I’d like, if I may, to talk about structure. May I? Yes I may. The one advantage to screaming into the abyss online is that it’s an uncaring abyss. It doesn’t care, that’s its whole thing. Do whatever. Talk about the structure of a kid’s science fiction show to your heart’s content.
So I
will.
Boba
Fett has a two-track structure, a present-tense story where our protag tries to
establish himself as the successor to Jabba the Hutt, and a past-tense series
of flashbacks that show what happened to Babs in between “Return of the Jedi”
and this show.
It
doesn’t work. And I think I’ve figured out why.
Because
the two stories are totally unrelated.
Now
let’s imagine you’re a massive Star Wars nerd and enjoy arguing about nerd shit
like this. Well actually, okay, first let’s imagine you exist. Congratulations.
Happy birthday. Now let’s imagine you’re a nerd. Lol, fucking nerd. Right, now
let’s imagine your objection:
“How
can you claim they are unrelated? The flashbacks are filling in the backstory
and showing how Bobbie Boo got to where he is in the present day.”
Sure,
that’s exactly what they’re doing. The question is, WHY? Why is this show intercutting
the present-day narrative with flashbacks to tell us the backstory and show us what
Bobbity Babs was up to? Why are flashbacks the best way to do that? How does
the flashback structure contribute to the story the show is trying to tell?
The
structure doesn’t work because it doesn’t answer any of these questions. The
two stories are disconnected. Oh sure, at the most basic level it shows the ‘what
happened’, but guess what—that is exactly what a traditional linear story does.
And a linear story is much easier for our linear brains with their linear
perception of time to understand. If you just want to show what happens to a
guy, then a flashback structure is most definitely and emphatically not
the best way to do it. At all. If that’s all you want to do, just show us what
happened, in the order it happened.
Here’s
our structure so far, with flashbacks in italics:
Boba
gets sassed by the Mayor’s representative—he escapes the Sarlacc and is
captured by Tuskens—he is ambushed by assassins—he saves the Tusken
child and is accepted into the tribe—he interrogates the assassin—he
witnesses the Tuskens being attacked by train guards—he confronts the
Hutts—he leads the attack on the train—he recruits the Mods—the
Tuskens are killed by bikers—the Mods save him from Krrrsantan—he
rescues Fennec, tells her he wants to be a crime boss because he is tired of
taking orders, gets his ship and kills the bikers—he holds failed talks
with the other gangs.
Now
here it is again, in chronological order:
Boba
escapes the Sarlacc and is captured by Tuskens—he saves the Tusken child and is
accepted into the tribe—he witnesses the Tuskens being attacked by train
guards—he leads the attack on the train—the Tuskens are killed—he
rescues Fennec, tells her he wants to be a crime boss because he is tired of
taking orders, gets his ship and kills the bikers— he gets sassed by the
Mayor’s representative—he is ambushed by assassins—he interrogates the
assassin—he confronts the Hutts—he recruits the Mods—the Mods save him from
Krrrsantan—he holds failed talks with the other gangs.
Here’s
the question: Does your understanding of the story change in any way whatsoever
with the linear version?
Nope.
Not a jot. There’s no “EUREKA!” moment. No insight. If anything, it’s a
helluva lot easier to follow. That’s because the flashbacks are being used just
to deliver plot, but the plot points are totally disconnected from the
present-day story.
Even
as a standard, boring old mystery-box approach to withholding information from
the audience in an attempt to get them to keep watching, this approach fails,
because the answers the flashbacks are revealing aren’t the questions the
audience is asking. When you tell us Boba Fett is now a mild-mannered, gentle man who wants to raise a family, our first question is not 'where did he get his gaffi stick?'.
There
is no reason for the flashbacks.
Movies
and TV shows and books should have a reason for what they do. A reason for
their structure. A reason for shots and angles and edits. A reason for
background music. A reason for dialog and why characters say what they say.
There should be a reason.
“1917”
should have a reason for its single-take cinematography. “Game of Thrones”
should have a reason for killing off its characters. “Use of Weapons” should
have a reason for telling half the story in reverse chronological order.
“1917”
is a tense story and a single take heightens the tension. You are right there
with these two soldiers through every agonizing, nail-biting step across the
mud and barbed wire and rotting corpses of No Man’s Land. They can’t escape and
neither can you.
“Game
of Thrones” is a revisionist high fantasy that aims at psychological realism
and kills of characters to drive home its theme: “In real life being a
goody-two-shoes would just get the hero killed—See? SEE?”
“Use
of Weapons” splits its narrative so that both the reader and the characters
discover the key revelation about the protagonist’s past at the same time, at
the end of the book. You and the other characters both get that sudden rush of
EUREKA at the same moment.
While
I’m on a roll, let’s take another example I saw recently: “King Arthur Innit
Mate?” or whatever the title of the Guy Ritchie Arthurian movie was. So bonkers
I won’t bother reviewing it, only to mention the premise is Arthur grows up on
the streets of London rather than as the ward of Sir Ector and Sir Kay. So
there’s an early scene where he’s being interrogated by Roose Bolton from Game
of Thrones that is composed of a series of lightning flashbacks—"Where
were you yestiddy lad?” “Aw, oi dindu naffin’ guv.”—Cut to: Young Arthur
beating the shit out of some Vikings. It works because it has a point. It
reveals Arthur’s character, eye ee the fact that he’s grown up to be a street
thug, at the point of the movie where that is relevant information, eye ee he’s
being interrogated by a guard about his activities.
It
works (although the movie itself gloriously and weirdly doesn’t) because it has
a point.
There
could be a point to the flashbacks in Boba Fett, if, and this is a big
IF, if they were related to the present-day story either in terms of revealing character,
motivation or theme.
Revealing
Character
A
lot of people have commented that the Boba of this show is not the Boba of the
movies. The man who had to be specifically told not to disintegrate people now
prattles on about respect and keeps letting his enemies go or else hiring them.
So the question is, “What happened?” and the show has now, four episodes in,
told us that living among the Tuskens changed him.
In
that case, the present-day narrative needs to center around this change. The
main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Other characters should be
commenting, questioning or challenging Boba on his new direction and the
flashback scenes need to focus on the catalyst for the change in Boba’s
character, not acts of derring-do as he kills monsters and boards trains. (Why
does he save the child Tusken? Unclear! What aspects of Tusken society does he
admire and why? We’ll get back to you on that one!)
Revealing
Motivation
Another
big question the show raises is why Boba even wants to be a crime lord in the
first place. The last we saw him on the screen, the man was a ruthless
mercenary, a lone gun, an outsider. What made him decide being a crime boss
would be a good idea?
Once
again, halfway through the season we’ve finally been given an answer: Because
he claims he is tired of taking orders from incompetent bosses who almost got
him killed.
Again,
that’s not the struggle that has been dramatized. Yeah, working with Jabba
nearly gets him digested by the Sarlacc right at the start of episode 1, but
we’ve had no indication that this has sparked any crisis of faith until Boba
just blurts out his motivation over a campfire.
If
that’s the point, THEN MAKE IT THE POINT. Use flashbacks to show all the other
jobs that went sour because of idiot orders from incompetent bosses. In the
present day, make that his key appeal to the underlings of other gangs—for
example, have him recruit Black Krrrsantan based on the fact the Wookie was
sent on a suicide mission to try to kill Boba (instead of just saying, “Hey
man, do you want a job?”).
Revealing
Theme
I
left this one for last, because it’s the hardest as honestly there hasn’t been
much of a theme to the show yet, other than maybe “everybody needs a family” or
something along those lines. But again, if that’s the point then the editing
between the two timeframes has to highlight the juxtaposition of the past (Boba
as loner) and present (Boba as trying to create a family), or contrast the
character of Boba (loyal to friends) against the antagonists (backstab each
other). Focus on the focus.
The
Hutts abandoning the Wookie when the assassination attempt fails fits this theme, but there
needs to be more of that, really zero in on it, because right now the scene just
comes off as strange and out of place, rushed storytelling, a sudden writing
out of two characters only just introduced. Just spitballing here, but have the
assassin start singing as soon as he is captured, have the train guards
immediately turn on each other, trying to point fingers at one another for
attacking the Tuskens (it was his idea—no it was HIS idea), dramatize for us
the difference between their approach and Boba’s.
All
I’m asking is that writers and producers of stories think about why they’re
doing what they’re doing. Why is this the best way to do it?
Is,
for example, a 1700-word blog post the best way to talk about this subject?
Well obviously fucking not, it’s never the best way to do anything, ever.
But.
Still.
Ah,
fuck.
No comments:
Post a Comment