 I still have my Christmas tree up cuz I haven't put it away yet and also that's not a window That's a weird modern electronic fireplace thing. The place I live is not on fire. Hello and welcome to Kyle talks about Writing I've been experimenting with long-form content. They tend to involve a lot of research So I do write them all out ahead of time and then I you know perform them very Professionally kill me while his son is watching cut that part But I have some topics I wanted to cover that I thought would actually work better in sort of a free form Format I've obviously covered superheroes already exclusively. I do think about other things I think my brain just gets clogged up and I have not stopped thinking about superheroes For like ten years who am I kidding? I've thought about superheroes my entire life That's literally what I grew up on I watched the spider-man 90s TV cartoon And I read my dad's old Marvel comic books and I played spider-man video games It was mostly spider-man plus other people who tended to show up in Spider-man so I was really familiar with the Marvel heroes as a little kid and when they started being produced as films That was just like a dream come true. I still can't believe the MCU Happened honestly like just the sheer scale of the cultural phenomenon that is the MCU I don't think will ever happen again And I never really agreed with people saying that the early superhero films weren't cinema or weren't as good as I don't know Tarantino movies I like using food analogies to talk about films a lot and my comparison for that has always been like if you wanted Ice cream and someone was like oh no no no you should go have this steak at this restaurant in Paris great advice But I don't want French steak. I want ice cream. That's why I'm going to Baskin Robbins I just think it's all equally valuable You know like it does it just depends on what you're in the mood for from my perspective the MCU is effectively dead Despite whatever Disney keeps trying to sell us it all culminated an end game and they had those cool credits Worldly actors signed their name and then it was and then it was done That was all that needed to happen. I obviously care way too much about superheroes But also I think the MCU is kind of like looking at filmmaking under a microscope a lot of issues I have with big movies and giant studio productions are specifically really apparent in the Marvel films And like I said, it's been like ten years I've had a bunch of other nerdy friends who I talk to constantly about all of this stuff Collectively, we've come up with all of these weird terms and rules and things that we've learned about writing by just Observing what Disney has done with this one franchise I figured I'd start today with something I learned during phase one of the MCU A rule that we developed and have referenced multiple times in our own writing that we call Asgard isn't interesting In the early days they were much more dedicated to making each character's film feel more like its own genre Iron Man felt like this, you know modern story about a tech mogul coming to power Captain America felt like a war film at least the first one kind of seemed like it was supposed to and then Thor was Fantasy they all ended up as kind of watered-down versions of the genre They were going for and arguably would have been way cooler if they had kind of leaned into it more But that's probably a whole other video Thor is the Norse god Thor like the literal Actual god and he's from the actual land of Asgard which we see and it's absolutely beautiful It's this giant city of gold They clearly put a lot of work into designing the visuals and it's a steady location through several other films multiple characters come from there Probably second only to New York City as like one of the Marvel's central locations and yet every single time anybody goes there I suddenly don't care about anything that's happening. It was hard to pin down exactly why for a while This happens a few other times too as they kind of extend the MCU into space I feel like Guardians of the Galaxy has this issue slightly though Not nearly as much and then an infinity war half the film feels like it takes place on this barren planet where they're fighting Thanos I just start tuning it all out It's like there just isn't anything for my brain to grip on to and this isn't just a problem in the MCU Which is kind of the whole point of these videos and I'm kind of a writer But mostly I just pay attention to things that don't matter I think the next most obvious example of this problem is occasionally. There's like a big blockbuster Original sci-fi film or at least one you haven't heard of before. It's probably still an existing thing The recent ones that come to mind were like that one with Eddie Redmayne as the villain Jupiter ascending and then there's another one that isn't that one that stars The kid that plays the green goblin in the amazing spider-man 2 Dane de Han that's his name Why is how is that his name and that girl that looks just like him, but they aren't related in the movie Valerian in the city of a thousand planets you know in 2017 I thought that was way more recent than it was the other person is Cara Delevingne And they do look very similar in that movie for some reason I feel like I made a point though, which is that I don't remember either of those movies And I watched one of them all the way through and I'm not even sure which one it was I had to have been Jupiter ascending and it feels like there's one of these like every couple of years I know I've seen trailers for similar sci-fi films more recently than 2017 and if it's not sci-fi It's some high fantasy thing where a chosen one kid has to go fight an evil king And the problem is not they're repeating the same idea over and over again But whenever I actually watch the movies and don't just ignore the trailers The problem seems to be yet again that Asgard isn't interesting if you create this whole big fantasy world That is nothing like Earth filled with characters that don't talk like us don't really look like us Don't dress like us. Don't follow our customs say sland and the war of the seven Dr. Seuss monsters it doesn't stick in your brain because you've never heard any of those things before in your entire life There is nothing in these movies to ground us when everything is unfamiliar It becomes really hard to stay invested in the story stories work best when we can immediately project ourselves on to someone or something Happening in the scene and it doesn't take much and it can happen in worlds that we aren't familiar with That's why Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are all popular. They may take place in different worlds They may have observes elements and use crazy wacky names and we don't forget those details They're made up names become part of our regular vocabularies We may even name our kids after them the world's become places we want to visit We can actually remember details about it and could probably navigate it if we suddenly showed up there But Asgard never became one of those places for some reason and again It's not just that those films did it first and now anything else feels like it's Copying those originals most of the time. They're actually not successfully doing the same thing at all Oh you Star Wars as an example since every writing class in the world loves to use Star Wars as an example Star Wars could be textbook Asgard Nothing there is familiar. It doesn't take place on earth. None of their names are anything real There's aliens walking around people with funny heads and robots except that that's actually not quite true We start out on a kid on a farm named Luke Lord of the Rings is the Original dense fantasy, but in the movie a lot of the Hobbits lives feel very relatable They're just little guys enjoying food having a holiday. They're just like British people the familiarity just being present though is not quite enough when you're being introduced for the first time To a massive world that you don't recognize there is one extra step that tends to be forgotten and it is that the audience Needs to learn things. I just praised Star Wars for actually not explaining everything that was going on in the world They walk into this cantina full of aliens and they're all just kind of there They have nothing to do with the scene They don't really interact with the main characters in any way and just kind of shows us that this is what goes on here But there's a difference between adding flavor to your world and expecting your audience to just kind of be on the same page From the get-go like I said earlier the audience needs someone to latch on to that's sort of how stories work In fact if you're ever stuck Starting a story the easiest cheapest way to grab your audience's attention is open on a scene with a person Struggling in that guy that we see could be billionaire Tony Stark But if the first thing we see happen to him is that his car gets blown up and he's scrambling around for his life We are now that snarky billionaire even though we're not anything like that guy breaking bad does this all the time Including the lack of context in the first episode the zoo has crashed his RV and he scrambles out of it in his underwear Completely terrified holding a gun and you don't know what's happening, but he's certainly having a bad day It's important that we are on the same page as some of the characters Experiencing that world if everybody in the world is familiar with where they are Accept you then it feels like it's not for you you feel Disconnected and like you don't belong you weren't invited You just become more of an observer and you're trying to pick up the details of what you're looking at and without that Baseline it becomes much harder to tell like is this normal are these people reacting to this thing in a way that? Somebody else would in the same world Luke doesn't react to the aliens in the bar And we know that means those are normal because he does react like a normal teenager when he's told he can't go Fly jets for a living. He's disappointed that he doesn't get to go do the thing that he wanted to do He's tired of being on this planet. His life is similar to ours and all these core ways So when he acts differently to something than we would We know that that's normal for him to and then when he acts surprised by a hologram popping out of the robot He just bought we know that's unusual my favorite recent example of this in media is actually the anime attack on Titan You have no idea what's going on in that show I wasn't supposed to none of the characters in the show knew what was going on either They were all trying to figure it out and when they got new information They would put it together with what they already knew and they would learn something new about their world That then I also learned at the same time because I was watching them figure it out anime actually does a pretty good job Most of the time of using normalcy to Established context and boundaries around the ridiculous fantasy situations that they introduced one popular example of this I've heard is the persona series. I've not actually played them myself But they did ask me to promote their new game for it's an actual ad. This is real. It's an ad it's 60 seconds I need the money. Hi ad Kyle here wearing a sweater because I got cold and I still didn't take down the tree Persona 3 reload is the captivating reimagining of the pivotal game of the persona series faithfully rebuilt with cutting-edge graphics Modernized quality of life features and signature stylish UI basically a ground-up remake of persona 3 Which I'm actually pretty excited about because I've been wanting to get into the persona series for a while The story is self-contained and you don't have to have played any other persona game to get started on this one It's like an alternate universe modern-day role-playing game with fantasy elements Half of it is like this social focused role-playing story and the other half is this Strategic fantasy combat system where you battle people with your persona sort of your characters avatar in this other world Both sides affect each other you develop relationships with all the other characters in the game It's all about the meaning of existence in your own mortality all that fun stuff And now you can play the game without having to go back to the old graphics from forever ago It's available on Xbox series XS Xbox one windows steam PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 is good because it means I can play it It's available for pre-order today, and it launches tomorrow February 2nd Be sure to check out our link in the description to get yourself a copy and also to support this channel A counter example of that would be lost which frustrated many people by being too mysterious And I think part of that is that there were a bunch of characters who would show up clearly knowing What was happening and just not telling you and I created that disconnect where you were like, okay Well now I'm just kind of watching something that I'm not a part of and don't understand when we're first introduced to Thor He's fighting a bunch of big monsters. We don't know on an ice world. We can kind of piece it together He can laser from one planet to another. He's a prince. His dad is a king He's a spoiled rich brat who needs to be taught a lesson And I think it never really gets fixed because while Thor talks about Asgard to his earth friends There's really no interaction all the way up until Thor Ragnarok Even when he brings Natalie Portman back to Asgard in the second movie They don't really use that opportunity to give more context through I don't know her reacting like a normal human being I'm pretty sure she kind of looks around in awe and makes some Observation that one of their devices is like some science that she heard of once But imagine if he had brought Tony Stark back He would have had some things to say some like normal human interactions like you guys have a lot of gold Or why is everybody wearing such ridiculous hats? There a ceremony going on or is this just the style these days? I don't know questions that like you probably Would have if you visited a foreign country even because no one in the movie asks them We don't ever get any context We don't know the answers and so it just stays uninteresting I know I'm not the first one to figure this out But I don't know it's just stuff that I think about a lot and it also always feels obvious like once I learned something I think well surely everybody else knows this and I'm just behind But maybe I'm not and this was interesting and maybe even helpful if you're a writer and you get stuck on things like this If you liked it or hated it, I'd love to know I have plenty more topics to bring up if you did enjoy it You might be able to tell by my general demeanor and face that I still haven't slept, but you Can help make that happen after the last video that I posted up our patreon actually went up by like $700 we have two or three hundred new people And I just want to say thank you so so very much I said that if we hit $4,000 by the end of this month I would take better care of myself and that motivated a bunch of you to go donate money and that's incredible You're amazing. Thank you. I'm still aiming for that So if you're interested in seeing more of these videos and in supporting me making them head on over to patreon.com Slash door monster you can get more content I do streams and podcasts and you can get bonus rewards for higher tiers But you only have to give a dollar every little bit helps and The more it goes up the less stressed out I get about finances So everybody who has donated already you've genuinely made a huge difference And if we can raise about another thousand by the end of the month I will do the Kyle sleep stream and I will live stream myself sleeping an entire night So you can all know for sure that it happened. Thank you for watching. I hope you have a great weekend and I will see you soon