[0:00] Hello there and welcome to another episode
[0:04] of the most popular thing in the world is bad actually.
[0:07] Where I, or really any YouTuber who knows how to use
[0:10] hand brake gets easy Internet points by criticizing the MCU.
[0:13] Look, the thing with the MCU is that it will always be really easy to criticize.
[0:17] When you homogenize the art of filmmaking to the point where you're able to
[0:20] pump out for movies a year plus a handful of TV shows.
[0:23] It will always be possible for someone like me to ask,
[0:26] was this style the best choice for this story no matter what story you're making.
[0:30] Because of course, there's going to be times when
[0:32] different choices would be more suitable to the material at hand.
[0:35] The cinematography and color grading of a spy movie
[0:38] shouldn't be the same as what you use in a space at Beck.
[0:41] Of course, each individual movie could be better,
[0:44] but they couldn't make this number of
[0:46] passively good movies if they didn't have some house style.
[0:49] I guess the MCU is good at telling simple fun stories about
[0:53] quippy relatable heroes and creating the desire to see those characters in future movies.
[0:57] It's not interested in anything else.
[1:00] However, I think a lot of the recent Marvel movies are doing something that doesn't
[1:04] interfere with that main goal of getting audiences interested in new characters.
[1:09] Marvel has started making movies that yada,
[1:12] yada through their own first acts.
[1:14] After my mom died, my dad started my training.
[1:18] Let's take a look at the first half-hour-ish of Jiangxi.
[1:22] In a prologue we meet Jiangxi father when Wu,
[1:25] who is an ancient immortal warlord in possession of the magical 10 rings,
[1:30] searching for an ancient city,
[1:31] he meets its protector Yang Li.
[1:33] They fall in love and have a child Jiangxi.
[1:36] Fast-forward to the present day in Shong is now
[1:38] Shawn and unambitious valet in San Francisco.
[1:41] His best friend is Katie and she likes driving really fast.
[1:44] Please get it. I'll go slow.
[1:47] Seem to. At a bar,
[1:50] Shawn and Katie tell the story of how they first met,
[1:52] which we don't get to see.
[1:54] Right before he's about to throw the first punch,
[1:56] Katie, comes out of nowhere,
[1:58] steps right between us and starts screaming the lyrics to Hotel California.
[2:03] They're more successful friend points out
[2:05] that they aren't making the best of their talents.
[2:07] Maybe there's a point where you're supposed to stop going
[2:09] on joyrides and start thinking about living up to your potential.
[2:12] This establishes a core theme of
[2:14] the movie and the lesson of both of their character arcs.
[2:16] Both of them have to learn how to become
[2:18] more responsible people and use their talents to help others.
[2:21] But in the moment they shrug off her advice and go partying.
[2:24] Scene 3, Shawn goes to Katie's place and has breakfast
[2:27] with her family where he's accused of being a mooch.
[2:30] The foundations of the films other major theme about how you relate to
[2:33] your family's history in the past is laid here
[2:36] with Katie's grandmother's still morning her husband.
[2:38] We just know why it going would've wanted you to move on and enjoy your life?
[2:41] Moving on is an American idea.
[2:44] Scene 4 has the inciting incident where they are attacked by ninjas on the bus.
[2:48] This scene absolutely rules, no notes.
[2:55] At the end of it, he realizes the Ninjas have
[2:58] something to do with his sister, therefore Scene 5.
[3:00] Shawn makes the decision to try and help his sister.
[3:03] Katie also makes a decision to help him.
[3:04] This is the end of Act 1.
[3:06] On the surface, there's nothing terribly wrong with that structure.
[3:10] We meet our protagonists,
[3:12] we learned what their major character flies.
[3:14] The direction of the character arcs has been set up,
[3:16] the themes have been established.
[3:18] We have an inciting incident and the main characters
[3:20] make an important decision to engage with the problem.
[3:22] It's a pretty standard first act.
[3:25] The problem for me is that this isn't actually the first act of Jiangxi story.
[3:30] There's a whole series of flashbacks detailing
[3:32] his background and how his father trained him to be an assassin.
[3:36] Let's break them down.
[3:37] Flashback 1, we learned that after his mother died,
[3:40] his father started training him as an assassin.
[3:42] His sister trained in secret when they were 14.
[3:44] His father sent him on his first mission.
[3:46] The montage actually contains all of the other flashbacks within it chronologically.
[3:51] Flashback 2, right before he goes on his first mission,
[3:53] he has a conversation with
[3:55] his younger sister where they are mourning their mother's death.
[3:57] She asks him not to leave her and he promises that he'll be back in three days.
[4:01] Something we know doesn't happen.
[4:03] Flashback 3, his father interrupts his training and tells
[4:05] him he needs to train both his body and mind in order to
[4:08] inherit the 10 rings showing us that Jiangxi did it
[4:11] 1.1 to inherit them and make his father proud more than anything else.
[4:15] Flashback 4. When Wu tells us about how Yingli had
[4:17] an effect on him and we see them falling in love and beginning of family.
[4:20] Jiangxi, mother is killed by his father's old enemies.
[4:24] He then witnesses his father take revenge and his
[4:26] tasked by his father to kill the man most responsible.
[4:30] Right after this Jiangxi confides in Katie that he did actually
[4:33] kill that man and then didn't return to his father because he felt guilty.
[4:36] Notably, this scene is not shown as a flashback,
[4:39] only talked about in contrast to the rest of the backstory.
[4:48] Now, if we rearrange these scenes chronologically,
[4:52] including the prologue with his parents and
[4:54] adding the scenes that are talked about but not shown,
[4:56] we can instead have a first act in change that looks something like this.
[5:00] Wen Wu is an ancient warlord,
[5:02] he gives that up when he falls in love.
[5:04] For a time, the family lives happily,
[5:05] but then some mobsters kill his wife.
[5:07] Shang-Chi witnesses his father violently take revenge for the death of his mother.
[5:11] His father trains him to be an assassin and
[5:13] Shang-Chi aspires to inherit the 10 rings himself.
[5:15] While Wen Wu would we trained Jiangxi,
[5:17] his sister practices in secret.
[5:19] His sister begs him not to leave her alone and promise that he'll return in three days.
[5:22] Shang-Chi is sent on his first mission.
[5:24] On the first mission, Jiangxi kills the man responsible for his mother's death.
[5:27] That would be the end of the first act in a chronological version of the story.
[5:31] First acts typically end when the main character makes
[5:34] a significant choice and this would be that.
[5:36] After this, the rest of the film could proceed as before.
[5:39] I think if you tell the story chronologically,
[5:41] you get more immediate reasons to care about Jiangxi.
[5:44] You see right up front the effect the death of
[5:46] his mother has on him and the rest of the family.
[5:48] You see what his relationship is like with his sister,
[5:50] which emotionally invest the audience and finding her later on,
[5:53] and as you can see at the beginning of his relationship with Katie.
[5:55] Though, the dynamic of that relationship does
[5:57] already work and is one of the stronger parts of the story.
[5:59] Most importantly, though we're centering the idea of Shang-Chi having to wrestle with
[6:03] the good and bad parts of his heritage
[6:05] rather than the story of him just being unambitious.
[6:08] I think the former is where the story and character are stronger.
[6:12] It also means showing the most critical scene of his character development,
[6:15] which the film only alludes to the fact that Shang-Chi was
[6:18] in fact an assassin who did in fact actually kill someone.
[6:22] This is the biggest hole in the story for me.
[6:24] We miss out on actually seeing this crucial moment of
[6:27] change in Shang-Chi and how that weighs on him over the rest of the story.
[6:32] His guilt over this moment is established and
[6:35] resolved in the same scene in the current film,
[6:38] rather than being explored over the course of the film.
[6:40] There's very little about the earlier parts of the movie that make it feel like
[6:44] Shang-Chi was actually an assassin and grappling with guilt.
[6:47] I just don't buy that that's who he is.
[6:49] He reads this too normal and two,
[6:51] well adjusted for that to be the case.
[6:53] When I think of his character arc,
[6:55] I think this is the story of an average guy from San Fran who becomes a level 20 monk.
[7:00] Rather than, this is the story of someone who trained to kill from a young age,
[7:03] learning to use his skills for the better.
[7:05] The movie wants to be both things,
[7:06] but I only know the second one because
[7:08] this scene is here to tell me that piece of information,
[7:11] not because I actually feel it on an emotional level.
[7:14] Giving the audience adhesive information is not the same as dramatizing a story.
[7:18] Also, I don't think this arrangement and extension of the story would
[7:22] add too much to the runtime because there's a lot you could cut from this movie.
[7:27] The final battle with the big monster is completely unnecessary when
[7:30] the actual emotional conclusion to the story is Shang-Chi defeating his father.
[7:34] Trava flattery doesn't need to be here.
[7:36] Much of the second act as the characters running from place to place,
[7:39] which could easily be pared down.
[7:41] What I'm trying to get at is the difference between
[7:43] character-focused storytelling and plot-focused storytelling.
[7:46] Character-focused story follows the character's emotional journey,
[7:50] the decisions they make,
[7:51] and how that changes who they are.
[7:52] A plot-focused story pushes the character from
[7:54] location to location to justify action scenes.
[7:57] In short, while the first act of Shang-Chi isn't bad by any means,
[8:01] I think it's the wrong first act if the goal is to
[8:04] build an audience's investment in his character.
[8:07] Captain Marvel has a similar problem.
[8:13] Now, in fairness, this movie has
[8:16] a better justification for its flashback structure than Shang-Chi does.
[8:19] The fact that Shang-Chi grew up as an assassin is not a mystery in that movie.
[8:24] Whereas Captain Marvel's history as an Air Force pilot on Earth is.
[8:27] For most of the film,
[8:29] she suffers from amnesia and is slowly putting together
[8:31] her memories of her life on Earth before she became an intergalactic space cop.
[8:35] These memories are delivered to the audience,
[8:37] mostly in fragments, quick snippets of scenes,
[8:41] and they're not really fleshed out.
[8:42] Only the memory that shows us how she lost her memories qualifies as a full scene.
[8:47] The rest is in a hazy fog.
[8:49] The audience receives the information that Carol was a pilot,
[8:52] that she experienced sexism throughout her life,
[8:55] and that she succeeded despite this.
[8:57] But these scenes are so short that they don't tell the full story.
[9:00] They are not dramatized, only hinted at.
[9:03] All of those valuable empathy building classic first act scenes are skipped through.
[9:08] Now at this point, we could do the same thing we did with
[9:10] Shang-Chi and reorder the events chronologically,
[9:13] but I think that would also mean removing the amnesia plot point.
[9:16] But that rewrite is far more radical than just rearranging Shang-Chi.
[9:20] Also thematically, I think the amnesia idea is important to this film's idea of
[9:25] power structures telling you who you are
[9:27] and what your limitations are and I wouldn't want to mess with that.
[9:30] Not every character needs to have their entire history
[9:32] chronologically laid out before they get to do the superhero stuff.
[9:36] When I first watched this movie,
[9:37] I actually loved that it started with her being a superhero
[9:40] without having to do a full typical origins story for her.
[9:44] I don't need to see them as a kid to empathize with them. That's not what I'm saying.
[9:48] But if we're going to hint at important scenes from her childhood that have informed
[9:52] her character and then try to cash in on those scenes emotionally at the climax,
[9:57] then the audience should get to experience those scenes
[10:00] in full so that they can resonate with them at the end.
[10:03] Because otherwise the end is just going to feel hollow and that's the thing.
[10:06] A first act problem isn't really a first act problem,
[10:09] it's a third act problem.
[10:11] Let's explain that more with another movie, Black Widow.
[10:14] This movie has one of
[10:16] the most perplexing climactic scenes in a blockbuster film in recent memory.
[10:21] There is so much going on in this scene that is only being
[10:24] established during the scene that needed to be established beforehand.
[10:29] Here's the context.
[10:31] You've got this family of super spies.
[10:33] Mom, dad, black widow, and her sister.
[10:35] Mom works for the bad guy who is going to capture them all.
[10:38] With some face changing technology,
[10:40] Black Widow disguises herself as her mom so that she can infiltrate Dreykov base.
[10:45] Dreykov is the head of the secret organization
[10:47] that brutally trained Natalie to be an assassin,
[10:49] a group she later defected from.
[10:51] Nat thought she killed him and his daughter back then
[10:54] and has felt guilty about the collateral damage of that.
[10:56] But of course, he's prepared for this saying that.
[10:59] When you look into the eyes of a child you have
[11:02] raised no mask in the world can hide that.
[11:06] Interspersed with this are brief flashbacks explaining
[11:09] what black widow's plan was, which is fine.
[11:11] It's a spy genre staple to get your characters
[11:14] in trouble and then reveal that they actually plan things out.
[11:16] It's fine. But then there's more.
[11:18] Dreykov reveals that the masked soldier that Nat's been fighting
[11:22] this whole time is actually his own daughter who Nat thought she killed.
[11:26] Wow, what a reveal.
[11:29] Wish I knew who that character was beforehand, but whatever.
[11:32] He tells her to leave, so it doesn't matter anymore to the scene.
[11:35] Nat tries to kill him,
[11:36] but can't because of pheromones.
[11:40] How are you controlling me?
[11:41] I'm not controlling you Natasha, well,
[11:44] not yet because I do use a pheromonal
[11:47] [inaudible] smelling my pheromones prevents you from committing [inaudible] it's me.
[11:52] Oh, but wait, there's more.
[11:54] She knew about the pheromones and her mom told her how to combat them.
[11:57] You just got to bang your head on a table a couple of times.
[12:00] It feels like this guy would be prepared for that.
[12:02] But all of this is actually a ploy to get him to
[12:04] reveal his entire evil plan, which he does,
[12:07] but the pheromone thing ultimately doesn't matter because Nat fails to kill him,
[12:12] and Yelena, her sister,
[12:14] just kill some later without having to overcome the pheromones.
[12:18] The only reason it's here as a plot point is
[12:21] to justify the two characters talking for a whole long while.
[12:25] But the only reason they need to talk for a whole long while is because there are
[12:28] so many plot points this scenes needs to touch on that weren't established earlier.
[12:33] In this one scene,
[12:34] we're covering Nat and Dreykov relationship.
[12:37] We've got to retell the audience that break-off basically raised Nat to
[12:40] the point that he can see through her face disguising technology, two,
[12:44] we've got to go over Nat and her mom's plan,
[12:46] three, we've got the taskmaster review,
[12:49] four, we've got the pheromones reveal and five,
[12:51] we've got the whole evil plan explanation.
[12:53] Now other than Nat and Melina's plan,
[12:55] all of these plot points are ideas that could have
[12:57] conceivably been handled in the first act of this film.
[13:00] The real problem here is that this is the first scene in the movie where
[13:04] Scarlett Johannson and Dreykov get to actually talk with one another.
[13:08] Let's do a quick recap.
[13:09] The movie opens with a very effective scene.
[13:12] Natalie is living a good life with a good family in Ohio,
[13:15] but they are all actually Russian spies and
[13:17] her father having completed his mission, needs to escape.
[13:20] They do and fly off to Cuba.
[13:22] In Cuba, we get the one establishing scene
[13:24] with Dreykov where he has gnats family broken up,
[13:27] The title card hits,
[13:28] and then so much happens,
[13:31] like more happens in the title card sequence for
[13:34] this movie then happens in the entire rest of the film.
[13:37] You've got this extremely phonetic and confusing sequence
[13:40] that I can't help but feel left most viewer scratching their heads.
[13:43] It whips through Natalie's training as a black widow as well as Dreykov rise and
[13:48] political influence but inter-cuts so much imagery that is, well, it's just a mess.
[13:52] My question is, why isn't what happens in the credit sequence part of the actual movie.
[13:57] If she's going to face off against Dreykov at the end,
[14:00] why not show scenes where she is being trained as a black widow,
[14:03] a sequence that could have shown us the abuse she endured under Dreykov.
[14:07] It got us emotionally invested in his ultimate defeat.
[14:10] If we want to end this movie with Natalie
[14:12] feeling guilty about hurting Dreykov's daughter.
[14:15] Why not have scenes at the beginning that showed
[14:17] what her relationship was like with Dreykov's daughter.
[14:20] If Dreykov has a special smell that stops people from attacking him and act 3,
[14:24] why not have a scene where someone tries to attack him but
[14:27] fails because of the smell tech in act 1.
[14:29] That way you don't have to do the whole explanation while it's happening.
[14:33] The movie repeatedly tries to tell us that Dreykov is
[14:36] really important and that Natalie has a long-standing grudge against him,
[14:39] but emotionally it all falls flat because we
[14:41] didn't see it in their one major scene together.
[14:44] Both of them have to keep saying things to re-establish their basic relationship.
[14:48] When you look into the eye of a child you've raised,
[14:52] no mask in the world can hide them.
[14:55] He took my choices, tried to break me.
[14:58] But you're never going to do that to anybody ever again.
[15:00] I feel like these lines exist because the film knows it did not succeed in
[15:04] investing the audience in Natalie defeating Dreykov or even what their basic dynamic was.
[15:09] It has to keep reminding us in the moment to justify what's happening.
[15:13] This is not how you want
[15:15] the climactic scene between your protagonist and your antagonist to go.
[15:19] When you have a scene like this where the two finally face off,
[15:21] that's the time you want the characters to be able to
[15:23] focus on what's really at stake in the movie,
[15:26] the theme, you want to see a clash of ideas.
[15:28] You want the audience salivating for the hero to wind
[15:30] slick little flashbacks showing that the hero actually has a plan when we
[15:33] thought they were the ones being surprised are
[15:35] fine but grinding everything to a halt to deliver
[15:38] exposition on almost every major plot point in the film is really not.
[15:42] For better examples of this.
[15:44] You need only look at the other movies I've mentioned in this video
[15:47] because even though I think those movies can also be improved,
[15:50] at least you know how to feel by the end when
[15:52] the hero and the villain are fighting at the climax.
[15:55] I think part of the reason that we don't see some of
[15:57] these scenes is because this movie has to pull off
[16:00] a ridiculous juggling act in order to keep
[16:02] the continuity of itself straight within the MCU.
[16:05] A problem so complicated,
[16:07] I'm not even going to attempt to unspool it.
[16:09] But the other reason we don't see, for instance,
[16:11] any of Nat's early life as a black widow is because that would involve showing
[16:15] tough scenes that include things like human trafficking, torture, mutilation.
[16:19] This is a movie made by the Disney Corporation.
[16:21] I get why for real-world practical reasons,
[16:24] this movie can't be that,
[16:26] that it can't focus on those things for longer than an introductory credit sequence.
[16:30] But, I didn't choose the subject matter for the story. They did.
[16:34] They chose to avert the camera away from
[16:36] the nastier parts of the story that they were telling,
[16:38] which created all screenwriting problems for them in the third act,
[16:42] I think it's a similar reason why we don't see
[16:44] Shang-Chi actually kill someone in his movie.
[16:46] Disney wants to make safe family friendly movies,
[16:49] and they are not going to show their characters doing bad things to
[16:52] that degree because they need to sell action figures and maintain their brand reputation.
[16:56] But I think these were mistakes or
[16:58] at least missed opportunities from a storytelling perspective.
[17:00] All of this is quite a shame because
[17:02] solid act ones used to be the MCU's bread and butter.
[17:06] I would argue that a ton of the MCU's initial success is
[17:09] because the early movies had solid first acts,
[17:11] Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk,
[17:13] even the Thor movie had
[17:15] well-structured introductions to their characters
[17:18] that showed what kind of person they were,
[17:19] what their flaws were,
[17:21] what their strengths were,
[17:22] what they wanted out of life,
[17:24] who was important to them all while involving them in the main plot that needs solving.
[17:28] Imagine if an Iron Man,
[17:30] we just watched him being Iron Man.
[17:32] Then a flashback at the end told us he got
[17:34] captured by the ten rings and had to escape from a cave.
[17:37] None of those movies held information back just so they can have a reveal later.
[17:42] They are upfront with who their characters are.
[17:44] I think that makes a better foundation for the rest of their stories.
[17:47] In fairness, marvelous TV shows are getting this right.
[17:50] In Hawkeye, we got a seven minute introductory sequence to echo,
[17:53] who is a secondary character on that show.
[17:56] But I know more about her and connect more to her as
[17:58] a result of those seven minutes than I do to any of the characters mentioned here.
[18:02] These movies have runtimes pushing 2.5 hours.
[18:04] They definitely have the time for more patiently paste character introductions.
[18:08] People often come to these kinds of movies for the big action set pieces and X3.
[18:12] But all of that is meaningless sizzle if he can't make the audience care in act 1.