I really do intend to do that “Best of the Decade” Note, I just haven’t gotten around to it. Again, ‘Film’ is the difficult category for me. I can break it down into bits, but I don’t know how I feel about breaking that category down and not any of the others?
Anyway I finished the main story on Jedi Fallen Order. I feel as if it left me more satisfied with the story than at least two thirds of the Sequel Trilogy. I’m also dead sure I want a sequel, but it’ll be years before that happens if they’re going to produce a quality game.
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Plot-Mandated Stupid Conflict
Also called the Conflict Ball! Or the Idiot Ball applied in a certain way, but today we’re going to talk about conflict.
I’m still mad about RWBY.
Alright, I’ll back up. Sometimes, in order to make the Plot work, the characters need to act stupider than usual. Often this takes the form of causing conflict for very little reason. There are situations where it makes sense for the medium. For instance, in the video game Injustice, characters fight at the drop of a hat--Ares appears in front of Wonder Woman, telling her he’s there just to talk, only for her to attack, and they fight, and when she beats him Ares explains why he’s there. Of course, Injustice is a fighting game, and so getting in one-on-one fights is the entire point of the game. If these two characters who are sworn enemies, and they didn’t fight, you as the player would feel a little ripped off. That’s what you’re here for!
This excuse doesn’t really fly in other mediums, other than, “Hey, this would be cool!” And I get that, running on Rule of Cool, but it’s still really dumb and feels contrived. Using a DC TV example, in Justice League Unlimited, during the Cadmus Arc (which is still a mostly really well-written arc despite what I’m about to say), Superman is uncharacteristically angry about Lex Luthor’s squeaky clean public image and presidential campaign. It comes to a head when he thinks he found a bomb under a park that Luthor created, and he goes to deal with it, but Captain Marvel (who now goes by Shazam in most media; it’s a long story) tells him to cool it and stop wrecking stuff, and then they fight, wrecking everything around them, only to reveal that it’s not a bomb, it’s a power generator meant to give power to underprivileged people and Supes just destroyed it.
Oops!
This only happens because Plot. We need Superman to have a big public incident that makes him look bad, and we need to make Lex Luthor frame him for something. It also happens because someone higher up demands that Captain Marvel/Shazam almost always fights Superman, because it’s become an iconic part of using the characters now I guess? Even if it makes very little sense for the two to fight. Yeah, it’s an awesome fight to watch, but it feels all wrong, because it feels less like the situation called for it and more like the Plot is making them fight. Everyone involved, including the audience, knows that they don’t need to do this, and if you sit down and think about it for five seconds (which both characters can do, having superspeed) they can work things out. Both Superman and Captain Marvel (who I remind you has the Wisdom of Solomon) should know better.
And yes, the result of ‘Superman has a public scandal and more people lose their faith in the league’ is an important consequence that needs to happen for the story to progress. But beating the snot out of Captain Marvel at the drop of a hat is not a great way to achieve that, especially taking into account that Captain Marvel’s true shape is a child, meaning we’re watching Superman beat the snot out of a child in public and that’s not really an okay thing to do with your character. It’s a mighty stupid thing to do with your characters, especially when that character is Superman.
[To be fair, it’s unclear if Superman knows that Captain Marvel’s alter-ego is a child. I assume he doesn’t, but he also doesn’t seem shocked when he finds out, nor particularly ashamed of what he’s done.]
A worse example happened in the penultimate episode of Volume 7 of RWBY. A three-way fight erupts between Qrow, Clover and Tyrian--Tyrian’s an escaped convicted serial killer who worships the series’s Big Bad, Clover is law enforcement, and Qrow’s one of the hero’s uncles and mentor character. And Clover’s told he has to bring in his friend Qrow, who doesn’t particularly want to go to jail, but he tries anyway because he cares about his duty. Instead of shelving this until the serial killer, Tyrian, is put down, they all fight. And because Tyrian and Qrow have their own enmity between them, Tyrian suggests that they team up on Clover and then settle their score through combat afterward.
And Qrow does it.
Yes, Qrow teams up with a serial killer, a man who has tried to kill him and the people he cares about, against his former friend. This goes exactly as well as you’d expect. As a writing decision, especially in a season that’s been pretty solid up ‘til that point, it’s pretty inexcusable. Because it relies on a character making a stupid, indefensible decision in order to escalate the conflict and cause more drama.
A lot of these are often handwaved or excused with “Well, this character is angry, or upset, or otherwise not in the right state of mind for sound decision making.” And in some cases that excuse works. But in others, it’s pretty lame, because regardless of what you feel, I should think beating up a child or teaming up with your sworn enemy against your friend is something that shouldn’t happen willy-nilly. Unless the character in question is really emotionally unstable, these things shouldn’t happen.
Limyaael once did an rant with something “Does it make sense for your characters to do that?” in it somewhere. And that makes sense in a lot of different situations! But it especially makes sense in situations where you want two or more characters to fight. Because if it doesn’t make sense for these characters to duke it out, then don’t have them duke it out. Don’t make them make stupid decisions for the sake of a fight scene. If you absolutely need these two to fight, or have conflict in some way, come up with a reason that makes a lot more sense than a petty disagreement, or something that would be solved in seconds or minutes if they’d talked things out. Yes, there are people who are proud and won’t back down from a fight, especially when upset; I am reminded of the documentary on Hamilton where Lin-Manuel Miranda, going through the process of duelling, keeps saying, “There’s so much time to apologize and walk away.” Yes, there is, but both Hamilton and Burr were, in history and in the play, the kinds of people who couldn’t let that kind of thing go because they’re too proud, as the preceding drama had gone to lengths to show us. But many of these cases don’t involve those kinds of people. They involve people doing things they wouldn’t normally do or trusting people they know they shouldn’t in order to manufacture drama.
Don’t do this! Don’t have characters act like out-of-character idiots for the sake of it!
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