Category Archives: On Writing

In Defense of Cinderella

Posted by natechen on

Disney recently released the latest of their live action takes on the old animated classics. I’m talking of course about Cinderella. I haven’t seen the movie but I have read and heard a number of reviews and I noticed a weird trend. Regardless of their opinions of the remake, most critics seemed to be very unappreciative of the original film. Or, perhaps more accurately, the character of Cinderella as she was portrayed in that film.

Now while I haven’t seen the new live action film I did seen the original animated film many times and I remember it very fondly. So imagine my surprise when most of what I read suggested that Cinderella had no character to speak of.

I take issue with this. Cinderella had a lot of character, even if it’s not developed in the ways we’re used to. So today let’s take a look at the classic animated Cinderella and some of the criticisms people have been making of it and then why they might not be entirely fair.

  1. Cinderella is entirely passive. She does nothing to escape the position her stepmother puts her in she just waits for the prince to come for her. While it’s true that Cinderella does nothing for herself, to improve her own situation, to call her passive is incredibly wrongheaded. She does a lot. Her most noticeable actions are just altruistic and directed towards mice. She does a great deal to proactively rescue, feed and clothe the mice of the house and in the process of caring for them indirectly provokes her stepmother (one of the most terrifying Disney villains there is). There’s more to Cinderella than just passively waiting, she’s actively doing good for those around here. That takes real moral strength – real character – to do.
  2. Cinderella undergoes no character growth during the story. This critique is actually very valid. Cinderella (the original animated film) is based on a fairy tale and is a very loyal adaptation of it. There was generally very little character growth in fairy tales because they were stories designed to serve as examples of desirable character qualities. Rather than showing how a character trait might come about they are designed to show that trait in action and what the rewards for it are. Her character is the result of a different storytelling tradition than the modern one and that does weaken her impact some, particularly to modern audiences, but it doesn’t make her character bad just the presentation of her story.
  3. Cinderella is a wimp. She never stands up for herself. This one really gets me. Given the time period of the story and the situation Cinderella finds herself in there’s only so much defiance we can reasonably expect of Cinderella. She does try and stand up to for herself and those under her protection when she does things like save the mice from the cat or ask if she can go to the ball. But she’s essentially been relegated to house servant since she was a young girl – she has few skills and little to no education. Just maintaining a cheerful attitude a taking the moral stands she does is already a herculean effort. What more do you want?

When you look back on it then it’s easy to see that Cinderella had its flaws as a film. The mice are kind of silly and take up time that might be used to develop the more important human characters like Cinderella’s stepmother or the nameless prince she ultimately marries, or showing a more modern character arc in Cinderella herself. The music is average and the stepsisters themselves really don’t add much to the story beyond giving their mother another excuse to be mean. But is Cinderella herself a flaw in the story?

She’s steadfast, patient and kind. Her good nature is her greatest charm and when she gets hers it is truly marvelous. Many times when I was young I laughed in gleeful vindication when Cinderella produced the second glass slipper, to her stepmother’s dismay and the Duke’s delight. She didn’t change or grow much but she sure made us grow to love her and for good reason. So give the lady a break. Or not. At the very least, no matter what you think, I’m pretty sure Cinderella would go right on being herself and, in an era when peer pressure is brought to bear with more strength and from more directions than ever before, that in and of itself is a sign of real character.

Avengers Analyzed: Fury and Coulson

Posted by natechen on

Now I could be criticized for including these two in my analysis of Avengers characters because at first glance it seems that neither Fury nor Coulson have distinct character arcs in this story. That’s not entirely true. Rather, these two erstwhile leaders of SHIELD share a conflict and a goal but it’s not one that works out like they expect.

You see, Fury and Coulson both fail in what they set out to do and that, in turn, cuts their character arc much shorter than we’re used to seeing. With that said, let’s just dig into it shall we?

Fury and Coulson’s Background

These characters share a single purpose, namely to create a superteam under the aegis of SHIELD. Coulson is the first of these two that we see, showing up pretty much as soon as Tony Stark stepped out of the shadows in his first shiny red Iron Man suit. Fury took a little longer to show up, poking his head in after the credits of Iron Man, and he was also more skeptical of Stark’s suitability for membership on the Avengers. Up until this point we haven’t really paid these two a whole lot of attention but after four movies we do know a few things.

Coulson is very enthusiastic at the idea of the Avengers and tries his best to reach out to potential members and interest them in the team, Fury is cautious and does his best to control risks that will undercut his agenda. There is a slight tension between the two in that Coulson hopes to see heroes doing their thing in a coordinated fashion that will protect and inspire others while Fury wants to be the head of his team and ensure that it is used in the best possible fashion. The balance between the two viewpoints is probably the fact that Coulson views Fury as a hero in and of his own right.

The Conflict 

Both Phil and Nick embody character vs. the world. Unlike Captain Rogers, their conflict doesn’t arise from changes in the world around them but from fundamental differences between the way Coulson and Fury think the way the world should progress and the way the world itself wants to be.

Basically, Fury and Coulson want the Avengers to be heroes. They want them to set an example for other people and be on the front line of what’s about to unfold. The world at large, on the other hand, sees all these exceptional people and the threats inbound and just wants them to go away as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. The world would prefer to just press a button or drop a bomb and have this sticky situation sorted out when, in truth, sticky situations are rarely sorted out that easily and will require brave men and women risking life and limb in very direct and personal ways to get things done.

In short, the world Fury and Coulson live in is exactly like ours.

Each of these two characters is going to face down the problem in their own way, if The Avengers is a war movie then Fury is the general who will command the troops and deal with government while Coulson is the trusted captain who will actually lead them into battle. One handles the strategic level, the other the tactical. Naturally, this leads to the basic conflict at work bearing out in different ways.

Fury is concerned with world leaders, the World Security Council, the people who’s backing he will need to make his idea work, he has to fight against the ideas permeating his world. Coulson, on the other hand, is going to face narcissism, a lack of self esteem, feelings of impotence and distraction by personal matters as he tries to keep the Avengers on task. His struggle is against the feelings permeating his world.

We Meet Fury and Coulson 

“This doesn’t have to get any messier.” – Colonel Nick Fury, to Loki 

This pair of erstwhile leaders are introduced pretty much at the same time, at the very beginning of the film as Fury comes to check on the Tesseract at a secure SHIELD facility at the back end of nowhere. This setting serves to quickly establish both characters as high ranking members of a government organization and that Fury outranks Coulson and establishes some other basic dynamics like introducing Agent Barton. Then, just to keep us on our toes, the movie drops Loki into the mix and lets us see what happens.

Fury vs. Loki 

“Yeah, you say ‘peace’, I kind of think you mean the other thing.” – Colonel Nick Fury, still talking to Loki 

Fury’s confrontation with Loki is our first demonstration of Loki’s power and it’s very impressive. He wipes out dozens of trained SHIELD agents and subverts two very valuable people, providing the impetus for Fury to go ahead and try the Avengers Initiative even though it had theoretically already been scrapped.

This confrontation is short but meaningful. In addition to providing the driving force behind the entire story and reinforcing the idea that SHIELD alone will not be enough to stop Loki’s invasion it also highlights a stubbornness that will ultimately be Fury’s undoing in his efforts to unite the world against the threats it faces.

Gathering the Avengers – And Hiding them Away

“With everything that’s happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned.” – Phil Coulson, to Captain America 

Nothing evokes the attitudes of the SHIELD leadership more than their interactions with Steve Rogers, which is fitting because when the attention of SHIELD wavers it’s ultimately Captain America who will step into the gap and takes up the mantle of leadership. But that doesn’t happen in this film so I’m going to ignore it for the moment.

Let’s focus instead on what Fury and Coulson are telling Steve. If you look at the dialog they’re constantly talking about using SHIELD resources for the good of humanity. Fury tells about the potential the Tesseract has as a power source, showing a wide-reaching civic good that SHIELD wants to advance. Phil talks about how the Avengers can inspire and unite people in dangerous times. These are worthy goals, goals fitting for a group of people who want to call themselves heroes.

In contrast, the very first thing that Fury does with his group of individuals once they agree to work with him is gather them on a flying fortress and turn them invisible, far from the people the Avengers are intended to serve and protect. Now no problem is going to have a perfect solution but SHIELD’s actions and its claims don’t exactly add up. We’re never shown how much of these actions were Fury’s idea and how much they belong to the World Security Council but at the very least concealing the existence of a highly recognizable fugitive from the public isn’t the best way to find a person and Fury has to have known that.

Not working with the public to find Loki is an odd choice, but one that makes sense in the light of the Security Council’s statement that the Avengers are dangerous. The problem with assessing things in terms of security is that everything is dangerous. The Council is, to paraphrase Gandalf, beset by dangers for they themselves are dangerous. The problem is, they fail to recognize that and therefore regard anything dangerous as bad. Fury isn’t doing a good job wining them over to his side.

Coulson’s problem is much more personal. Heroes come with a lot of baggage and the Avengers are no exception. Making things worse, baggage frequently multiplies when you cram a bunch of it into one place, witness the constant bickering between Steve and Tony. Coulson’s conflict plays out as he tries to smooth over everyone’s conflicting feelings and forge the Avengers into a single team that can work together like his own agents do. The problem is, the Avengers are not SHIELD agents by any stretch of the imagination and, while Coulson has the kind of personality and insight to put each of these heroes at ease individually, he is not the person to lead them collectively.

Coulson vs. Loki

“You lack conviction.” – Phil Coulson, to Loki 

Coulson’s confrontation with Loki is also brief but even more effective than Fury’s. While Loki technically defeats Coulson the concept of a moral victory definitely applies here. At no point does Coulson’s resolve waver or his spirit flag. No, the reason Coulson can’t stop Loki is that he’s come alone. While Coulson’s goal was to help bring together and support the Avengers as a team he unfortunately didn’t actually consider himself a part of that team and because of this, at a critical moment when the presence of just one or two other members of the Avengers could have made a significant difference, Coulson doesn’t ask them for help.

Yes, some of them were busy with other things. Some of them were mind controlled. But honestly, Phil didn’t have to come alone, did he? Well, yes he did. You see, from a story standpoint, conviction was what the Avengers as a whole were lacking, just as much as Loki.

The Avengers lacked conviction in the cause Phil believed in, the idea that a simple, old fashioned crew could take a stand on something incredibly simple, like having the freedom to make your own decisions, and fight for it, inspiring other people to do the same. Banner and Romanoff think they’re monsters. Steve’s uncertain of his place in the world. Stark can’t see beyond his own narcissism. Barton’s perspective is so farsighted sometimes it leaves him alienated. Thor can’t parse his conflicting love for his brother and his adopted planet. And Nick Fury… well, he couldn’t do without a backup plan.

Only Phil Coulson had the unshakeable belief that the Avengers could become the heroes to inspire a generation. It was that conviction, in turn, that would inspire the Avengers themselves.

Things Fall Apart

“Director Fury, the Council has made a decision.” – The World Security Council 

While Coulson wins the battle for the Avengers, the war for the world falls through. Coulson’s part of the struggle was to win the Avengers over to Fury’s vision to defend the world and bring them to place that goal above personal goals. While Phil succeeded Fury can’t get the Security Council to buy in. They remain skeptical of Fury’s goals – a unified force offering Earth long term security – and instead pursue their own goal of immediate safety regardless of the cost in the future.

It’s important to understand what a setback for Fury this is. Not only has he lost his best agent, by deciding to destroy the Chitauri invasion along with the island of Manhattan via nuclear warhead the World Security Council has completely rejected Fury’s single greatest hope for saving Earth. Yes, Fury ignores their orders and tries to stop the nuclear strike but the fact is that he wanted the Avengers to be a symbol of mankind united, a testament to the way noble ideas can unite people in spite of pettymindedness. While it’s hard to blame the Security Council for their decision – the entire world was at stake after all and that kind of responsibility has got to be heavy – without Council backing the Avengers can’t really represent humanity united. It’s hard to represent a united front when you’re a rogue element, after all.

Ultimately, at the end of The Avengers Fury is not in the greatest position. The Avengers have gone their separate ways, the World Security Council is on his back and he’s lost his best agent. Fury is on the ropes and will probably need to take drastic measures to reestablish his credibility. Something like allying with a questionable politician to build an armada and dispatch threats before they materialize. But again, not the scope of this analysis.

Fury and Coulson serve the larger story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to be certain, but they also have their own conflict to resolve and that conflict comes from the differences between their idea of the world and the world’s own ideas. The small part of the world that they need to join them directly, the six members of the Avengers other than Fury himself, does come over to their side but the world as a whole does not. Fury is vindicated when the Avengers win but the Security Council still will not back his decisions or trust that the Avengers will function for the good of the world, both questioning whether they will be on task when needed again and whether they are up to the task.

This outcome to Fury and Coulson’s story may seem depressing, and to be fair it is. But at the same time, it does two very important things. First, it adds verisimilitude. As I said before, the World Security Council has a very real, significant burden on their shoulders and it’s not crafting a strong, heroic society it’s making sure that there’s any society left at all. It’s natural for them to want failsafes and be very skeptical of making seven people Earth’s first line of defense against things like the Chitauri invasion.

Secondly, Fury’s leadership style is secretive, controlling and frankly a little Machiavellian. These tendencies make him a poor leader for the kind of group he wants to build. The Avengers don’t naturally trust him and follow his lead. Fury explains his goals several times but the Avengers, and Tony and Steve in particular, are skeptical because his actions don’t really match with his stated ends. The other Avengers defer to Coulson because their previous experiences with him have convinced them of his good intentions but Fury never lets the Avengers get that close. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Fury’s efforts fail.

So what kind of further character growth can we expect from Age of Ultron? Honestly, I can’t say. With three villains to focus on this time around – Ultron himself plus Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch – plus all seven Avengers apparently returning in the second film I’m not sure how much character growth we can expect from them this time around. The individual films Iron Man 3, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World made a wholehearted attempt to further the work done of Marvel’s The Avengers. They succeeded to some extent but what made The Avengers so great was it’s success in characterizing it’s cast without needing the background from the first phase of Marvel movies.

But we can still hope, since it is Joss Whedon at the helm. And there’s still a good chance of a great story and fun action.

The Importance of Context, Historical and Otherwise

Posted by natechen on

Marvel’s Agent Carter was an interesting experiment. A series of eight hour-length episodes, the miniseries-esque offering served to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) while allowing it’s sister show, Agents of SHIELD, a chance to regroup and air the second half of it’s season in one long continuous burst rather than chopping it’s episodes up in that weird spring schedule a lot of TV shows adopt. This certainly helps SHIELD tell a cohesive, overarching story and the idea of a miniseries expanding the MCU is a new angle we haven’t seen in TV before, in part because there’s never been anything quite like the MCU before to drive it.

That’s not to say Agent Carter is without flaws. I could find any number to nitpick at but the one that really jumps out at me does so because of how glaring it is. On the whole, not many characters in the series, outside leading lady Peggy Carter, showed much character growth or had their background delved into at any length. What I want to poke at is one of the attempts to provide that growth that fell somewhat flat. It concerns SSR Agent Jack Thompson.

Thompson is Carter’s foil in the SSR, the agent devoted to the idea that she couldn’t hack it in the high stakes world of cold war spy work. He’s a decorated marine who won the Navy Cross in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War and he’s determined to prove he’s top dog. Eventually we find out why (and please be aware that this is a spoiler, if a minor one.)

You see, our boy Jack got the Navy Cross for saving his superiors life during a night ambush by the Japanese. He woke up, saw Japanese soldiers in their camp and started shooting. In the aftermath he found a white flag dropped on the ground and concludes the Japanese were surrendering and that he’d just incited the death of innocent men. Then he gets an award for it and the guilt really starts eating at him.

Jack tells Peggy this story after he freezes in the middle of a pitched gunfight and she asks him why, giving her and the audience a little more understanding of why he is the way he is. It’s a nice moment, well acted and well written. It has one problem.

The Japanese almost never surrendered.

Soldiers talk about fighting to the death all the time but a large percentage of them will surrender if it’s clear there’s nothing more they can do to win. Troops in WWII did it all the time. German troops, Italian troops, American troops, British troops, French troops, it was just a part of war and nothing to be ashamed of. For everyone, that is, but the Japanese.

The culture of Imperial Japan was fatalistic in the extreme, most famously manifesting in the kamikaze pilots at the end of the war, and it’s shocking how all pervasive the attitude was. Many Japanese troops captured during the war were incapacitated somehow and most of those capable of resisting chose to do so until killed, or did something suicidal like running at enemies with a grenade ticking in their hands or just committed suicide rather than submit to capture. This isn’t to say the Japanese didn’t surrender but those who did were a very small minority.

On the other hand, the Japanese knew the Americans surrendered and expected them to do the same. So Japanese troops would sometimes pretend to surrender, approaching with a white flag and hands in the air, only to drop the flag and attack when it looked like they were close enough to enemy lines. This tactic quickly became well known among American troops who viewed any attempt to surrender in a large group with a great deal of suspicion. It may have happened much less often than people talked about but it’s still a historical fact, confirmed by records on both sides of the conflict, that Japanese troops almost never surrendered during WWII.

This is something Jack Thompson should have known. He should not have been readily accepting of the notion that the Japanese troops who’d come into his camp were there to surrender because the historical context makes such an assumption highly unlikely. Failing to take this context into account when writing this scene strips the moment of all the credibility it’s good writing and acting earned it.

It’s not like this fact would have changed the scene a great deal if it had been included – Thompson could have been just as guilt-ridden over choosing not to wait to see if the Japanese really were surrendering before fighting back instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt no matter how little he may have thought they deserved it. In fact, that scene might have been even more believable and more suited to analyzing the horrors of war because Jack would have found himself in a situation where he was powerless to know whether he made the right choice or not. At least when he knows with concrete certainty that he was wrong he can look for some kind of penance. But the stark fact of war is that it dehumanizes those that participate and Jack’s inability to tell whether he did the right thing or not would be a powerful representation of that, one that would reinforce the ambiguous yet grim fate of the Japanese soldiers who found their way into his encampment.

Instead the writers failed to do their research and a scene that had the potential to be very impactful fell flat by failing to fit with the historical context it was intended to have. Agent Carter did a very good job recreating the mid to late 1940s in fashion, culture and even architecture and vehicles. That’s what makes this oversight particularly glaring – it’s a hole in the historical context that’s otherwise rock solid. Writers take note! If you’re going to add historical context make sure you get it all or your work is just going to come out flat.

Creativity and Entertainment: A 21st Century Conundrum

Posted by natechen on

From the wealthy of Regency England gathered around the pianoforte for an evening of music to the pioneers in the American West listening to a man with a fiddle, from a man telling stories by the firelight to a group of gamers telling stories about their D&D characters, the human race has a long history of people creating and sharing those creations with others. But not so much in the recent past.

We hardly even think of this kind of creativity as creative anymore, we just call it entertainment, ignoring the fact that throughout most of history “entertainment” was something that people created for themselves or those immediately around them. Since the rise of media driven culture people in societies with advanced media have largely given over the business of entertainment to an elite caste and become entirely consumers, rather than creators. The theory, as with all the things we’ve stopped doing for ourselves over the years, is that a professional will do it better than we could and the loss of knowing how to do it won’t hurt us that much. And in some cases that’s probably true.

But in the case of creating entertainment I’d argue it’s very much the opposite.

Our culture has lost the ability to create entertainment itself and it suffers for it. We suffer from a loss of ability to connect to other people, a loss of insight into the creative process and a loss of the ability to appreciate creativity.

Creativity is, at it’s core, the ability to explain ideas to other people in a way that they find exciting and engaging. In order to do it you have to be able to get a feel for where other people are mentally and emotionally and then lead them to the experience you want them to have. On the large scale that means understanding the society around you and on a smaller scale it means being alert and attentive to the people you meet. By necessity it requires that you both know how to understand people and how to best collaborate to bring them where you want them to go. These kinds of very basic people skills are a core part of entertainment and when we stop creating to entertain they begin to atrophy and our society is paying the price – as a culture America is becoming more rude, less understanding and more impatient. Is all this because we’ve given up entertaining ourselves? No, probably not. But is that a factor? I think it may be.

But society isn’t the only thing hurt by our failure to create and entertain – our ability to understand the creative process is impaired. There are some things about what goes into entertainment that can only be understood fully by someone who’s done it. Ask anyone who’s just attempted theater or written a short story for the first time – they’ll always tell you it’s more effort than they expected. On top of that, the sense of accomplishment and, when working in a group, the sense of comradery is far more than you would expect. To go with it, there’s almost a sense of possession – what you’ve done or created is yours alone and not like anything else on Earth, for good or bad.

An understanding of that work and that sense of accomplishment comes with an understanding of the euphoria and sense of importance that comes with creativity. After all, you’re making up something that never existed before and that’s going to feel good. With that rush comes the tendency to push ideas, to construct stories in ways that make our own ideas prominent. As a creator it’s important to check this tendency in the interests of verisimilitude but no one can do it perfectly and some creators don’t do it at all. Having actually been through the process personally helps you spot when others aren’t policing themselves as well as they might.

That’s an important skill to have because entertainment contains a lot of ideas that entertainers are trying to advance – yes, they have the goal of entertaining you but almost all entertainers have things beyond entertainment that interest them and those ideas always creep into the entertainment you provide. If you’ve created your own entertainment before you know how this can happen and can spot the signs more easily. Sure, TV is just TV but that doesn’t mean it’s not influencing you at all. You might not be selling your soul to the devil when you flip on pop radio but Taylor Swift is certainly getting some real estate in your brain. The familiarity being a creator yourself gives you will help you understand what those influences are doing with the brainspace you’re giving em.

Finally, being creative really does help you appreciate the results of the creative endeavors produced by others. The act of creating requires a practiced eye or ear or hand. Once you’ve developed those skills it will as easily pick out the best that other creators have to offer and savor it all the more for knowing all the time and passion that went into it.

The benefits of creating are many, but you’ll probably effect the most people with them if you aim to entertain. If you’ve not even dabbled a bit in creative expression to share with others then go out and try it. It will be good for your friends and for you.

Gambit Souffle

Posted by natechen on

It’s a well known fact that ignorance is a vital part of any story. Once the reader knows everything about a story they’re at the end of it, aren’t they? The art of keeping things from the reader is known as suspense and it’s a vital part of just about any narrative.

There’s a lot of ways to keep the reader guessing about what’s going on, a sort of grab-bag of narrative gambits that will keep the reader guessing. It can range from something simple, like not revealing a character’s plans to the reader, to something very complex like having the story told from the first person perspective of a man suffering from short term memory loss. These gambits are perfectly good tools for building suspense and keeping your reader interested in what’s going on.

Right up until they’re not.

I was reading a story recently that centered around a group of four characters. One was wanted for a crime and wouldn’t comment on whether they were guilty or not. One was a former criminal who claimed to be trying to go straight. One claimed there was a ghost telling her secrets and reading minds. One just seems irresponsible and reckless. The narrative doesn’t really do anything to clear up their motives or whether they’re sane and trustworthy or crazy and dangerous.

Then all four are captured and get brainwashed. Maybe. I think. That part’s a bit unclear.

And they might be hypnotically programmed to turn on each other and there are suddenly weird gaps in their memories and nothing makes sense any more because you weren’t sure how much they could be trusted in the first place and GAH! It was so frustrating because it seemed like such an interesting story to start off with. I liked the characters and the story was going somewhere. But there were so many narrative gambits at work that I couldn’t figure out anything that was going on anymore and I gave up. The writer had baked a gambit souffle and it fell in.

Writers love reading and we particularly love reading stories that show us a well used literary device. And it’s the nature of the beast such that, once we read a story with a good device, we want to try it out for ourselves. I’m sure you’ve felt this urge before. You may even want to combine multiple literary devices together and make a wonderful concoction of clever scenarios and deft writing.

But you should probably resist that urge.

You see, the problem with gambit souffles is they do tend to fall in. Let’s take a look at the example I gave earlier. Not only do we have unreliable narrators in a scenario where it looks like no one can be trusted. We also have brainwashing, casting the characters motivations into even more doubt, and blatant memory gaps on top of, in one or two cases, entirely contradictory memories. It’s so hard to build a  coherent picture of what’s going on that you can’t sympathize with anyone or judge whether they’re taking actions that will benefit them or hinder them.

Narrative techniques like unreliable narrators or literary devices like amnesia help a story by building suspense or helping the reader become immersed in the story. But pile to many on and the reader starts to have more questions than answers and are likely to get frustrated by the lack of information long before they get invested in the story.

Some time ago I did a series of pieces on the obligations a writer has and their first obligation is to their audience. Without an audience a writer is just daydreaming and a confused audience is going to stop paying attention sooner or later, and probably sooner. So as a writer, it’s important that you don’t get so caught up in your literary techniques and your narrative gambits that your audience gets lost. Have people read your work and ask them what they think. If they’re confused don’t explain the story to them, ask them what they think is going on and if they’d want to keep reading.

If they don’t know what was going on consider asking how you could clarify it. But first, ask if they’d keep reading until things became clear. If they would you may not need to change anything, they may just be pleasantly confused and waiting to see how the protagonist sorts things out. But if you’ve lost them entirely then your story is failing and it really needs an overhaul.

Remember, writing isn’t done for the sake of the techniques you use while doing it, writing is to convey ideas from you to your audience. Test your gambit souffles on audiences to make sure it’s holding up, because if your story falls in on itself it’s doing no one good.

Avengers Analyzed: Barton and Romanoff

Posted by natechen on

It’s time to talk about Marvel’s The Avengers once again. We finished with all the superheroes so what’s left to look at? Why, the regular human characters of course!

With four incredibly larger than life characters eating up screen time how are we supposed to relate to anything in this film? Are they even relevant in this story? On the other hand, why do normal people even need superheroes anyways? To help us examine these questions The Avengers gives us Agents Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, AKA The Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Now before I get into an analysis of these two characters, a quick aside to address the elephants in the room. First, I’m tackling these two characters together because their stories kind of go together and Barton… doesn’t get that much development. The second is the tendency of the fanbase to pair Hawkeye and Widow romantically. I don’t really understand this pairing, I suppose it may have a basis in the comic books but for the most part, in terms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I don’t see it. These two characters seem to share more the brother and sister relationship of Romanoff and Captain America in The Winter Soldier than serious romantic leanings and I don’t think they would be a good fit. Sure, they share skills and a history but these two things do not a romance make.

Honestly I think the two characters in the MCU that would make a good romantic fit for Romanoff would be Cap or Banner, as their strong moral centers and stable personalities would make a good balance for her shrewd disposition and apparent lack of a strong direction for herself. Barton looks to need someone very assertive and fun, things Nat plays at but don’t appear to be a part of her core personality. I can’t think of an MCU person who fits that mold so I’m not really sure who would make for a good match for him at the moment.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that this is not an analysis of these two characters together in that sense.

Background 

Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton are Agents of SHIELD, one of Marvel’s many, many organizations with somewhat forced acronyms for names. Neither one has been the central character of a movie, in fact both have been peripheral characters in previous appearances. Romanoff was assigned to help SHIELD keep an eye on Tony Stark after his first outing as Iron Man, Barton helped Phil Coulson sort out what was going on with Thor during his first trip to earth. Unfortunately, both characters got little development beyond highly trained spy characters.

Conflict 

Here’s why I think Romanoff and Barton belong together for analysis. I think they share the same conflict – characters vs. god. The personal conflict these two have is against a force utterly beyond their ability to oppose. Even with all their incredible training, equipment and personal willpower neither Barton or Romanoff score a clear win over Loki before joining up with the rest of the Avengers. In this way, these two characters show Earth’s need for the superhero team and at the same time affirm that regular people have a place on that team.

Barton’s Introduction 

Clint Barton is an expert marksman. He specializes in dealing with problems from far away and he frequently does so in a very lethal fashion. He has a distant personality that matches his skills and we see this by the way he distances himself from those around him at the beginning of the movie. We first see him standing on top of a catwalk far away from the rest of the people at the facility he’s tasked with guarding.

Barton doesn’t really fit in with other people but that may be appropriate given rather ghastly nature of what snipers are capable of with modern weaponry. The fact that he says he’s more comfortable watching things from far off only adds to the image of a man who would rather stay at a distance than get too involved in what’s going on. A simple introduction for a pretty simple character. But simple doesn’t mean ineffective.

Barton vs. Loki 

Barton is one of the first characters to confront Loki in The Avengers and he looses. Badly. This creates what is known as the Worf Effect, Hawkeye’s defeat and subsequent loss of free will establishes Loki’s menace in two ways – first, he defeats a highly trained SHIELD agent handily and second he robs that agent of free will as a consequence. In the first five minutes of the movie Clint Barton goes from one of SHIELD’s trump cards to a pawn in the service of the enemy. Not fun times.

Romanoff’s Introduction 

Where Barton is introduced as a loner, distant from all those around him, Natasha is introduced as the center of attention. It’s just not good attention.

Black Widow’s projecting weakness to manipulate those she meets and subsequent defeat of several large men via hand to hand combat skill establish that she is also a formidable individual. She’s also the opposite of Barton, working best up close and indirectly, rather than at a distance and in violent opposition.

I’ve already talked about her first encounter with Bruce Banner at length in Banner’s post, there are a few things we learn about her through this exchange. First, she has great personal courage. She goes to meet the Hulk even though he clearly scares her. Second, she can’t seem to set aside her lies and tricks. Even when Banner proves he sees through her by saying why she’s there – SHIELD does want the Hulk and Romanoff did bring a full team with her – she sticks to her story until Banner forces her hand. Third, while Romanoff is good at lying she’s not always so good at seeing through them.

After all, Banner’s a rank amateur in comparison and she fell for one of his bluffs.

First Bridge 

Most of what Barton and Romanoff do in the first half of the movie, besides playing of the four superheroes at the center of things, is show their skills by taking care of things the superhumans can’t. Romanoff flies Captain America to the confrontation in Stuttgart, Barton finds stuff for Loki and plans how to steal it.

These demonstrations serve to reinforce both how skilled these characters are and how little they seem able to accomplish against Loki. For all his skills Barton didn’t even make him break stride and Romanoff relies on the superior firepower of the Quinnjet during the Stuttgart battle. Things don’t really get much better once Loki is captured.

Romanoff vs Loki 

Much like Tony, Romanoff confronts Loki in a way that’s not directly adversarial. When he’s locked up in the Helicarrier she goes to try and get information out of him and she does so in her usual way. She plays him, pretending to want to know where Hawkeye is, pretending to be guilt ridden, pretending to be weak and vulnerable, all to find out what, exactly, it is he wants on the Helicarrier.

Most people assume that Romanoff wins this confrontation because Loki mentions the Hulk, Romanoff seizes on this fact and then the Hulk proceeds to go wild in the Helicarrier. This assessment is a little weird. Loki is so good at deception that he’s considered an embodiment of it and we never get any indications that he was on the Helicarrier for the Hulk. In point of fact, Loki’s play wasn’t the Hulk at all. His entire purpose on the Helicarrier was to keep the Avenger’s attention focused on him while his mind controlled minions seized control of Stark Tower and prepared to summon the Chituari.

In other words, while Romanoff is a good liar she’s not very good at picking them out and this, combined with the fact that Loki hits three nerves all in one conversation (Barton, Widow’s past and the Hulk), keeps Natasha from noticing she’s being played even as she tries to play Loki herself. Of course, Loki’s intent was not to focus Romanoff’s attention on the Hulk or anything else, but rather to keep her attention squarely on him and not on what others were doing. That’s fitting, since he is a master trickster, and his success in doing so only serves to reinforce how regular humans, even those who are very good at what they do, are ill suited to fight Loki and his minions.

Second Bridge

We enter the third act of the film with the Helicarrier brawl and it’s at this point that Barton is finally broken free of Loki’s mind control. Romanoff helps him get his bearings again and the two agree that they’ll make up for the slip-ups they’ve caused by going out and pounding Loki like the red-headed stepchild he is (metaphorically speaking, of course). Don’t miss the significance of it being Captain America who shows up at the end of the scene and calls them to action, however. These two are going to action again but this time not just as a pair of SHIELD agents but as members of the Avengers.

Conflict Resolution – The Battle of New York 

Some might argue that the reason Barton and Romanoff failed against Loki because they acted against him alone. Not so. Barton was a part of a group during his confrontation. Some might point out that the agents of SHIELD could have figured out what Loki was up to if they had more time to unpack it. Maybe so, but the problem was they had to work faster than Loki’s timetable. Most people can overcome a given problem if they have unlimited time and resources to work with the key to a good story, particularly an action or adventure story, is to limit both.

The point of these two characters is not that they need help overcoming Loki. If that was all it took then SHIELD was in place already. The world didn’t need just any team, it needed the Avengers.

Thus it’s fitting that the two of them are at the heart of wrapping up the battle of New York. While Tony saved New York from over zealous human intervention it was Widow who actually shut down the portal the Chituari were using to invade. Barton was the one who tracked each threat as it came through and made sure it was contained before it could cause too much damage. The Avengers could not have won without them. Yes, the “super” heroes (except for Hulk, who was special) were each able to draw with Loki in their own encounters with him, none of them were able to win alone and Loki backed by an army is even worse.

The point of Barton and Romanoff in this movie is to show that the existing methods for fighting threats to Earth were not up to the task of stopping Loki. Their inability to fight him personally reflects the depth of his power and the limits of their abilities, serving as a microcosm of the problem at large. Once the Avengers existed as a coherent team the conflict is resolved – superspies alone are not equal to the task but all of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are.

So that’s the end of the analysis, right? All the main characters and conflicts are covered, aren’t they? Well, no. See, even with the Avengers all assembled there has to be someone to lead. Next month, in our final installment, we’ll take a look at the leaders of the Avengers. See you then!

Genrely Speaking: Historical Fiction

Posted by natechen on

Welcome back to Gernrely Speaking, the part of the show where we crack open a genre and look at what it means when we mention it here. As I’ve mentioned before, the literary classifications we call genres exist as much as an expression of opinions as they do a scientific taxonomy of fiction. So keep in mind that any definition of a genre is as much a subjective idea as it is an ironclad classification, which is one of the reasons this segment’s name is a pun based on the phrase “generally speaking”.

Today we’re going to look at a genre that doesn’t get much press these days: Historical fiction.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of historical fiction? You don’t know what it is or what it looks like? Well then we’d better start there. Historical fiction is an aesthetic genre that generally has:

  1. Real History. Lots and lots and lots of history, the historical kind of history that comes out of history books. “Historical” is in the title because there has to be solid, well researched history serving as the foundation for this story. While some of a historical fiction novel is fiction the broad backdrop for the story has to be historical. This is why a novel series like the Thieftaker can kind of sort of qualify as historical fiction – while the main character, his magic and his close associates are fictional, the backdrop of events he lives in are not.
  2. Encounters with historical characters. Much like with it’s counterpart, alternate history, half the fun of historical fiction is seeing known historical figures in a new light. In this case the new light revolves around whatever scenario the new story adds to the historical record. Murder investigations during the revolution? Sounds like the mind of Ben Franklin might be needed. Stuck behind Confederate lines during the Civil War? Enter General Lee! If you’re a history fanboy then historical fiction is definitely a genre for you.
  3. The ability to pass without trace. The heart and soul of historical fiction is that it is something that could have happened during the known historical events depicted in the narrative. It’s a “what if” but a very specific one. So nothing the fictional characters do can have any outcome on actual historical events. No matter how much those events may grate on those characters, both protagonists and antagonists are going to have to live with the verdict of history as we know it.

What are the weaknesses of historical fiction? The biggest drawback to this genre as a writer is the amount of research you will have to put into writing it. The facts have to be right, or someone in your audience is going to spot your mistake and call you on it. Again, this is historical fiction. It has to actually be historical while still being fiction.

The second big hurdle is all those historical characters. While historical figures from ancient times like Ceaser, Nebuchadnezer or King David have a little wiggle room in how we can expect their character or disposition to be displayed, by the dawn of the age of exploration there’s enough written in enough different sources that a competent, well studied author can make a good stab at knowing what an important person was like day to day. And again, you have to get it right because the kind of people who will read these books are the kind of people who will catch these discrepancies and be upset by them.

The third problem is for readers new to the genre. They might find the careful web of historical facts and important events distracting or confusing, taking away their ability to keep track of a well written yarn.

What are the strengths of historical fiction? If you love history you will geek out over well written historical fiction. They’ll mention all the important things and you will most likely love every minute of it. It’s just like a well written tribute to your favorite movie, novel or comic book character – there will be easter eggs and fanservice just waiting for you to catch it. The fact that all the events and characters were real just adds to the fun.

For people who aren’t into history, good historical fiction is a great chance to learn about historical events in a gripping and exciting way. The works of G. A. Henty, a historian from the 19th century, were intended to teach his readers the history of Britain while entertaining them and exciting their imagination. Other authors may put less (or more!) emphasis on the actual historical narrative in their books but all the good ones will make sure there’s plenty of historical fact there. If you love a good book but never managed to make it through a dry history text in school, this may be exactly what you need to start a lifelong love of the past.

Disappointment Deconstructed: Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted by natechen on

So. There was this movie called Guardians of the Galaxy and everyone told me it was fantastic. It was on most of the best movie lists I saw for 2014. It was supposed to be the fun Marvel movie, a romp that would get us out of our seats and moving.

Yeah, I don’t see it.

It’s like this. Guardians of the Galaxy is not a bad film. But it’s not really a good one, either.

Let me start with the things that are good about this movie – and there are some good things in this movie. It looks gorgeous, everything from the starships to the fur on Rocket Racoon is rendered in beautiful CG. In particular, I love the design of the Milano, Peter Quill’s ship. Also, this movie goes the extra mile to build up the Marvel universe’s plotlines, introducing both the character of Thanos and the idea of the Infinity Stones, things that will doubtless be important in films to come.

The casting is good, particularly casting the wrestler David Bautista as Drax. I’m not a wrestling fan and I know nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy outside of what comes from this film, but I can tell that this is the kind of role you definitely want a heavyweight pro wrestler playing. He doesn’t need to emote, he just needs to be tough. On the other hand, Vin Diesel is actually surprisingly expressive as the voice of Groot.

A very few of the jokes in the film worked for me. I thought the reference to the great legend of Footloose and it’s hero, Kevin Bacon, was funny and Drax’s severe literal mindedness is funny, particularly as it leads him to reject each and every attempt to give him a nickname.

The fullscale space/air battle at the end of the film is great. In particular the phalanx formation the fighters use is something that I’ve wanted to see in scifi for a while but no one ever thought to do – probably because it doesn’t make that much sense. But it’s cool, and that’s important too.

Using the tape Peter keeps as his sole tieback to life on Earth to bring his character development full circle is a nice touch and gives the film a little bit of much needed thematic unity.

Since I’m now out of good things I guess I’ll have to move on to the stuff I didn’t like or that waffled. I can basically lump these things into three categories, and I’m just going to list them under those headings in bullet points.

Poor Characterization. 

  • We’re told Gomorrah hates her adoptive father, Thanos, because of all the horrible things he’s made her do and done to her. We never see any of these horrible things. We’re told about a few but we don’t see any of them.
  • We’re told Yondu has been the closest thing to a father to Peter has ever had. We never see him do anything to signify that relationship or any kind of special bond between the two.
  • We’re told the Ravagers wanted to eat Peter when they found him. We never see them try to eat anyone else. Wha?
  • Rocket claims everyone’s calling him a rodent or vermin but we never hear anyone but Gomorrah or Drax use these terms (or if we do it’s only once or twice) – and they’re the most caustic members of the cast so we should expect bad behavior from those two. In fact, no one but Peter, who knows what a raccoon is, ever seems to bat an eye at him and that’s as it should be. He’s just another alien in a galaxy full of aliens to most people. In short, this is a lack of consistency.
  • Why does everyone fear Thanos? We never once see him do anything nasty. Yes, it’s okay to build suspense around a villain but they have to do something villainous or they just come off as pointless – and that’s what Thanos is in this film.
  • What is Nebula’s problem? Explain based on things we see in the movie, not the comic books, please. You can’t do it, can you?
  • Why did we have to hear about Yondu’s collection of bric-a-brac on his pilot’s chair before we saw it? It would have been easy to show us it in passing so we’d know what he was talking about when he mentioned it to the dealer later.

Plot Holes

  • Why could Peter hold on to the Infinity Stone for as long as he did? I know it’s probably because his father was an alien of some sort but he never showed any kind of exceptional energy resistance before. Why is he so good at it now? You could have at least set this up somehow.
  • Why did the combined efforts of four people who were never particularly powerful contain a stone we were shown annihilating a group of much more powerful people earlier in the movie?
  • When did Peter put that little troll doll into that extra containment sphere he had?
  • What ever happened to that bomb Rocket was building? Why didn’t we see that get used before they jumped up to the big gun?
  • If using the Infinity Stone was as simple as sticking it to a hammer or something, why did no one do this before in the HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE?!
  • If the Guardians of the Galaxy could contain the Infinity Stone safely, why didn’t they just hang on to it?
  • How did Rocket know he could grow Groot back from just one twig? Or is that supposed to be a new Groot?

Failed “Fun” Moments

  • After the nifty fight scene with Peter at the beginning and the inventive three-way chase scene that brings Rocket, Groot, Peter and Gomorrah together, the action in this movie goes way south. Most of the action scenes after these two boil down to people spraying bullets around or rather uninspired brawling. In particular, Bautista’s skills as a professional wrestler go woefully underutilized.
  • The music. I get that it’s supposed to be a nostalgic nod to Peter’s past but it doesn’t really do much for me. That’s probably just a personal thing.
  • Most of Peter and Rocket’s banter. I know I’m supposed to be laughing at it but it just never gets beyond the pedantic. I don’t blame the actors here, they were clearly trying hard to make it interesting, I just didn’t see that they had anything to work with.
  • The jailbreak sequence. In particular, the part where Peter thinks he has to get ahold of another inmate’s prosthetic leg could have been comedic gold but we barely see any of it. In stead we get a raccoon trying to hide self-satisfied laughter at hoodwinking Peter. Mixed priorities, missed opportunities.
  • The climactic moment is four people reaching to hold hands. If I wanted to see friendship as magic I’d watch My Little Pony. Yes, I’ve said I like heroes to triumph over villains via moral strength rather than temporal power but this just comes off as cheesy.

Most of Guardians‘ problems come from the film being too rushed. A prison sequence could be the better part of a movie – look at Star Trek VI. Instead we get it rushed into the second half of the first act. Situations, characters and ideas are barely given time to breath before we’re rushed on to the next thing and most of our understanding comes from being told, not shown.

I know that the movie had a lot of source material to draw on and it wanted to cover as much as possible because there was no certainty of another film at the time, but I’m afraid the result was too much being packed into too little time resulting in a movie that had a lot of potential but came out pretty lackluster. I know I’m supposed to be having fun with this film, and I even know where and why… but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m actually having fun.

Marvel may have created a blockbuster but I’m afraid it’s a flashy movie over a pretty mediocre core. I doubt the film will age well – but then, who knows? Maybe that shiny exterior will still be good twenty years from now.

I’m not holding my breath, mind you.

Still, the franchise now has another episode to come back to these ideas and maybe make something of them. Hopefully things will go better with the next film.

Beats to Scenes – Or From Outline to Story

Posted by natechen on

It’s been a while since we looked at the mechanics of writing a story, how you take the germ of an idea and get it into something usable. Now outlining isn’t the greatest part of everyone’s creative process but personally, I’m a big fan of the beat outline. A lot of people seem to think outlining steals a lot of the spontaneity from a story. Some people have wondered how you go from outline to story at all.

I want to look at both these issues at once by showing how I think you jump from your outline to the scene of a story. See, I like to think that my outline is spontaneous when I’m creating it and my scenes are spontaneous when I’m creating them. Sometimes you’ll need to adjust your outline when writing a scene – usually by adding to it – but most of the time unexpected events while writing a scene just give you more opportunities to add twists to your outline that will be fun and exciting.

Each beat should be a specific event in your story. So, when that event happens, do the following:

  • Look at the characters that were a part of that event. A man getting shot in his apartment at night sets a very different scene from a man getting shot on a crowded street.
  • Decided which characters you want to talk about in the aftermath of that event. If they weren’t all there for it, figure out how they’re going to know about it. If the man shot was an off-duty cop his partner is probably going to hear about it from their captain, while if he was on duty his partner is going to know much sooner.
  • Ask yourself how your characters will react to that event. Was it good for them or bad for them? When setting the beats of your outline you think of them as good or bad for the protagonist but what about the other characters? The partner of a cop who gets shot is going to react much differently than the mobster who ordered the hit.
  • Decide what everyone in the story will do in response the beat your outline calls for. Then chose which of those responses are important to your story as a whole. Not everyone in a given scene has to have a response that you show in a given scene, some responses might be better addressed in a later scene, and sometimes characters who don’t fit in a scene have a response that is important to the story and you have to find a way to bring it to the attention of those in the scene. If the death of a cop spurs a criminal to start robbing banks it makes more sense for fellow cops to hear about it over the crime radio than for the criminal to announce it in person.
  • Look at your next beat and decide if it fits in the scene you’re writing or if it needs to be the start of a new one. A cop yelling at his captain about how to react to his partner’s murder? Probably a natural extension of his finding out about his partner’s death. But that same cop instead going to tell his partner’s spouse? That is probably better as a new scene.

Once you hit the point where a new scene is called for, go back and try and streamline the elements you’ve laid out. Juggle discovery of, reaction to and response to an event to create a nice cadence to your scene. Don’t let any one element take over and try not to let it drag out too long. Bigger beats will call for more time spent on them but on the whole you probably don’t want more than a page or two before the next beat occurs or the story begins to drag.

If you wind up with more than that you probably needed to break the larger point into multiple smaller ones. Knowing exactly how much beat you need for a scene is more art than science but in time most authors get a good grip on it and, for all those times you don’t, even as an experienced author, there’s always the editing phase.

It’s the reaction and response part of stories I love writing the most. There is where (for me) the spontaneity of a story lies and, with a good handle on where your story is going thanks to your outline, you should be able to let your characters stretch themselves and surprise you without going too far afield in your narrative. Most of the time, at least. And for the rest, well, at least you’ll see it coming quickly and only have to do a little remodeling of your outline, not completely stall out when you realize you’ve go no idea where you’re going anymore.

So happy scenecrafting! Let me know if it works for you.

Avengers Analyzed: Thor

Posted by natechen on

It’s time to finish up our look at the superhumans of Marvel’s The Avengers with a look at Thor. While Bruce Banner was our starting point mostly because I found him to be the least understood character, and Tony Stark and Steve Rogers followed him because their stories felt related, but Thor is the logical place to wrap up our superhero overview because he’s the final superhero in the film to show up.

Thor presents us with an interesting one because, while he’s probably the most powerful of the Avengers in absolute terms, he’s actually the most normal of them emotionally and relationally.

Yes, Thor doesn’t age, wields a weapon that easily puts out four times the power of Tony’s arc reactor and takes hits from The Hulk without appreciable harm, but he’s also got affectionate parents, friends who share his life and goals and a brother.

That last bit is the sticky part.

Point is, if you ignore the scale of his life, Thor is actually the most well adjusted, emotionally grounded and mentally stable of the four superheroes on the team. He has no suppressed anger, overactive ego or severe trauma. His greatest personal problem is a lack of familiarity with Earth culture. This both lets the audience see Loki from another angle and sets up his personal conflict.

Thor’s Background

Basically, Loki got jealous of his adoptive brother and arranged for him to be exiled to Earth, where Thor learned to be less of a Jerk. The material point is that Thor had to stop Loki’s scheming to take the throne of Asgard but in the process discovered his brother was adopted and full of discontent. Although Thor ended the matter by foiling Loki and accidentally sending him into the unknown depths of space he regrets the way they parted and clearly wants to make things right.

The Conflict 

Thor’s personal conflict is character vs. characters. Yes, as in multiple characters. For the majority of his time in the film Thor is not personally in conflict with Loki per se, rather he’s in conflict with the rest of the Avengers over what should be done about Loki. Thor still sees his brother as someone to be reformed and brought back into the fold. The rest of the Avengers see him as a threat to be dealt with via any means necessary. Thor wants to reconcile with his brother. The Avengers want Loki gone any way they can get it.

These goals aren’t necessarily contradictory but they will keep Thor and the Avengers working at crosspurposes even as Loki approaches his endgame.

We Meet Thor 

“What’s the matter, scared of a little lightning?” – Captain Steve Rogers 

For all his self-satisfied preening and condescension towards the other Avengers, when Thor arrives Loki gets nervous. We never see him show any trepidation towards anything else, he never flinches from his brother in person, but Thor beat Loki once and he doesn’t seem to have been in Loki’s calculations this time around – their dialog on first meeting suggests Loki expected his father to keep Thor at home. Thor is a weakness in Loki’s plans and a figure with enough personal power to shake Loki’s seemingly boundless self-confidence.

And then he steals Loki out from the noses of the Black Widow, Iron Man and Captain America.

Points for intimidation factor. Points for style. Nothing more to see here. Move along.

Loki – First Confrontation

“I’m not overly fond of what follows…” – Loki 

As Loki’s brother, Thor is given the unique privilege of confronting Loki multiple times through the film. Each of these confrontations marks a distinct point in Thor’s character progression and so the very first thing Thor has to do is drag Loki out for a little chat.

This initial conversation is not very long, courtesy of Tony Stark, but it clearly shows Thor’s priorities. Yes, Earth is under Thor’s protection and yes, he’s very concerned about what’s happening to it. But he’s really hurting because his brother has turned into something he doesn’t recognize and Thor can’t grasp why. Now this is in no small part because Thor is not particularly bright, he mostly gets by on being very earnest and normally this is one of his strengths. But the same forthrightness that makes Thor trustworthy and keeps his life simple also keeps him from ever fully grasping Loki’s ambition and need for validation.

When Loki mentions how much energy it must have taken Odin to send Thor to Earth we have to understand that Loki is seeing an expression of how much Odin is willing to do to keep him from happiness. All Thor sees is how much his father loves Loki and wants him to come home.

This scene is a perfect illustration of how Thor’s perspective is different from everyone else’s. The fact that it ends with Iron Man tackling him and throwing him into a pitched melee with two of the other Avengers only serves to show the logical outcome of Thor’s skewed perspective – it leaves him at odds with everyone else in the group.

A Battle of Worldviews

“This is beyond you, metal man. Loki will face Asgardian justice.” – Thor

Just about everything that happens with Thor from the end of his first brief conversation with Loki until Loki’s bid for freedom on the Helicarrier serves to illustrate the tension between him and the rest of the Avengers over what Loki is and what he’s there for. Most telling is when Thor tells Fury Loki isn’t out for power but vengeance. And not just any revenge, revenge against Thor specifically. Thor is still thinking of this as a personal problem between himself and his brother and he winds up fighting all three other superheroes in the Avengers before he starts coming to terms with things.

That’s right, as the most forthright of the Avengers Thor winds up physically fighting with Iron Man, Captain America and even the Hulk as an outward expression of his inward resistance to seeing Loki as they do. He just can’t accept Loki as an enemy to be defeated. He still wants Loki to be the brother he can save.

Loki – Second Confrontation 

“Are you never not going to fall for that?” – Loki

The moment Loki locks Thor into the Hulk cage is short, sweet and revealing… for Thor. Loki has never directly played his hand against his adoptive brother, mainly because the trickster knows he can’t overpower thunder. But the prison that used to hold him gives Loki a new card to play against Thor and for the first time there’s no masks between the two. Loki doesn’t just try and keep Thor out of the fight, he tries to kill him. It’s the same as burning the bridges between them.

While Thor escapes the death trap he’s also reached a turning point. After crash-landing in a field somewhere on the East Coast Thor brushes himself off and turns to reach for the hammer. This is an interesting moment. Although no dialog is said the image is reminiscent of the moment in Thor’s first stand-alone film, when he reached for Mjolnir and was found unworthy.

Now Thor finds he’s misjudged his brother, seen only a personal problem when Loki was all too willing to ignore Thor to pursue his bigger plans. Maybe he’s wondering if that lapse of judgment makes him unworthy to wield the hammer again. More likely he realizes the moment he takes up that hammer again he’ll have to turn it against his brother. But he takes it anyways, and it marks the turning point of his character.

Loki – Third Confrontation and Character Resolution

“Loki, turn off the tesseract or I will destroy it!” – Thor

Thor is too much of an earnest guy not to give Loki a chance at formal surrender before pounding him but this time around he’s not pleading with Loki, he’s offering an ultimatum. When Loki turns him down Thor stops playing nice and fights for real. While Thor doesn’t have the insight of Banner, capable of seeing through Loki’s illusions and immune to his semantics, once Thor turns his hand against his brother Loki’s no match for him.

People have said that Thor’s sudden reconciliation with the rest of the team is very abrupt but really, when you realize that his conflict with them was rooted in the different ways they saw Loki, it begins to make a great deal more sense. As soon as that difference of opinion is gone there’s nothing more to fight about.

There’s not as much of an arc to Thor’s character as the other three characters we’ve examined so far and perhaps that’s not surprising. After all, he is the best adjusted of them already and maybe his character didn’t need as much growth as some of the others. And to be fair, Thor is the first character to score a clean win over Loki, sending him running into the arms of the Chitauri after their confrontation at Stark Tower. That’s no small feat considering the only other character with a clear win over Loki is the Hulk – the other characters in the film never do more than stall Loki and frequently play into his hands.

Sadly, no one does that more than the core human members of the cast – so we’ll examine them next. Coming up in March, we look at Agents Romanoff and Barton. See you then!