The Ideas Man – A (very) short story
“Regarding storytelling, ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that matters!”
“Ah, so you’re a big fan of ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace’, then?”
“Excuse me? While it wasn’t the worst film I’ve ever watched, it had some truly terrible scenes and characters in it.”
“But it had great cinematography, top-notch visual effects and and some of Hollywood’s best actors in it.”
“Yeah, but the dialog sucked.”
“The ‘Star Wars’ script had to be one of the best edited scripts in movie history. And the different personality of the characters was conveyed really well.”
“Yeah, but Jar-Jar Binks!! … And a trade route conflict?!”
“So you’re saying that right at the beginning of the scriptwriting process, bad ideas were chosen for the characters and plot and then flawlessly executed?”
“…”
Loading ...
One day, Jim Butcher and a friend were arguing about writing. The friend asserted that if you start with a bad idea, no matter what you do with it you can’t make it into a great story. Jim disagreed. The friend wagered that mr Butcher couldn’t make a good story out of a lame idea they supplied, Jim said he’s take any two lame ideas of the challenger’s choosing. They went with ‘the lost roman legion’ and ‘pokemon’.
The Codex Alera series has made multiple millions of dollars, hit #7 on the bestseller listings, and is widely regarded as among the best fantasy books of the last few decades.
Basically, if you can’t make a good movie about trade route disputes and Jar Jar Binks, your execution was a long way from flawless.
“@ Sindri:
I find this hard to believe, because “The lost Roman Legion” is not a lame idea, and Pokemon, though it sounds lame, was already proven to not be lame.
I bow before the wisdom of this post
Though I withsh there was a comic with it
Because all minorities are protected, even Islamic terrorists, people tend to wind up casting capitalists as the evil villain.
What is an evil capitalist going to do that is so villainous? He is going to offer you a job, or sell you stuff, or, worst of all, offer you a job and sell you what you produced at a substantial mark up just because he designed the product, told you how to make it, and provided the equipment to make it!
Hence the evil trade league engage in an evil trade dispute was an incoherent and stupid idea. If they make a profit off trading, why the are they blockading? They might, like the evil East India company, evilly block all traders except themselves, but the total blockade story made no sense, and everyone watching it could see it made no sense.
“So you’re saying that right at the beginning of the scriptwriting process, bad ideas were chosen for the characters and plot and then flawlessly executed?”
Yes. It isn’t about the rocks in your path, it’s about how cooly you steer around them. Do you really expect every character to go through the movie with a 100% run of consecutive Good Decisions? They aren’t going to say “Screw the meeting, I’m getting a ham sandwich” at least once? But really, everything JarJar was a bad idea that shouldn’t have made it out of the first rough draft.
B-but.. I -liked- Jar-Jar!
@ Iron Ed:
I don’t remember the movie well, just all I hear is how bad it was, but they did make Jar-Jar pretty cool near the end of the Clone Wars series, in my opinion.
@ D-Rock:
🙂 I was actually reasonably pleased with the movie that introduced Jar-Jar (Phantom Menace?). My biggest complaint was the… Metachlorians??? Good grief that pool needs more chlorine! 🙂
The original series of three is still by far my favorite. I liked ‘Phantom Menace’ overall, but it will never be a classic. I only saw bits and pieces of its follow-up; just enough to decide it was a soap opera and thus not worth watching. The final movie in that series I never bothered to see at all.
Edit: “Regarding storytelling, ideas are a dime a dozen. Focus on a few good ones, and properly execute them!”
The point behind the saying “Ideas are a dime a dozen” is only that ideas are cheap. This doesn’t mean that all ideas are good, or that it’s a good idea to mix a gazillion random ones. Proper quality control means dropping most ideas.
I love how the post of @ Sindri shows a case of how to do it. Two strong memes, a way to combine them, and a good execution.
In contrast, The Phantom Menace had a lot of concurrent ideas. Racing, the Dark Side & Lightsaber fights, a hidden underwater civilization, politics of a monarch vs a trade federation, a comedic side-kick, robotic armies and warfare, the prophecy & its child prodigy, a federation drifting into a dictatorship… it’s a whole lot to stitch together in a single movie.
Can I share this on Tumblr?
…I really, really like this, it’s about time people actually explained their problems with that movie instead of just being like “It sucked”.
@ Sindri:
You sir, win the internet for this very finely crafted, and 100% accurate reply. As a Butcher fan, I can attest that I have heard this story several times. And its still funny every time.
Check annnnnnd mate.