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Episode 11 – Tomorrowland Ain’t What it Used to Be - Ten Giant Robots
An in-depth conversation about Brad Bird’s latest Clooney vehicle: a “Tomorrowland” that never arrives.
* Disney owns everything.
* Marvel
* Pixar
*
Star Wars
Jesus (optioned with right of first refusal)
* The original “Tomorrowland”
* Tomorrowland the movie
* PJ was going to blow it off.
* Efram was intrigued by the “touching of the pin” in the trailer.
*
Sean saw trailer on duct tape.
Brad Bird also did Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (his first live-action film)
Tomorrowland: No there there.
How to deliver on new, magical place – good example, Harry Potter – Diagon Alley.
Good exploration of magical places:
Oz
Blade Runner
Things to Come
Metropolis
Alas, Damon Lindelof and the “Man Who Does Not Deliver”.
J.J. Abrams: Mystery Box – We call bullshit.
Bait and switch with no satisfying resolution on layered mysteries.
Sean’s Rant: Mystery Box is hipster bullshit
The MacGuffin: A person or object that the good guy and the bad guy both pursue. To gain control of the MacGuffin is to have the upper hand in the story and “win” the outcome of the movie.
Hitchcock MacGuffin – Meaningless. Just designed to drive story forward.
Modern MacGuffin: MacGuffin has meaning beyond just being a plot device.
Raiders of the Lost Ark – When it’s done well…
The Ark is the MacGuffin. It also has special meaning beyond just wrestling for its control. It defines the boundaries of Indiana Jones’ character.
Marcus and Sallah worry about the magical properties of the Ark. Indy doesn’t believe in that “magical superstitious hocus pocus”. But the only thing that saves him is recognizing the magical properties of the Ark.
Therefore, the MacGuffin itself is meaningful as compared to the briefcase in Pulp Fiction which has implied power but the nature of it we never discover.
Flakey MacGuffin (mmm… delicious):
Hipster Bullshit: Pretending to take a risk without actually taking a risk.
Desiring to imbue the MacGuffin with special intellectual meaning (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark). The storyteller’s desire to demonstrate their cleverness with a Modern MacGuffin but chickening out at the last minute for fear their idea is weak.
Actually having an idea and landing on it might be embarrassing or underwhelming. A fate worse than death for the Hollywood filmmaker.
Avoiding landing on the idea but pretending to have one is faking intellectual content where there is none. aka “Hipster Bullshit” – pretending to be artful while only having the trappings of it.
Efram: Read where Abrams and Lindelof think the question is more important than the answer.
Sean: Disagrees. He goes to movies to see points of view.
Joss Whedon: Pays off and entertains the whole way through a story. And the whole thing isn’t resting on the mystery box.
Star Wars (the original): Mystery AND payoff throughout.
Efram breaks down plot:
Too much “getting to Tomorrowland”.
View all episodes
By Ten Giant Robots
5
33 ratings
An in-depth conversation about Brad Bird’s latest Clooney vehicle: a “Tomorrowland” that never arrives.
* Disney owns everything.
* Marvel
* Pixar
*
Star Wars
Jesus (optioned with right of first refusal)
* The original “Tomorrowland”
* Tomorrowland the movie
* PJ was going to blow it off.
* Efram was intrigued by the “touching of the pin” in the trailer.
*
Sean saw trailer on duct tape.
Brad Bird also did Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (his first live-action film)
Tomorrowland: No there there.
How to deliver on new, magical place – good example, Harry Potter – Diagon Alley.
Good exploration of magical places:
Oz
Blade Runner
Things to Come
Metropolis
Alas, Damon Lindelof and the “Man Who Does Not Deliver”.
J.J. Abrams: Mystery Box – We call bullshit.
Bait and switch with no satisfying resolution on layered mysteries.
Sean’s Rant: Mystery Box is hipster bullshit
The MacGuffin: A person or object that the good guy and the bad guy both pursue. To gain control of the MacGuffin is to have the upper hand in the story and “win” the outcome of the movie.
Hitchcock MacGuffin – Meaningless. Just designed to drive story forward.
Modern MacGuffin: MacGuffin has meaning beyond just being a plot device.
Raiders of the Lost Ark – When it’s done well…
The Ark is the MacGuffin. It also has special meaning beyond just wrestling for its control. It defines the boundaries of Indiana Jones’ character.
Marcus and Sallah worry about the magical properties of the Ark. Indy doesn’t believe in that “magical superstitious hocus pocus”. But the only thing that saves him is recognizing the magical properties of the Ark.
Therefore, the MacGuffin itself is meaningful as compared to the briefcase in Pulp Fiction which has implied power but the nature of it we never discover.
Flakey MacGuffin (mmm… delicious):
Hipster Bullshit: Pretending to take a risk without actually taking a risk.
Desiring to imbue the MacGuffin with special intellectual meaning (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark). The storyteller’s desire to demonstrate their cleverness with a Modern MacGuffin but chickening out at the last minute for fear their idea is weak.
Actually having an idea and landing on it might be embarrassing or underwhelming. A fate worse than death for the Hollywood filmmaker.
Avoiding landing on the idea but pretending to have one is faking intellectual content where there is none. aka “Hipster Bullshit” – pretending to be artful while only having the trappings of it.
Efram: Read where Abrams and Lindelof think the question is more important than the answer.
Sean: Disagrees. He goes to movies to see points of view.
Joss Whedon: Pays off and entertains the whole way through a story. And the whole thing isn’t resting on the mystery box.
Star Wars (the original): Mystery AND payoff throughout.
Efram breaks down plot:
Too much “getting to Tomorrowland”.