Continuity of Myth
No updates this week so we’re right into it.
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One of my favourite video game podcasts is the Waypoint Podcast. Host Austin Walker is one of the most intelligent critics out there and I love the different elements that the rest of the team bring to the mix, especially Danielle Riendeau’s ever-present, unabashed love for the immsersive sim.
The discussion on the podcast is always topical, thoughtful and best of all nuanced. Occasionally the podcast will dedicate an entire episode to a game in an ongoing feature called Waypoint 101. The latest episode covers developer Avalanche‘s 2015 take on the Mad Max franchise.
The episode, of course, digs into the film franchise too at one point touching on the loose (very loose!) continuity between the movies. They then make a point that I’ve always struggled to kind of put into words myself, that from the second installment onwards the movies essentially become a kind of fable. There’s obviously the framing device from Road Warrior where we learn the narrator is the feral kid we’ve been seeing the entire movie. That closing shot of Max, quickly pulling away and watching him fade into the desert, is him passing from the narrator’s minds eye and into legend.
There’s a similar shot at the end of Fury Road where Max drifts into the jubilant crowds and fades from view. Max is myth, maybe a composite, a legendary figure that drifts across the wasteland in and out of the lives of those braving the chaos to find something better. This, ultimately, is why it doesn’t matter who plays Max. He’s a character that can be reinterpreted, tweaked and made fresh again depending on context and the characters around him.
The Waypoint crew raise the valid point that this is maybe why the game fails. The player controls Max in the game. He becomes something more tangible, less mysterious. Instead he becomes an avatar to just land one more combo or find one more unlockable piece for your new car. Maybe a game that exists in that world, presenting Max as something separate from the rest of us would have done better - who knows?
But this loose, mythic style of storytelling and rules made me think about comic books, specifically superhero comic books. There has been a lot of back and forth over the years as to whether continuity is a good thing or not. Most seem to enjoy the legacy aspects of continuity spanning decades. Others argue that it’s a shackle on creativity that can drag even the best writers into a morass of bland, predictable storytelling.
Even the big two sometimes seem to feel the pangs of what life without continuity would be like, rebooting the universe, creating new ones before the status quo re-emerges with a new coat of paint. I’m not the first to suggest it, but I sometimes wish the big two would lean into the looser aspects of something like the Mad Max franchise. Superheroes are often heralded as modern myths. Embrace that. Let each creative team bring their sensibility to it, free from the constraints of what came before. Decouple the narrative from continuity and let creators truly put their stamp on these characters. They’re pliable. There’s room for more than one version.
There’s an argument to be made for the same kind of practices to be put into effect on the movie screen too. But after toil and time it has taken to establish the various cinematic universes I’m under no illusion (billions of dollars are a strong motivating factor) that the kind of homogeneous, entertaining but harmless, film-making that Marvel Studios is known for is here to stay.
Interestingly, at the moment, there is a Todd Phillips directed Joker origin movie in production with Joaquin Phoenix penciled in to star (with Martin Scorcese producing no less) in the titular role. It exists completely outside the DCEU movie universe, separate from the Jared Leto version of the character we saw (if you didn’t walk out) in Suicide Squad.
I’ve zero enthusiasm for seeing a Joker origin movie, but part of me wonders whether DC is in to something with this stand alone project or if they’re continuing with their scatter-shot method of trying to catch up with their Marvel counterparts.
Links
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This is one of many writing related posts on Jim Butcher’s LiveJournal (remember LiveJournal?) that are worth a look.
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I love the notion behind this post, especially lately. You don’t have to live in public.
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Robert Heaton on how to remember what you read.
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Global warming + thermal imaging = a criminal’s dream.
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Cory Doctorow at Locus on Zuckerberg, Facebook and corruption.
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A fantastic piece by Megan Abbott on the genre of noir in the age of #MeToo.
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The director of King Kong: Skull Island certainly had a crazy time in Vietnam.
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Finally, I find this bizarre. A single typo consigned the Aliens: Colonial Marines video game to a shit show of problems with its AI. Years later, someone noticed it.