The Universal Rule of Crap

   Let’s hop on that buzz train and talk about The Rings of Power — but not right away. It’s a 10-minute read before we actually get to the Rings. I’ll make it worth your while, My Precious Reader.

   At first glance, this post may seem like a lengthy rant, but it isn’t. It’s just that this time around, Yours Truly is gonna have to list a lot of crappy things before he gets to the point. I’m not mad. I’m not cranky. But Chris Gore is right: 99% of films today are garbage.

   Important things need to be said — so bear with me, ladies and gentlemen.

   Here we go.

   I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies, and they were crap.

   Gimli doesn’t even know that Khazad-dûm has fallen over a thousand years before. It’s absurd.

   Somehow, Saruman knows there is a balrog lurking within the mines of Moria; he’s got a god damned book with a PICTURE of the balrog in it. What the actual fuck bucket? That’s ridiculous.

   Shelob, one of my favorite characters, doesn’t even speak. Why?

   And please, can we all agree that the Eye of Sauron is a metaphor? With the palantír stolen from Minas Ithil, Sauron can “see” things far away, but it’s not a huge flaming eye sitting on top of Barad-dûr.

 

   In the book, Gandalf and Saruman never fight. In Ralph Bakshi’s movie, the wizards do have a clash of sorts, but it is rather abstract and very elegant, like a Certamen in Ars Magica. In Peter Jackson’s film, Saruman and Gandalf violently fling each other against walls and ceilings — two disheveled old men fighting with their canes.

   This scene is getting worse with each new iteration.

   It’s a mess. It’s a disgrace.

   Nevertheless, for an entire generation, Peter Jackson’s trilogy is the best thing they ever saw.

 

   I get it. Teens and young adults were awestruck in 2001 and 2002 and 2003; The Lord of the Rings movies arrived at the best possible moment — like D&D for Gen X, or like the first set of Magic: The Gathering for older Millennials. Right into that sweet, sweet spot, and right when you’re ready to embrace it and fully, wholeheartedly enjoy it.

   It’s okay.

   But — still — those movies are crap.

   Don’t worry, though; for my friends and I, the magical-thing-that-completely-changed-our-lives-and-rocked-our-world was First Edition AD&D — and it was crap.

   I saw The Hobbit, part 1, and it was embarrassingly bad. I did not bother with the other two, and I never will—

   Thorin and Company are attacked by orcs, and — outta the blue — Gandalf finds the entrance to a VERY LONG tunnel that leads directly to Rivendell. Seriously?

   And it happens to be the one night of the year when Elrond can decypher the moon-letters on Thrór’s map. Moon-letters? What is that?

   And Radagast somehow managed to steal the Witch-king’s own blade? Appalling.

   [refills coffee cup]

   I’m not done yet. Like I said — bear with me, please.

   The Phantom Menace was crap.

   Attack of the Clones was crap.

   I didn’t see Revenge of the Sith, but I assume it was crap.

   I saw The Force Awakens, and it was hard sun-baked donkey manure.

   I haven’t seen The Last Jedi nor The Rise of Skywalker. I don’t watch The Mandalorian. Haven’t seen The Book of Boba Fett... So I can’t comment on those films and series.

   Even Return of the Jedi was crappy. Luke walks a penis-shaped plank floating over a giant, gaping vagina full of teeth. Really? And those Ewoks. Come on…

   The Dungeons & Dragons movie with Jeremy Irons was horseshit. Why would the next one be any different? Are the people involved not almost the same as in 2000?

   The American Gods show was a glistening pile of stinking crap, despite Neil Gaiman’s personal involvement. I can’t imagine what the man had to endure with countless TV execs vetoing his every decision literally all the time.

   By now, you’re probably thinking, “So this guy believes everything is crap?”

   No, I don’t. Some things are excellent. You just need to find them.

   Remember The Incredible Hulk, the 1978 TV show starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno? That was awesome. Bixby is so good as doctor David Banner — he makes you feel all sorts of emotions for the character. This show wasn’t overly “Marvelized.” It wasn’t at all infantilizing. And Lou Ferrigno, well, he is to the Hulk what Adam West is to the Batman: a legend.

   Remember Conan the Barbarian, the first one, back in 1982? Now that was something, wasn’t it? It’s not a cinematic monument, but it isn’t annoyingly clean and cliché, and it isn’t a god damn caricature of an age past. It’s grim, ugly, and brutal. Even Ridley Scott’s Gladiator looks like an upbeat period piece next to Conan.

   The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross, is an excellent series of books. Smart, engrossing, funny and terrifying all at the same time. Nothing in there is either easy or lazy. Stross challenges your brain, and your brain takes on that challenge. It’s a wonderful treat.

   Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen, the 2019 TV show, is as close to perfection as you can get. In his movie, Zack Snyder refused to include the squid; he said, “it would take 15 minutes to explain the squid.” Without any explanation, Lindelof showed us the squid in all its grotesque glory — and his Watchmen won 11 Emmys. Do not explain, ever. Just tell a story.

   The X-Files. The Sopranos. Breaking Bad. Sherlock (the one with Cumberbatch)…

   Good things exist out there… but they are few and far between, that’s for sure.

   It is our unkillable, gullible optimism that seems to be the problem. We always assume that the next thing will be mind-blowingly good. Like Dune. Like Kenobi. Like The Rings of Power.

   Before that infamous Vanity Fair article came out, I saw people say stuff like “Counting the days already! CAN’T WAIT!!!” or “September 2: date reserved and locked in!!!”

   We’re so dumb. We never learn.

   We assume the next thing will be good — and it’s almost always crap.

   And it is positively futile to suddenly realize that something is crap 3 years after the fact. You already paid for the thing. You already fed the system.

   Again, I haven’t seen The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, but I witnessed SO MUCH hype when those movies first came out. And now, 3 years later, I keep seeing things like this—

 

   Where were you 3 years ago? We needed people saying those things out loud back then; now, it’s useless, because The Crap Factory already made its money, because The Steady Production Of Crap continues unabated. We need to learn to sniff out the crap earlier — waaay earlier — in the process.

   It’s like “the Emperor has no clothes.” In the beginning, no one says a damn thing, but as soon as one voice states the obvious, everybody start to pile up like crazy. It becomes a pop-up echo chamber.

   YouTuber PhilosophiCat said that George R.R. Martin’s books were “about nihilism — where good never triumphs, and potential heroes die meaningless deaths, and the world descends deeper and deeper into misery, chaos, and despair.”

   Well, that’s Tuesday in the Middle Ages.

   Yes, the Cathars were brutally exterminated — a senseless mass murder. Babies, too.

   Yes, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake — a meaningless death.

   It’s real life, it’s not Disney.

   If and when you give the audience exactly what they want, it becomes absolute crap.

   I remember the series finale of NBC’s Grimm. Literally five minutes after it ended, someone tweeted, “EVERYONE’S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

   That’s your audience. That is us.

   In CBS’s Blue Bloods, all fans seem to care about is whether Danny is gonna end up with his detective partner, Maria. They don’t understand that the screenwriters already used this storybeat once in the show, when Jamie got together with his partner on the job, Edit. Writers won’t do this twice in the same show: it would look stupid. And then what — Frank with Abigail?

   I’m fed up with Mulder marrying Scully, Patrick Jane getting together with Lisbon, and Castle getting together with Beckett. The audience is dumb.

 

   There are two or three different fan film “trailers” of The Silmarillion out there, and they’re all unadulterated crap. You get a glimpse of some dark tower with a red thing glowing on top of it; there’s something resembling a volcano in the distance, with legions of orcs marching next to it; then you see 8 or 10 silhouettes walking in single file on a mountain ridge in an astounding vista. In short, stuff that you have seen before. There’s absolutely nothing new there.

   But it gives you an insight into the public’s mind. We’re begging for the same movie over and over again. We don’t want new. We want recognizable. We want well-known.

   For me, it’s a huge relief whenever potential heroes die meaningless deaths and the world descends deeper and deeper into misery, chaos, and despair.

   Indeed, it is real. It hurts. It stays with you.

   Planet of the Apes, the first one, doesn’t have a happy ending — and it sticks with you for a long while.

   Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem doesn’t have a happy ending — and it sticks with you.

   Good shows are being cancelled because of poor viewership. Networks shouldn’t do that. For Life was excellent, and we needed much more than just two seasons of it. What we don’t need is 10 Fast and Furious movies.

   As I said at the beginning: I’m not mad, and I’m not cranky. I won’t even watch The Rings of Power, because I don’t have Amazon Prime, have no intention of getting it, and the whole thing is gonna be crap anyway.

   Believe me, I’d like them to prove me wrong, but they won’t.

   It’s gonna be crap.

   Not because of Sophia Nomvete, the actress who plays Disa — she’s probably awesome. Not because of Ismael Cruz Córdova, the actor who plays Arondir — he’s probably amazing. Not because of full metal jacket Galadriel. But because Crap is a recipe, and most industry execs follow it to the letter.

   They are physically, intellectually, and most of all, contractually incapable of writing good, compelling stories.

   Even when they BEGIN with a good, compelling story — like American Gods, the novel — they end up turning it into vile, inexcusable crap. Really, what else can I say?

   If Amazon were to actually deliver a splendid, formidable story, like HBO’s Rome, for example, then all the rest wouldn’t matter anymore — who should or shouldn’t have a beard, who should or shouldn’t wear a full suit of plate mail, et cetera.

   Since the Vanity Fair article and the Super Bowl trailer, we have this enormous shitstorm going on, and the focus of all that indignation is on a couple of small, immediately noticeable points. Almost no one seems to focus on the true, concealed, overwhelming, central issue: a deep-rooted bulletproof entrenched systemic crap-factory culture.

   That’s the real problem.

   We have a living body lying on a table in front of us, and that body is the entertainment industry. It has cancer, a couple warts here and there, and an ingrown toenail. Since we’re powerless to cure the cancer itself, we just stand there and argue about how to best cure those warts and that nail—

   But the body’s still dying, and it’s the cancer that’s killing it, not the damn warts.

Worldbuilding examples: Lucas, Tolkien, Peter Jackson

First example — Star Wars

   Darth Vader is second only to the Emperor, everybody knows that. But it didn’t seem to be the case in 1977.

   In Episode IV, Vader is the muscle. He doesn’t even sit at the conference table, and paces around the room like an attack dog on a leash. That’s exhibit A.

   Admiral Motti says, “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader.”

   If the supreme ruler of the galaxy is a 10th dan black belt, no officer will ever joke about someone’s “karate shtick,” right? It doesn’t make sense. Motti’s scathing words, “Your sad devotion to that ancient religion...” unequivocally indicates that the Galactic Emperor, in Lucas’ mind, was not a Sith at this point.

   Vader begins to Force choke Motti — but is ordered to stand down. That’s exhibit B.

   The Sith Lord clearly isn’t the Emperor’s second-in-command here.

   In ’77, galactic domination ain’t Vader’s chief concern: he is mostly obsessed with finding and killing his old master. “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed,” he says. “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

   In the script, we can read: “Grand Moff Tarkin, governor of the Imperial outland regions, enters. He is followed by his powerful ally, The Sith Lord, Darth Vader.”

   That sounds odd, doesn’t it? After all, Himmler wasn’t a “powerful ally” of Hitler’s — he was under his command. Mussolini was a powerful ally: not actually in the Third Reich, but from another country. That’s what an ally usually is. If you belong to the same military, you’re not an “ally,” you’re either an officer or a soldier. That’s exhibit C.

   Three years later, in The Empire Strikes Back, there are no new Grand Moffs. Vader is the Emperor’s right-hand man, and he calls him “my master.” The Emperor is now a Sith, too. Worldbuilding has occurred.

   In the very beginning, it was a military empire, with a lone “sorcerer” ally who wasn’t that impressed by the Death Star. Later, it became a Sith empire — with military personnel.

   Huge difference.

   We can assume that Vader isn’t actually part of the Galactic Empire in ’77. He stands to the side, like Destro in G.I. Joe — scary enforcer and / or independent contractor. The Sith Lord is Tarkin’s powerful ally, not the Empire’s. Seems like the Grand Moff personally hired Vader to retrieve the stolen Death Star plans; an unusual situation quite similar to Vader later hiring the bounty hunters to find the Falcon.

   Tarkin, not Vader, has a direct line to the Emperor. “I’ve just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently.”

   Vader isn’t a ranking officer in the Empire. Not yet.

   Get this: in a “Revenge of the Jedi” deleted scene, the new Death Star commander refuses to let Vader enter Palpatine’s throne room.

   When they remake A New Hope — let’s face it, it’s inevitable — they’ll rectify those details; Vader will indeed sit at the conference table, and Motti won’t mock him at all.

*

   Whether or not you agree with this analysis, one fact remains: the character of Darth Vader is much more dominant in The Empire Strikes Back than it was in A New Hope ― and that is due to cogent worldbuilding. How many times have we heard game designers say: “If your players connect with one NPC, give that NPC more importance in the next games.”

   It is what Lucas did. Both kids and adults loved “The Sith Lord,” enjoyed his “sorcerer’s ways” and his “sad devotion to that ancient religion.” So, now, let’s give him more screen time and make him less of a loner, less like Merlin in Camelot; let’s take King Arthur — boom, he’s a sorcerer too! The Galactic Emperor himself is going to have his own sorcerer’s ways and a (no longer sad) devotion to that ancient religion. Vader is gonna be the Emperor’s apprentice. Thus, technically, the Empire’s number two.

   That’s how you worldbuild.

   Overhaul. Interweave.

   After A New Hope, Lucas took governor Tarkin’s “ally” and the unseen Galactic Emperor, and linked them directly to one another. It made good sense, and enriched the world’s core principle, which is the Force. Imagine what Star Wars would be if Lucas had failed to do that.

Second example — The Hobbit

   In my penultimate 2021 post, Low-concept vs High-concept, I talked about the giants that we see in The Hobbit, when Bilbo and the Dwarves are crossing the Misty Mountains. I thought it was totally preposterous, but someone recently told me that the “stone giants” are indeed mentioned in the source material. I was taken aback. Yes, it has been a long while since I read The Hobbit. I didn’t recall that one sentence, like, at all. My bad.

   “Bilbo… saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang… they could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.”

   Believe it or not, those insane 300-foot tall elemental giants did not come from Peter Jackson’s fevered mind. So he was right to include them in the movie, wasn’t he?

   Since we’re discussing worldbuilding, this is noteworthy.

   Tolkien wrote The Hobbit around 1933, including the duelling giants for stylistic effect, fairytales and all. After that, as he started working on The Lord of the Rings, he completely scrubbed these creatures. His world was slowly shaping up, and he kept the Trolls, the Ogres, the Orcs and the Goblins, but abandoned the Stone Giants. Why?

   He knew they wouldn’t fit. Even at that early stage, Tolkien certainly knew who Melkor would be, and how he would have perverted some of Arda’s creatures to make Trolls, Orcs, Goblins and so forth; but a race of rock hurling titans — how come? It’d upset the world’s balance. Indeed, why puny 40-foot Balrogs when you could have an army of towering elementals the size of the Statue of Liberty?

   So Tolkien cut them out and never spoke of giants again in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales.

   Top-notch worldbuilding.

   But then Peter Jackson went and undid that.

*

   There’s a reason why Lucas scratched the name Starkiller, and there’s a reason why he cut the scene with Biggs Darklighter: they are bad names. Writing the script, Lucas probably tried many permutations — Starlighter, Starwalker, Darkwalker, Skylighter, Skykiller. In the end, he kept the one name that sounded really good.

   What Disney is doing, returning to pre-1977 drafts and bringing back those deleted names and characters, is bad worldbuilding.

   If there’s a Dark side and a Light side, there should be lightsabers and darksabers — right? Bad, and almost childish, if you think about it. When my nephew was 4 or 5, he saw a blue fire hydrant on the street, across from the park, and as soon as this information registered in his five-year-old brain — those things on the sidewalk aren’t always red, there can be other colors — as soon as he knew this, he started looking for the green ones and the yellow ones and the black ones and the orange ones. For months.

   So, yeah, lightsabers… darksabers… shadowsabers are next on the list, probably.

   All lightsabers in A New Hope were supposed to be identical: white. That would have been great, I guess. Adult sci-fi. Then Lucas thought it would be more dramatic if the good guy wielded a bluish blade (Heaven is blue), and the evil guy had a reddish one (Hell is red). Maybe not George’s best worldbuilding choice.

   Forty-five years later, it’s Toys ‘R’ Us Star Wars.

   And what’s going to be the “light” / “angelic” equivalent of the Nazgûl? The Nazgood?

   What Peter Jackson did was bad worldbuilding, too. Tolkien removed the stone giants from all his works after The Hobbit, so why in hell is Jackson boisterously reintroducing them? Sure, the giants are present in the book — but you also need to look at all the other texts of Middle-earth, and see the big picture, and understand why the author did what he did.

   Good worldbuilding is about adding layers to what’s already there instead of constantly inserting new stuff. Remember that nifty little Ring of Invisibility Bilbo found in some random cave? It turns out that it’s much more than just a generic Ring of Invisibility… That’s right. Think about doing the same in your tabletop role-playing games; instead of introducing a powerful new item, just take that “ordinary” +1 dagger the party found during their very first adventure — and make it speak all of a sudden. It’s an intelligent dagger +1 / +3 vs demons / devils, and it needs the party’s help to go free its former owner from a sorcerous prison inside a huge derelict steampunk meteorite!

   “But why didn’t it speak to us for an entire year?” It’s up to you, the DM, to come up with a cool reason. Maybe the dagger was simply observing the player characters and assessing their worthiness?

   Bad worldbuilding is when you go over the edge. Things were okay before, but then you add something more, and it all goes to hell. That’s what happened in White Wolf’s World of Darkness towards the tail-end of the storytelling game craze; with vampires and werewolves and changelings and mages and celestines and mummies and demons literally everywhere, why and how would there be any normal humans in positions of power anywhere?

   The Star Wars universe is fine without Starkiller and darksabers.

   Middle-earth is fine without Stone Giants.

   The World of Darkness was fine with just seven vampire clans and a few garou tribes.

   The most significant difference between good worldbuilders and bad worldbuilders is that good worldbuilders know when to rein themselves in.