It’s 4 AM as I’m writing this blog and I’m having trouble sleeping. I’m hoping that writing these thoughts will tucker out my skull so I can get back to whatever a normal life is.Let’s see how this goes…
A few days ago I was binging season 6 of Rick and Morty. I thought the series as a whole was better than season 5 but all in all I feel that the series is over. Meaning I no longer care about what happens to any of the characters. There was something missing in the stories. Like the characters were morphed but something other than a character arc. If a character’s point of view or philosophy changes through anything but through the story, it leaves an after taste of deception in the audience’s mouth. Like they used an established character that was built on trust via the story and now it’s being used to tell a different type of story or message that the audience didn’t sign on for. An example might be if there was a new story where Jesus Christ was talking about the benefits of the military industrial complex. A lot of people would reject that story as it would be far from what the original story has said.
This might be reading too far into it all but I always felt that Rick is basically a Gen-X’er who hates everything and has no interest in the modern world. His family represented the new world which Rick constantly mocked. Over the past few seasons it seems like rick is forced to accept how the world works and how his views are increasingly invalid. There’s room for great storytelling in there but it seems to me that his critique which was what brought so much attention to his character, has gone away and morphed into a defensive trait used to avoid any personal growth. To me this switch started around season 4 and that’s what it feels like to me is when the show lost it’s soul.
A friend of mine posted a quick review of the Gotham Knights video game a few days ago in which he said that if you treat the game like a Batgirl game, then it was enjoyable. For those of you who aren’t aware of the story, Batman has been killed and it’s up to the Gotham Knights (Batgirl,Nightwing,Robin and The Red Hood) to take up the mantle of Gotham City’s protectors. Thinking about this premise shined a light on what I see more and more in entertainment, to smash all the idols.
“Hey let’s make a Batman game but without Batman!”
“Hey let’s make some Star Wars movies but lets not use Luke Skywalker too much.”
“Ooo wait! I have an idea! Let’s make a He-Man cartoon but wait for it….we don’t have He-Man in it!”
Maybe it’s because I’m a Gen-X guy myself and like many of my ilk, were taught morality through a mix of religion and Saturday morning cartoons. I think that’s why a lot of us online have such a negative reaction to the characters we grew up with being used to just milk as much money as possible through movies and merchandise. The irony is that nothing has changed in that respect, only the audience has. Maybe we’d feel better if they targeted us to sell to as opposed to a younger audience who doesn’t care about those characters the way us older folks do?
“Hey jackasses! You can’t exploit and manipulate me as an impressionable child in order to get my parents money, then forget about me now that I make my own money! I want you to target me so I’ll spend a bunch of cash about things that really don’t matter!”
Maybe that’s the issue, the industry always wanting the quickest path to the younger market? I don’t have kids of my own so I’m not up on the newest trends and characters. The last storyline that I saw that was anywhere as big as Star Wars and the like was the Harry Potter books.I’m guessing that in ten year’s time a Millenial will expose the Harry Potter series to their kids the way Gen-X exposed their kids to the original Star Wars films and the reaction will be mixed. I think generations want stories to call their own no matter the quality of the previous stories. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, if anything this will keep the fire lit for creative energies.
The problem with adjusting characters for younger generations that at some point you’ll alienate the audience that appreciated the characters and loved them to begin with. I think that’s what happened to a lot of IP (intellectual property) in modern stories. If I were to give a note to the studio heads of all the film studios, I would say that the next executive or producer who brings up the idea of modernizing an existing IP shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it. Tell them to take that creative energy and put it into a new idea instead of converting someting that’s already been done. I know that’s asking a lot when a studio is investing millions of dollars into a project but look at what they’ve been putting out in the past few years?
Maybe Hollywood is still recovering from the pandemic but the sure thing of a Marvel movie isn’t such a sure thing anymore. Are they running at a loss? Probably not. Are they making the kinds of returns they were 10 years ago? Probably not.
If modern storytelling doesn’t improve I’ll be forced to write a story myself…and it’s going to suck=P