Good Stories are Hard

A day ago, on the Guardian site, Jonathan Jones took critics to task for criticizing Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” for its lack of historical accuracy and pointed out that many historical films, including last year’s “The King’s Speech” also were less than completely accurate. All true, but alas historical verisimilitude isn’t the issue at all. Finally, "Robin Hood" wasn’t a good movie because it wasn’t telling a very good story. Script writer Brian Helgeland gave us a character who was not particularly clever or interesting and nothing particularly clever or interesting happened to him. Who cares if the medieval world may have actually had something like a Higgins boat, as Will Mclean cleverly pointed out, http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.com/ ,so that the final scene was not nearly as anachronistic as it seemed?

Two interesting counterpoints are Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” and “Kingdom of Heaven.” Neither had particularly strong stories either but both immersed the audience in a world that was surprising and new and which alluded to central historical truths about their respective times. For example, the beginning battle scene in Gladiator illustrates the power of technology, organization and discipline even in a relatively primitive world, a key aspect of historical Roman success. Of course it is also relevant to the kind of real warfare we see on the news at the moment. In that context, it’s interesting to compare “Restrepo,” Sebastian Junger’s documentary about a US platoon in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, with "Gladiator" which suggests that very different kinds of stories about the Roman invasions of Gaul and England could be very interesting indeed.

Good stories are hard.

But they always have been. Very occasionally, I find myself musing that in spite of the sea changes in media at all levels, we’re becoming worse at it as a culture. Certainly, the immediacy of things like Facebook pose interesting obstacles to the creation of suspense, a vital narrative element.

Unfortunately, a couple of experiences this week have only served to support that rather gloomy opinion. Lynn and I watched the first episode of the Camelot miniseries on Starz. Like, Michael Hirst’s previous production, “The Tudors,” it seems to have no idea of what it’s about. The first episode gave me no reason to watch a second and even if we do I fear I may be unable to keep with it due to severe, aggressive apathy.  Ironically, one of the six word stories from the New York Times, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/whats-your-six-word-love-story/, serves as a perfect review:  "Note to self:  no more surfers."

More interesting and possibly more sadly, Bioware has released a demo of their RPG "Dragon Age II." "Dragon Age I" was one of the most successful computer games of last year and was particularly interesting because a story with strong ironies, difficult choices and well-realized characters was one of the central and unique elements. I’ve long felt that computer gaming, still relatively young, was waiting for its “Birth of a Nation” and "Dragon Age I" suggested that moment might be very close indeed. Alas, the demo of DA II suggests that those elements have been forgone in favor of developing an anime-styled game to appeal to fourteen year-old ADD console players of FPSs, a caricatured demographic I suspect is actually microscopically small. I have fingers crossed in hopes that it was no more than a terrible demo.

I’m going to go reread some Borges and Lovecraft.