Marvel's Act One Problem

[00:00] Hello there and welcome to another episode

[00:04] of the most popular thing in the world is bad actually.

[00:07] Where I, or really any YouTuber who knows how to use

[00:10] hand brake gets easy Internet points by criticizing the MCU.

[00:13] Look, the thing with the MCU is that it will always be really easy to criticize.

[00:17] When you homogenize the art of filmmaking to the point where you're able to

[00:20] pump out for movies a year plus a handful of TV shows.

[00:23] It will always be possible for someone like me to ask,

[00:26] was this style the best choice for this story no matter what story you're making.

[00:30] Because of course, there's going to be times when

[00:32] different choices would be more suitable to the material at hand.

[00:35] The cinematography and color grading of a spy movie

[00:38] shouldn't be the same as what you use in a space at Beck.

[00:41] Of course, each individual movie could be better,

[00:44] but they couldn't make this number of

[00:46] passively good movies if they didn't have some house style.

[00:49] I guess the MCU is good at telling simple fun stories about

[00:53] quippy relatable heroes and creating the desire to see those characters in future movies.

[00:57] It's not interested in anything else.

[01:00] However, I think a lot of the recent Marvel movies are doing something that doesn't

[01:04] interfere with that main goal of getting audiences interested in new characters.

[01:09] Marvel has started making movies that yada,

[01:12] yada through their own first acts.

[01:14] After my mom died, my dad started my training.

[01:18] Let's take a look at the first half-hour-ish of Jiangxi.

[01:22] In a prologue we meet Jiangxi father when Wu,

[01:25] who is an ancient immortal warlord in possession of the magical 10 rings,

[01:30] searching for an ancient city,

[01:31] he meets its protector Yang Li.

[01:33] They fall in love and have a child Jiangxi.

[01:36] Fast-forward to the present day in Shong is now

[01:38] Shawn and unambitious valet in San Francisco.

[01:41] His best friend is Katie and she likes driving really fast.

[01:44] Please get it. I'll go slow.

[01:47] Seem to. At a bar,

[01:50] Shawn and Katie tell the story of how they first met,

[01:52] which we don't get to see.

[01:54] Right before he's about to throw the first punch,

[01:56] Katie, comes out of nowhere,

[01:58] steps right between us and starts screaming the lyrics to Hotel California.

[02:03] They're more successful friend points out

[02:05] that they aren't making the best of their talents.

[02:07] Maybe there's a point where you're supposed to stop going

[02:09] on joyrides and start thinking about living up to your potential.

[02:12] This establishes a core theme of

[02:14] the movie and the lesson of both of their character arcs.

[02:16] Both of them have to learn how to become

[02:18] more responsible people and use their talents to help others.

[02:21] But in the moment they shrug off her advice and go partying.

[02:24] Scene 3, Shawn goes to Katie's place and has breakfast

[02:27] with her family where he's accused of being a mooch.

[02:30] The foundations of the films other major theme about how you relate to

[02:33] your family's history in the past is laid here

[02:36] with Katie's grandmother's still morning her husband.

[02:38] We just know why it going would've wanted you to move on and enjoy your life?

[02:41] Moving on is an American idea.

[02:44] Scene 4 has the inciting incident where they are attacked by ninjas on the bus.

[02:48] This scene absolutely rules, no notes.

[02:55] At the end of it, he realizes the Ninjas have

[02:58] something to do with his sister, therefore Scene 5.

[03:00] Shawn makes the decision to try and help his sister.

[03:03] Katie also makes a decision to help him.

[03:04] This is the end of Act 1.

[03:06] On the surface, there's nothing terribly wrong with that structure.

[03:10] We meet our protagonists,

[03:12] we learned what their major character flies.

[03:14] The direction of the character arcs has been set up,

[03:16] the themes have been established.

[03:18] We have an inciting incident and the main characters

[03:20] make an important decision to engage with the problem.

[03:22] It's a pretty standard first act.

[03:25] The problem for me is that this isn't actually the first act of Jiangxi story.

[03:30] There's a whole series of flashbacks detailing

[03:32] his background and how his father trained him to be an assassin.

[03:36] Let's break them down.

[03:37] Flashback 1, we learned that after his mother died,

[03:40] his father started training him as an assassin.

[03:42] His sister trained in secret when they were 14.

[03:44] His father sent him on his first mission.

[03:46] The montage actually contains all of the other flashbacks within it chronologically.

[03:51] Flashback 2, right before he goes on his first mission,

[03:53] he has a conversation with

[03:55] his younger sister where they are mourning their mother's death.

[03:57] She asks him not to leave her and he promises that he'll be back in three days.

[04:01] Something we know doesn't happen.

[04:03] Flashback 3, his father interrupts his training and tells

[04:05] him he needs to train both his body and mind in order to

[04:08] inherit the 10 rings showing us that Jiangxi did it

[04:11] 1.1 to inherit them and make his father proud more than anything else.

[04:15] Flashback 4. When Wu tells us about how Yingli had

[04:17] an effect on him and we see them falling in love and beginning of family.

[04:20] Jiangxi, mother is killed by his father's old enemies.

[04:24] He then witnesses his father take revenge and his

[04:26] tasked by his father to kill the man most responsible.

[04:30] Right after this Jiangxi confides in Katie that he did actually

[04:33] kill that man and then didn't return to his father because he felt guilty.

[04:36] Notably, this scene is not shown as a flashback,

[04:39] only talked about in contrast to the rest of the backstory.

[04:48] Now, if we rearrange these scenes chronologically,

[04:52] including the prologue with his parents and

[04:54] adding the scenes that are talked about but not shown,

[04:56] we can instead have a first act in change that looks something like this.

[05:00] Wen Wu is an ancient warlord,

[05:02] he gives that up when he falls in love.

[05:04] For a time, the family lives happily,

[05:05] but then some mobsters kill his wife.

[05:07] Shang-Chi witnesses his father violently take revenge for the death of his mother.

[05:11] His father trains him to be an assassin and

[05:13] Shang-Chi aspires to inherit the 10 rings himself.

[05:15] While Wen Wu would we trained Jiangxi,

[05:17] his sister practices in secret.

[05:19] His sister begs him not to leave her alone and promise that he'll return in three days.

[05:22] Shang-Chi is sent on his first mission.

[05:24] On the first mission, Jiangxi kills the man responsible for his mother's death.

[05:27] That would be the end of the first act in a chronological version of the story.

[05:31] First acts typically end when the main character makes

[05:34] a significant choice and this would be that.

[05:36] After this, the rest of the film could proceed as before.

[05:39] I think if you tell the story chronologically,

[05:41] you get more immediate reasons to care about Jiangxi.

[05:44] You see right up front the effect the death of

[05:46] his mother has on him and the rest of the family.

[05:48] You see what his relationship is like with his sister,

[05:50] which emotionally invest the audience and finding her later on,

[05:53] and as you can see at the beginning of his relationship with Katie.

[05:55] Though, the dynamic of that relationship does

[05:57] already work and is one of the stronger parts of the story.

[05:59] Most importantly, though we're centering the idea of Shang-Chi having to wrestle with

[06:03] the good and bad parts of his heritage

[06:05] rather than the story of him just being unambitious.

[06:08] I think the former is where the story and character are stronger.

[06:12] It also means showing the most critical scene of his character development,

[06:15] which the film only alludes to the fact that Shang-Chi was

[06:18] in fact an assassin who did in fact actually kill someone.

[06:22] This is the biggest hole in the story for me.

[06:24] We miss out on actually seeing this crucial moment of

[06:27] change in Shang-Chi and how that weighs on him over the rest of the story.

[06:32] His guilt over this moment is established and

[06:35] resolved in the same scene in the current film,

[06:38] rather than being explored over the course of the film.

[06:40] There's very little about the earlier parts of the movie that make it feel like

[06:44] Shang-Chi was actually an assassin and grappling with guilt.

[06:47] I just don't buy that that's who he is.

[06:49] He reads this too normal and two,

[06:51] well adjusted for that to be the case.

[06:53] When I think of his character arc,

[06:55] I think this is the story of an average guy from San Fran who becomes a level 20 monk.

[07:00] Rather than, this is the story of someone who trained to kill from a young age,

[07:03] learning to use his skills for the better.

[07:05] The movie wants to be both things,

[07:06] but I only know the second one because

[07:08] this scene is here to tell me that piece of information,

[07:11] not because I actually feel it on an emotional level.

[07:14] Giving the audience adhesive information is not the same as dramatizing a story.

[07:18] Also, I don't think this arrangement and extension of the story would

[07:22] add too much to the runtime because there's a lot you could cut from this movie.

[07:27] The final battle with the big monster is completely unnecessary when

[07:30] the actual emotional conclusion to the story is Shang-Chi defeating his father.

[07:34] Trava flattery doesn't need to be here.

[07:36] Much of the second act as the characters running from place to place,

[07:39] which could easily be pared down.

[07:41] What I'm trying to get at is the difference between

[07:43] character-focused storytelling and plot-focused storytelling.

[07:46] Character-focused story follows the character's emotional journey,

[07:50] the decisions they make,

[07:51] and how that changes who they are.

[07:52] A plot-focused story pushes the character from

[07:54] location to location to justify action scenes.

[07:57] In short, while the first act of Shang-Chi isn't bad by any means,

[08:01] I think it's the wrong first act if the goal is to

[08:04] build an audience's investment in his character.

[08:07] Captain Marvel has a similar problem.

[08:13] Now, in fairness, this movie has

[08:16] a better justification for its flashback structure than Shang-Chi does.

[08:19] The fact that Shang-Chi grew up as an assassin is not a mystery in that movie.

[08:24] Whereas Captain Marvel's history as an Air Force pilot on Earth is.

[08:27] For most of the film,

[08:29] she suffers from amnesia and is slowly putting together

[08:31] her memories of her life on Earth before she became an intergalactic space cop.

[08:35] These memories are delivered to the audience,

[08:37] mostly in fragments, quick snippets of scenes,

[08:41] and they're not really fleshed out.

[08:42] Only the memory that shows us how she lost her memories qualifies as a full scene.

[08:47] The rest is in a hazy fog.

[08:49] The audience receives the information that Carol was a pilot,

[08:52] that she experienced sexism throughout her life,

[08:55] and that she succeeded despite this.

[08:57] But these scenes are so short that they don't tell the full story.

[09:00] They are not dramatized, only hinted at.

[09:03] All of those valuable empathy building classic first act scenes are skipped through.

[09:08] Now at this point, we could do the same thing we did with

[09:10] Shang-Chi and reorder the events chronologically,

[09:13] but I think that would also mean removing the amnesia plot point.

[09:16] But that rewrite is far more radical than just rearranging Shang-Chi.

[09:20] Also thematically, I think the amnesia idea is important to this film's idea of

[09:25] power structures telling you who you are

[09:27] and what your limitations are and I wouldn't want to mess with that.

[09:30] Not every character needs to have their entire history

[09:32] chronologically laid out before they get to do the superhero stuff.

[09:36] When I first watched this movie,

[09:37] I actually loved that it started with her being a superhero

[09:40] without having to do a full typical origins story for her.

[09:44] I don't need to see them as a kid to empathize with them. That's not what I'm saying.

[09:48] But if we're going to hint at important scenes from her childhood that have informed

[09:52] her character and then try to cash in on those scenes emotionally at the climax,

[09:57] 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.