure on them? I'd love to sport a shirt and/or hoodie with those red eyes glaring at people!
The mystery box is a tool, just one tool. Like starting a drama with a flash forward and then gong back to the beginning. Now imagine a TV show in which EVERY episode used this shtick. And not in an ironic adult cartoon way. No critic would tolerate it.
SierraSierraFoxtrot That is season 4 of Lost and it was my favorite season. They even played with the audience’s expectations with one episode where we had a flash forwards and flashbacks without it being clear there were flashbacks until the end unless you have know certain details about Korean culture and how their calendar matches up with the western Georgian calendar.
@@emberfist8347 Yeah Lost was the illusion of a good series. But once you realize the entire plot was pure mystery box BS with no good answer, I'd never want to watch it again.
@@emberfist8347 : Personally I hated the ending, because I wanted answers to all the mysteries they set up. Pretty much for several seasons the series did nothing but make a ton of weird mysteries that there was no satisfactory answer to. That being said it did have some good characters, I just hated the whole idea of getting duped into watching a mystery they had no good answer for.
Like briefcase's contents being unimportant because the focus is on the characters, you could say to anybody criticizing you for focusing on the ST and NPC Marvel that the contents of the critiques are not as important as the storytelling lessons you teach through them. Another great video essay, well done!
Sounds about right. Right from the start of your video I recognized your examples as support for the story, McGuffins or otherwise unimportant, rather than central elements of the plot itself. You quickly spelled it out in exactly that same way for the mystery box theory and why it fails. You could see that years ago in how Lost developed under Abram's philosophy, if not direction.
Mysteries are great and all but one must be careful of what kind of mysteries they are setting up and more importantly how effective the payoff will be because if the payoff is lackluster and disappointing then the mystery box theory is ruined. The reason why J.J Abrams mystery boxes failed in Star Wars wasn't so much his fault but Disney for allowing someone else to direct the sequel how they see fit regardless if they made sense in continuity and followed the prior story and mysteries. This resulted in The Last Jedi giving us extremely disappointing twists because Rian wanted to make his own story while ignoring the tiny fact that TLJ is a direct sequel to TFA and following stories, big mysteries and establishments are important unless you want to end up with a confusing, contradicting and disjointed mess which is what happened with the Disney trilogy. Word of advise Disney: Plan your shit and don't let other people write how they want to if you want a coherent story.
Disney needed to fire Kathleen Kennedy and replace her with someone who was konsiderably more kompetent. She was the head of Lucasfilm. She was the producer who was there for all 3 films. It was her responsibility to steer the ship, or make sure that someone else was steering the ship. It was Disney's responsibility (to their audience and to their shareholders) to make sure Kennedy was doing her job.
Spoiler It was a clever way to continue the series, it could just be a simple solution to how to destroy titans in an easy way and end the series but by making answer being the information about the outside world and the originality of titans and informing both audience and characters that they still have a long way to achieve their goal, it show us that the series has still so much things to show.
Mystery Stories aren't inherently bad, but if they are done wrong they can be one of the most disappointing things imaginable. It is possible to create stories with mystery and interpretations based on contents, but you need to establish a PATTERN, something where logic and rules can be set and constructed upon. For example, take the game Binding of Isaac, where it tells the story of Isaac. The game story is torn by pieces and mysteries, many of which we need to solve in order to reach an answer, to things like What is the Basement? Why Isaac's mom got nuts? Why all the characters that we play are bible figures? What happened to Isaac? All this we can find answers by looking at the patterns that the game shows us, things like the items, the cutscenes, enemies and bosses and such. All those things constantly tie with one thing: Religion! Religion is the base of Isaac's story. Almost everything that happened and happens has connections with religion in a way or another, it was the religion that made Isaac so depressed, it was the religion that made Isaac see himself was a bible sinner(hence why you can play as them in the game), it was religion that made him kill himself and so on. Religion is the answer for many of the mysteries of everything in Isaac, both directly and indirectly, it keeps a consistent theme during the narration that keeps the players wondering and guessing, and why this work is, again, because the game sets a platform to base his events. We know that Isaac had a shitty life cause of religion, so everything will inherently tie with it. If the game's creator decided to put other things just because, it would be off-putting since it has no base in the story whatsoever.
I mean you can write a story around a Mystery that doesnt get solved. but you have to write around it and have the story not rely on the mystery. A mystery can be a plothook but not what the content of your story is without it being resolved. It is kind of like writing a detective story where you dont get a resolution to the investigation. It is possible but unless it is pulled off masterly it is an unsatisfying mess.
Spot on, especially about the difference between the macguffin (which works for heist films) and what Abrams constructs. MacGuffins work as an easy way of driving a plot, provoking action, and generally *revealing* the motivations of the characters involved. But Abrams’s mystery boxes try to construct and develop characters by way of deliberately leaving in the character’s construction. Abrams’ Mystery box is a narrative scam - promising something that is never delivered, and one that generally sacrifices actual character development for the ecstasy of the revelation (or the plot twist). One thing I’ve thought about Rey for a while now is that the narrative focus should not have been on who she is or how she is so talented or who her parents were, but rather it should have been focused on how she progresses to becoming a hero by confronting the trauma and abandonment that so characterize her and hold her back and overcoming the external obstacles and opponents that provoke her trauma and tempt her to abandon her journey. The best of Star Wars, both OT and PT, has always been firmly character-centric, driven not ultimately by plot but by character journeys.
The Mystery Box is fine... as long as the Mystery Box is a birthday present, or a Christmas present. You need a gift inside, to please and reward the reader for their patience.
Writers that know what they're actually doing will use this all the time in TV shows, and Cake theory touches on it. You start with one mystery that slowly unveils itself through the course of an episode, keeping your invested until your questions are answered. But in the meantime, you also create a new mystery (aka a cliffhanger) that must be answered in the next episode, and the cycle can repeat itself.. In movies it's a bit harder, as you don't exactly have multiple episodes to drop mysteries and resolve them, but it can still be done.
This is why I know all the lore of my world. I have am answer for everything and everything demonstrates its importance. Even if it's importance isn't coming up soon. Ya gotta focus on little things like only specific interactions with an earing in the first book of a trilogy. Only to answer them at the very end when the earing is the key to everything.
I love your PSA Bump that you did early on. Good details on the power and perils of the Mystery Box tool for writers. And Lee Childs "Cake" tool... explains a lot. Not my cup of tea, no disrespect implied or intended. An additional tool for thought: Science Fiction author John Brunner had a tool that he called "the middle of the trilogy". He would write a stand-alone novel with enough implied events to furnish a prequel and a sequel, but never did write them. And then Piers Anthony figured out the mirrorverse version and wrote trilogies with 48 novels (so far). I guess. Makes the mortgage payments.
Imagine a murder mystery where 3/4 of the way through the detective finds out his mother has died from cancer and he needs to see his father and attend the funeral. He hands over the investigation over to another detective. The rest of the story is following him dealing with his family and the loss of his mother, and we never find out who the actual killer is. How many mystery readers would be ok with a book like that?
I want to read one of those
It would make for a great troll book but a terrible mystery novel
Good point. It's pretty bad when it seems Tommy Wiseau has more of a grasp on story focus than Abrams and he never claimed to understand mystery, suspense, or even drama.
Just imagining it existing, hurts my chest.
@@PoeticProse7 Dude, The Room is a treat compared to the Star Wars sequels...
It is Chekhov's Gun without the Gun ever going off.
It's worse than that. Much worse. Chekhov promoted the general rule that if you show something in your story you should come back to it because there is an implicit promise that it will be used/important. But you can actually build a good story through using a false lead. In these cases you are aiming for a clever plot twist where you had your reader/viewer focused on one thing (while leaving very subtle hints towards something else) and the true reveal will come late in the story. And so, in these cases too, there is still a conclusion. But there is never a conclusion with Abrams' philosophy. Everything is left inexplainable.
Alexander Norman You I sometimes always appreciate the subtler Chekhov’s guns. A good example is the Dark Knight Trilogy. The Dark Knight establishes Batman gave Gordon and the MCU irradiated bills trace where the mob holds their money. Then in the Dark Knight Rises, Bane turns an experimental reactor into a nuclear bomb. How does the GCPD track the bomb? Why with the Geiger counters they got to track the marked bills.
It's stockpiling an armory and forgetting the bullets.
More like Chekhov's gun that's introduced and then forgotten about complete about halfway through the story because of all the fucking distractions that popped up for some reason - only to be revisited in later stories where the gun then goes off, then is retconned into not going off and then goes off again...
“Chekhov’s Shiny Wall Decoration” (Overly Sarcastic Productions) still has value as a MacGuffin. Abrams’s mystery box is so much worse than that.
Example: Someone lays a gun on the table, and it’s never fired. However, the story is more focused on the people around the table, and how they react to the gun, who would want to use it, and how they’d use it. In this instance, it’s not about the gun, but the people, so it’s fine if it’s never used.
However, if the story promises over and over again that the gun will be used, but then it never is, that’s lazy writing. Especially if the beginning of the story states explicitly that the plot can’t be resolved unless the gun is fired. There’s a lot of ways to screw this plot up, and Abrams’s mystery box is one of them.
The author if the TV show Babylon 5 (J. Michael Strazynski) said much the same thing. He created a bunch of mysteries in the show... and slowly answered them over the course of the shows run. Some times in a random episode, some times in the mid season break, some times in the season finale. But he answered them. But... he would replace one question, with another. So even though you got the satisfaction of having something answered, usually in an ironic fashion, you still got the high of an unanswered mystery.
He was a master. J.J. is a fraud.
And he had trapdoors ready for every main character that answered some of the connected mysteries, but allowed him to remove the character from the show in one episode. In the case of Sinclair he did it without even needing the actor to do it. The recording of the message Garibaldi gets in 'The coming of Shadows' was an actual recording they filmed during the making of the first season.
Now that's planing ahead.
@@grayscribe1342 J. Michael Strazynski is one of the best (current/living) show writers, game writers, comic and book authors, Abrams is a hack.
The difference is that J. Michael Strazynski actually KNEW the answers to the questions he was raising. He had those figured out before he actually started writing the scripts. He knew why Babylon 4 had vanished, and what was under Vosh's armor. JJ just creates a mystery, but he has no idea what the answer is. He just hopes that he'll be able to figure one out later. He never had any real idea why the plane crashed in Lost. He never really had any idea who Rey was, who Snoke was, or why Luke had run off. He just figured that whoever the next script writer was might be able to do something with his EMPTY mystery boxes.
@@liljenborg2517 Thats because J.J. is a terrible writer, he needs to be the guy in the back of the room that goes "what if there was a mystery surrounding X?" adn then real writers take that and flesh it out. instead he's the guy in the front of the room going "there is a mystery surrounding X!" then does nothing with it, it's mystery for the sake of mystery.
@@thedisgruntledjedi8637 JJ's Mystery Box "technique" is JJ simply claiming that his lazy writing is actually writing genius. The scary sad thing is that people bought his con.
The mystery box is only as good as the mystery behind it.
If you're not gonna do anything with it, might as well not put it in there.
Exactly
@@LiteratureDevil enjoyed this one LD 👌
Mysteries calls people attention because they want to know the answer to that mystery, but when you don't give them the answer you just let them confused and not getting anything about it and they get disappointed. There are some mysteries that works to audience perspective, like Inception ending, but not everything has to be like that.
That's why Cloverfield Paradox sucks, because you get confused about everything and you don't know what is happening because they don't get the time to explain it.
The Doctor's origin should have remained a mystery, because it was never important to the story, he was a mad man with a box who dropped into your life like Mary Poppins and was then just as suddenly gone.
Yes and any mention of his backstory (2nd doctor onward) never really gave the Timelords a complete explanation just enough to not make it unreasonable.
Yeah. What a nice way to ruin an iconic character.
This should have been the Master's origin. A quick cameo of Missy delivering the line, "The Timeless Child was me", before morphing back to the current Master. That would both explain the Master's hatred of Gallifrey, and explains why no one simply shoots the Master (it wouldn't do any good). But that would make Jodie less than absolutely the speshulest.
@@nk_3332 Why is it, that even with the worst stuff they do, fans and people find twists they could have don that would have worked infinitely better than what the 'professionals' have done?
The Master has been abused by the Timelords before and this would give one of the greatest villains in Doctor Who unlimited regeneration's and as you mentioned motivation. And they can surprise us when the current regeneration's of the Doctor are used up how and why he gets a new set, even if I think they should come up with a better idea than last time.
@@grayscribe1342 Because the fans respect the property, and the audience. Star Trek was political, but they rarely said 'you were wrong to have done this' they said 'you need to outgrow this'. The effect is the same, but the tone is very different.
I now need someone to write a story revolving around someone trying to stop the sale of a meth-like drug called "mystery box".
Code Geass, Refrain is close enough
There's an Akbar and Birbal story regarding faith with mystery box parallels.
Imagine a Mario game where you never get to power up because all those [?] boxes won't reveal their content...
That would be torture.
*laughs in shitty romhack*
Enomiel Lanidrac
Virgin Super Mario Bros: Needs power ups to defeat his enemies
Chad Normal Mario: Doesn't need power ups to kick anyone's ass
And the developers would say, "well you should just pretend that the boxes had something really cool in them, anyway."
"That box could've had a hypno-shroom!"
"(What do you mean that's the wrong game...)"
As a writer, the questions you bring up often need to have hints woven within the story, it’s such a delicate blend. You cannot be too obvious as to insult the reader, and too subtle or worse no hints at all that the reader feels cheated out of the answer.
The mystery box is lazy, because imagination is powerful. It can be done right, Lovecraft and as you mentioned V, do a good job at raising up questions that are fun to the imagination, but the overall themes are never jeopardized by.
That's why I can't get the light novel series So I'm a Spider, So What? out of my head. When I first read the story there were many scenes where I had little idea what was going on, but I could tell the author was hinting at something important. Later, in the story, when a major reveal happened, it felt simultaneously like a complete shock and completely obvious. But it was never enough to answer all of the questions I had, and it keeps you wanting more. Even the major reveals, just gave me more questions and made me want more.
I keep going back and rereading the series after each new book, knowing where the series is going and seeing all the subtle clues I missed or misread. It is impressive all the little details the author was able to sprinkle in.
I always wondered why everyone was so down on Innsmouth?
"Hey, Orange Yoda, why do you have Luke's lightsaber?"
"A good question, now shut up."
@@justinfarischon7868 Reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's novels, particularly The Stormlight Archive or the Mistborn series. There's generally a big twist at the end, but there are little things that hint at the twist so that it isn't a copout. There are questions asked, but there's an answer planned ahead of time, even if it takes a couple books to reveal the whole truth (Why is Vin able to sense through Copper Clouds? Book three of Mistborn answers that in a satisfactory way with info already revealed about the power systems in the book).
It makes it so that there are a lot of bonuses to reading/listening to the books more than once. There are so many things you notice the second time through that you didn't see before (references to things called Koloss in Mistborn 1, along with the appearance of TenSoon and mentions of Kandra, both of which show up more in later books).
@@akl2k7 I've heard good things about his work. I should add them to my list of books to read.
The worst part of Abrams' mystery boxes is that I never once, in ANY of his work (and I was a big fan of Fringe's first couple of seasons), got the impression that even HE knew what was in the box, what the answers were. Star Wars was worse because the plan wasn't to have an overarching plotline, but for Abrams to set up the pins and then hand it over to someone else to decide how to knock them down. I get every impression that there may have been a discussion early on between Abrams and Johnson that sounded like, "The answers can be anything you want. I'm excited to see what you'll come up with." ...And then Johnson decided he'd rather play curling on the bowling lane and just swept aside all the pins like he had some actual, personal axe against the game of bowling.
This is too revealing it might as well be real.
I loved the first seasons of Fringe. Went downhill fast when the formula becomes acutely aware.
I 100% agree, Fringe at first seemed like an X-files knock off, and it probably is, but there was that mystery to keep you invested for that whole first season...until it lost the plot and I gave up in season 2.
I've been told there are a lot of cases where a writer can get away with not revealing details so long as the audience can tell the writer themselves knows. To be fair, this was NOT meant to apply to important plot points. It was more about worldbuilding and stuff that would be interesting to know, but not necessary to the story. Like the contents of that briefcase.
When an author proposes a mystery in the beginning of a story, the author is making a promise to the reader that the author knows the answer to the mystery, and when the reader finds out what it is, it will blow their minds! This entices the reader to follow the characters through the story to discover the answer at the end.
The problem with J.J.'s execution of the mystery box theory is it became obvious that the author did not know the answer to the mystery, because he was more in love with the infinite possibilities than revealing the solution to his own enigma. Once the audience realized this, many concluded the mystery box was ultimately empty and not only lost interest, but became perturbed at being misled into following an unrewarding wild goose chase.
To me, as an author, it is fine to use the mystery box technique IF the author ultimately knows what is in the box and, (if the contents is pivotal to the character's development), is prepared to reveal it to the readers.
Kaedis mystery box is also acceptable if you’re a Game master for a tabletop rpg. You’re going to develop lore at times on the fly and you should go ahead abd put in the world what appeals to you and sounds awesome. The answers as to why those things are will come later and will sound cool if you’re players ever hear of them
@@Sellipsis Tabletop games are inherently improv based no matter how much the Game Master has planned out beforehand simply by the reactionary nature of the game, ergo it's an apples to oranges comparison between them and more conventional stories.
To be fair, it is possible to promise a mystery that you don't know the answer to, you just have to write a lot to figure it out. Ken Levine is a great example of this, as, if you follow the development of Bioshock Infinite, it becomes apparent that Levine didn't know the answers at first. Of course, he definitely knew what the answers were before the game was released, due to all the writing and rewriting.
@@GameCat16 That is exactly the point. If the writer presents a mystery to the reader, knowing what the solution is, it is not too hard to drop clever hints along the way to the big reveal, delighting as your audience, (hopefully), marvels at your brilliance. However, if the writer presents a mystery, not knowing what the solution is, chances are he/she will be doing a lot of re-writes to try to pull meaning from details in their own story and sew it all up into a resolution that makes it LOOK like he/she knew what they were doing all along. It all depends on where a writer would rather spend the majority of their time, in planning or in re-writes.
@@GameCat16 Strongly disagree, Bioshock Infinite was disjointed and it shows, people just like to forget about that because it gave them "the feels" or made them feel smart for thinking they understood it. It's held together better than most other stories with it's level of obvious rewrites and ideas that seemed cool but then don't go anywhere, because there was a better than average effort and talent to tie all the fragmented ideas together but it's still easy to see the stitching if one looks.
This video, the Mary Sue one, this whole format, is fantastic. Knocking it out of the park, well done!
It's awful.
@@Dragonage2ftw how so
I think the best example of the "Mystery Box" theory is the original Alien. Where they purposefully don't show the monster, because whatever we are imagining is infinitely more terrifying than realizing it's just a dude in a rubber suit.
"Jaws" was like that too, but in both cases the monster was eventually seen and defeated. Scott and Spielberg believed in payoffs.
@@peteg475 Oh, I agree... to a point. Throughout Alien, we only got either very tight shots or mere brief flashes of the xenomorph. This built up the tension and terror. And yes, the full reveal of the creature at the end does show a very scary looking monster, but it still reminds us that it's just "a dude in a rubber suit." The reason Jaws worked so well was a combination of what we are talking about, ie just short glimpses of the creature, and a VERY realistic looking creature effect. I'm reminded of an old episode of the cartoon Doug, where Doug is terrified of a monster from a movie called "The Abnormal." And he's scared because he closed his eyes every time the creature was on screen. When he finally DOES peek, he sees it's just a cheap suit, and therefore nothing to be scared of.
I'm sure there is some example of a movie where they never fully reveal the monster, but I honestly can't think of one. My overall point is pretty much what LD said: the mystery is great, but a payoff is needed. The question becomes simply how MUCH do you pay it off, or reveal?
Jake The Army Guy i agree... but I am not sure if it counts as a JJ mystery box - he likes to leave people hanging on too many different pieces in his films and for no good reason than mystery’s sake.
Whereas the mystery created by not revealing much of the xenomorph (or explaining everything) in Alien was confined to the early part of the film and actually had the purpose of letting the audience’s imagination fill in the gaps. There were no other large mysteries that were left unanswered by the end of the film either - we even learn why they were woken up so far from home to go check out the signal.
@@JakeTheArmyGuy not a movie, but a VN, "Saya no Uta" does this, but what the monster actually looks like isn't important to the story, so it never needs to be revealed.
@@JakeTheArmyGuy Jaws also makes a great example of a director being forced to make the best out of the situation he is in. The shark looked great, but malfunctioned often since the water screwed it up badly. Spielberg literally had to use the beast as little as possible to avoid making it look strange and created greatness out of adversity.
The feeling I got from Abrams' Mystery Box TED talk was that he relishes in the wonder of the mystery along with the audience, while he's the one who's supposed to be in charge.
It's like being a passenger on the plane, and the pilot sits next to you. You ask the pilot something like: "who's flying the plane?" or "do you know where we're going?" And the pilot answers: "I have no idea! Isn't that great? Let's find out together!"
If the mystery box is full of infinite possibilities, then I can imagine its full of infinite horse crap as well.
😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@gonzalo7591
Maybe the last scene of Episode 9 should have been JJ sitting in a chair saying, "This is a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' movie. For each one of you in the audience, Rey's parents are whoever YOU decide they are."
Okay, thanks, JJ.
@@UTU49 Rey doesn't have parents. Like Anakin, she doesn't come from a mother-father relationship raising a good kid, but she comes from messing around with midi-chlorians. She's a genetically engineered clone with a massively enhanced midi-clorian count. So instead of thousands of them in each cell, she has tens of thousand or more. Basically, she's a walking midi-chlorian that is amnesiac until the opening events of the trilogy begin to wake her up to what she is.
Yes, I am being facetious and sarcastic. The character of Rey was ill-conceived at best. Yes, the irony and the pun were intended.
Promises of cake without actually giving you cake.... So the cake is a lie...I feel old.
but the lie could also be a pie, or a cupcake, or icecream! Isnt that exciting!
_J._ _J._ _Abrams_ _after_ _the_ _audience_ _sees_ _the_ _mystery_ _box_ _is_ _empty:_ "What are you doing? Stop it! I... I... We are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you."
I'm still not over the loss of Companion Cube. I suppose that makes me old, too.
But the cake wasn't a lie, it was down in the basement the whole time. GLaDOS never said it was for you.
But in this case, the cake really is a lie, because J. J. Abrams can't even be bothered to bake one in the first place.
Someone cut the cake. I told them to wait. Hello? You're not even going the right way. You should've turned left, there. Hello? You shouldn't be down here. Good people don't end up here.
I think one reason J. J. Abrams' mystery box theory doesn't work is because he didn't plan, or at least know, an ending to his work. That's one rule a lot of writers are taught for short stories, and series too. If you don't know where everything will conclude, then everything your story's built up to, whether it's plot, characters, theme, or setting, comes to nothing.
But endings also require inevitable consequences of a kind, usually a sacrifice via death or something else. Which is the very thing Abrams, and writers like him, find hard to accept. Not necessarily because they're attached to their characters, but more because they always want them to win WITHOUT sacrifice. And for that, we get TRoS, where the only characters who do die are hardly connected to the new ones to feel like a true loss, but rather a wasteless demise. Except for Kylo Ren, but that's was just done in an attempt to try and please both crowds in the divided fandom.
Deborah Kelty he opens the boxes without knowing how to close them again or fill them even.
Well, considering they were still revising the last movie after it went to post....yeah. Abrams had no plan. And one has to wonder whether he even cared. Because you get a distinct feeling even going back to The Force Awakens that these movies are being written and directed by people who simply didn't care.
Yeah, in cases where the mystery box works well the author clearly has the contents in mind from the get go and drops little hints here and there for the audience to chew on while they wait for the reveal. In TFA there are little hints dropped that to me suggested she might have been a younger sister to Ben Solo (the way Leia and Han responded to her) and I’d theorized she could even have been Ben’s start of darkness, with him being jealous of the attention she was getting from their parents while he was training with Uncle Luke and then when she also started training the attention she was getting from Luke as a novice that needed more direct supervision than the better trained Ben. But then TLJ did the equivalent of ripping open all the mystery boxes and revealing there was nothing there, jossed all of that fan theorizing that took place following TFA and the shit hit the fan. Then in RoS they tried to fix things but it was too late.
@@WastelandSeven Exactly. Without a reason to care, nothing good will come of a piece of art except later distaste, apathy, and perhaps regret.
Cathy Grandstaff No that is not a mystery box is a mystery box is when you set up a mystery before you know how to conclude it. When it is planned ahead of time, it is just a mystery.
"Wish too often and your well will run."
- Mystery Box etchings (2009).
The Mystery Box is the physical manifestation of one word: novelty
This constant half-baked novelty is, in essence, Literary ADHD
"Waiting inside is not wonder but poison...in reality is nothing but a Misery Box" 👏👏👏 well said.
My God! Thank you, I have been saying this for years! The story structure nerd in me shrieks everytime I get the telltale feel of a mystery box story.
Into Darkness and Force Awakens are mystery box stories at their worst. Rather than reveal information piece by piece giving you the grander picture over time, they keep you in the dark until the 11th hour and throw everything at your face at once. Or in the case of TFA don't reveal anything and kick the can down the road to the next guy, hopefully he'll have the answers right?
@@nightwishfan1991 It feels like the writers are stomping their feet shouting, "but answers are hard!!!!! I just want cool things, why can't I just have cool things?!"
Abrams saying that the mystery (or lack of information which is not all that a mystery is) is more important than the story (or information) . . . sounds like someone trying to sound edgy by misusing Zen riddles in place of actual writing talent or knowledge.
@@PoeticProse7 Question: What is a mystery with no answer?
Answer: False tension with no meaning.
@@UnusVita Absolutely! I watched his Ted Talk and as a writer I kept going, "That's not how plot works, that's not how mystery works . . . dude, did you ever take single creative writing class?"
Hey, J. J., what is the sound of one hand clapping in the wind? (smacks the back of his head) That.
"And I looked, and behold a Bad Robot: and his name that sat on him was JJ Abrams, and Ruin followed with him."
Your translation is incomplete, it says: "and Ruin JOHNSON followed with him."
@@gojira387 that is indeed the joke
J.J. thinks that the Mistery box can solve every problem with the plots.
"I want an answer to this, author"
"Fuck you, shut up, mystery box"
JJ wants to be able to jangle keys in front of his audience and get applause.
@Shaman Xeed Ha! You wish.
@Shaman Xeed So, in your opinion, what manga is "good".
@@mray4784 Magma Tasai by Osamu Tezuka
Anything by Tezuka actually. It all ended save Firebird
If there's nothing inside then you can fill it with everything
Also Berserk is the best
If there is one work of fiction that comes to mind for me after watching this, it's the 2017 anime _Kemono Friends_ - a show with such a limited budget that you couldn't use it to buy a turkey sandwich, but which became one of the most popular shows in Japan precisely because the writer/director Tatsuki knew how to use these ideas of "mystery" perfectly.
At first, we are kind of given a "Mystery Box" right out of the gate: a young girl named Kaban wakes up in an abandoned safari park filled with anthropomorphic animals, and she has no memory of who she is or what she is. She wants to find out what kind of animal she is, setting her narrative in motion, but this "Mystery Box" isn't so mysterious to the audience, who figures out she's a human being literally within minutes.
So that seems like it doesn't leave us much to look forward to since we all know the inevitable reveal. But Tatsuki is nothing if not brilliant. He shifts the focus of mystery off of Kaban herself and onto the world she is in (and boy are there strange and fascinating clues regarding the park and its origins). When I first watched it I thought she had gotten lost as part of a research team to the abandoned park and maybe hit her head or something resulting in amnesia. So imagine my utter surprise when we learn the fact that it's likely all of humanity on earth has been completely annihilated by an unknown terror. Suddenly the mystery goes right back to Kaban - for while she is still searching for _who_ she is, we - who know she is human - are suddenly wondering _why_ she is. It's amazing how there can be two mysteries going on side by side - one the protagonist is trying to solve and a different one the audience wants to solve.
Fortunately her "Box" is finally opened and who she is and where she comes from are revealed, exactly as they should have been. As for the origins of the park and of humanity's fate, they are still a mystery. But those questions aren't important to the main plot of the show - like this video recommended, they don't form the narrative focus. So no one is bothered by that and it gave us something to look forward to.
That is, until Tatsuki's bosses fired his ass and decided to take the franchise in a completely different direction. And as for the second season - well, let's just say they may have profited from watching this video.
The greatest failure with Rey is that her inconsistencies were easily remedied with small explanations.
Her experience with mechanics, flying and scavenging could be answered by providing a relationship with her carer: Unkar Plutt.
Her force powers could be explained after TLJ from having the film dedicate its time on Rey being trained by Luke.
Although, Rey still needed to lose to Kylo.
This all could have been remedied.
She also would have needed not uses the force until she meets Luke and not being the one flying the falcon.
But then Rey woul'd owe her skills to men ^^
Unkar Platt is definitely not her carer. He barely gives her any food and send his uruks to beat her.
"Anyone can be a hero" falls flat on its face when you consider that _only_ Rey was able to become the hero.
As someone who's writing a story, there's an incredible appeal to the use of mystery boxes in the cake formula style and somewhat like pulp fiction.
Have a device be a part of the story that could be relevant, with undisclosed details that eventually amount to nothing, but ends up being just a mean to a character's resolve.
"The true x is the friends we made along the way" is something that comes to mind almost instantly, the device just fulfills it's intended purpose without being detailed but is still teased as something valuable/important thorough the plot.
Reminds me of One Piece too.
TLDR: Do not use mystery boxes if their specific answer is deeply connected or relevant to the plot or protagonists. A mystery box must never be the centre of attention.
It can be but only when you have an answer. If you don’t know what. Your villains origin is going to be, don’t set it up as mystery just leave it. That is why V’s face and the briefcase work they are not set up to be important to the story.
@@emberfist8347 In the original script of Pulp Fiction, the briefcase was filled with gold. Tarantino only decided to make it a mystery during filming.
@@davidsumner7604 Nah the script said it had the diamonds from Reservoir Dogs.
Meanwhile, Dr. Who went and did the opposite: Instead of keeping the Doctor's past vague and simple to allow for imagination and endless story threads, they went and gave her a definite backstory which now narrows the stream and potential, and radically shifts the context of all the Doctor's actions and conflicts in a bad direction. Wouldn't be surprised if this next Season goes and gives the Doctor a definite name as another nail in the now excessively sealed coffin.
The funny thing there is that the story of Gallifrey was finished, that story had already been wrapped up in a satisfying way without needing to give any answers, they had to actually go back and erase that satisfying conclusion just so they could insert bad answers that made the entire franchise seem small and ridiculous.
The mystery box is literally the Kings new clothes. He never wears luxurious robes, rather he walks around naked and expects everyone to be content worth the possibility of what he might be wearing
Meanwhile, everyone watching is thinking "put some damn clothes on you pervert!"
I really like the comparison to the car without enginge. It fits since, like Star Wars, it will run for a while, but only downhill.
I do wonder if the mystery box should be reserved to non-plot essential items/ideas, kinda like the suitcase from Pulp Fiction, or V's identity. I mean, after all, a car can run great without a passenger seat or a backseat driver.
@@rya3190
I think it can be very effective to leave some mysteries unanswered... but only if it is being done decisively FOR THE BENEFIT of your audience. If the author leaves mysteries unanswered for a long time or forever, because he is just procrastinating making a decision, then he is a shitty writer.
Oh, a very quick and simple fix:
Do not cast J.J. Abrams. If you absolutely must, do not cast Rian Johnson to work after Abrams.
Yes, J.J.'s flawed mystery box notwithstanding let's not forget this disaster of a trilogy is the result of multiple factor and putting a different director in charge of the middle episode was not the least. A lot of poor production decision are to blame for all this mess.
Casting is what you do with actors, not directors.
The word you want is "hire."
It's remotely possible Abrams had a satisfactory answer before Johnson screwed things up.
Ah, who am I kidding? No one had any sort of plan for anything.
@@nathanbrown8680 Considering the bad taste Abrams left in... well, I won't speak for anyone else... my mouth after _Lost,_ I don't expect so. He also hasn't exactly wowed me with his other cinematic outings.
Also, it's not like he completely lost control. Yeah, he had a huge interruption, but he had one movie to set up and another to satisfactorily end plot threads.
I'll be honest, I think Johnson did the best he could with what he was allowed to do.
I don't think *any* director could have done better in his position.
He got a story that had several important characters who had barely any characterization. He wasn't allowed to give the new characters significant flaws.He was in a position where he was told he should push the idea that anyone could become a force user.. And to top it off he had to have an interesting story. So he basically had the work of two movies that he had to do in one with some serious limitations.
As near as I can tell, his biggest mistake from a story view is the Holdo maneuver, and, to non fans it was probably the high point of the movie. The rest of the major issues come to what he was told to do and what he was not allowed to do. Thus, those can almost certainly be laid at Kennedy's or Abram's feet.
That said, TLJ is *not* a good Star Wars movie but it is far better than either 7 or 9.
Rey being unusually great at everything reminds me so much of when I used to play pretend with my friends, especially when we were very little.
We would always come up with interesting conflicts, but our characters found a solution too easily, probably because we basically imagined our little story like a mix of cartoon and video game.
But like, we were 10 when we realized how boring being overpowered like that was in the long run.
This reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's rules for this. You can promise the audience a truck, and then give them a truck. You can promise them a truck, and then give them a really amazing truck. You can promise them a truck, and then give them a kick in the face. But you can't promise a truck and then give them a bike.
The comparison of the cake formula and mystery box was brilliant. Thank you for clarifying this.
Well said, and well laid out. I am forever sad at the unopenable mystery box of what the Star Wars sequels could have been if a competent writer had been involved. I would even say that The Force Awakens could have worked if there had been something inside that box. At the end of 7, there was still potential. Here's an example of how Rey's currently inexplicable abilities could have been explained:
Imagine this one change to Episode VII: At the end of the movie, when Rey finds Luke and stretches forth his lightsaber, he looks back at her, and says, with a measure of reverent surprise, "Rey?" Imagine what goes through your mind then. Clearly Luke knows her. Perhaps her abilities have an explanation after all.
Then, Episode VIII can explain to us how Rey was a fully trained Jedi, Luke's first, but when he sensed the Dark Side beginning to appeal to her, he used the force to do something terrible, which he would regret and never forgive himself for: he wiped her memories. He tried teaching her again, she learns quicker, and her abilities become stronger, but once again she begins to be drawn to the Dark Side. After a few more attempts, each try ending with her fascination in the Dark Side, he wipes her mind one final time and leaves her in the care of foster parents on Jakku, vowing to return once he becomes a better master.
Then, when this pattern repeats with Ben Solo, we begin to understand how Luke could get to where he is, and why he has exiled himself. He sees himself as a failed trainer, incapable of rising the next generation of Jedi without inadvertently leading them to the Dark Side. He blames his own heritage as a child of Darth Vader, believing that the Dark Side is innate within himself as well.
But now, here is Rey, older, mature, and good, finding herself mysteriously strong in the Force and seeking a master to train her.
Different story now, isn't it?
Matthew Bockholt wow i actually quite like idea. Never thought of that kind of perspective either.
While I still have a problem with Luke doing dark side stuff, he is the guy who forgave darth Vader after all, it would very much be a more satesfying movie that the rubbish we got.
Could I write this as a fanfiction, please? This idea is great!
@@Notfallkaramell
I couldn't stop you if I tried. It's only one of a dozen ideas I came up with that could have been better than what we got.
I would like to add that this idea is the least intrusive to Episode VII. I still hate that episode for one very important reason: it completely undoes everything accomplished in Episodes IV-VI; character growth, world building, and plot, all cancelled.
This is how you can know that Disney never intended to make sequels. This is actually what is called a soft reboot. And I hate it.
The worst part of the "little miss mary sue" syndrome is that its spreading, Borderlands 3 ended up becoming the force awakens of videogames...
Hold up, what?
@@voivodadracula1936 Biggest example is Ava. Most annoying character in all Borderlands games, by far - gets another character killed off then blames another character for it, game consistently kisses her ass despite her doing nothing useful, writers deflect criticism of her.
@@warcraftfan5 This is extremely late, but she also became one of the 6 sirens that can exist at any given time in the universe...
JJ Mystery box doesn't work because JJ doesn't know whats in the box. Its Schrodingers box. Was there ever a cat in it? Did the cat escape? Is the cat still there? Is it alive or dead? It doesn't matter because the box is no longer important as we have a new mystery box.
"Promises dinner and serves nothing". I can't think of a more apt description of Abrams work
I think the whole problem is a lot simpler:
Things can be interesting by being left unexplained. It adds an element of mystery. But it does NOT add suspense. Suspense comes from not knowing something AND expecting to find out. There is anticipation there.
So if you use mystery to drive suspense, it's because you've MADE the audience care about the answer and it's implications to the remainder of the story. When you as a writer do this, you are forming an implicit contract with the audience - that the questions raised WILL be answered and that the answer will be satisfying and narratively cohesive.
The 'Mystery Box' is not a flawed concept. It's just a stupid and terrible one. The idea of using mystery as suspense is okay. The idea of using unanswered mystery for interest is okay - see all soft magic systems. But writers already do this naturally. The Mystery Box is explicitly building suspense with a mystery WITHOUT THE AUTHOR THEM-SELF knowing the answer.
This means that you're dooming yourself to breaking the promise you made with the audience. Because now you can do one of two things. One, you can just never provide an answer, which means you cashed in on people's suspense to draw excitement and interest and never delivered. Two, you can eventually give the answer - but since you never knew the answer yourself, whatever answer you give is unlikely to be narrative coherent or live up to the suspense built around it. You're just making a cliffhanger with no followup because: "Cliffhangers are exciting, right!?" No, Cliffhangers are FRUSTRATING. The EXCITEMENT is in the ANTICIPATION of knowing YOU WILL GET the answer.
There is ZERO benefit to the mystery box method in terms of story quality over an author who builds mysteries around questions THAT THEY KNOW THE ANSWER TO. Either they never reveal the answer to the audience, and the result is identicial, or they DO reveal the answer to the audience and it is satisfying. The only advantage is to the writer, who gets to build suspense and implication and excitement around absolutely nothing, requiring no talent or effort.
The Mystery Box method is just a writer being a lazy asshole and deliberately planning to break a promise to readers while cashing in on excitement and suspense that they did not earn.
A mystery box leaves a question hanging in the air for the reader to speculate on, however it can go bad when it is integral to the plot as it will make one aspect of that plot feel shallow and dumb. It will make the reader wonder why the plot is happening without telling them and making the story feel incomplete or bad. This was what I learned, thank you for the video!
The mystery box was at best an interesting theory that in practice proved to be little more than an idea you get when you're high and try to implement while you're still high.
Unfortunately, I don't know if he can even use that excuse.
You deserve waaay more subscribers. This was a really well put together video and it really made me finalize why I didn't like JJ's idea of the mystery box.
Personally, I thought the big mystery box of Force Awakens was "who are these First Order clowns and why are we rehashing the power relationship of A New Hope?"
I really wasn't that interested in Rey's parents because it didn't seem all that important for moving the plot. Hell, seemed like it was a device to keep the plot from moving in a contrived attempt at The Refusal.
As for mystery boxes as a concept, I think what most has people in arms against them is how the sequel trilogy appears to cynically use ambiguity to trick audiences into projecting their own personal meaning in lieu of having something of substance to say about the human condition.
Rey’s wasn’t even going to be a series long thread. Rey accepted they wouldn’t be coming back for her and moved on. However the idiots who live on tumblr thought this was going to be a plot thread and then Rian Johnson decided to “subvert expectations”
To be fair, some of this harping on Rey's heritage was the fans trying to fix a massive fuck up of the writers. Of course Johnson would miss that point entirely in his response. They don't know what they're doing, but they're hella smarmy about it.
Wow. This might just be my favorite of your videos thus far. You really got me thinking about story telling with this one.
A really good example of that cake theory is the lore of dark souls. We know the stuff important for the plot but not much else. We know that Gwyn Lord of Sunlight sacrificed himself to keep the Age of Fire going, but we do NOT know if he did it out of duty to his people or out of fear of those who would rule the Age od Darkness
What a great presentation. You pretty much spell out the problems with J.J. and his mystery box.
"How do you make your family hungry? You make them wait four hours for dinner." This explains the grind in JRPGs! Just kidding, great video as always Literature Devil.
The analogy you used about dreaming of writing a novel but never actually following through with it because imagining of what could be is sweeter really stuck with me. I really want to be a good writer, and I have several book ideas in my head, but I don’t actually write them because imagining how good it could be is sweeter than actually going through with it and receiving criticism. Man, I really need to write...
I like how you always end with a clear-cut point, as if answering the question you asked at some point in the video.
But, I'm curious to see how you'd handle an open-ended closure. To ask the audience to close the question for you. How to wrap an episode like that.
3:46 The difference with the mystery in pulp fiction and v for vendetta when compared to jj abrums is that the characters know what is inside the box or behind the mask. They know what the answer to the mystery is and they are satisfied with it so we don't have to know the answer. We know the answer is good so we don't necessarily need to know what the answer is and will be satisfied with not knowing and then guessing about what the answer to the mystery is will become fun.
Also in pulp fiction diamonds are in the briefcase
A boat's a boat but the mystery box could be anything. It could even be another boat
And you know how much we’ve always wanted one of those!
Ur acting like this is the first time I’ve done something stupid,remember that time I was supposed to get that boat
I honestly kind of adore this channel. Thanks for all of the writing tips.
The Mystery Box hypothesis (not "theory") failure is this: mysteries need solutions. Just look at any good classical detective story (Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe). Those stories had resolution when the mystery's solution was presented. Even if it was flawed or made no logical sense, at least the reader came away with some satisfaction because the mystery had been solved, thereby giving the story a conclusion.
Rob Boyte As LD said, that is indeed the case as long as the mystery is the focus of the story. Though I am not sure if Abrams ever intended for Reys backstory to be of importance. Maybe he was just actually bad at writing.
@@mayhemivory5730 For a series or serialized properties, yes, you can keep the audience guessing. But, you must ultimately resolve matters because, as LD has gone over in other videos, a question (mystery) is a promise, which the writer must keep (solution). Abrams' writing is flawed because his initial storytelling approach is flawed.
The thing with Mystery box is that it's the poor man's mystery. It's essentially the illusion of a real mystery, only for the mystery to merely be an excuse to do all kinds of weird stuff to get the audience guessing with no concrete answer. A well constructed mystery is great where you can watch it a second time and see all the clues you missed, where the mystery box is never intended to be intelligent TV, it's designed for a simpleton audience looking for random shock value.
Awesome video. It's difficult to find UA-cam videos that are as concise and well-referenced as yours.
No one:
JK Rowling: "The fact is that you, the viewer, were a mystery box all along."
The real mystery is the friends we made along the way
But also the mystery box is gay trans disabled and black even though none of these facts were hinted at or described in the actual text, and some of them were outright contradicted.
@@RoninCatholic the box is a female with a penis because magic allows it. Also it is an asian native american natural redhair
Hahaha! The delivery of 'misery box' at the end! Such a cynically twisted pleasure to hear JJ's style compounded so simply. Amazing comparative essay.
This was Rather extremely useful and informative. It could be applied in other ways rather than just story telling. Thanks Lit.
Keep up the great work
J. J. Abrams is a poor man's Alfred Hitchcock.
I personally have never made any connection between Abrams and Hitchcock. [snaps fingers]
Hitchcock's bomb story: A time bomb set for five minutes is placed in a room and two characters enter it later and time advances over that five minutes. Hitchcock knows what will happen, he lets the audience know what's going on RIGHT NOW and it's the characters who have no idea.
Hitchcock: 100% in control, Abrams... I don't know how much control he has, it's a mystery.
He's like a little kid trying to copy what he saw on TV
@@tskmaster3837 In Abrams' version of this story, they'd probably just yeet the bomb out the window after taking 7 minutes, and it'd explode harmlessly once removed from the immediate proximity of the protags.
TheAutistWhisperer he’s more of a poor man’s Steven Spielberg than Hitchcock. He even looks like Spielberg.
Awesome video. It's difficult to find UA-cam videos that's concise and well-referenced as yours.
Tuesday is my good day.
Thanks for adding another reason why Tuesday is my good day.
I'm pretty sure his views on the Mystery Box have been shaped by his failures of the past. I present exhibit A - the TV series Lost (Abrams and Damon Lindelof). That show spent like 4 seasons piling the mystery boxes up, writing IOUs to the viewers.
Then, as they started opening these mystery boxes, the contents kinda sucked and the viewers were furious. I'm pretty sure Abrams learned his lesson - but it was the wrong one. He seems to have understood it as "don't open the mystery boxes" rather than "don't overpromise - a mystery only works if it serves the story and makes sense".
"The Mystery Box is the opium of the movie-going masses!"
Hey Literature Devil, as a incipient writer myself, I appreciate enormously your writing video essays/lessons. You are so talented and wise!!🙏
to me the big mystery was the identity of snoke or, at the very least, what he is capable of. and we all know how that turned out.
That “stunning and brave” checkbox at 0:40 really got me 😂
Yes, the things that bothered me when watching The Force Awakens were, how was Rey so powerful with lightsabers and using The Force without any training, especially when fighting Kylo who was highly trained in these things? And how did Snoke and The First Order arise out of the ashes of the defeated Empire we saw at the end of Return of the Jedi? I assumed that "dinner would be served, or at least the first course of it" in the next movie. However, with Rian Johnson's obsession with subverting expectations, he did not serve us dinner, not even an appetizer, worse yet, he basically said "there is no dinner to be served" ("you're parents were nobody's) and killed Snoke without giving us any more information about him (the cake was a lie!). And that is why I absolutely hate Disney Star Wars since I saw The Last Jedi. Also, that "wonderful tasting meal" of seeing our beloved hero, Luke Skywalker, at his best again was a lie, all we got was a bad taste of sour green milk from a spacecow's udder as we saw a character assassination of our favourite hero who Mark Hamill says he had to think of as "Jake Skywalker" rather than "Luke Skywalker" to be able to act the character's part since this version of Luke was so different than the classic Luke we all grew up with.
This is my favorite video of yours as it puts something ive been trying to get across to people for years. A mystery is only worth while when there is a pay off. An unsolved mystery is like a battery with no charge. The only time its acceptable is when its not essential for something to function
The Mystery Box is JJ's equivalent to Shamylan's 4th act twist. Once you realize that's it's his primary writing tool that he uses as a base for everything he does, it devalues the effectiveness of that tool. It's a crutch that both of them found effective, but their adherence to those techniques is what holds them back as storytellers.
Yes. Yes... someone should kidnap them both and subject them to an in-depth curriculum that teaches all aspects of writing good stories in all mediums. Then they can be released into the wild again. Of course, there will be essay tests (along with other questions) for every unit of every course of the curriculum. That might keep them out of Hollywood for the next 15-20 years.
I don't think the act of using a tool consistently devalues it's effectiveness if it's truly effective in the first place. pure originality isn't what makes things great, there is true merit to using a tool repeatedly and improving and refining it. the problem with those specific tools is that they promise something and then don't deliver, and the first time that happens you get fooled into thinking the first half of the movie means something, but you don't fall for their same trick for the first half if that specific tool is the one that they rely on.
15:45 One other way to put it is that the cake formula will make you wait for hours for dinner and then reveal a cake, where the mystery box makes you wait four hours for dinner and then gives you a bag of flour. If that.
The mystery box is okay...as long as there is an answer to the mystery in the WRITERS mind. For instance my favorite crime series Columbo use Mystery boxes in novel way. We already know who the killer is. The mystery is how the bumbling detective zeroes in on the killer and makes the killer confess or get caught in their web of lies. So the Hero antagonist is this ever shrinking mystery box that grows more and more threatening as he goes. The audience along side the villain antagonist has most of the answers the mystery is how Columbo figures it out.
If there's an answer to the mystery it's really not a mystery box anymore, it's just a mystery story. The mystery box tactic as defined by JJ is essentially creating the illusion of a mystery that the writer hasn't thought out an answer to yet. And when such things come to an end, either the answer is terrible or the box never gets opened.
Usually in Columbo, he knows who the murderer is early on, the challenge is proving it. You watch to see how exactly he ends up outwitting the criminal to prove him guilty. It's sort of the opposite of the mystery box, because most of the details are already revealed to you. The entire plot format is "X killed someone. Columbo eventually catches X" and the part the writers fill in is how A goes to B.
@@taragnor The end result is enviable. the way the "Mystery box" comes into play is which if any of the threads presented to Columbo does he take to get to them. We the Audience along with the villain protagonist we've followed think we know the answers. In many stories HOW columbo found out how to do it isn't important (as its often a baldfaced lie) but what impact does it have on the villain is what is important.
Yes I've been waiting for this! I've thought this for a long time, but it takes me a while to crystalize my thoughts. Let's see if this helps, and we are on the save wavelength!
It would have been fun if Abrams would have thought about the movies even a little more... The loss of potential is staggering. Imagine if only Rey would have been a proper clone of Palpatine instead of a granddaughter, now that would have made many heads spin.
I think it's possible that he did think about it, but Rian had other ideas.
@@handsomebrick Well that's Kathleen Kennedy's incompetence.
"I wanted an Empress, a near equal subservient to my will. When I abruptly was discorporiated, the fools raised her as their own. Willfully ignorant that the force would bring my instrument back to me." - The Emperor answering Rey's origins in a better script for RoS.
Fantastic analysis! There's one approach that you didn't directly approach, however, and (if used properly) I think it's the best of both worlds.
And that approach is: presenting the mystery box, actually putting something in the mystery box refusing to tell what's in the mystery box, but planting just enough clues for somebody to figure it out. This is the Lee Child Cake approach, just more subtly, but it leaves the "endless possibility theorycrafting" of Abrams' idea largely intact. It's the satisfaction of the Mystery Box with the satisfaction of the Lee Child Cake.
Take Dave Filoni when talking about Star Wars: Rebels. He was once asked who was in the Sith Holocron from the end of Season 2. He said "Good question. I know who that is, actually. And I'm not going to tell you." Knowing Dave, he actually does have a fascinating backstory cooked up for her. He used a similar approach for Ahsoka's fate(s)-while he did eventually answer the questions in really unexpected ways, he deliberately laid breadcrumbs all along that, with hindsight, show he knew what he was doing. It BUILDS TRUST BETWEEN THE STORYTELLER AND THE AUDIENCE-if we can trust the storyteller to actually have something amazing inside the mystery box, we're more willing to accept the mystery box.
Toby Fox uses a similar technique in Undertale. For Flowey (the first real time he uses this) he creates a mystery box...but then actually answers it when you least expect it: it becomes the fulcrum of the story when you initially thought it was a plot-hole. Once that trust is established, he's able to use it more subtly with Sans (leaving incredibly difficult to find hints, but just enough of them to get an outline of the general sort of thing that might have happened to him) and Gaster (the most Abrams-esque mystery box in the game, and one that even if it's never answered still utilizes the trust he's built up elsewhere.)
A thousand other great works use it sparingly. I think the best mystery boxes are the ones that clearly have something in them, but that make you WORK for what's in them. To learn Gandalf's past, you have to actually read the Silmarillion. To learn about the VOID in Hollow Knight, you have to beat the Pantheon of Hallownest. To decipher Termina, you have to dig through lines of cryptic dialogue and piece it together into something cohesive.
Just do it right. Put something in the mystery box. (Or, if you're a lazy and bad writer who can't be bothered, at least put enough clues in for people to fill it for you. At least somebody will get a good story out of it, then.)
An answer is (usually) better than nothing.
Thanks for the video! It's like you just helped me find where to scratch a an itch I've had since the force awakens.
2:24 into the video: so … Abrams is a hack who presents us with incomplete stories because they interest him more ??
"Mystery is more important than dinner," words to live by.
And this is what happens to your fans! SMASH! This is what happens to your franchise! BOOM! And this is what happens to the future of your CEO! BANG! Any questions?
I like how Dark Souls did it. They wrote a complete lore then took little bits out to make a mystery. That way they avoided the "just making random shit up without any concern as to whether it makes sense" problem.
Jokes aside, I believe that the best way for the "Mystery box" to work is if it creates conflict *without ever solving it.*
And that is difficult without entering into MacGuffin or "Diabolus ex Machina" territory.
no
@@bonbon8899 Did you have to look that up?
@@DonVigaDeFierro no
Another great video and glad about the store. However, when will you sell merch with some of your silhouette figure on them? I'd love to sport a shirt and/or hoodie with those red eyes glaring at people!
Soon
The mystery box is a tool, just one tool.
Like starting a drama with a flash forward and then gong back to the beginning.
Now imagine a TV show in which EVERY episode used this shtick.
And not in an ironic adult cartoon way.
No critic would tolerate it.
SierraSierraFoxtrot That is season 4 of Lost and it was my favorite season. They even played with the audience’s expectations with one episode where we had a flash forwards and flashbacks without it being clear there were flashbacks until the end unless you have know certain details about Korean culture and how their calendar matches up with the western Georgian calendar.
@@emberfist8347 goid example, but they did exactly right.
@@emberfist8347 Yeah Lost was the illusion of a good series. But once you realize the entire plot was pure mystery box BS with no good answer, I'd never want to watch it again.
@@taragnor It was a good series. I even didn't mind the ending that much because I cared more for the characters than the mystery.
@@emberfist8347 : Personally I hated the ending, because I wanted answers to all the mysteries they set up. Pretty much for several seasons the series did nothing but make a ton of weird mysteries that there was no satisfactory answer to. That being said it did have some good characters, I just hated the whole idea of getting duped into watching a mystery they had no good answer for.
Like briefcase's contents being unimportant because the focus is on the characters, you could say to anybody criticizing you for focusing on the ST and NPC Marvel that the contents of the critiques are not as important as the storytelling lessons you teach through them. Another great video essay, well done!
Thank you very much, really liked you enjoyed it!
2:03 bruh thats just a lootbox
Sounds about right. Right from the start of your video I recognized your examples as support for the story, McGuffins or otherwise unimportant, rather than central elements of the plot itself. You quickly spelled it out in exactly that same way for the mystery box theory and why it fails. You could see that years ago in how Lost developed under Abram's philosophy, if not direction.
Mysteries are great and all but one must be careful of what kind of mysteries they are setting up and more importantly how effective the payoff will be because if the payoff is lackluster and disappointing then the mystery box theory is ruined. The reason why J.J Abrams mystery boxes failed in Star Wars wasn't so much his fault but Disney for allowing someone else to direct the sequel how they see fit regardless if they made sense in continuity and followed the prior story and mysteries. This resulted in The Last Jedi giving us extremely disappointing twists because Rian wanted to make his own story while ignoring the tiny fact that TLJ is a direct sequel to TFA and following stories, big mysteries and establishments are important unless you want to end up with a confusing, contradicting and disjointed mess which is what happened with the Disney trilogy. Word of advise Disney: Plan your shit and don't let other people write how they want to if you want a coherent story.
Disney needed to fire Kathleen Kennedy and replace her with someone who was konsiderably more kompetent.
She was the head of Lucasfilm. She was the producer who was there for all 3 films. It was her responsibility to steer the ship, or make sure that someone else was steering the ship. It was Disney's responsibility (to their audience and to their shareholders) to make sure Kennedy was doing her job.
finally! Someone who's able to formulate all my gripes about the Mystery Box in an understandable and comprehensive way.
Another one that made well the mystery box: Shingeki no Kyojin. Those who saw the latest season will know what I talk about.
That "Answer" to the mystery is one of the best I've ever seen.
I could not believe how amazingly well that was pulled off.
Spoiler
It was a clever way to continue the series, it could just be a simple solution to how to destroy titans in an easy way and end the series but by making answer being the information about the outside world and the originality of titans and informing both audience and characters that they still have a long way to achieve their goal, it show us that the series has still so much things to show.
Dang. Any college would be lucky to have you on as an English Professor. You do in minutes what it takes most weeks to communicate.
Mystery Stories aren't inherently bad, but if they are done wrong they can be one of the most disappointing things imaginable. It is possible to create stories with mystery and interpretations based on contents, but you need to establish a PATTERN, something where logic and rules can be set and constructed upon. For example, take the game Binding of Isaac, where it tells the story of Isaac. The game story is torn by pieces and mysteries, many of which we need to solve in order to reach an answer, to things like What is the Basement? Why Isaac's mom got nuts? Why all the characters that we play are bible figures? What happened to Isaac? All this we can find answers by looking at the patterns that the game shows us, things like the items, the cutscenes, enemies and bosses and such. All those things constantly tie with one thing: Religion! Religion is the base of Isaac's story.
Almost everything that happened and happens has connections with religion in a way or another, it was the religion that made Isaac so depressed, it was the religion that made Isaac see himself was a bible sinner(hence why you can play as them in the game), it was religion that made him kill himself and so on. Religion is the answer for many of the mysteries of everything in Isaac, both directly and indirectly, it keeps a consistent theme during the narration that keeps the players wondering and guessing, and why this work is, again, because the game sets a platform to base his events. We know that Isaac had a shitty life cause of religion, so everything will inherently tie with it. If the game's creator decided to put other things just because, it would be off-putting since it has no base in the story whatsoever.
13:20 Wait a second sherlock, I was expecting some essay about J. J. Abrams' Mystery Box and not a personal attack
I mean you can write a story around a Mystery that doesnt get solved. but you have to write around it and have the story not rely on the mystery. A mystery can be a plothook but not what the content of your story is without it being resolved. It is kind of like writing a detective story where you dont get a resolution to the investigation. It is possible but unless it is pulled off masterly it is an unsatisfying mess.
All of Jar Jar Abram's mystery boxes had in them were middle fingers and notes that said "your snoke theory sucks"
I'll box YOUR mystery!
Audience: “What’s in the box!”
JJ: “A good question for another time.”
Spot on, especially about the difference between the macguffin (which works for heist films) and what Abrams constructs. MacGuffins work as an easy way of driving a plot, provoking action, and generally *revealing* the motivations of the characters involved. But Abrams’s mystery boxes try to construct and develop characters by way of deliberately leaving in the character’s construction. Abrams’ Mystery box is a narrative scam - promising something that is never delivered, and one that generally sacrifices actual character development for the ecstasy of the revelation (or the plot twist).
One thing I’ve thought about Rey for a while now is that the narrative focus should not have been on who she is or how she is so talented or who her parents were, but rather it should have been focused on how she progresses to becoming a hero by confronting the trauma and abandonment that so characterize her and hold her back and overcoming the external obstacles and opponents that provoke her trauma and tempt her to abandon her journey.
The best of Star Wars, both OT and PT, has always been firmly character-centric, driven not ultimately by plot but by character journeys.
The Mystery Box is fine... as long as the Mystery Box is a birthday present, or a Christmas present. You need a gift inside, to please and reward the reader for their patience.
Writers that know what they're actually doing will use this all the time in TV shows, and Cake theory touches on it. You start with one mystery that slowly unveils itself through the course of an episode, keeping your invested until your questions are answered. But in the meantime, you also create a new mystery (aka a cliffhanger) that must be answered in the next episode, and the cycle can repeat itself.. In movies it's a bit harder, as you don't exactly have multiple episodes to drop mysteries and resolve them, but it can still be done.
This is why I know all the lore of my world. I have am answer for everything and everything demonstrates its importance. Even if it's importance isn't coming up soon. Ya gotta focus on little things like only specific interactions with an earing in the first book of a trilogy. Only to answer them at the very end when the earing is the key to everything.
I love your PSA Bump that you did early on.
Good details on the power and perils of the Mystery Box tool for writers.
And Lee Childs "Cake" tool... explains a lot. Not my cup of tea, no disrespect implied or intended.
An additional tool for thought: Science Fiction author John Brunner had a tool that he called "the middle of the trilogy". He would write a stand-alone novel with enough implied events to furnish a prequel and a sequel, but never did write them.
And then Piers Anthony figured out the mirrorverse version and wrote trilogies with 48 novels (so far). I guess. Makes the mortgage payments.