*Please note that I will be using the term “SSU” consistently throughout this article, even though the universe itself had undergone many names since its inception. I will also divide the SSU into two distinct “eras,” separated from one another by the main actors playing Spider-Man: Andrew Garfield (2012-2014) and Tom Holland (2015-present).

Contents

1. Sinister Six Was Never About Fighting Spider-Man

   1. The Garfield Era

   2. The Arad/Tolmach Interview

   3. The Sinister Six Featurette

   4. Drew Goddard Interviews

   5. The Leaks

   6. The Setups of TASM-2

2. The Evolution of Sinister Six

   1. Shifts After TASM-2 Came Out

   2. Shifts After the Sony Hacking

3. Conclusion

Sinister Six Was Never About Fighting Spider-Man

The Garfield Era

Sinister Six was initially developed as an installment of The Amazing Spider-Man (TASM) franchise. When Sony released the first TASM (dir. Marc Webb) in 2012, it was clearly intending it to be the beginning of a larger, multi-part story, but it had not approached it as a launchpad for a cinematic universe. Following the success of Disney’s Avengers that same year, however, Sony changed gears and decided to expand upon the TASM franchise to realize a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe.

Initially, the topic was first brought up by Sony producer and executive Amy Pascal during an investor call on November 21 2013, where she stated:

“We are going to access Marvel’s full world of Spider-Man characters, so be on the lookout for new heroes and villains.”

Subsequently, on December 12, Sony announced that it had assembled a writer’s room consisting of Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Jeff Pinkner, Ed Solomon and Drew Goddard “to work on a large-scale story that will encompass several films.”

And with that, what I like to call The Garfield Era of the SSU had officially begun. The plan was to use the upcoming TASM-2 as a launchpad for the larger universe, which in addition to two more previously announced mainline sequels would include the ancillary spinoffs Venom and Sinister Six, all of which would work together as parts of a larger overarching narrative whole.

Here is an excerpt from the press release originally featured on Electro Arrives:

“The five writers, along with the two producers and Marc Webb, have formed a franchise brain trust to expand the universe for the brand and to develop a continuous tone and thread throughout the films. Under the deals, the studio announced that Kurtzman & Orci & Pinkner are writing the screenplay for The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which the studio hopes Webb will return to direct; the film will go into production next fall for release on June 10, 2016. In addition, the team will build on the cinematic foundation laid by Webb, Arad, and Tolmach in the first two movies.

They will expand the franchise as Kurtzman & Orci & Solomon will write the screenplay for Venom, which Kurtzman will direct; also, Goddard will write, with an eye to direct, The Sinister Six, focusing on the villains in the franchise…. Until now, we have approached each film as a separate, self-contained entity, but with this move, we have the opportunity to grow the franchise by looking to the future as we develop a continuous arc for the story….””

While the article established that the film would focus on the villains of the TASM franchise and was part of a larger interconnected multi-film story arc, it didn’t really provide any specifics about the film is actually about.

If you know the comics, odds are you assumed that the Sinister Six movie centered on a group of six supervillains teaming up to take out Spider-Man. After all, that’s pretty much why the team came to exist in the comic books in the first place and non-cinematic adaptations of Spider-Man have tended to depict it as such.

The Arad/Tolmach Interview

One of the earliest indications of this came in April 2014 in an article by IGN. Quoting producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, the article by Daniel Krupa opens with the claim that the Sinister Six film “is going to be a tale of redemption, where the villains aren’t necessarily portrayed as villains.”

The way Tolmach describes the spinoff, a key idea of the film seems to be to push back against the traditional moral binary between heroes and villains by depicting the S6 as real three-dimensional characters who have relatable motives and goals.

“There’s no such thing as just a villain,” says Tolmach. “There are villains by virtue of choices that people make but they always begin as humans, as characters. As flawed people; as tragic people. You know great movies have been made about a bunch of “bad guys” who get together to do something…. There’s a huge tradition of it. Those are sometimes the greatest characters to watch, a bunch of broken people coming together for whatever reason.”

Echoing this, Arad adds that at least one of the S6 characters in the film is meant to have a redemption arc, something that audiences love.

“...and that’s what’s so beautiful about the Spider-Man universe. They have amazing stories if you look at it. And everybody’s looking for redemption; they’re unforgiven. Would you see one of the Sinister Six starting to feel like that? Yes. And people love it, by the way. They love when a villain finds his way back because we’re all very forgiving.”

Tellingly, the producers NEVER specify why exactly the S6 get together in the film. Tolmach in particular keeps the reasons behind them getting together ambiguous.

Furthermore, in the very beginning, he explicitly states that they will NOT confirm what role Spider-Man has in the film or if he will even appear in it.

“We’re definitely not going to say what we’re doing in terms of Spider-Man there.”

In fact, the most information that we get regarding Spider-Man is the idea that all the members of the S6 are united by their hatred of Spider-Man. Evidently, the producers were implying that fighting Spider-Man is NOT the reason why the S6 get together, which would mean they’d have to team up for some other reason.

The Sinister Six Featurette

These conclusions are directly supported by the behind-the-scenes featurette Something Sinister This Way Comes by Charles de Lauzirika, which was included on the TASM-2 home video release in August 2014 and has recently been officially released on YouTube. The first half of the 20-minute featurette mostly discusses the Spider-Man Rogues Gallery and the history of the Sinister Six team formations throughout the comics, which is mostly provided via an interview with Spider-Man historian Stephen Saffel, famous for the 2007 book Spider-Man the Icon.

Around the halfway mark, the featurette switches to a discussion of the TASM fran-chise, particularly when it comes to the ending setups of TASM-2, and the difficulties of adapting Sinister Six comics for the big screen. It starts with Saffel’s comments:

“Doing Sinister Six films is going to be a huge challenge. Part of the problem is that your main characters are not characters you can root for.”

The documentary then cuts to Marc Webb, director of TASM 1&2, as well as a key member of the braintrust. As though speaking in response to Saffel’s comment about the inherent challenge with a potential Sinister Six movie, he states:

“If there’s a way that the Sinister Six can become heroes, where you’re rooting for them, where the six bad guys have to fight something that’s even worse than they are and they are… by coincidence, their agenda is aligned with, uh, the forces of good, I think that would be kind of an interesting avenue to that.”

Webb hints that the planned Sinister Six movie is indeed one where audiences can root for what are traditionally ‘bad guys,’ as in this context they become heroes fighting the real villain so unwittingly align with someone representing the forces of good.

Drew Goddard Interviews

In 2015, Goddard began to open up about the unmade Sinister Six Project, explicitly confirming that Spider-Man was indeed slated to be in Sinister Six, which means that the movie was never going to be just about the ‘villains.’ Here are some quotes:

“I’ve always wanted to do a Spider-Man project and to come at it slightly different just felt right for me. I was really excited about that one, but who knows what the future holds. The allure of Peter Parker is strong…”

• Source: Drew Goddard, IGN interview Sept 29 2015

““Well, you know the truth is, it’s been… we’re a few years out from any Sinister Six happening, so a lot can change between now and then. But my idea for it was always to make it a big epic Spider-Man movie. ””

• Source: Drew Goddard, HeyUGuys interview, Sept 30 2015

Goddard’s description of the film as an “epic” Spider-Man movie fits with Joanna Robinson’s reveal in the book MCU: Reign of Marvel Studios that at least one draft of the film “took Spider-Man and his villains to the Savage Land (in the Marvel comic books, a prehistoric pocket of jungle life hidden in Antarctica), where Spider-Man would ride a T-Rex.” (301) This indicates the movie featured Spider-Man participate directly in high-scale action and adventure sequences, suggesting he had a much bigger role in the film than has been commonly assumed.*

*That Spider-Man appeared in the Sinister Six movie at all was a closely guarded secret at Sony, who refused to clarify this within press releases and statements in 2013-2014. The November 2014 Sony Hacking, which leaked numerous emails, revealed that the character was indeed in the movie, though the exact nature of his role remains largely undisclosed.

Out of all the interviews I’ve found with Goddard, the one by IGN has been the most informative. The writer-director gets candid about his cinematic inspirations and how he approached the challenge of making a Spider-Man film work with six villains:

“When you’re doing just a straightforward superhero movie, you don’t need a lot of villains. The focus is on one guy. I think with Sinister, it’s different. To me it’s less about too many villains and more about too many antagonists and there’s a distinction. You never say, like, The Dirty Dozen has too many characters. They’re all villains, or you could argue that. But they’re protagonists. The trick with Sinister, is that I was making everyone the protagonist and less about six-on-one and more about coming at it a little differently…. You can still have protagonists be evil. That’s the secret.”

What Goddard makes clear is that for him the key was to depict the S6 ‘villains’ as protagonists, rather than tell a conventional superhero story, wherein the lone hero has to face off against one or more villains. Thus, he indirectly corroborates that his movie was not about Spider-Man facing off against multiple villains, but rather a movie where the S6 themselves are the heroes of their own story.

Perhaps the more revealing detail that Goddard shares here is the comparison he draws with The Dirty Dozen, a classic 1967 war movie directed by Robert Aldrich.

Set in 1944, the plot follows Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin), who is tasked with gathering together a team of 12 soldiers recruited from murderers, rapists and criminals (some with long sentences, some on death row) to assassinate a group of German Nazis that have taken over a French chateau.

The comparison thus clearly implies that the plot of Goddard’s movie would have a similar setup, meaning somebody (perhaps the US government) would forcibly recruit six incarcerated Spider-Man villains to take out out the film’s actual villain - someone far more evil than they are, someone requiring multiple superpowered individuals to defeat, someone who could potentially threaten the world itself.

The Leaks

In a leaked email to Tom Hardy, Amy Pascal likewise compared Sinister Six to 1960s men-on-a-mission films, where teams of villainous or morally ambiguous characters fight on the side of good. In addition to The Dirty Dozen, she also references the Westerns The Professionals (1966, dir. Richard Brooks) and The Wild Bunch (1967, dir. Sam Peckinpah). Moreover, she describes it as the “Sex Pistols of superheroes movies,” suggesting the film would have a punk rock aesthetic, and celebrate what some might consider reprehensible or destructive behavior.

“We are going to make the sex pistols of superheroes movies ....where all the characters are the “bad guys”

> Its a sort of celebration of these guys in the vein of the dirty dozen and the professionals and the wild bunch...”

• Source: Leaked Email from Pascal to Hardy (June 7 2014):

That Spider-Man would fight alongside them is also confirmed in a thread between Michael Deluca and Pascal, which indicates that Goddard took inspiration from a story of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, where Norman Osborn blackmailed the hero into joining his team, a variant of the Sinister Six known as the “Ultimate Six” or “Norman Osborn’s Six.” This suggests that in the film Spider-Man was not going to work with the S6 of his own free will but would also be forcibly recruited.*

* The email the thread does not reveal who blackmails him or why, which means that Osborn was not necessarily the recruiter/blackmailer. Additional leaked Sony emails I’ve found since the initial publication of this article suggest Goddard’s final roster as of September 2014 consisted of Dr. Octopus, Sandman, Black Cat, Vulture, Mysterio and Spider-Man himself. Green Goblin was almost certainly not going to be in the movie at that point as Sony wanted to avoid rehashing the villain. Given all this, I think the US government or some agency creating the Sinister Six team is what makes the most sense.

Finally, some insider info was provided to the pop culture blog Badassdigest, a site with a good track record of providing verified leaked behind-the-scenes info on movies. Here is what Devin Faraci wrote about the potential plan Sony had on October 7 2014 when info started trickling out about Sony’s negotiations with Disney to have Spider-Man appear in the MCU:

“Spider-Man coming into the Marvel Cinematic Universe? That’s a big deal. But get this: it’s the THIRD DIFFERENT Spider-Man plan I’ve heard in the last week. Other things I’ve heard from insiders:

- Sony is going to soft reboot Spider-Man with The Sinister Six, having a new actor playing a Spidey who works with the villains The Dirty Dozen style to take down a larger threat.”

Everything Faraci reports here, including the film performing a “soft reboot” of Spider-Man with a new actor (more on this later) lines up with the other leaks and publicly available information.

From all this, we can extrapolate that Sinister Six was going to challenge the traditional moral binaries of the previous TASM films by having Spider-Man join forces, perhaps unwillingly, with a cadre of villains, presenting this as a necessary “evil” in the face of what was likely a world-ending threat. Had the film been made and released in 2016, as planned, it would’ve certainly drawn comparisons to Warner’s Suicide Squad (2016, dir. David Ayer), a movie with a chaotic, punk-rock aesthetic about a bunch of DC Comics supervillains forced to fight on the side of good by the US government.

The Setups of TASM-2

Now that we’ve established what Sinister Six was really going to be about, let’s talk about its relation to TASM-2. It is commonly thought that the ending of this film, which teases the formation of a team of villains meant to hunt down Spider-Man, was directly setting up the events of Goddard’s Sinister Six movie.

But that’s not entirely true.

Its first priority was to set up the plot of TASM-3, which was initially going to be the next SSU movie and had been conceived as the concluding chapter of the TASM trilogy prior to Sony’s decision to make a full-blown expansion into a Spider-Man universe. Its script had already been in development for several months by the time the Sinister Six project was announced at the end of 2013.

While Sony didn’t announce a release date for Sinister Six in the original press reveal, later interviews and articles would establish that the film was intended to come out after the release of TASM-3 in Summer 2016 but before that of TASM-4 in 2018.*

*Leaked emails clarify that Sony originally planned on giving Goddard’s film a third quarter 2016 date, preferably November, so TASM-3 and Sinister Six would be released in the same year. Venom would then follow in 2017, likely August.

Thus, the sequence of the Gentleman walking through the Oscorp Special Projects division alongside the end credits, which provide viewers with visual schematic teases of the Oscorp technology that could be used by a villain, was meant to foreshadow the formation of the S6 in the third TASM movie, rather than Goddard’s movie.

“In Oscorp’s Special Projects, we see, we get hints at… there are glimpses of, there are implications of the accoutrements of villains that will either be in the Sinister Six’ first iteration or will eventually move through the Sinister Six.”

• Source: Jeff Pinkner, Something Sinister, Aug 2014

Despite all the teases, however, the actual roster of villains meant to appear in the group had not been settled upon when TASM-2 came out in theaters. Webb stated that he believed that some characters, such as Dr. Octopus and Vulture, were essential members of the S6, while others remained open questions.

“It’s tricky because we’re not exactly sure if all those people are gonna be in The Sinister Six, or even in the next movie,” says Webb. “Like the Mysterio mask, I just think looks really cool. And I love Mysterio, but we haven’t all agreed on it, but I just forced it in because I thought it looked cool.”

• Marc Webb, Something Sinister, Aug 2014

“Well, I think that we’re still hammering out the details of what the Sinister Six are going to be but… there are certain, fundamental, almost iconic characters within the Sinister Six that you can’t mess around with, Ock being one of them, Vulture being one of them, Goblin being one of them.”

• Marc Webb, IGN interview, May 5 2014

One member certain to be included was Green Goblin.

A scene excised from the final cut of TASM-2 revealed that the head of Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper), who died in the beginning of TASM-2, was preserved in a jar within the Special Projects division. According to Webb, the intent was to resurrect Norman and have him return as a new Green Goblin, who would be both the main villain of the third TASM movie, as well as the leader of the Sinister Six.

“Yeah, we were talking about the Sinister Six…. Chris Cooper was going to come back and play the Goblin. We were going to freeze his head, and then he was going to be brought back to life…. Well, that was going to be the main villain. He was going to come out and lead the Sinister Six. We had talked about Vulture a little bit too....”

• Source: Marc Webb, Den of Geek interview, Aug 17 2017

Meanwhile, Jeff Pinkner’s comments indicate that the S6 founded by Norman would only be the first iteration of the group, meaning a different incarnation would arise in the future. In line with this, Goddard has stated to IGN that the roster for his Sinister Six movie would not necessarily be the same one previously teased in TASM-2.

Nonetheless, there were definitely discussions between Webb and Goddard about character setups in the TASM films that would also play out in his film.

““I had to talk to Drew Goddard and make sure these things were going to be played out in the future universe,” he says. “There are some very specific plans, for example, for [Doc] Ock and for Vulture. Or the man in the hat at the end of the first movie. All those things emerge with varying degrees of emphasis.””

• Source: Marc Webb, Grantland, May 5 2014

This means the third TASM was going to introduce the more traditional version of the S6, which would try and fail to destroy Spider-Man. Building on this, Goddard would then depict another incarnation of the group – likely consisting of several returning members and new faces – being forced to work with Spider-Man.

Many of these long-term plans, however, would ultimately remain unrealized.

The Evolution of Sinister Six

Shifts After TASM-2 Came Out

Hollywood franchise filmmaking is highly reactive.

One installment’s critical and commercial performance directly informs the creative decisions and choices a studio makes on what comes after in order to address and improve on the perceived “issues” of the work that preceded it. And this can create considerable problems for telling longform stories across multiple films.

Sony’s plan was to use TASM-2 as launchpad or foundation for the expanded universe and have the subsequent three films - TASM-3, Sinister Six, and Venom - all connect as part of a larger cohesive serialized story arc. So, when TASM-2 grossed less than expected in theaters and scored a polarizing “51%” score on Rotten Tomatoes in May 2014, Sony began re-evaluating its plans and analyzing what went wrong.

“...I think we all said: “let’s build a universe correctly and… let’s let the story keep evolving , and let’s make sure each movie is a big emotional step for Peter and that the bad guys have a reason to find each other and build this group of the Sinister Six over the course of two or three movies.””

• Source: Alex Kurtzman, Something Sinister, Aug 2014

Based on the various leaked emails and industry reports, some of the Sony execs’ take-aways were that the TASM movies were too dark and brooding, that their storylines and villains felt redundant or rehashed, that the franchise needed to recapture the “fun” of Spider-Man and with that, its appeal to family audiences. A recurring thought was that Sony now could not really continue the SSU with another TASM movie, that something new and different was needed that could perhaps rehabilitate both the Spider-Man brand and character. The proposition of making Sinister Six the next SSU release thus began to look more and more attractive.

What may have been a deciding factor is an incident around July 12-13, when star Andrew Garfield decided to skip a Sony gala event in Rio de Janeiro, snubbing Sony Entertainment chairman and CEO Kaz Hirai. It’s been widely speculated, though never fully confirmed, that this event led to him being fired from Spider-Man.

Reportedly, Hirai had a preplanned speech, where he would’ve formally announced Garfield’s TASM-3 return in May 2016 (a month earlier than the previous date of June 10). Less than two weeks later, on July 23, 2014, Sony instead announced that Goddard’s ‘supervillain team-up,’ which previously had not had a release date, would now come out on November 11, 2016, while TASM-3 was being pushed back to May 4, 2018, with the fourth installment’s status now being unknown.

Sinister Six was thus anointed as the next SSU movie, meaning its script would now have to be informed by and so react to the reception of TASM-2.* Whether or not Garfield had been fired at this point, Sony had essentially cancelled TASM-3 or, at least, the version Webb planned to conclude his trilogy. Keep in mind, TASM-3 was intended to be closely linked in terms of story to both TASM-2 and Sinister Six. Its removal from the sequence meant that the planned storyline about a resurrected Norman Osborn creating the first incarnation of the S6 with the intent of killing Spider-Man would now be completely dropped.

*Goddard presumably wasn’t able to do much writing on the picture prior to the end of May 2014 due to his pre-existing commitments to the Netflix series Daredevil. Once his exit as showrunner was finalized, he was able to fully focus on the Sony project. So any changes from any plans or outlines made prior to the TASM-2 release could be easily incorporated.

In turn, rather than build off narrative links and character setups established in the previous chapter, Sinister Six would now have to introduce most, if not all, team members of the S6 and still tell a complete story. All this could explain why, despite the heavy emphasis the SSU brain trust initially placed on serialized storytelling (in fact, one of the main reasons Sony hired the brain trust was because its members had extensive experience in serial television), Goddard would claim in 2015 that he actually designed Sinister Six as a standalone, self-contained picture that could work under different schemas and was not reliant on any pre-existing setup or continuity.

““My vision of that movie was a summer annual… you didn’t have to worry about continuity. It was just, ‘We take Peter, put him on an adventure, we put him back in his life.’ I intentionally wanted a movie that didn’t have to worry about mythology and continuity. It was important to me to make a movie that could stand on its own. So the good news is, you know, [laughs], it slots in very well to any plan anybody ever wants. We just need to let a couple years go by, I think.””

• Source: Drew Goddard, IO9 interview, Sept 22 2015

One cannot discount the possibility that Sinister Six was always planned to be self-contained enough to work both within the larger TASM story arc and as its own movie. But all available evidence suggests that, following the negative reception of TASM-2, Sony wanted to decouple Goddard’s movie, which it was quite bullish on, from what came before though without completely abandoning the TASM continuity.

This would certainly align with the leaked information provided to Badassdigest about Sinister Six performing a soft reboot of Spider-Man with a new actor, which would have to happen if Garfield had indeed been fired in July 2014. In any case, by the time Goddard delivered a finished draft of the script (approximately in December 2014), the film had evolved from Chapter 3.5 of TASM into a largely independent work.*

*Tellingly, the September 2014 leaked roster featured none of the villains introduced previously in the TASM films. It did include Black Cat, however, meaning Sony was looking to tie Sinister Six into the Black Cat and Silver Sable film. Canceling the original TASM-3 basically gave Goddard more freedom to make the movie he wanted. The new TASM-3, were it to be made, would then likely have to build on and follow the events of Sinister Six.

The general impression seems to be that Sony (or at least Amy Pascal) was quite gung-ho on the script. The problem was that, by that point, Sony had suffered a massive hack that compelled it to radically change the direction of the Spider-Man franchise.

Shifts after the Sony Hacking

The November 2014 Sony Hack is considered a key reason why the company ended up cutting a deal with Disney in February 2015 to license Spider-Man to the MCU.

Discussions about such a deal, in fact, had begun sometime in the latter half of 2014 prior to the hacking. Without going into a lot of details, per the leaked emails, if a deal were made, Spider-Man would make a debut appearance in the upcoming MCU film Captain America: Civil War, at the time only known as Captain America 3.

Sony was uncertain, as to what effect or relation it would have on Sinister Six. Could Spidey’s appearance set up Sinister Six? Or would it not fit with it in terms of continu-ity and so preclude Sony from being able to make the film? Should they then maybe contractually require another solo Spider-Man movie to be made for a 2017 release to make up for the loss of a 2016 release? Will they be able to continue to build on Sinister Six to expand their universe, as previously planned? A lot of things were still undetermined, as Goddard would be working on his script up until December.

The talks fell apart in late October-early November, only to resume after the public got wind of the fact that the possibility existed due to the leaks that followed the hacking. Fan interest in seeing Spidey in the MCU helped convince Sony to indeed make the deal happen, which led to Spider-Man/Peter Parker appearing in Civil War.

Only now, he would be played by Tom Holland. And rather than set up Sinister Six, his appearance signified the beginning of a new era of the SSU.

While development of the mainline TASM films was now fully cancelled, that of the ancillary ones transitioned over into the Holland era. By this point, there were three such carryover projects: Sinister Six, Venom, and Black Cat and Silver Sable.

Each would now have to be re-evaluated and revised to no longer bear any connection to the TASM world and continuity. Only Venom (2018, dir. Ruben Fleischer) would eventually reach the big screen. Black Cat and Silver Sable remained in active development until around 2018, when it was scrapped in favor of two standalone solo films, neither of which ended up getting made.

“Sony will no longer release its Spider-Man villain movie ‘The Sinister Six’ in November of 2016 as previously planned, said a person involved in its production. The studio will rethink its approach to the film, which remains in development, in light of the new agreement with Marvel.”

• Source: Ben Fritz, Wall Street Journal, Feb 10 2015

Meanwhile, Sinister Six essentially transformed into a continuously deferred long-term milestone project, one that Sony has unfortunately to this day still not been able to realize. To explain what I mean, I need to discuss how Sony’s general approach to the cinematic universe had changed from the early days of the Garfield era, which structurally resembled that of the early Warner/DCEU model.

The initial plan called for a big sequel movie (Batman v. Superman for Warner, TASM-2 for Sony) to act as the fulcrum of the larger cinematic universe and lead into multiple spinoff or sequel projects that were closely tied to it in terms of narrative continuity.

Sony had already begun scaling back on seriality and continuity in the aftermath of TASM-2’s reception. In the Holland era, it would lean further into this direction, essentially shifting to the Disney/MCU model, which entailed making several self-contained solo superhero films that would ideally launch their own respective franchises, while simultaneously setting the stage for a mega-crossover franchise.

“Right now, it’s sort of like Iron Man when you did the first Iron Man. Right now, these first movies are establishing these characters.”

• Source: Amy Pascal on the ancillary films after the release of Spiderman: Homecoming, Collider, July 18, 2017

Sony’s “pilot episode” for the ancillary SSU titles and, in that sense, its equivalent of the MCU’s Iron Man (2008), was the aforementioned Venom, a horror comedy focused on a monstrous antihero with a penchant for eating bad guys’ brains. Despite getting bad reviews, Venom proved to be a huge commercial success, grossing over $800 million worldwide. This led Sony to greenlight more solo superhero origin story films, such as Morbius (2022), Madame Web (2023), and Kraven the Hunter (2024).

Though not bereft of world-building elements, each had its own self-enclosed narrative and tone. Key to this was Sony’s decision to establish the main characters as having no history with or ties to Spider-Man, despite them originating in subordinate roles to the webslinger in the comics. Including examples from unmade projects, these roles can be broken down into four categories:

1. supporting heroes (Madame Web, Silk, Jackpot)

2. antiheroes (Black Cat, Silver Sable, El Muerto)

3. villains that later became antiheroes (Venom, Morbius)

4. true villains (Kraven)

Such a deviation from the source material has proven controversial among comic book purists, especially when it comes to the adaptation of the webslinger’s rogues gallery. Sony’s apparent policy in the Holland era is to never actually have genuine villains as protagonists. When it comes to Venom and Morbius, for instance, the studio bypassed the characters’ time as bonafide Spider-Man bad guys and presented them as antiheroes in the adaptations right off the bat.

Meanwhile, Kraven - the sole (at the moment) representative of category d - was reimagined as an antihero who hunts criminals and murderers, while protecting nature and wildlife. With the exception of Madame Web then, all the leads of the ancillary live-action SSU movies have been morally ambiguous protagonists, who don’t mind brutally murdering bad guys yet adhere to their own moral codes and remain (mostly) committed to safeguarding the lives of the innocent.

The ultimate, though never openly acknowledged, goal of establishing all these superheroes was to eventually bring them together in a mega-crossover movie that would constitute Sony’s response to Avengers. And this movie, in case you haven’t guessed it yet, was meant to be Sinister Six.

““All of these villains that we now have in our universe happen to be characters that are in the Sinister Six. There may be something that happens with that.””

• Source: Amy Pascal, from the end of Worldwide Web-Slinger featurette for Spider-Man: Far From Home, Oct 7 2019

Despite Goddard’s claims, the film as envisioned back in December 2014 could not really work within the context of the SSU after the MCU deal. Rather than team up Spider-Man with his sworn enemies, the film would bring him together with a bunch of other Sony heroes and anti-heroes, whom he wasn’t met.*

*To be clear, Sony wanted to potentially include villains introduced by the mainline Holland Spider-Man films in the new S6 roster. This is why a reformed Vulture (Michael Keaton) appeared in the credit scene of Morbius, where he stated that he wants to “do some good.” Despite what others may claim, he has never said that he wants to fight Spider-Man.

And where the former incarnation was written as a spinoff/reboot of the TASM films, the latter is intended to be a franchise movie that works specifically within the continuity established within the SSU following the MCU deal.

What I would argue has remained consistent across the two eras though is the central concept of Sinister Six, which is that of Spider-Man teaming up with the S6 to stop a larger, possibly world-ending threat.* In the same vein, the new incarnation of the movie was also never going to be about the S6 teaming up to fight Spider-Man. (That premise, when you think about it, wouldn’t make any logical sense, given that most of the SSU leads are neither villains, nor have any history with Spider-Man at all.)

* Imagine, for instance, Spider-Man teaming up with Venom, Morbius, Vulture, Kraven, and Madame Web to battle an invasion of symbiotes led by their evil god Knull. Were the movie to happen now, it could potentially introduce yet another incarnation of Spider-Man, one that is specific to the SSU, due to Holland’s remaining exclusive to the MCU.

Conclusion

That Sony has never stopped wanting to make Sinister Six is obvious, given the repeated teases throughout interviews over the years and the setups that have appeared in the SSU movies themselves. So, why has it still not happened?

For one thing, outside of Venom, the SSU pictures have, sadly, not been successful, in part due to the efforts of antifans and “critics” that reject them on general principle. For another, Sony’s long-term plans for the Holland era experienced some rather significant changes and revisions due to unforeseen external factors.*

* I intend to write a whole other article to explain the shifts that happened to the SSU during the Holland era. For the moment, I will say that, had things gone according to plan, Holland’s Spider-Man would have crossed paths with Tom Hardy’s Venom years ago.

As someone that actually likes the heroes the SSU has established so far and believes most of the ancillary Spider-Man movies to be underrated, I sincerely hope that one day Sony will indeed make a legitimately good Sinister Six movie that delivers on the various setups and teases of the preceding installments. At this point, it doesn’t seem likely, but then again, forgotten superheroes have a tendency to unexpectedly return.

And the SSU is still alive, despite many having proclaimed it dead.

I recently tried to do the Substack Chat thing and it didn’t quite work out, despite my best efforts. Honestly, I’ve never really liked Chat that much (except the dms) and think Substack made a mistake abolishing the good old-fashioned discussion thread post.

So, now I want to try to resurrect it. Here is hopefully the first of several posts meant to mostly just generate some discussion via the use of the Comments.

I went to see Weapons last night. I really liked it though I don’t think the movie quite lives up to the hype. It really reminded me of Longlegs, a movie that was marketed as a really dark super-serious horror movie that turned out to be more of a satire/black comedy and somewhat less than the knockout early buzz had proclaimed it to be.

What really struck me was how much difficulty I had watching the scenes of violence and gore. Weapons has relatively little of it compared to other horror movies.* But my capacity to stomach it and not get squeamish is clearly not what it used to be.

*Though admittedly some scenes go really over-the-top, to the point where I wondered if it had to be cut back due to an NC-17 rating.

I’ve been noticing it more and more over the last few years. I simply can’t watch uber-violent sequences like those in Only God Forgives (2013) or super gory splatter ones like in Evil Dead (1981) without at some point averting my eyes anymore.

Stuff that never bothered me 20 years ago now makes me really uncomfortable.

It’s as though I used be desensitized to that stuff. And now I’m not.

Which makes me wonder - do people normally get more sensitive to screen violence over time? Anybody else here find that violent films - especially horror films - you used to watch are no longer tolerable? If so, why do you think this is happening? Could all the real-life violence shown on-screen be impacting our ability to watch fiction? Do we generally get more sensitive to such imagery as we age? 

What do you think?

Leave a comment

I didn’t think it was a bad film, exactly, but I definitely found that it was overrated. In my mind, it is a very mid film, one that has good qualities but also a LOT of flaws.

Table of Contents

1. The Pros

2. Misogyny and Xenophobia

3. ‘Man of Steel’ Reaction

4. Moral Incoherence

The Pros

First, I’ll talk about what I liked.

The casting is good. Korenswet and Brosnahan don’t actually have that much to work with, but they make for a likeable central couple as Clark and Lois respectively. Really though, the MVPs of this film are actually Edi Gathergi’s Mr. Terrific and Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, both of whom are scene stealers and arguably have the most confident narrative material at their hands. Lex especially is the kind of Luthor you want to see more of, as opposed to Kevin Spacey or Jesse Eisenberg.

I also admire the film’s visual variety. There is a lot of COLOR here, a lot of places and sequences that just pop off the screen, especially when you get inside the pocket dimension that Lex created to imprison anyone that stands against him. 

I think the action here is largely nice if not exactly outstanding, the only exception being the sequence where Mr. Terrific really cuts loose with his spheres. 

And I admire the overall ambition of the movie, which plunges the viewer into the middle of a different universe teaming with superheroes and all sorts of comic book weirdness. There is no origin story, either for Superman or the new DCU. 

But for all that, there’s a lot that just didn’t work for me.

Misogyny and Xenophobia

For one thing, I think this movie is overstuffed. It seldom has any breathing room, and while it has plenty of emotional beats that land, it really seems to prioritize just moving from one point to the next, while trying to distract the viewer from the fact that it doesn’t really examine almost any of the ideas it tackles in any substantial way. 

For another, I find Superman to be a weirdly misogynistic film.

This isn’t to say the film doesn’t have any well-drawn or likable female characters (eg. Lois Lane) but to highlight that it presents Eve Tessmacher as little more than a clueless bimbo, reduces Kat Grant to busty, walking eye-candy and makes Jimmy Olsen into an asshole that treats women like garbage (think Starlord without the redeeming qualities) without ever calling him out on his behavior.

More than that, I really, really don’t like how the movie depicts Superman’s parents. A key issue is that it never once bothers to really give audiences an actual understanding of what Krypton is, only suggesting that its inhabitants apparently view humans as an inferior species to rule and consider human women as potential sex slaves. 

In theory, there is nothing wrong with this take on Superman’s parents. The problem is that their depiction - and thus the characterization of Kryptonians in general - is essentially rooted in xenophobic beliefs about Middle Eastern and Asian cultures.*

*Despite all the jokes, it is evident that the movie wants us to take the ‘secret harem’ thing at least on some level as a serious threat to the sanctity of human (that is, Western) society.

This, in turn, plays into the portrayal of the Kents as saintly, archetypal farmers that represent everything good and pure about the US. I’m quite certain for many viewers, this stuff would fly over their heads. But for an immigrant like myself, it stands out, especially as the film, for all its silliness and whimsy, does attempt to tackle topical issues like the immigrant experience.

Yet, in effect, what it ends up saying is that Superman is good in large part because he chooses to reject the backwards foreign upbringing of his biological parents and instead embraces the white, traditionalist American mentality of his adoptive ones. 

To be a good immigrant then, you have to assimilate and give up that which is ‘bad.’

‘Man of Steel’ Reaction

By far the most interesting thing about Gunn’s Superman to me is how it feels like a conscious reaction to Zack Snyder’s take on Superman in Man of Steel (MOS, 2013), which itself was a reaction to Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (2006).

You can see this in the bright, poppy, colorful look of the picture, the exaggerated and heightened “reality” of its setting or the comedic tone. But for me, this is most clearly visible in how the movie repeatedly underlines just how much this Superman aims to protect all forms of life, to the point where Gunn even includes a moment where Superman saves a freaking squirrel from being crushed by a Kaiju. 

This is the moment where the movie basically screams at the audience: “See how much he cares?! This Superman cares about collateral damage! This Superman doesn’t just save people, he even saves cute little rodents!”

I doubt anybody familiar with the controversies that erupted after MOS came out would not see this as a direct response to how that movie handled the depiction of collateral damage and the false perceptions that Snyder’s Superman “doesn’t save anybody” or “kills more people than he saves.” Both claims are honestly bullshit (and were, in fact, debunked years ago) yet continue to be reiterated by people that rejected Snyder’s more relatively grounded approach to the character on general principle.*

*Despite all the buildings leveled in the climax, MOS notably never confirmed that those buildings were filled with people. As nobody died on-screen, the idea was obviously nobody died at all from the destruction. But social media disagreed, and so Snyder and co. chose to lean into the ‘collateral damage’ perception in the sequel. Since then, Superman’s cinematic battles have been confined to areas that have been evacuated or are confirmed to be uninhabited. The new Superman continues the trend.

Regardless, the new movie’s Superman is positioned culturally by the filmmakers as the comparatively “better” one by virtue of the fact that he wants to save everyone and never actually kills anybody. (This is why I think a lot of people overpraise the movie - it largely corresponds to their idealized model image of Superman, of what they believe the character should be or always has been.)

There are, however, multiple problems with this attempted (meta-)dialogue with MOS.

Moral Incoherence

To begin with, Superman’s moral position is not coherently depicted.

Even as the movie goes out of its way to establish that Superman saves doesn’t kill, it also establishes that he has no compunctions about threatening to murder a foreign head of state unless he complies with his demands. We don’t know for a fact if Superman would’ve made good on his threats and have lots of reasons to believe he wouldn’t, but doesn’t it seem out of character that this squirrel-saving hero also resorts to dictatorial, might-makes-right strong-arming tactics to get his way? 

Or what about Superman’s attitude towards the film’s two main soldier villains, the Engineer and Ultraman? During the climactic action sequences, he appeals to the former, trying to convince her that she doesn’t have to follow Lex’s orders. But then he never tries to make any appeal to the latter. Even after discovering that his final foe is a mentally incapacitated clone of himself with not much in the way of free will, Superman never once tries to reason with nor show any compassion to Ultraman.

The way the movie dispatches the villain ultimately absolves Superman of direct culpability - Clark manages to get Ultraman hit by a building that flings him into a black hole - but provides no moment for him to reckon with this action, which leads to the presumed death of Ultraman, on an emotional level.

These problems also feed into the second major issue, which is that the movie itself seems to be at odds with the character’s alleged moral standing. 

Consider the role of the Justice Gang. 

Their presence early on expands our understanding of the world of the film, while also contrasting Superman’s ‘save everyone’ mentality with that of a more practical, down-to-Earth, and cynical group of heroes. That fight with the Kaiju, where the squirrel scene takes place, is very telling in that regard: where Superman wants to find a non-lethal way to stop the Kaiju, Green Lantern and company just want to kill it and be done. Moreover, while Superman just wants to ‘save lives,’ regardless of the geopolitical situation, the Justice Gang members are well aware of how bad it would look if they intervened in the Jarhanpur/Boravia conflict.

The ‘arc’ of the Justice Gang is ultimately to come around to Superman’s side when it comes to humanitarian interventionism. At the end of the movie, he calls upon them for help and they answer by going up against the Boravian army. And in the course of this, Hawkgirl directly attacks the Boravian government, taking its leader Ghurkos out into the sky. Ghurkos tells Hawkgirl something to the extent of: “I know you’re like Superman, so you won’t kill me.” And Hawkgirl replies that she’s not like Superman before proving her point by dropping Ghurkos to his death.

On the one hand, this underlines the distinction between Superman and the Justice Gang. Despite coming around to his way of thinking, Hawkgirl remains a more morally gray and cynical hero willing to go to lengths Superman wouldn’t. On the other hand, Hawkgirl’s actions conveniently dispatch the film’s villain without requiring Superman to get his hands dirty. 

Superman is responsible for this death insofar as he spurred the Justice Gang to intervene. But the situation is contrived in such a way that he is again personally absolved of direct culpability and so never has to wrestle with the morality of his choices or the consequences of his actions.

All this effectively throws any claim the film has towards possessing a coherent moral framework out the window and so undermines the metatextual claim the film makes about the superiority of this take on Superman over that of Zack Snyder’s.

Sure, unlike his predecessor, Gunn’s Superman doesn’t directly kill anyone. Yet his actions do ultimately bring about death and promote a fascist-like authoritarianism.

I’m certain some people would defend the film against such criticisms by claiming that the inevitable sequel will interrogate the contradictions we see here or point to Flagg’s scene towards the end as evidence that the movie is deliberately avoiding a clear ideological or moral stance. 

But I believe it’s crucial to analyze what the film is trying to say in and of itself. And from this perspective, the Flagg scene is another sign of incoherence. If there is a takeaway from all this, it’s that killing villains to protect the innocent is justified, so long as it’s not the pure and idealized good guys that carry out the killing.

But what about you? 

Do you agree with my take on the new Superman? Vehemently disagree? Am I wrong to read it as highly conservative, misogynistic and at times xenophobic?

Please let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Similar or Related Posts

Superman represents an example of what I like to call a “faux-lo” movie, which is a crossover film that is billed as a solo superhero movie for marketing purposes. I discuss Warner’s strategy of such crossover-first, spinoff-second movies here:

This mystery title was also listed on Remedy’s updated ‘game projects’ page alongside the upcoming titles FBC: Firebreak, Control 2 and Max Payne 1&2 Remake. Though little information has been officially released about the Fourth Game, I argue that this project is actually an Alan Wake spinoff called Doors, and that Remedy had first hinted at plans for it back in 2019 when it released Control.

A Short video that summarizes my ideas. Source images courtesy of Remedy Entertainment.

Table of Contents

1. Quantum Break and IP Ownership

2. Control and the RCU

   1. The Oceanview Motel Doors and Symbols

3. Deciphering Doors

   1. How ‘Alan Wake II’ Set Up a ‘Doors’ Spinoff

   2. Doors to the Multiverse

4. Conclusion

Quantum Break and IP Ownership

To understand the origin of Doors, we need to talk about Quantum Break (QB).

Though it has its fans, it’s often looked down upon as a lesser Remedy game and many have called it a ‘failed experiment’ due to its attempt to intersperse episodes of a live-action television series with more traditional sections of action-adventure gameplay.

Far less discussed though is how the reception of QB radically changed Remedy’s overall approach to the ownership and exploitation of intellectual property (IP) as well as its relationship with the business side of making games.

Typically, the story goes that Remedy wanted to develop Alan Wake 2 (AW2) shortly after the 2010 release of the original, but the first game’s publisher Microsoft wasn’t interested, inspiring the developer to instead create an original IP that would be fully owned by Microsoft, leading to what would become QB. The new project reportedly appealed to Microsoft as it was intended to incorporate live-action TV episodes, which fit perfectly with the company’s desire for its upcoming XBOX One console to be an ‘all-in-one’ entertainment system that included original TV programming.

However, per other accounts of the project’s origin Microsoft was actually interested in AW2, or at least in the version Remedy pitched that would’ve included the live action television element. Apparently though, they would only agree to fund this iteration of the sequel in exchange for Remedy ceding ownership of the Wake IP.

From this perspective, Remedy developed the new QB IP for Microsoft as they wanted to get another project off the ground but without giving up ownership of Wake.

Whether or not QB was developed specifically so that Remedy could retain rights to and control over Wake though, it was essentially made in lieu of AW2 and in that sense can be seen as a byproduct of Remedy’s inability at the time to further develop and exploit the IP they owned.

None of this is to say that Remedy approached QB half-heartedly. Gambling on the chance that the first QB would prove successful enough for Microsoft to greenlight more installments, Remedy spent 5 years developing technology, iterating concepts and building an immersive world that could sustain multiple stories. The production was complicated and the game’s release was delayed from 2014 to 2016.

So, you can imagine how disappointed the Remedy crewmembers must've been when QB came out to a mixed reception, underperformed commercially and was then basically shelved by Microsoft, which by that point had largely lost interest in television/game integration and pivoted away from its initial vision for the XBOX One.

For the second time in a row, Remedy found itself unable to further build on a video-game title and IP they had spent years establishing. And in this case, as Microsoft owned all of QB, Remedy wouldn’t be able to develop a sequel with another publisher even if it wanted to. Taking stock of their experiences with AW and QB, Remedy realized that things had to change and decided on 5 new key strategies that would drive their approach to making games for the next several years.

1. Retain and leverage brand/IP

2. Adopt a multi-project model (producing multiple games at the same time)

3. Switch to multi-platform releases

4. Make and release each game faster

5. Create interlinked (shared universe) franchises using its own brands

To achieve their goals, Remedy needed to expand as a company, gain more financial independence and become less reliant on publishers. Thus, the company made an initial public offering in May 2017, raising approximately 12.3 Million Euro by selling shares on the Finnish stock market, and with that took back control. Literally.

Control and the RCU

Within just three years of QB’s release, Remedy made a surreal action-adventure game set inside a fictional government agency called the FBC, which is beset by an invasive extra-dimensional alien species. Fittingly, the game was called Control.

Published by 505 Games at the end of August 2019, Control was now the second major IP that Remedy wholly owned and the first AAA Remedy title in years to reach the Playstation. Though not a hit off the bat, its long tail sales across multiple platforms gradually made it into the developer’s most popular work since Max Payne. 

But though designed as a complete game in and of itself, Control also presented an opportunity to capitalize on the company’s other IP and, in the process lay the foundation for the Remedy Connected Universe (RCU). The titular character of the Alan Wake series made a cameo in the main game before getting a slightly larger focus in the 2020 DLC expansion AWE, which set up the future release of AW2 in 2023.

Now, it’s important to note here that the RCU’s existence was made possible specifically by the company’s ownership of multiple brands/IPs. In hindsight then, had Remedy traded ownership of the Wake franchise to Microsoft in exchange for making AW2, the crossover with Control would not have been legally possible.

Remedy gradually unveiled plans to expand the RCU by both creating more games within its existing franchises and launching new, original IPs. But while the games encompassing the shared universe would be officially announced and revealed over the course of several years, the developer had actually included an encoded roadmap to future RCU projects in Control. The player can find the roadmap by visiting a mysterious, apparently inter-dimensional location called The Oceanview Motel.

The Oceanview Motel Doors and Symbols

“For over 10 years, we’ve had a crazy dream. The idea that the tales told in some of our games would be connected to each other, a connected world of stories and events with shared characters and lore. Each game is a stand-alone experience, but each game is also a doorway into a larger universe with exciting opportunities for crossover events.

• Source: Sam Lake, AWE: The First Remedy Connected Universe Crossover Event”

Player character Jesse Faden is first transported there after pulling a light cord three times. She finds herself in a hallway with six different doors covered in mysterious symbols. Initially, the only door out of the six that can be opened is the one with the Inverted Black Pyramid. Doors with this symbol recur throughout the Oldest House - the central location of the FBC and thus the game itself - and when Jesse leaves the Motel, she does so specifically through the Black Pyramid Door.

The others remain closed and their significance is left unexplained in the main game. Over the next 5 years or so, enough evidence emerged to decipher the meaning of the symbols. As I will argue, every single symbol-adorned door corresponds to a specific videogame title in the RCU. In effect then, Remedy laid out an ambitious plan to release at least six interconnected titles, of which Control was but the first.

To summarize my findings and better illustrate what I’m talking about, I’ve created the following chart, which matches each symbol with its corresponding RCU game.

Early on, the biggest clue that the symbols represented specific RCU games was the Spiral Door. In-game, Jesse can locate a manuscript page that is said to have been written by Alan Wake and discovered in the Oceanview Motel corridor, having been pushed into it from “under the door with the symbol of a Spiral.”

Finding the page also leads to a vision of Wake describing his experience over 10 years of trying to write his way out of the Dark Place, where he was trapped at the end of AW1, marking the first explicit crossover of the character into Control. 

About a year or so later, a player of the PC version of Control discovered that the sym-bols actually have names within the game files: ‘alanwake,’ ‘control_2,’ ‘vanguard,’  ‘pyramid_black,’ ‘pyramid_white,’ and ‘doors.’

Not counting Control, three of these file names directly corresponded to projects Remedy would develop in 2020-2024. And all of them were wholly-owned by Remedy, meaning that they could have cross-overs and so constitute parts of the RCU. This evinces that every symbol designated a specific RCU videogame, and with the exception of the Black Pyramid, each foreshadowed an unreleased future project. 

Unsurprisingly, the Spiral Symbol Filename “alanwake” corresponded to AW2, which began early stages of development in late 2017 and came out in 2023. Accordingly, in AW2, Spiral Doors appear several times, allowing Wake to enter his Writing Room. 

The Filename “vanguard” corresponded to Project Vanguard, a multi-player game that had been in development since at least 2018 but was cancelled in May 2024.

While Remedy (to my knowledge) never directly stated that the game was meant to be part of the RCU, this fact can be deduced from what CEO Tero Virtala stated in the Remedy 2021 Annual Report about Codename Vanguard being the beginning of a ‘third major franchise’ owned by the developer. This means it was planned to be a major new IP that could cross over with those of Wake and Control:

“For Vanguard, we signed a global development, license and distribution agreement signed with Tencent. This gives us a major partner and support to create an excellent game and grow a third strong franchise. Overall, we advanced our long-term growth plans significantly during 2021. We now have three Remedy-owned franchises that are expanding into new games with world-class Partners.” (6)

This was given further credence by the Report’s “Strategy” page, which establishes that the company aimed to achieve to own no less than three successful game brands by 2025 and states that each Remedy “brand and game stands on its own, while still connecting to a wider, underlying Remedy universe.” (8)

Finally, the Filename “control2” obviously suggested a full-on sequel to Control, which would enter the early concept stages of development in 2021. The symbol association was explicitly confirmed onscreen in the 2024 Alan Wake 2 DLC Expansion Chapter “The Lake House.” Here, FBC Agent Kira Estevez is transported to the Oceanview Motel and goes through an opened door with the Control 2 Symbol, leading to a teaser cinematic of the events that will take place in the Control 2 game.

The specific titling of the file also indicated that multiple doors and symbols could refer to projects in the same franchise. Given this and that the Black Pyramid corresponded to the first Control, it logically followed that the White Pyramid symbol designated a Control-related title, which fits to a tee Remedy’s wholly-owned multi-player spinoff FBC: Firebreak, which is slated to come out later this month.

As of this time of writing then, we know the meanings of five out of six symbols, each of which designates a specific RCU game. Two of them have been released, two will come out soon and one has been canceled. Therefore, the remaining symbol must also designate another future RCU title. And going by its filename, we can assume that this game is either named or codenamed Doors.*

*For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to it as such from this point forward.

Deciphering “Doors”

Naturally, one might be inclined to ask: “What evidence is there that Doors is, in fact, the Unannounced Fourth Game recently teased by Remedy?”

First, let’s consider what we know so far about the mysterious new project.

The updated ‘Game Projects’ page lists the 4th Project as a Remedy title, rather than a work associated with another publisher like Max Payne. This means the game represents a brand wholly owned by Remedy, guaranteeing that it’s set in the RCU.

Additional info can be gleaned from the 2024 Annual Report, according to which Remedy at the beginning of 2025 was working on four games at the same time and aimed to release on average one new game annually for the 2025-2030 period.

“As per our strategy 2025-2030, we will launch on average one new game per year and currently focus on four game projects simultaneously.” (5)

The report doesn’t mention the Unannounced Fourth Game directly, but it does list the three upcoming announced titles: FBC, Max Payne 1&2 Remake and Control 2. If the games are to be released annually, with FBC slated for 2025, then the earliest the Fourth Game could be released is 2028.* This is in line with Tero Virtala’s claim at the April Business Review that the new game is only in its ‘early phases.’

* I personally think a more realistic date is 2029, given how long game development for such a title can take. It’s possible DLCs could also count as part of the annual release strategy. If so, even if the 4th Game comes out after 2028, it will have still fallen within Remedy’s plans.

Finally, Remedy’s revised 2025-2030 business strategy provides some additional hints:

“Our own Franchises, Control and Alan Wake both have their own worlds and expansion opportunities but are connected by a Remedy Connected Universe (RCU). This provides fans with an additional layer, and for us an additional creative and commercial opportunity. By 2030 we will grow Control and Alan Wake from great games into world-class franchises with more regular sequels.”

This tells us two things.

First, Remedy currently has no plans to expand into a third IP for the next 5 years, indicating that it has narrowed the RCU’s scope and is now focused on building it out via the creation of new installments in its established franchises.* Second, it must release a new game in the Alan Wake series by 2030 so as to fulfill its new strategic objective of transforming it into a ‘world-class franchise with more regular sequels.’

*This in line with the fact that the Remedy openly announced that the May 2024 cancellation of Codename Vanguard (at that point technically known as ‘Codename Kestrel’) was intended to help the developer focus on its existing franchises.

This aligns quite well with what we know about the 4th Project’s release window, meaning it is pretty much confirmed to be a game from the Alan Wake franchise.

How ‘Alan Wake II’ Set Up a ‘Doors’ Spinoff

“I was in a dark place, and there was a dark man there. His name was Mr. Door, and he told me that there are many worlds - side-by-side, on top of each other, some inside of others. In one world, there was a writer who wrote a story about a cop. In another world, the cop was real. Door said he himself was in all of them at the same time, endlessly shifting between them.”

• Dylan Faden describes a dream he had in Control (2019)

So far then, everything we know about the Unannounced Fourth Game fits with what we know about Doors. But the biggest evidence that the two are one and the same can be found in the narrative setups of Remedy’s most recent release: AW2.

Though the belated sequel tells a standalone story that continues and resolves the plotlines of its predecessor, it also introduces new characters, narrative enigmas and setups that are clearly meant to be expanded on or tied up in another title.

Without a doubt, the biggest mysteries following the end of the game surround the character of Warlin Door, aka Mr. Door. Initially, Door is presented as a late-night talk show host who interviews Alan Wake in the Dark Place’s manifestation of New York City, implying that he is similarly trapped there and forced to play a role.

But as the game progresses, it becomes evident that Door is actually a God-like being that can enter and leave the Dark Place of his own free will whenever he chooses and is participating in Alan’s story so as to advance some larger personal agenda. The audience, however, never learns what that agenda is. And at the end, numerous questions remain unanswered about Door’s motives, goals, and powers.

These include:

• How and why does Door pluck Sheriff Tim Breaker out of the real world and teleport him to Dark NYC? Did he do this so Tim could deliver a crucial piece of information to Saga Anderson at the end of the game so as to help her escape?

• Did Door aid Saga because it furthers his master plan or because he is, in fact, her long-lost father, as the game repeatedly implies?

• What does he want with Breaker and the Anderson brothers Tor and Odin, all of whom seem to join him in and disappear from the Dark Place?

• And what does he mean when he tells Alan in their final scene that the next time they meet, Alan should ‘play his part’ or stay out of his way?

Their presence is clearly intended to set up another installment of the Wake franchise that will include a larger role for Warlin Door as well as the characters linked to his subplot - Saga Anderson, Tim Breaker, and the Anderson Brothers - in AW2. It can be surmised the new game will revolve around interdimensional travel and parallel universes, for both concepts are directly tied to and so define Warlin Door himself.

“A door that stands between two rooms is in both. A door that can lead anywhere is everywhere. That door is the center. He governs the currents of reality.”

• Mr. Door describes himself in a vision to Saga Anderson in Alan Wake II (2023)

Doors to the Multiverse

I mean, the guy’s last name is Door, for crying out loud!

If we’re being honest, it’s ridiculous and implausible. But it fits the literary concept of a speaking surname, underlining the fact that this character somehow has the ability to travel anywhere and essentially constitutes a living door that stands between all worlds in a larger, potentially infinite, multiverse. His power is implied to have an intrinsic link to The Dark Place, which Warlin describes in one of Saga Anderson’s visions as a “mirror reflecting all possible realities.” Furthermore, Door cryptically claims that his power is not limited to him but apparently runs in his family, adding:

“The family of Doors have the power to shift between these realities. Here, and elsewhere.”

Does this mean that all of his blood relatives are naturally capable of interdimensional shifting via the Dark Place? Or does it mean that this power is limited to his own descendants specifically? And what could this signify for extended family members, such as in-laws? None of this is made clear. But if what Door says is true, then Saga Anderson should also possess Door’s ability, as should her daughter Logan.*

* Even if AW2 doesn’t outright confirm it, all the details it presents point to Saga being Warlin’s daughter and thus a member of the family of Doors.

It is very likely then that Saga will return as a main character in Doors and revisit the Dark Place, with players becoming able to shift between various alternate universes. Perhaps the plot will focus on Saga traveling across the multiverse to find her long-lost father Warlin and reunite with her grandfather Tor and grand-uncle Odin, who promised in their last appearance that they’d see her again. Or maybe it will follow Sheriff Tim Breaker, as he pursues Door across many worlds in an effort to find answers and make his way back home. Maybe it will be a bit of both.

Whatever the case is, I’m certain that Saga, Tim, and Mr. Door will be crucial to the events of the spinoff, while Alan Wake will likely take on more of a supporting role. The title, after all, is Doors. Even if it’s only a codename, that signifies the focus of the new game won’t be on Alan Wake, and thus it won’t be a direct sequel to AW2.*

*The title thus could be simultaneously referring to both the concept of opening doors to other universes and to the central role of the family of Doors. This is given credence by the associated Oceanview Motel symbol, which shows rectangles within rectangles, visually suggesting an infinite number of doors within doors and thus universes within universes.

And if the game’s story indeed revolves around exploring the multiverse, then in terms of gameplay, Doors should accordingly use dimensional shifting as a central concept and mechanic, perhaps in a manner analogous to QB’s use of time manipulation.*

* Imagine controlling a character that gains abilities like warping space, jumping through portals to teleport behind enemies, or reflecting enemy attacks via spatial distortion fields.

This direction only seems natural to me, given that with AW2 Remedy has begun actively remaking QB - or at least select elements of it - within the Wake franchise and thus inside the legal contours of the RCU.2 Doors then could very well be a means for Remedy to create an alternate universe version of the QB sequel that was never made, to reuse its concepts, plot points, plans and ideas in a new form, and so symbolically regain ownership of and control over the QB IP in the process.

“Parallel Universes? Multiverse?... We are connected because of something that happened to us somewhere else. Shockwaves echo across worlds?”

• Sheriff Tim Breaker’s whiteboard at the end of AW2 (2023).

Conclusion

Let’s sum things up. Remedy hints at a future RCU game called Doors via Control in 2019. Then, four years later, Alan Wake 2 ends with some pretty big unresolved mysteries surrounding Warlin Door and introduces the idea that there is a whole family of Doors, interdimensional shifters that can access the multiverse via the Dark Place. And less than two years later, Remedy announces plans to expand the Wake franchise by 2030 and to release a new fourth game that is part of the RCU.

Altogether, these pieces of evidence point to the conclusion that Doors and the new fourth game must be one and the same. Should it be released, it will represent the last of six RCU titles that had been planned at the time Control was published in 2019. Rather than a direct sequel to AW2 though, Doors is (very likely) going to be a multi-verse spinoff focusing on secondary characters like Warlin Door and Saga Anderson, with dimensional shifting being crucial to the gameplay and narrative.

At the moment the game is in the early stages of development and is planned to come out approximately in 2028-2029. Of course, there’s always a chance that it won’t make that date. After all, videogame production is notoriously fickle. The project could very well fall apart during development, as happened with Vanguard, or become extensively delayed due to production difficulties. Or it could undergo radical changes and become a distinct yet still related RCU project in the course of development.

Whatever happens, I sincerely hope Doors makes it to the finish line as I love Reme-dy’s games and want their long-term vision for a connected universe to succeed. We need more works like Control and Alan Wake 2, more big budget AAA titles that seek to mix different media, experiment with storytelling and challenge our expectations.

But what about you?

Do you think the new project will indeed be Doors? Or is Remedy cooking up something else, eg. Alan Wake 3: Master of Many Worlds? Do you like the prospect of exploring the multiverse in a future title? Is the developer indeed attempting to symbolically reclaim Quantum Break? Any other thoughts on Remedy or their games? Please,

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Table of Contents

1. Narrative and the ‘In-Trouble’ Trilogy

2. Frame of Television

3. The Eyes of the Lost Girl

4. Flow and Consciousness

5. The Real Woman in Trouble

Narrative and the ‘In-Trouble’ Trilogy

David Lynch has an interesting relationship with narrative.

Though his debut feature Eraserhead was an experimental, absurdist picture that had little interest in traditional storytelling, his work over the next 20 years was far more bound to convention, offering what were for the most part legible and literal, if highly weird and surreal, stories. It was not until Lost Highway (1997) that the director returned to making movies, where the story was entirely open to interpretation, and literal meaning was largely eschewed in favor of symbolism and subjective depiction.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lost Highway constitutes a prime example of what Warren Buckland defines as the ‘puzzle film,’ a designation that has also been applied to both Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006), which I personally like to refer to alongside Highway as installments of Lynch’s “in-trouble trilogy.”*

*Each picture follows a ‘person in trouble’ and at least the first and third installments have been described as such by Lynch in interviews and promotional materials. 

The author summarizes the conventions of the puzzle film in his introduction to the book Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, stating that

“...puzzle films embrace non-linearity, time loops, and fragmented spatio-temporal reality. These films blur the boundaries between different levels of reality, are riddled with gaps, deception, labyrinthine structures, ambiguity, and overt coincidences…. In the end, the complexity of puzzle films operates on two levels: narrative and narration. It emphasizes the complex telling (plot, narration) of a simple or complex story (narrative).” (6)”

Though there are those who would scoff at they idea of trying to ‘decode’ Empire or claim that imposing a narrative upon it is to do it a disservice, I believe that the picture indeed lends itself towards a literal interpretation.

In crafting it, Lynch did not completely reject an explanation for the film’s narrative but left enough elements or clues that openly invite and encourage the viewer to uncover it, much as he did in the preceding installments of the in-trouble trilogy.

Both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive early on establish a narrative framing device that obliquely guides spectators towards a coherent narrative interpretation by allowing them to easily distinguish between the real or objective events that compose the film’s story and those that take place in the ‘subjective reality’’ of the main character, from the perspective of whom the story is told.

Early into Lost Highway, Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) has a meeting with two detectives, who are investigating the mysterious videotapes he and his wife have received of their own home. In the course of the conversation, he admits that he doesn’t like video cameras, preferring to remember things in “his own way” and “not necessarily the way they happened.” This essentially positions video camera recordings in the movie as the only record of objective truth, while framing everything we see otherwise as a manifestation of Fred’s unreliable mind.

Similarly, at the beginning of Mulholland Drive, we witness a first-person POV scene of someone going to sleep on a bed with red sheets. About 90 minutes later, Diane (Naomi Watts) wakes up from the same bed, framing everything that came in-between these two scenes as her dream, something I discuss more in-depth here.

Frame of Television

Inland Empire likewise presents clues that establish or at least strongly imply a clear delineation between real and imaginary/fictional events in its second scene, where The Lost Girl, who we learn is a prostitute, enters a hotel room and has sex with a male client. In the morning, she wakes up and cries, then begins watching television.

Initially, the screen is static, full of snow.

The film cuts to the Lost Girl.

But when it cuts back to the screen, we suddenly see clear images of the Rabbits live-action sitcom on the screen.

Cut back to the Lost Girl’s eyes.

Then, we see Grace Zabriskie’s Neighbor character moving in a disjointed, blurry version of the full scene that will be shown about 5 minutes later.

The next shot shows some of the television images enveloping the walls of the room. 

Cut back to the Lost Girl.

Now the camera begins to push in closer and closer to the Girl's eyes - when it cuts back to the TV, which is now closer than before, we again see STATIC.

Cut back to the Lost Girl. The camera zooms in even closer. We then cut back to the static screen, which becomes the frame of our CAMERA as well, meaning there is no further delineation between our screen and the TV screen in the film.

This heavily implies that we - the audience - are now seeing the television screen through the Lost Girl's eyes, and that what she sees - and thus we see - is not real, for television shows a fictional reality. This is corroborated by the fact that the static then DISSOLVES to a scene from Rabbits, Lynch’s absurdist web sitcom series. (Sitcoms, after all, are among the most common and recognizable staples of scripted TV. )

After a few seconds, the film cuts back to the Lost Girl Watching from her hotel room. A few more seconds pass, the film cuts back to her eyes again. This repeats a couple of more times. The intercutting serves as a reminder that the sequences we see when the Lost Girl is not onscreen is actually what the Lost Girl is watching on TV. 

By the time we get about 6.5 minutes into the movie, the intercutting between The Rabbits scene and the Hotel Room STOPS and the film continues to follow the Rabbits sequence. At this point, the film has completely transitioned us into the world of the television screen that the Lost Girl sees.

Hence, we enter the fictional reality of TV and thus the Lost Girl’s subjectivity. We don’t know if what she sees on the screen is what’s actually being shown on screen or what she imagines herself to be watching. But either way, it is NOT real.

Consider how the scenes that follow seem to break apart any semblance of coherence. About 7 minutes 20 seconds in, the male Rabbit fades out of the Room he walked into. The next thing we know, the film fades a couple of new characters into the same room. And they have a vague conversation in Polish.

At the end of it, we again see the Male Rabbit in the room, only for the film to FADE OUT.  When it FADES IN again, we seem to be in a different movie altogether.

The Eyes of the Lost Girl

We now see a repeat of the sequence with the Neighbor Character we saw earlier when it was shown on the Lost Girl’s Television Screen but it is now no longer distorted and appears uncut. This then leads into the next scene, which introduces actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), whom the film is ostensibly about.

Notably, however, the plotline about Nikki and her role in a new film is interspersed with a lot of seemingly unrelated sequences that seem to come from different genres or movies altogether. There seem to be elements of a sitcom, a murder mystery, a soap opera, a crime thriller about Eastern European prostitution, etc.

The order of the sequences seems random and confusing, especially since there is no clear or direct causal link between them. But the structure starts to make more sense when you keep in mind that everything we see is what the Lost Girl sees on TV.

Recall: what used to be one of the most common activities that TV watchers would perform following the introduction of cable and the remote control?

The answer: channel surfing.

By changing channels quickly, viewers avoid spending too much time on any one specific program and to sample a large variety of distinct texts. When you watch Inland Empire from this perspective, its disjointed nature comes across as intentional.

That is, we could say that the seemingly random order of the scenes is the result of the Lost Girl channel surfing and so sampling different shows and movies. The initial use of “fade in/fade out” transitions between the various sequences supports this view, arguably signifying the shift from one program or channel to another.

Over time, however, the boundaries between all these discrete televisual segments and their respective realities begin to break down, with characters and elements from one sequence beginning to pop up in another, disrupting any sense of spatio-temporal coherence.* In effect, the many fictional programs the Lost Girl is watching merge into a singular stream or “flow” of audiovisual programming.

*For instance, I like to think that the first time we see Julia Ormond on-screen, she is playing a daytime soap opera character in a TV show that is completely separate from the reality of the movie about Nikki Grace. But the next time she appears, her character in the Nikki Grace movie reality begins to inexplicably recall the character from the soap opera.

Flow and Consciousness

Now, I specifically use the term ‘flow‘ here, as it is a key concept in television studies. And Inland Empire is a movie that perfectly expresses it in a visual medium.

To clarify, flow is perceived to be a fundamental characteristic of television. Initially, it was theorized by scholar Raymond Williams in the book Television: Technology and Cultural Form. The author posited that all news programs, series, commercials, short and feature films, etc. appearing on TV function as components of planned sequences that join together into a singular continuous whole or “flow” of audio-visual material.

“In all developed broadcasting systems the characteristic organisation, and therefore the characteristic experience, is one of sequence or flow. This phenomenon, of planned flow, is then perhaps the defining characteristic of broadcasting, simultaneously as a technology and as a cultural form.” (86)

On TV then, boundaries between different media texts break down. Williams in parti-cular notes how differently feature films play on TV. Rather than wholesome, singular works, they are often interrupted and joined to other segments, such as commercials.

I highly doubt Lynch read Williams’ theory.

But everything Williams states in the following passage, in my opinion, perfectly captures the structure, progression, and experience of watching Inland Empire.

“...I began watching a film and at first had some difficulty in adjusting to a much greater frequency of commercial ‘breaks’. Yet this was a minor problem compared to what eventually happened. Two other films, which were due to be shown on the same channel on other nights, began to be inserted as trailers. A crime in San Francisco (the subject of the original film) began to operate in an extraordinary counterpoint not only with the deodorant and cereal commercials but with a romance in Paris and the eruption of a prehistoric monster who laid waste New York. Moreover, this was sequence in a new sense… since the transitions from film to commercial and from film A to films B and C were in effect unmarked… I believe I registered some incidents as happening in the wrong film, and some characters in the commercials as involved in the film episodes, in what came to seem – for all the occasional bizarre disparities – a single irresponsible flow of images and feelings.” (92)

Building on what Williams describes here, I’d say that Inland Empire too ultimately seems to become a single, irresponsible flow of images and feelings. What’s important to note here is that this flow also reflects the subjective experience of the Lost Girl.

It’s no coincidence that about an hour into the film, Nikki Grace - a fictional charac-ter the Lost Girl arguably identifies and empathizes with - begins to lose her sense of self and, among other things, inexplicably finds herself transported to Poland, where she experiences a life that is not her own but similar to that of the character she’s supposed to be playing in her ‘cursed’ film. It is as though elements of the Lost Girl’s own past, her life start to bleed into and alter the fictional reality of Nikki.

Despite all this, the distinction between real/objective events and fictional/subjective events is occasionally reinforced. About 80 minutes into the runtime, for instance, the film reminds us that Dern and the other characters we see are fictional constructs by cutting back to the Lost Girl watching them on TV from her hotel room.

We can conclude from all this that the opening 6-7 minutes provide a way for us to clearly tell apart scenes taking place in the real world (the Lost Girl in the hotel) from those set in the imaginary/fictional one (Nikki Grace et al.).

Whatever we see on the TV screen is not real. Laura Dern’s character(s) and every-thing that happens to her is not real. The Rabbits are not real.

Only the Lost Girl is real.

And much of what we see is her stream of consciousness, which intertwines with and becomes indistinguishable from the flow of various shows and movies shown on TV.

The Real Woman in Trouble

What all this means is that The Lost Girl is the true “Woman in Trouble” that the film is about. She is the actual main character, the individual whose mind the film is exploring, and whose story it is actually telling. Naturally, one might ask: “What is the Lost Girl’s story? What can be deduced from what we see in Inland Empire?”

I cannot offer a comprehensive response to these questions yet, but I am convinced that one can infer a coherent story by thoroughly rewatching the film and piecing together the different pieces of information scattered throughout and encoded in the fictional realities.* Perhaps I’ll do that in the future.

But for now, I want to provide a general idea of how to decipher the film. And to that end, I need to discuss why the Lost Girl is watching television.

Inland Empire never explains this. In fact, it never explicitly establishes almost anything about the Lost Girl beyond the fact that she is a prostitute with a husband and child. But the simplest answer is that, much like the other protagonists of the in-trouble trilogy, she wants to essentially escape her reality.

And what are some the primary sources of escapism today? Television and film.

It’s really that simple. We watch movies and shows all the time to immerse ourselves in fictional realities, as they help us, to quote some old texts I used to study in grade school, to “escape the problems and troubles of our everyday life.”

I’d say that is precisely what the Lost Girl is doing. Needless to say, her life must be quite unhappy. And if what we see happen to Nikki (in the fictional reality) indeed reflects the Lost Girl’s real-life past, it is likely that she has suffered from an abusive marriage and possibly the murder of a lover at the hands of a monstrous client.

Similar to what we saw in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, the better imaginary worlds the main character immerses herself in don’t last, as aspects of her life start to intrude into and corrode them. In contrast to what happened in those films, however, the Lost Girl seems to survive her internal ordeal and gets a ‘happy ending.’

In my opinion, Laura Dern’s character ultimately comes to embody the Lost Girl’s sense of self. Thus, in the ending, when they meet, the Lost Girl and Nikki reintegrate into a whole person, which is why Dern/Nikki/Susan vanishes. In effect, the Lost Girl has finally “found” herself. She is lost no more, which is why she stops crying and happily greets her family. The use of the dissolve from the Lost Girl’s head in those final scenes further evinces that much of what we saw took place in her mind.

Rather than allowing her to completely escape from reality, watching television seems to have helped her heal and overcome her real-life troubles. From all this, it follows that Inland Empire is about the healing power of watching television and how its flow can impact and in turn be impacted by the subjective experience of the viewer.*

* Now, none of this is to say that this is the “correct” or “best” way of reading the film. After all, Inland Empire opens with what one could argue is another framing device of a record player that describes a radio play called Axxon N., implying that the Lost Girl’s story could very well itself be a work of fiction, which gives things a whole other layer of potential significance. Nonetheless, I do think the clues presented in the movie position the Lost Girl as the film’s true main character and the real ‘woman in trouble.’

But what about you?

Do you agree with this interpretation of the film? Did this analysis change the way you look at it? Or am I completely off-base? What is your take on Inland Empire?

Does it make any sense? Is it a good David Lynch movie? Please,

Leave a comment

If you like this article and are a fan of David Lynch, please consider reading:

Dear Readers, I’m happy to announce that the Film & TV Newsletter Catalogs are back! After several months of inactivity, my directory of film and TV Substack newsletters has been revamped and can now once again be updated with new entries.

I have a backlog of submissions that I’ll be adding over the course of this month and I have to figure out exactly how I will announce these updates - maybe in the MTVD digests? -  but for now I wanted to make sure folks and prospective new authors are aware that the FTNC is up and running again. So, please explore it, and maybe you’ll find an interesting newsletter or two.

Now, if you’ve been reading this site regularly over the course of this year, you should know that the page suffered from technical issues and I had to stop updating it. 

So, what happened exactly? To explain this, I need to talk a little bit about the design of the directory. The FTNC project took some time to come together. Though I had the idea for it early into my second year on the platform, I couldn’t figure out a way to present the many newsletter links I’d found in an interesting way. 

The simple fact is that Substack’s interface doesn’t offer that many text formatting and page layout options. It’s not possible to have different parts of the text appear in different colors, for example, and there’s no button that allows placing the text in the center of a line. So, I needed to come up with a design for this directory that would be visually attractive yet also work within the limits of the Substack interface.

At one point, I thought about just using the native embedded links format. As in, you post a link to a Substack newsletter and it gets converted into an embedded link that allows one to subscribe to it. Here’s an example:

Textual Variations

Subscribe to learn why so many movies exist in multiple versions, and what this means for film history and culture. Also, some quality criticism.

By Mikhail Skoptsov

Pretty simple, right? But this turned out to be untenable. When you post a hundred Substack links, the embeds take up way too much space and to be honest, they just don’t always look that well in the interface.

After experimenting and doing more tests, I found that it was possible to actually center text using the “pull quote” option in the format tab. This also created some nice little divider lines that helped single out individual entries. 

But there were still a lot of questions I struggled with. How do I make a listing of newsletters look interesting? What information should I include? Just the publication link? Or the name of the author? Perhaps the description?

I wanted to make sure readers would be able to get a sense of what the publication was about, but I also didn’t want to bog things down with too much information. The directory should be easy to read and browse, not cumbersome. 

And then, Substack introduced the ‘Mention’ feature, which offered a solution to all my problems. Now, the name of the newsletter could be of a different color and highlighting it would give one a nice-looking pop-up with additional information, including the Substack description, and the proper link. And authors would receive notifications that their newsletters had been mentioned in it. 

Combine this with the pull quote and the directory was ready!

Now that I had settled on the design, I could regularly update the FTNC with new entries. This worked for a while. But when I tried to update the FTNC earlier this year, I was blocked from doing so.

A pop up message informed me that the page could not be updated as some authors had chosen to disable mentions of their name and/or Substack.1 So, I now had to remove all newsletters with disabled mentions if I wanted to update the page at all.

The problem was there was no way to determine who exactly had disabled mentions. It could’ve been anyone out of the 100+ entries listed on the page at this point.2 

My only solution was to revamp the directory entirely and make it work without men-tions. This was not easy. I again had to do a bunch of tests and try different design templates. I also had to check every single link I had at this point, make sure it worked, copy it and manually link it to a publication’s name.3 

Little by little though, things progressed and I settled on a design that uses the “Code Block” formatting option. Now, the name of the publication and its author(s) appears inside a Code Block while a description follows below.4

I hope you all enjoy the revamped FTNC! I don’t know how relevant it will be in the future, given that Substack seems to be finally rolling out a “Movies & TV” category, but I hope it helps folks discover some interesting writing on the topic.

Categories help writers, especially unestablished ones, with getting discovered. And without “Film and TV” or something similar, it’s tough for potential new readers on the platform to even know we exist.1 I had one issue though: I knew that Substack had, in fact, introduced a “Movies & TV” category not too long ago.

It apparently wasn’t accessible to everybody yet but there was evidence that it clearly did exist and was being gradually rolled out.  Well, a few days ago, it finally popped up on my interface, only to vanish shortly thereafter.

In this post then, I want to talk about this new yet elusive category, how you can still find it (and others) even if the link itself doesn’t appear for you on the Substack home page, and what it could mean for us Film and Television writers going forward.2

Table of Contents

1. The Original Categories

2. Notes and New Categories

3. The “Movies & TV” Tab

4. What Does All this Mean?

The Original Categories

It’s important to understand that there are actually several different types of ‘cate-gories’ available on the Substack platform, and they can be accessed from different parts of the site. And at the moment, the way Substack is implementing them can be quite confusing. Before we can even talk about the Movies and TV category then , we need to clarify how the platform’s approach to the Categories changed over time.

The original ‘categories’ were known specifically as ‘leaderboard categories’ as they were closely tied to Substack listings of the most successful or popular Newsletters. These leaderboards were, according to the official page, “designed so that publishers can find new subscribers and subscribers can find great publishers.” 

When creating a Substack, prospective writers were - and still are - prompted to select two leaderboard categories in which they want their publication to appear. In fact, it’s still possible to change your categories from the Publication Settings page (accessible from your dashboard). The Basics Section right at the very top shows your publications category options. What about the reader? 

Well, I don’t recall how it used to work, since the Substack interface has changed considerably over the last 3 years, but nowadays, you either have to manually enter substack.com/browse in the address field or log-in to your account, click on your icon and select the “Explore” option, which then takes you to the “Browse” page. 

Having done this, the first two Categories you can click on are “For You” and “Staff Picks,” which are recommendation categories that display recommended posts on the left side of the screen and a list of Featured Substacks in a column on the right side.

The others - which correspond to the categories writers are allowed to pick in settings - all follow a similar layout but display the Leaderboard Substacks in a column on the right instead of Featured ones. 

Notes and New Categories

I’m only speculating here, but I do believe that the people behind Substack realized over time that the original Leaderboard Discovery system wasn’t really working all that well and didn’t offer us writers a lot of visibility. This, I think, was one of the factors that led to the introduction of Notes in April 2023.

Later in September, Substack revamped its front page to make Notes more prominent and essentially a part of the homepage itself.  I’m not sure if the change was exclusive to the Substack app at the time, but the website version of the front page must’ve followed suit shortly thereafter if it wasn’t changed at the same time. 

Building on this, Substack at some point afterwards added Categories to the homepage, making them selectable tabs at the top. Thus, the contemporary Substack interface does give one access to Categories without the ‘explore’ or ‘browse’ features, essentially incorporating them into the new Notes-centric ecosystem. 

What’s interesting is that these Homepage Category Tabs consist of both the pre-existing Leaderboard Categories (the ones writers can pick) and new Notes-exclusive Categories. I can’t say how many new Category Tabs were introduced back when these were first incorporated into the Home page, but apparently Substack began to selectively roll out about 100-150 new Category tabs back in the middle of September, as revealed by Ben Cohen of Substack Growth.

You can see a report on this by Kristina God in her video here from 8:32:

Kristina God's Online Writing Club

There Are Now Hundreds of New Substack Categories and Tabs

Party time 🥳, because I belong now to the Top #25 Education publications on Substack…

Listen now

2 years ago · 90 likes · 39 comments · Kristina God

Click on any of the Leaderboard Category Tabs like ‘Culture,’ ‘Technology’ or ‘Busi-ness’ and you will be taken to a new sub-page that includes a feed of Notes related to the category (as opposed to posts accessible from the explore tab) on the left side and a Leaderboard column on the right side featuring key leading publications. 

But click on any of the new Category Tabs like “Comic Conventions” or “Archae-ology” and you’ll be taken to a sub-page that includes a feed of Notes and a Reading Queue of Posts related to the topic, with no Leaderboard whatsoever. Everything here seems to appear courtesy of the Substack Notes algorithm and thus far there is no option to actually choose to have your publication or its posts show up in it. 

The “Movies & TV” Tab

Per Cohen, Substack is working to give writers the option to choose these Category Tabs but at the moment they seem to be showing up randomly in your homepage interface. This is likely why I’ve noticed some fellow Film and TV writers posting in Notes about a “Movies & TV” Category Tab several weeks ago.

It has appeared for some but not for others. I myself did not get access to the tab until a few days ago, when it popped up alongside some new Tabs like “Horror” and “Gaming.” I clicked on “Movies and TV” and while the result thus far has not been too different from my standard algorithm-influenced homepage feed, it has indeed allowed me to discover some new writers and publications.

What I really liked about it and the other new tabs is that they were clearly more specific, more niche, more zeroed-in on particular subjects than the broader Leaderboard Categories. They essentially allow for micro-targeting and, if employed properly, can indeed introduce a lot of new readers to our writing and vice versa.

Unfortunately, just as I was looking forward to checking out more new tabs the other day, they all vanished, again limiting me to the leaderboard categories only.

This, however, led me to look for a workaround, and I’ve realized it’s possible to still access these new Categories even if the tabs are gone (or haven’t shown up in your interface to begin with) as long as you have the web address for it. So, if you’ve been meaning to check out the “Movies & TV” Category and haven’t had the opportunity, or if it was similarly removed from your interface, please click on or enter the following address in your address bar: https://substack.com/home/category/76782

You can access other new and/or hidden category tabs in the same way. All you have to do is enter the number of the category you want in the address bar at the end of [substack.com/home/category] in order to access it. Here’s a couple of others I know: 

• /76822-Horror

• /76853-Architecture

I recommend experimenting with numbers to find other Hidden Tabs like this or to bookmark the numbers of the New Categories you can access right now, as it’s entirely possible the tabs will vanish from your interface in the near future. 

What Does All this Mean?

First of all, Substack is clearly working on creating new categories and helping readers and writers alike with discovery. However, these categories are still in the formative stages and the company is testing to see what’s working and what isn’t. 

Second, it’s safe to say that Substack is slowly but surely phasing out the Leaderboards and the Browse/Explore options. The latter options are already virtually invisible on the homepage and the Leaderboard Categories have Homepage Notes versions, making the classic versions largely redundant. Perhaps the leaderboards will be retained and maybe even added to the new Notes-exclusive tabs, but I doubt it, as they currently don’t quite mesh with the ‘Reading Queue’ approach to the interface.

I sincerely hope the “Movies & TV” category will not only stick around but become a selectable option in the Publication Dashboard Settings menu. Alongside the retirement of the ‘Leaderboard’ approach and the introduction of the other tab categories, this can greatly help Film and TV writers with exposure, while improving navigation of the platform for readers.

All in all, my fellow film/TV writers, it seems we are getting closer to no longer being confined to the “Culture” category. I'm quite happy as I’ve been lobbying for it for a long time. So, make some noise and let the folks running the platform know we need “Movies & TV” to become a regular option!

But what about you?

Have you been able to access the new “Movies & TV” Category?

Have they helped you at all with discovery? Are there other new Category Tabs that you’ve discovered or are excited about? Please,

Leave a comment

Licensing content is, of course, nothing new. But it used to be that exclusive deals were the norm and the expectation. Even when a studio-owned production company licensed a series to rival streamer like Netflix or Max, the show in question could typically only stream on that one platform, at least in a given geographic territory.

Nowadays though, it is becoming more and more common to see a series appear on multiple streaming platforms in the same market (eg. the US) at the same time.

A great example is that of the supernatural mystery show, School Spirits.

School Spirits

The first time I saw School Spirits was when I was taking a flight via Delta Airlines last year. It had a great pilot and it made me immediately want to see more of the series. I subsequently purchased and downloaded the entire first season via Apple TV.*

*Paramount puts most of its original series on home video, meaning you can purchase and download individual episodes if you don’t wish to subscribe to the platform.

I’m pretty certain though that a lot of people hadn’t heard of it until it was dropped on Netflix on November 30 with little advance warning, over 8 months after its debut on Paramount Plus in March 2023 as an Original Series that had been made wholly in-house by Paramount Global (production company AwesomenessTV is a subsidiary).

What’s really interesting here is that the show’s Netflix debut didn’t follow the typical scenario. Usually, a streaming original is cancelled and pulled from its initial platform due to low performance before getting re-licensed to another streamer. This is precisely what happened to the animated Star Trek Prodigy, which disappeared from P+ after its first season and concluded its second season on Netflix.

By contrast, Spirits not only remained available on its initial platform but also retained the “Paramount Plus Original” labeling, even though it would no longer be operating under a wholly exclusive licensing agreement in the US market.* More than that, the show’s previously announced second season was not cancelled, remaining instead in active development and beginning production on June 13, 2024.*

*That it had been renewed in the first place and before the Netflix reissue suggests that the series was performing relatively well for P+. I’m guessing that a key factor is that it has a lower budget than some of the other originals.

So, why then did Paramount decide to share this series with a rival, despite the fact that it hasn’t canceled or removed it? There have been no official answers as of yet. But putting aside the obvious fact that this allows P+ to more directly monetize the show by having Netflix pay it a licensing fee, I believe it likely that Paramount is trying to see if it can get the “Netflix Effect” to work on a streaming original.

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The Netflix Effect

The “Netflix Effect” refers to how the re-release of an older series on Netflix has the potential to greatly increase its audience and popularity, often beyond its initial ratings on broadcast television. It is often associated with the drama Breaking Bad, whose ratings on AMC increased following the release of previous seasons on the streaming service. Showrunner Vince Gilligan was quoted as saying in 2013:

"I think Netflix kept us on the air… I don't think our show would have even lasted beyond season two. It's a new era in television, and we've been very fortunate to reap the benefits."

In September 2023, the Netflix Effect became a trending topic due to reports about how the Netflix reissuing of various TV shows could actually increase the viewership of those shows on other streaming services, like Max and Peacock.

Per an Indiewire article by Tony Maglio, HBO Chief Casey Bloys stated at a conference about the releases of HBO shows like Insecure and Ballers on Netflix:

““What’s been nice about it is, without doing a thing on Max, the viewership of… ‘Ballers’ and ‘Insecure’ [on Max] really saw a spike when it was on Netflix,” Bloys said. “You’re introducing it to more people, it’s marketing.”“

The same article also discusses how the Netflix reissue of the USA Network Drama Suits (2011-2019) had turned the series into a new hit, garnering it much larger viewership than it ever received on its initial streamer Peacock, and increasing the ratings of the Peacock-exclusive final season.

The sudden surge is not all Netflix, of course — except for the fact that it pretty much is. Nielsen does not separate Peacock viewership from Netflix’s, but suffice it to say the vast majority is coming from the vastly larger platform. As of June 30, Netflix had 238.4 million global paid subscribers; Peacock had 24 million….

While “Suits” Season 1 has been the huge hit on Netflix (it makes sense, that’s how sample viewing works) Season 9 has seen a disproportional lift on Peacock. There’s a logical explanation: Peacock is the only platform with the ninth and final season of “Suits” available to subscribers.

Given all this, the licensing of Spirits to Netflix was likely intended not so much to give P+ some additional income but rather to boost the show’s exposure and so attract more people to check out its upcoming second season on Paramount+.

Granted, we don’t know how exactly the Paramount-Netflix deal for this show will work going forward, but it’s been confirmed in a press release that S2 (now premiering Fall 2024) will remain a P+ exclusive, at least initially. Windowing the release in this way simply makes the most commercial sense, essentially replicating the broadcast network and cable licensing strategy with a streaming original.

Assuming this is indeed Paramount’s strategy, I’d say it’s paying off. Per a January 1, 2024 article by Paul Tassi, the series

“…has been in Netflix’s Top 10 list spanning three months now, as it debuted on November 30, 2023, and now here on January 1, 2024, it’s still #9. I never saw it actually hit #1, but this demonstrates staying power that few shows ever have.”

So, the show clearly has reached a wider audience, which, coupled with an evident surge in social media discourses, indicates good things for its future. And while the licensing fee is probably not huge, given the second-run status and lack of exclusivity, it certainly creates additional incentive for Paramount to keep the series in production. 

Multi-Platforming as the Future of Streaming Originals

Now, I’d say all this is actually far more significant than it might seem on the surface. To reiterate, Spirits is a very recent show and a non-canceled steaming original, as opposed to a catalog or library series. If its second season indeed gains a huge boost from the Netflix Effect, then its success might signal a new direction for streaming originals as a whole, or at least for those of Paramount Plus: multi-platforming.*

*One could point to AMC+ temporarily licensing its shows to Max or Amazon giving viewers access to MGM+ original content for a limited time as another instance of multi-platforming. But I find that there are various distinctions. Amazon owns MGM, while AMC+ series also tend to air on the AMC channel rather than remain web-exclusive.

Rather than outright canceling and removing promising but low-rated new Original shows, streaming services might keep them active, while also licensing them to a bigger streamer like Netflix to offset their expenditures and increase the viewership of future seasons. So certain streaming programs that would otherwise get quickly canceled and pulled could potentially stick around longer and make more impact.*

*I really hope that this is what happens with Spirits, as it’s a great show that almost nobody really noticed when it first premiered. It might not always make sense in terms of its world-building (I’m still confused as to whether or not the spirits can actually interact with the physical world) and the plotting isn’t particularly that strong or attention-grabbing. (Though S1 ended on a great cliffhanger.) But the series excels when it comes to creating compelling characters with truly immersive emotional journeys that can hit you like a ton of bricks. So, I hope the series gets more seasons to fully tell its story and resolve the fates of its ghosts. 

This direction would be completely in line with the attempts by streaming services, following David Zaslav’s lead, to adopt traditional cable and broadcast TV business models, such as windowing releases. As I’ve said before, streaming services are becoming increasingly similar to classic broadcast television networks.

“The fact is licensing some library content to others VOD platforms like Netflix or Amazon as part of a co-exclusive agreement is just smart business,” Zaslav said. “We’re expanding our audience, while maximizing the value of the asset and providing more revenue streams. And that is our job, to optimize the windowing to get the best possible return on investment.”

• David Zaslav, The Wrap interview, August 3 2023

Multi-platforming in that sense seems like a potentially viable business model for the low-rated streaming original moving forward. It probably won’t be able to overcome the side effects of the ongoing consolidation happening in the media industry, but it can help extend the life of a streaming series and its service, at least for a little while.

But what about you?

Have you seen School Spirits and if so, what did you think of it? Do you think co-licensing originals to Netflix might indeed help them survive longer? Are there any other series that have shown up on Netflix that you’d never expect? Is the loss of exclusivity a bad thing? Please,

Leave a comment

Case in point: while browsing the new Hulu (on Disney Plus) platform, I discovered two erased series that have popped back into existence. 

The first is The Gordita Chronicles, the HBO Max ‘original’ that following its removal could still be seen while taking a flight via American Airlines or Jet Blue. After being in limbo for 15 months, the family comedy returned to Streaming on both Tubi and Hulu towards the end of March. Though interestingly enough, the Hulu listing was initially unreported - in a March 26 exclusive article, Deadline claimed that Tubi would be the show’s “exclusive AVOD home” while not mentioning Hulu at all. The latter platform is generally considered SVOD, though it has a key AVOD component (meaning you can select episodes of shows to watch with advertising).

Subsequently, showrunner Claudia Forestieri confirmed the Hulu release on Twitter, and a few articles followed, such as one in Popsugar. But the overall coverage of the show’s return didn’t seem to be anywhere as big as that of its ‘erasure,’ even though producer Sony had clearly negotiated new distribution deals for the series that are now bound to make it considerably more accessible than it ever was on Max.

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Yet whereas the return of Gordita was deemed worthy of coverage by at least one major media publication, that of Inside Amy Schumer, which has been covertly available in its entirety on Hulu since at least mid-April, has not. (This in turn means one can now access it via the Hulu hub on Disney Plus as well. Also, the series still remains to this day 95% available on the Amazon version of Paramount Plus.)*

* Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that it had been there since at least the end of February, but this was only an estimate. I can confirm that I definitely noticed it there in April 2024.

This is really weird, given that it seemed like a big deal among prominent TV critics from major outlets like EW, Deadline and Hollywood Reporter, when the Comedy Central sketch comedy series was pulled from Paramount Plus back at the end of June 2023. Just look at the following Google Search headlines:

None of these outlets have published anything about the show’s new home on Hulu, even as Schumer’s (recently cancelled) Original Hulu series Life and Beth generated multiple headlines and received critical accolades in the past year.

Perhaps this is because nobody from Paramount bothered with an official press release. Heck, Amy Schumer herself hasn’t mentioned anything on her Twitter (though to be fair, that account thus far hasn’t been updated since the end of 2023).

Why though? Do the people involved not want to spend anything on advertising? Or is stealth-dropping a previously removed series now just a general strategy?

Even then though, you’d think somebody in the TV press would’ve noticed. And maybe some people have, but don’t care to report about it, as that would undermine the nar-rative they’ve been pushing the year before. Or maybe it’s just not deemed interesting enough. Meaning, I’m certain that a lot of outlets only ‘care’ about such series to the extent that it helps attract attention and couldn’t give a crap about their actual status. After all, an outrage-inducing headline about a streaming company erasing a series to save on residuals for actors is bound to get more clicks than one about a show finding a new home and becoming potentially more profitable for everyone.

But I honestly have no idea.

Whatever the case is, the lack of coverage for such returning shows maintains the impression that they are ‘erased’ and in that sense, misleads the public by not keeping it informed.* Viewers deserve to know that pulled streaming content is not so much vanishing into the void, as moving to a new home after some time in limbo.

*Some commentators even went so far as to falsely equate such removals to the burning of film negatives by film studios in the days before preservation. In actuality, the closest comparison might be television cancellation. A show is discontinued, and soon stops airing on a channel altogether but might reappear elsewhere, such as on basic cable, a few years after the fact. In such cases, the asset is not destroyed but repurposed.

Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other series that have stealthily made it back to another platform or format since the ‘Great Streaming Purge of 2023.’

One just hopes that the new landlords alongside the press will do a better job of helping us find them.

Bonus Material: "Furiosa" Black-and-Chrome Standalone Release on 08/13

The alternate ‘tinted black-and-white’ version of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, dir. George Miller) is getting a standalone video release today via digital retailers, like Amazon and Apple TV, meaning one won’t have to wait for a box set after all to see it.

But what about you?

What do you think about shows now moving around different platforms and Netflix now showing what used to be exclusive content? Has there been a show you know of that has returned but has not been reported on? Is there an original series or movie from one streamer that you only checked out after it arrived on another one? Please,

Leave a comment

*It’s also in my opinion the best Terminator sequel ever made. I’d argue that writing-wise, it even surpasses the movies it was based on.

In the course of the surreal puzzle film-like “Dungeons and Dragons,” viewers learn that Derek was taken prisoner by Terminators in the post-apocalyptic future and sent to a dilapidated house, where some off-screen event then occurred to him in the basement. By keeping exactly what happened undisclosed and ambiguous, the episode left many questions unresolved or open to interpretation.

For instance, why did someone leave a hatchet for Derek to free himself from his shackles, rather than killing him? Was Skynet attempting to brainwash Derek, turning him and the others into sleeper agents? Was it even Skynet that did this?

When I first saw this episode, I fully expected the show to eventually flash back to this event later in the season to explicitly answer these questions by allowing viewers to see precisely what happened and why. The show had demonstrated a tendency by this point to skip over certain key events and then flash back to them later.*

*Indeed, the ending of “Dungeons and Dragons” flashes back to the events of “Queen’s Gambit,” resolving the question of who killed Andy Goode. And an interview with Josh Friedman suggests that the question might’ve been explored in one of the Season 1 episodes cancelled due to the WGA Writer’s Strike.

However, I eventually came to learn that the writers had, in fact, left a lot of clues as to what was really going on with Derek in this and other episodes. After rewatching “Dungeons and Dragons” and paying close attention to onscreen details, I came to realize that there is indeed a logical and rational explanation for everything we see happen to Derek concealed within the text itself.

And this completely changed my understanding of what this episode is really about. All the answers are there, they are just not out in the open.

In this article then, I will lay out a comprehensive theory, as to why Derek was taken, who took him, what happened to him in the basement and why he was released. In the process, I will argue against the most common reading of the episode, which is that Derek was captured by Skynet and interrogated in the basement (possibly by Cameron) for vital information about the human resistance.

Please note that this relies on extensive knowledge of the series’ events and will likely not make much sense to those not versed in it.

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The Theory:

My theory is that Derek Reese wasn’t captured by Skynet.

Instead, he was taken by reprogrammed pro-Resistance Terminators and then interrogated in that basement by a reprogrammed Cameron under the orders of John Connor. His whole ordeal was really an elaborate test of loyalty, a mind game orchestrated by his own nephew to see how trustworthy he really is. Derek failed his test – he broke during the interrogation and revealed the location of Connor’s bunker, the one where he and Kyle were both stationed, to his interrogator Cameron.

The Resistance then left the captured Derek with a hatchet so he could free himself and faked the destruction of the bunker in order to maintain the ruse. Future Connor then decides to never reveal to Derek that he is his biological uncle and sends him back in time without even telling him the truth of what happened to Kyle, because he doesn’t fully trust him. It is not entirely clear, as to whether or not Derek ever learns the full truth behind his ordeal.

All this might seem rather outlandish, but as I will show, there is much evidence to suggest that this is indeed what happened.

Let’s go over this step by step, tackling the questions one by one.

What exactly happened to Derek in the basement?

Derek was tortured into giving up the location of John Connor’s bunker.

It is not clear whether the torture was physical or purely psychological, but there are many indications that some form of enhanced interrogation took place. While Derek’s body shows no visible signs of physical damage, he is also clearly tired and weak after he is brought out of The Room. The fact that classic music is playing in the basement alludes to “music torture,” an interrogation technique used on prisoners of war, wherein individuals are subjected to loud music in combination with sensory or sleep deprivation to make them more open to revealing information.

Given the general context in which the event takes place, the use of music torture to psychologically prepare the prisoners to reveal secrets makes a lot of sense.  The notion that Derek gave up critical information is supported by the fact that he and his cohorts are released from captivity shortly after he has been to The Room.

Later, when Derek and the others return to Connor’s bunker, it is abandoned, with signs of damage, presumably by Skynet’s forces. Sumner corroborates this, stating that neither Connor nor Kyle were there at the time Skynet attacked.

Altogether, this evinces that “Skynet” had apparently somehow learned the location of Connor’s bunker sometime between Derek being taken and his return. It is safe to assume that the interrogation of Derek in the basement and the destruction of the bunker (presumably) by Skynet are causally linked events. Supporting this reading are two key conversations that Derek has with other characters.

When John discusses his life with foster families with Derek in Episode 1.07, “The Demon Hand,” he mentions how Sarah gave up on being his mother and signed over custody to his foster parents while being locked up in a mental institution.

The following exchange then takes place:

D: Look, John… What can happen to a person inside four walls… um, screws with your head. Makes you do things you never thought you’d do. 

J: Some people never give up. Some people always fight. 

D (beat): Fewer thank you think.

During this moment, Derek is clearly relating to Sarah, because he too knows what it’s like to be “inside four walls” and “do things you never thought you’d do.” One can assume that he may be alluding to his murder of Andy Goode/Billie Wisher.

However, note that he also says “Fewer thank you think” in response to John’s claim that some people always fight. In effect, he implies that he too “gave up” after being inside four walls. This clearly indicates that he broke during his interrogation and believes he betrayed Future Connor and the Resistance.  

Further corroboration is provided in a Cameron/Derek conversation in 2.20, “To The Lighthouse.” Cameron has just freed Derek, after he had been captured by human agents of Skynet.

D: Why’d you come after me? 

C: You know the location of the safe house. John’s location. If they tortured you--- 

D: That would never happen. 

C: It has before.

Cameron here strongly implies that Derek had apparently given up John’s location previously under torture, which fits perfectly with the events depicted in 1.06.

At the time, The Official Terminator Blog all but confirmed this to be the case:

Oh and speaking of returns — Derek and Cameron had a pretty important conversation in this episode, didn’t they? After Cameron rescued Derek he asked her why she came for him. “You know the location of the safehouse. John’s location.” 

“But Derek responds, “That would would never happen.” 

“It has before,” she reminds him. 

But what exactly does that mean? Master of all things T:SCC (see: Josh Friedman) has given me permission to confirm that it indeed does imply that Derek was tortured and gave up John’s location some other time. Yes, then.

Finally, following the show’s cancellation, TSCC composer Bear McReary listed 15 favorite moments from the series on his site’s blog.

Note what he wrote about "Dungeons and Dragons":

…I’ll never forget being able to write music for the dark vistas of fallen Los Angeles, and Derek’s time spent incarcerated. My favorite moment is when he’s taken into the basement to be interrogated… and ultimately gives up the location of his friends.

Who interrogated Derek?

Cameron, specifically the Cameron we know today.

Derek hates the specific incarnation of Cameron that we have known since the show’s beginning. Note his reaction when he first sets eyes on her in “Queen’s Gambit” and his claim that “everything she says is a lie.” Chronologically, the first time Derek sees Cameron in the flashbacks is when the pro-Resistance Cameron comes into his line of sight after he has returned from interrogation.

Derek yells “Metal!” the moment he spots her and pulls out a gun, which evinces that he had encountered Cameron previously. Also, he is surprised to realize that terminators at this point in time are working for the Resistance, meaning that this is not a well-known fact among the human fighters.

Another piece of evidence is the show’s use of music.

The classic music playing in 1.06 in the basement when Derek is brought there is “Chopin’s Nocturne.” This theme is reprised at the end of 1.07 when Derek sees Cameron dancing and practicing ballet.  It appears there is no source for the music in the scene itself, making it non-diegetic. The association of Cameron with the music implies that she was present in the basement, making her Derek’s interrogator. 

Several conversations also allude to Cameron having done something to Derek in the future. Noting how Derek has reacted to Cameron, Sarah asks her about this in 1.06.

S: Did you do something to him? In the future?

C: I don’t know.

S: You don’t know?

C: When they reprogram us, they scrub our memories. It increases the chance of success.

S: Success?

C: Of the reprogramming. 

Cameron here claims that she may have done something, but if so, she doesn’t remember. Contrast this with what she says to Derek during their tense conversation at the breakfast table one episode later in “The Demon Hand.”

D: You might have them fooled, but not me. I know you.

C: I know you too. 

Cameron here confirms that she knows Derek already, alluding to a shared past. This means she had lied to Sarah about not remembering doing something to Derek in the future. Once again, the most likely answer is that she had interrogated him, which is why he hates and distrusts her. This leads to another question.

Assuming Cameron remembers interrogating Derek, does this mean she had lied about the memory scrubbing as well? There are two possibilities.

Either Terminators’ memories are not scrubbed when they are reprogrammed or Cameron was already reprogrammed when she performed the interrogation.

Who was Cameron working for when she did this?

The Resistance and/or Future John Connor.

There is a lot of evidence that the Terminators that took Derek captive and then inter-rogated him were all working for the Resistance, rather than Skynet. First of all, as mentioned previously, clues indicate that Cameron was the one who performed the basement interrogation. The fact that she remembers the events of Derek’s torture supports the possibility that she had already been reprogrammed.

Moreover, while we don’t see any follow-up to the exchange Derek and Cameron have in 2.20, the fact that Cameron knows suggests that Future Connor is also aware that Derek gave him up under torture. It is consistently shown throughout the series that Cameron is Future Connor’s close advisor and, as someone working for the Resistance, it is logical that she would communicate all information to him. So, it follows that if Cameron knows, then Future John does too.

Additional clues can be inferred from the depiction of the Terminators that Derek interacts with in his future flashbacks, especially The Rogue Terminator. Derek first encounters The Rogue when he goes after Kyle following an attack by a Hunter-Killer machine. At that point, he is grabbed by The Rogue, a T-888 Terminator clad in blue mechanic-like coveralls. Given that after this, Derek is seen in a prisoner transport bus, it is safe to assume that The Rogue is the one who captured him.

Later, after Derek is released and reunited with the Resistance, a Terminator begins shooting up the base. While the episode does not draw attention to this detail, it is clearly shown to be the Rogue Terminator. After Cameron destroys it, she states:

“Sometimes they go bad. No one knows why.”

This means the Rogue was already a reprogrammed Terminator and has only now gone bad, meaning it had to have been working for The Resistance when it captured Derek at the beginning of the episode. Now, one could argue that this not the same Terminator that captured Derek but merely the same model.

However, the “law of conservation of detail” – the trope according to which all the pie-ces of a plot matter and no detail should be extraneous – works against this. In other words, it would be a big coincidence for two identical-looking but different Termina-tors to both encounter Derek in the plot without there being greater significance. 

Moreover, the uniform of the Rogue corroborates the idea that it’s the same Termina-tor. This is because the Resistance has a very specific fashion choice. During the scenes at the new Resistance base, multiple characters, including reprogrammed Cameron and Derek himself, are shown wearing dark blue coveralls or similar shirt-and-jean combinations. The consistency of these outfits indicates allegiance to the Resistance. In other words, Derek, Cameron, and The Rogue all wear Resistance-brand clothing, the same clothing the Rogue wore when he captured Derek.

From all this, it follows that Derek must’ve been captured and imprisoned by a friendly Terminator at the behest of the Resistance/Connor.

Couldn’t Cameron have been working for Skynet at the time?

Not likely, as the overall series of events that occurs doesn’t fit with Skynet’s M.O.

Throughout the episode, we are reminded that Skynet takes humans to work camps. But here, they are taken to a dilapidated house, which is where Derek received his barcode tattoo. More importantly, it doesn’t make any sense for Skynet to release the prisoners after interrogating them. If indeed it was Skynet that interrogated Derek, why leave behind a hatchet rather than kill him or send him to a work camp?

One could theorize Skynet had ulterior motives, perhaps having brainwashed Derek and turned him into a human sleeper agent. But this conflicts with the fact that T-888 Vick had been given a mission to assassinate Derek, evincing that Derek isn’t working for Skynet, willingly or unwillingly. The logical conclusion is that Skynet isn’t actually responsible for Derek’s interrogation, which fits with the episode’s reveal that Future Connor has multiple reprogrammed Terminators fighting for the Resistance.

Additionally, there is the state of Connor’s bunker following an apparent attack by “Skynet.” When Derek and Wishes return there, Wisher states:

“Plasma burns. Secondary explosions. Skynet was here.”

Shortly thereafter, Sumner shows up and corroborates the idea that Skynet attacked:

“Skynet found it, four nights ago… Four Triple-8s snuck in around us… Killed most. Took some.”

But despite evidence of an attack, including a bloodstain on a wall, and the claim that most of the bunker occupants were killed, there are curiously no dead bodies to be seen anywhere in the bunker. This is a conspicuous absence. After all, Skynet Terminators don’t mind leaving bodies behind and it’s strange to think that the Resistance would remove all the bodies following the attack on the bunker.

So, there is no tangible proof of Sumner’s claim that Skynet Terminators killed most of the bunker occupants, which suggests the possibility that the Resistance faked an attack on the bunker after Derek had given up its location. Assuming this is true, Sumner lied to Derek about the attack, meaning he is in on Future Connor’s ruse.

Strengthening this possibility is the way the episode sometimes shows alternate pers-pectives in the future flashbacks outside of Derek’s POV. In particular, specific moments focus on Sayles, who notably was constantly testing Derek's faith in Connor. When Derek first receives his barcode tattoo, we see several shots from Sayles’ POV – he appears to be paying close attention to what’s happening to Derek.

Later on, Sayles is the one who questions Derek’s commitment to Connor’s cause. He says (among other things):

“Maybe Connor’s wrong. Maybe he’s crazy.”

Derek does not agree. When Sumner first appears, camera work accentuates Sayles’ gaze and the two exchange what appears to be a knowing glance. Altogether, this indicates that Sayles may have been there to monitor Derek up close, to see how he reacts to his predicament and whether or not he is able to remain committed to the cause under pressure. Thus, Sayles and Sumner were in on Connor’s mindgame.

Why would Future John Connor do this to Derek?

To test how loyal and trustworthy Derek really is.

“Dungeons and Dragons” establishes some very interesting details about Future Connor. Though Future Connor is apparently friends with Kyle and to a lesser extent Derek, he has become reclusive and reliant on Reprogrammed Terminators to carry out his orders. Moreover, he has a penchant for keeping confidential information from many of his fellow Resistance fighters, especially when it comes to the truth behind the Topanga Canyon operation and Skynet’s Time Displacement Device.

Clearly, Future Connor has very few people whom he trusts. And a present-day scene between Young John and Sarah underlines the fact that Future Connor never trusted Derek enough to reveal to him the truth of their biological connection. When Young John claims that they have to tell Derek that he is John’s uncle, Sarah denies the possibility.

S: We don’t, and we can’t. 

J: He’s family. 

S: He’s a stranger. 

J: I sent him back here, so I must trust him. 

S: Not enough to tell him about Kyle. You didn’t trust anyone enough to tell them about your father. Anyone.

This is a good point.

We can also infer from Derek’s raving at one point that Future John never specifically told him what happened to Kyle or where he sent him, meaning he didn’t trust him with this information either. But it raises an interesting question: “Why didn’t Future John trust Derek enough to tell him the truth?”

What if it’s because he knew that Derek would give it up if he were ever tortured? What if he knew that Derek could potentially give up under duress, and reveal something that could cost Future Connor and/or Kyle his life? What if he had orchestrated Derek’s kidnapping and interrogation to test, just how much he could reveal to his biological uncle about their connection, about the need for Kyle to travel back in time to become his father, about everything?

After all, if Future Connor is anything like the present day John, then he probably wanted to believe that his uncle was one of the people, who never give up and never stop fighting. When you put all these pieces of information together, Derek’s predicament in the basement and his “escape” makes a lot more sense.

Derek failed his test. Had he managed to hold on and not reveal the info on Connor’s bunker, John would’ve released him and told him the truth.

Closing:

When we put together all these pieces, we can construct a solid causal chain of narrative events in regard to what happened to Derek and why. Basically, a reprogrammed Resistance Terminator captured Derek and took him with some other men to a Resistance black site. A reprogrammed Cameron then subjected him to psychological or physical torture to test his loyalty and trustworthiness. Sayles monitored Derek throughout and also posed questions to gauge his faith in Connor.

Derek eventually broke, giving up the location of Future John Connor’s bunker to Cameron. The Resistance then let Derek go, abandoning the house and leaving a hatchet behind for him to free himself. To keep up the ruse that this was all Skynet’s doing, the Resistance then evacuated Future Connor’s bunker while arranging it to look like Skynet had attacked it.

In reality, nobody from the bunker died, which is why there were no bodies left behind. Derek arrived at the bunker to find it abandoned and believed himself to be responsible, though he apparently did not confess about having been broken. He then joins up with the rest of the Resistance and learns that Connor has reprogrammed Terminators working for him.

Derek remains unaware, however, of Connor’s ruse. Because Derek had failed his test, Future Connor ultimately chooses not to be forthcoming with him. He doesn’t tell him, where and when he sent Kyle exactly, or what happened to him. Nor does he trust him enough to tell him the truth about their biological connection.

I believe that this is the truth behind Derek’s basement mystery. It is only a theory, of course, and unless Josh Friedman and others who worked on TSCC provide confirmation, we will never know anything for sure.

But the evidence speaks for itself, in my opinion. Some might argue that this way too convoluted to be possible, but I would counter that "Dungeons and Dragons" is a puzzle film and such an elaborate mindgame perfectly fits the genre.

But what about you?

What’s your favorite genre television show with big, unresolved mysteries? Are there any theories you really like? Have you ever watched TSCC? If so, what do you think of it? Please,

Leave a comment

For me, that movie was David Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive.

It is, without a doubt, my favorite movie of all time. As pretentious as this may sound, Mulholland Drive was the first film that made me think about what it meant, fostering active engagement on my part as a viewer instead of over-explaining itself via artificial exposition. Watching it over and over completely changed my perception of what films are and what they were capable of.

It inspired me to diversify the types of films I watched, as well as to analyze them critically. It made me an avid fan of Lynch and a collector of his works. And I believe it to be the work most directly responsible for my becoming a film scholar.

So, here I want to share how Mulholland Drive changed my life.

First Impressions

In late 2003, I was an avid movie-watcher but I’m not sure I would really call myself a cinephile. I loved watching movies, but I didn’t really think much about them. Or rather, I had not seen a movie that inspired me to think while or after watching it. I regularly watched films at that point on cable and DVD. The former wasn’t very good in Russia at the time, but occasionally you could find an interesting title on it.

I also wasn’t really sure of what I wanted to do with my future. I knew I wanted to have something to do with movies professionally, maybe acting, directing, or producing. But I wasn’t certain precisely what that would be, even as the specter of graduating from high school loomed ever closer.

Then, one day, I caught the tail end of a little film called Mulholland Drive on cable. I had never seen anything like it before. Prior to this, the most obscure or independent films I had seen were by Quentin Tarantino, which is to say that I was mostly into escapist entertainment of the mainstream, blockbuster variety.

Mulholland Drive was my entry point to experimental cinema, surrealism, and the works of David Lynch, who remains to this day my favorite film director. Its ending was so bizarre, yet so captivating.

When I asked my parents if they had seen the film, they replied that they had and neither one liked it. My mother stated that it had a lot of plot points, which led absolutely nowhere. My father regarded it as a bunch of nonsense.

But despite their reactions, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Something about it just lingered with me. I bought it on DVD and watched it in its entirety.

I really enjoyed the film even though the final 30–40 minutes really threw me off. Left without a clear understanding of what it was about, I went on the Internet and started reading about it. I found out it had been originally a pilot for television, remade into a feature when the series wasn’t given a green light.

I also bought into the claim by film critic Roger Ebert that Mulholland Drive is “is all dream. There is nothing that is intended to be a waking moment.” For a while, this was how I approached the film — as a collection of dream sequences, without an actual story. I thought it wasn’t meant to be rationalized, simply enjoyed as a bunch of beautiful, yet ultimately disconnected scenes randomly strung together.

Rewatch and Analysis

I soon showed it again to my parents and their opinion of the picture started to improve. They enjoyed individual episodes, such as the comical murder sequence by an incompetent assassin, despite finding it to still be incoherent as a whole.

And then, I showed it to my older brother when I visited him in the summer of 2004.

This was the fourth time I saw it and I believe at this point I had memorized almost every line of dialogue. It was during this rewatch that something just clicked. Suddenly, I could sense the logic behind the movie’s structure and the disparate pieces of its narrative started to fall into place in my head.

The next time I watched it with my parents, I was ready.

First, we saw the film in its entirety, and while I occasionally told mom and dad what to look out for, I didn’t explain anything.

Then, after the movie was over and I had confirmation that they still didn’t get it, I made the case that, in the end, Mulholland Drive was the story of Diane (Naomi Watts), a young woman that came to Hollywood and didn’t really make it big, ending up jealous and possessive of her lover Camilla (Laura Elena Harring), who was more successful and talented. Once her lover decided to leave her, Diane had her killed, only to be driven insane by her guilt, which led her to commit suicide.

I argued that only the last 30 or so minutes of the film took place in reality, while everything before that were the dreams of Diane Selwyn, a reflection of her desires to become a true star, to be the woman that Rita/Camilla loves, to be the one that the director favors. I then rewound the DVD and showed them all the evidence.

I pointed out how the opening POV sequence showing someone going to sleep on a bed with red sheets corresponded to “Diane” waking up much later in the movie, framing everything that had taken place before that as a ‘dream.’

I illustrated how the weird and unsettling “Winkie’s” diner scene seemed to intentionally linger on a discontinuity between two sequential shots, indicating to the viewer that this was a false reality, or more specifically, part of a dream.

I showed them how the emphasis on the ashtray in Diane’s apartment meant that the scene was taking place chronologically earlier than Diane waking up and talking to her neighbor, that we were now seeing flashbacks intercut with the ‘present.’

I replayed the scene between Diane and the assassin Joe, explaining that it heavily implied that Diane had her lover Camilla murdered and apparently the blue key served as proof of her death (and/or would unlock a locker containing it).

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Film Studies

I swear, I reached these conclusions about the film’s actual narrative all by myself, and this led me to realize that films were capable of being more than just entertainment, that they could tell stories through indirect and elliptical means, that they could be ambiguous and open to interpretation.

My parents were very impressed with my analysis.

That I was able to explain the plot refuted any doubt in their minds that a film-related profession could be in my future. In turn, I now had a clear idea of what I wanted to learn in college and what I wanted to do professionally.

Previously, I was interested in filmmaking and acting, but now I wanted to participate in film criticism and analysis. I wanted to write about movies, to study movies, analyze them, engage with them on a deeper level. I knew I wanted to see more films like Mulholland Drive that encouraged or necessitated audience interpretation.

I dreamed of becoming a great film critic.

And so, rather than searching for acting or directing majors, I started looking into film studies. I applied to six or seven universities with such programs, using my analysis of Lynch’s masterpiece in my application essays and writing samples.

I got accepted into three of them, ultimately becoming an undergrad in the Cinema Studies program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. My time there led me to consider becoming a full-on researcher and professor of film and television, ultimately leading to a PHD at Brown University’s department of Modern Culture and Media.

Every time I see Mulholland Drive now, I recall some events from my life that are connected to it. I remember writing my first film essay and making it through the application hell that was my final year in high school. I remember watching hundreds of movies from different genres from across the world, in the process learning global film history, theory and culture.

I remember living in NYC and visiting an amazing, yet now sadly defunct video store, where the butchered TV pilot version of the movie was openly available for rental. I remember meeting screenwriting professor and frequent Lynch collaborator Mary Sweeney at USC to discuss the use of dream visions in Twin Peaks.

In turn, I wonder sometimes about what would’ve happened if I had never caught Mulholland Drive on TV. Would I have still gone into film studies? Would I have still worked as a film critic for publications like Washington Square News and The Daily Trojan? Would I still have written a dissertation about the history of the American film industry? I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it.

My takeaway from all this is that one movie really can change your life. And in so doing, it can become an indelible part of your personal history.

But what about you?

Do you like Mulholland Drive?

Or do you think it’s ‘suckfest,’ as a colleague once described to me? Is there a film that similarly inspired you to think differently about movies, to become more actively engaged when watching? Is there a film that helped make you who you are today? If so, please

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A recurring argument was that Fury Road looked like a much better movie than Furiosa, as it had far less CGI (computer graphic imagery) and/or relied almost entirely on practical special effects (SFX), as opposed to digital visual effects (DVFX). In essence, the new film was being negatively perceived due to the enduring belief that DVFX are fundamentally inferior to SFX in terms of quality. 

Putting aside the fact that FX quality is actually an inherently subjective issue and can really depend on a whole lot of factors, I found this recurring argument to be not only unfair but also downright ignorant. Because the simple fact is that it relies on perpe-tuating the enduring myth that 80-90 percent of the effects in Fury Road were entirely practical and that the film had a minimal use of CGI. 

This is what I will illustrate in the course of this article.

Contents

1. The ‘Fury Road’ Practical FX Myth

2. What Does Miller Actually Say About ‘Fury Road’?

3. At least 74% of the shots in ‘Fury Road’ Used CGI

4. The “No CGI” Marketing Deception

5. ‘Furiosa’ Suffers The Consequences

T​​​he ‘Fury Road’ Practical FX Myth

Since it came out in 2015, Fury Road has been repeatedly praised for having little to no CGI , with innumerable articles and posts by journalists, influencers, social media users, redditors and others using some variation of the claim, ostensibly first made by director George Miller himself, that 80-90 percent of the picture’s special effects were created practically, ie. ‘for real.’ Here are some examples:

“Prior to the film's release, Miller gloated over the fact that 90 percent of the film was shot with practical effects. The compilation above affirms his claim, showing many of the explosive car and motorcycle stunts before CGI or VFX were added.”

• Source: NoFilmSchool, 2016

“Over 80% of the visual effects are practical. The film was shot on digital, and some CGI was used to remove stunt wires, create the Citadel, create the sandstorm, remove Furiosa’s arm, and to enhance the colours in post-production.”

• Source: All the Right Movies, 2024

“Over eighty percent of the effects seen in Mad Max Fury Road are practical effects, including stunts, make-up, and sets, not CGI.”

• Source: Learn Filmmaking, 2020, via @thefilmszone

If the film has 90 percent practical special effects aka SFX, then that would suggest only about 10 percent were DVFX/CGI.

These conclusions are typically accepted at face value, as a basic truth. But while everyone seems to agree that Miller said either over 80 or 90 percent of the effects are practical, nobody can actually point to when, where, and in what context he said it.

And trust me, I’ve looked. The earliest mention I’ve been able to find of this claim is a preview of the film by Business Insider, released (ironically) on April 1, 2015 - about six weeks prior to the film’s theatrical debut in the US:

“It’s hard to believe no one got hurt. Miller claims 90% of the effects are practical.”

Like so many articles that would come after, this one doesn’t provides any direct quotes from Miller himself, nor links to the original source if it’s referring to one.

This raises the possibility that Miller had NEVER actually made this claim at all. Perhaps, he said something else that was misconstrued and transformed, then endlessly repeated by the media until it widely became accepted as fact.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Maybe Miller really did give an actual percentage of what he believes the SFX were in the movie a long time ago. But the absence of direct evidence leads me to believe that this was most likely a media invention. Bolstering this possibility is what Miller regularly reiterates about the film’s FX in the press interviews he’s done for Fury.

What Does Miller Actually Say About ‘Fury Road’?

Look at the many available interviews with Miller in 2014-2016 about Fury Road, and you’ll find that the director repeatedly tries to distinguish Fury Road from big budget movies that rely extensively on the use of green-screen to visualize impossible or physics-defying elements, such as superpowers or aliens.

Boldly proclaiming that Fury Road is “not a green screen movie,” Miller stresses that its real-world setting necessitated having real stunts and practical effects. 

“We also wanted to do this film old school.  It’s not a big CG movie.  There is CG in it, but every stunt you see is real, involving real people, and often involving members of the cast.  That was a big logistical exercise that brings a certain degree of anxiety with it….  It was better than being a green screen movie.  This movie is very real world, very palpable and very visceral, and that’s what we were going for.”

• Source: Collider - August 2014

““We don’t defy the laws of physics,” explains Miller about his resolve to keep as much of the film happening right in front of the camera as possible. “There are no flying humans. There’s no spacecraft. So it’s not a green screen, CG movie. It’s analog compared to digital. You go and crash a car, no matter what simulations you do, you are never going to get the detail of the fragments and the way the sand behaves. It will look fake. Why not do it for real when you can and you’ve got the people who can execute it?””

• Source: Den of Geek - May 12, 2015

“This is a movie that’s real vehicles, and real people and real desert. It had to be old-school - there are no flying humans, it’s not a green screen movie, so we had to shoot it for real. And I think that makes the movie feel very very authentic. 

And… all the action… everything you see on the screen happened. I mean, we did use CG for harnessing - to erase harnesses, to change skies, to erase our tracks and to create a big toxic dust storm and things like that, but for the most part it’s - yeah.”

• Source: VICE - May 17, 2015

“It’s a movie that doesn’t defy the laws of gravity. There’s no flying people… no spacecraft, there’s no alien worlds. So, it’s kinda crazy to do CG… of events that you can do for real. We only use CG to … enhance or help a shot. For instance, erasing safety harnesses, making the sky consistent…We’re asking audiences to immerse themselves into the screen and… you better make it as real as possible. If they detect an artificiality which you often get from CG when it’s only CG, then you sort of fall away from the movie.”

• Source: Digital Spy, Feb 5 2016

Miller never outright denies that CGI was used in the movie but he also tries to clearly downplay the role DVFX played in the construction of the picture.

He stresses that DVFX is subordinate to practical shooting and reality, that it fulfills a supporting role rather than being key to the film’s visual style and on-screen action, and implies that the scope of its usage was rather small. For certain then, he promotes Fury Road as a SFX-first film, culturally elevating it by comparing it with the more ‘artificial,’ green-screen-reliant pictures that have entire sequences of pure CGI.

In this sense, he clearly contributed to the popular yet erroneous cultural perception that the film has virtually no CGI. But of all the things he reiterates over and over, the claim that 80-90% of the FX in the film were practical isn’t one of them.  

At least 74% of the shots in ‘Fury Road’ Used CGI

Now, it’s important to note that even in 2015, there were some interviews and articles that went against the grain, providing a much clearer idea of the role played by DVFX in the making of Fury Road as a whole and its action sequences in particular.

The May 12, 2015 Filmmaker Magazine interview with director of photography John Seale, for example, undermined the notion that Fury Road was a ‘no green screen’ movie, with him stating:

“ There was an enormous amount of green screen. The 40 to 45 percent of the film with the beautiful Charlize Theron and five beautiful girls in the backseat who are all involved in getting that truck to a certain point and back again is done without the truck moving. The visual effects boys built big hydraulics rams and could put the entire semi-trailer tanker onto rams and rock that thing. They could throw you off of the roof if they wanted to, which they nearly did a couple of times on-set!”

May 29, 2015 saw the publication of the elaborate behind-the-scenes piece “A Graphic Tale: the visual effects of Mad Max: Fury Road” by Ian Failes for the website FX Guide, which, in addition to providing specific FX breakdowns of several shots and sequences, interviewed the movie’s VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson.

I highly recommend at least skimming the article, as it paints a very different portrait of the film’s production and, reading between the lines, was actively pushing back against the SFX Narrative promoted by Miller and the media. Its second paragraph directly states that the practical and on-location filming told “only half the story” when it came to the making of the film’s action and landscapes. It then reveals:

“Hundreds of visual effects artists, led by overall visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson, would spend considerable time crafting more than 2000 visual effects shots and helping to transform the exquisite photography into the final film…. ”

As it turns out, the film underwent very elaborate digital VFX and color grading  changes, the majority of which worked to enhance “the largely practical and stunt-based effects” that were filmed by Miller.

The following passages from Jackson are crucial here:

““I’ve been joking recently about how the film has been promoted as being a live action stunt driven film – which it is,” says Jackson. 

“But also how there’s so little CGI in the film. The reality is that there’s 2000 VFX shots in the film. A very large number of those shots are very simple clean-ups and fixes and wire removals and painting out tire tracks from previous shots, but there are a big number of big VFX shots as well.””

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The article additionally delves into the use of green screen, such as in the creation of the ‘Toxic Storm’ sequence. In some cases, entire practically filmed elements were painted out and then replaced with digital doppelgangers. Per the article:

““You shoot the layout and vehicles and gradually everything might get replaced,” he says, “except the camera and the positions of where things were. You may end up with nothing left of what was actually filmed, but the shot still inherits something real from the plate you shot originally.””

What Jackson and the article make evident then is that Fury Road actually had a LOT of CGI quite literally on top of the practical SFX and stunt sequences, which were often enhanced, revised, transformed, augmented, supplanted, etc. through DVFX manipulation. Such changes were, for the most part, microscopic yet their scope was considerably larger than audiences were led to believe.

Much of what Jackson states in the FXGuide article was given additional credence by Julian Mitchell’s interview with Fury Road colorist Eric Whipp in Definition Magazine, which was published on June 8, 2015.*

*Sadly, most of the images from the article are no longer showing up. But the text remains. 

The film’s color grading process entailed using DVFX to modify certain pre-existing recorded elements within the frame, such as the skies and background environments. This was deemed necessary as the film’s on-location shooting resulted in many shots having different looks, often due to differences in weather conditions, and it was necessary for scenes to match. Furthermore, it helped to produce the film’s recognizable exaggerated, color-saturated, graphic images. 

Using CGI in that regard was key to properly color grading and correcting the picture. Tellingly, Whipp describes such changes as ‘minor visual effects.’   

““The beauty of doing that in the grade is that George can change it at any time, he can position the sky, he can switch the sky, we can grade the skies interactively with the scene…. It felt like this was what digital intermediate had been designed for… people don’t usually think of sky replacements in the DI suite or adding lens flares but the technology in the colour suite is getting so good that you can do some of these minor visual effects. I call them minor visual effects because we’re not bringing in CG ele-ments or anything crazy but we can do some basic 2D compositing work. But it makes a huge difference to the image especially if you’re trying to make a really graphic look.””

At the same time, there was direct collaboration with the film’s VFX department to achieve the final look of a given scene. The film was essentially shot with the intent of being elaborately modified via digital technology in post-production to this end.   

““John Seale shot an amazing digital negative to work from, there’s a lot of latitude in it… Then visual effects are enhancing things as well and so the collaboration between visual effects and colour and cinematography. They all go hand in hand. We’re all trying to achieve that graphic frame.””

From this perspective, CGI was intrinsic to the creation of the picture as a whole.

Rather than a minor element, it was as crucial as the shoot itself. Indeed, if one com-pares the number of reported VFX shots (~2000) to the total number of shots in Fury Road (~2700 per Whipp), then CGI is actually present in 74% of the movie!

The “No CGI” Marketing Deception

Altogether, these articles demonstrate that while Fury Road indeed contains numerous practical effects, it is not at all low on DVFX. Rather, DVFX often merged with the SFX and other photographed physical elements into a single unified whole, to the extent that you often don’t realize that CGI was used at all when watching it.

The notion that it’s a CG-light film then is a popular misconception, one that Miller himself initially helped foster in 2014-2015. Over time, however, the director would get more candid about the extent to which the film employed CGI.

In an interview by Kurt Andersen for the Studio 360 Podcast in February 2016, Miller admits when asked if there wasn’t ‘that much computer-generated trickery’:

“There was CG involved in an enormous number of shots, but it was always supportive of the real world stuff… Harnesses, we had a lot of actors in the stunts…. We had to change landscape… So there was quite a deal of visual effects but they were never the principle thing.”

In a 2022 interview with Vulture, when discussing the release of his new CGI-heavy fantasy film 3000 Years of Longing, Miller is even more candid, stating about Fury Road: 

“The world was medieval, in a way, so it had to be grounded, and we had to do as much of it for real. However, there was not one shot in that movie that wasn’t CGI in one way or another. We shot over months, but [the story] was compressed in time over three days. Which meant the skies had to remain consistent, so every shot virtually had a changed sky. If you’re driving vehicles across the desert, you’re doing take after take, you’re doing track after track. You had to erase all but the necessary tracks…. Landscapes you had to change, if there was some greenery in it, and so on, and so on.”

Naturally, one might wonder: if at least 74 percent of the film has CGI and/or is achieved with some degree of DVFX, then why would Miller misleadingly promote the movie as being low-CGI in the first place? 

The answer is simple: because it sells. 

By the time the film came out, audiences had become really invested in the idea of practical FX after years of CGI-dominant spectacle. And so, studios decided to capitalize on this by creating marketing campaigns designed to foster the false impression that their big budget titles were largely, if not entirely, devoid of CGI. 

Journalists then typically pick up these scenarios and run with them uncritically, generating clickbait headlines and spreading misinformation.

If you don’t believe me, then you should watch the amazing four-part YouTube video series “No CGI” Is Really Just Invisible CGI by VFX supervisor Jonas Ussing, who dismantles the ‘No CGI’ marketing deception step-by-step:

1. Part 1

2. Part 2

3. Part 3

4. Part 4

What Ussing makes very clear, among other things, is that contrary to popular belief, there isn’t always a clear distinction between practical and digital effects.

Even films that extensively utilize practical FX in the course of shooting, such as Top Gun Maverick, might then use CGI to tweak, enhance, replace, reference, or otherwise modify the filmed effect during post-production. The end result is a combination of practical and digital but the fact that DVFX were utilized is not evident on-screen, a style of VFX usage that has come to be termed “Invisible VFX.”

“Invisible VFX work ranges widely in scope, purpose and style. Much of it is a matter of problem solving — correcting mistakes and oversights on set. Changes have always been made in the editing room, of course, but as VFX have become cheaper and more plentiful, filmmakers are increasingly relying on computer wizardry to fix errors, make adjustments, and otherwise tune things up.”

• Source: Calum Marsh, New York Times, March 16 2024

Invisible VFX work is often associated with period films and dramas, such as Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), The Power of the Dog (2021), or Ford vs. Ferrari (2019). Often, it can help “accurately represent the world at the time,” as a Foundry article explains.

But based on what Ussing reveals in his videos, I believe that many big budget movies nowadays, such as the Mission Impossible films, are essentially adopting that style in an effort to elevate themselves above those that don’t. When watching the resulting “Invisible FX Blockbusters,” viewers are regularly fooled into thinking that they are watching a film almost entirely without CGI, when in reality the CGI is simply imperceptible and does not draw attention to itself.

The problem is that the marketing campaigns for such works attempt to support the illusion of ‘No CGI’ and so in turn bolster them culturally and commercially by misleading and sometimes outright lying to audiences, while promoting the false notion that somehow practical FX are inherently superior to DVFX/CGI.

And this in (re)shapes the cultural discourse, inspiring more audiences and critics alike to negatively perceive films with instances of obvious, evident DVFX.

Case in point: Furiosa.

‘Furiosa’ Suffers The Consequences

The early reactions to the Furiosa trailer footage on social media platforms like Twitter or sites like Reddit clearly illustrate how pervasive the false “No CGI” and the “Fury Road was 90% practical FX” narratives continue to be. Despite there currently being relatively little information regarding how much Furiosa actually relied on DVFX, or how its elaborate action sequences were made, detractors decided in advance that it must be a lesser picture due to the ‘obviously larger’ CGI quotient.

It doesn’t help that a number of articles from high-profile media publications seem to support the popular cultural legitimation narratives, according to which SFX are inherently better than VFX,  when discussing Furiosa.

Just look at this excerpt from the recent Variety article on the movie:

“And in 2015, a year in which the box office would be dominated by the CGI-ridden “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Jurassic World” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” Miller’s practical-effects-driven “Fury Road” offered something different: a propulsive survival thriller whose ultimate special effect lay in its human-scale stakes… One of the reasons why “Fury Road” was so beloved (and such a nightmare to make) was that 90% of the special effects were performed for real, but “Furiosa” incorporates more CGI.”

Or this bit from Time Magazine:

“Expectations for Furiosa are sky-high after Fury Road won six Oscars and became a cultural phenomenon: its high-octane action scenes, shot largely without CGI, were so original and unrelenting that the movie left audiences dazed.”

Or this review from Forbes:

“Fury Road… was hailed for its commitment to practical stunt work with minimal CGI alteration or augmentation…. In a desert of Marvel CGI overload, Fury Road was an action oasis.

So why does Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga look like Fury Road’s airbrushed plastic cousin? … Through nearly the first hour of the film, CGI dominates the action with its jerky, weightless mayhem. ”

Look, I haven’t seen Furiosa yet. I don’t know if it’s a masterpiece or a disaster. But it really bothers me that even legitimate publications suggest that it’s perfectly fine to base assessments of the film’s ‘quality’ on the amount of CGI it has.* From everything I’ve gathered, the issue isn’t really that the film might have more VFX shots than its predecessor, but that the CGI seen on-screen is more visible and perceptible.  

*If you ask me, this is simply the wrong way to approach and critique movies. Not to mention, it is disrespectful to the work of VFX artists, whose contribution to such major motion pictures is basically being disappeared from the public record.

The mistake, however, is to automatically think that when CGI is noticeable, then it means the visibility is unintentional and thus a sign of low quality. This overlooks the possibility that CGI is meant to intentionally distort and exaggerate what we see on-screen. Indeed, to me the Furiosa trailers suggest a prequel that is less grounded yet more mythic and abstract than Fury, even though the two movies share a great deal of continuity both in terms of story and production.* 

*The script, or at least drafts of it, were written before Fury Road. At one point, it seems the two live-action movies might’ve been shot back-to-back, though I don’t think this has been definitively confirmed. At another point, Furiosa was going to be an anime prequel series or perhaps a movie - the anime part is confirmed but the details are a little confusing to me.

Whatever you might think of Furiosa if you do see it, don’t jump to conclusions about its CGI and SFX, and don’t assume whenever you hear that a big budget movie did everything practically or without resorting to green screen that this is necessarily true. Instead, question the hype, try to look past the narrative. 

And if the CGI you see in a movie is indeed visible and evident, ask yourself:

“Is this intentional? And is the visibility necessarily bad? What is it that makes Invisible VFX preferable to or better than Visible VFX? Are more abstract, fantastic, or exagerrated images that draw attention to themselves inherently worse than grounded, realistic images that do not? And why do CGI and green-screen get such a bad name nowadays anyway?” If you have any thoughts on this, then please

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After seeing the film, I have written more about the use of CGI in Furiosa. I honestly think the film deserves praise for its DVFX, especially considering that it used AI machine learning to help create an imperceptible composite of Alyla Browne’s and Anya Taylor-Joy’s faces.

Click the link above to jump to the AI section or the one below to check out the full article:

Now, I want to start by stating upfront that I kinda hated The Big Bang Theory.

Ok. Perhaps, ‘hate’ is too strong a word, but it is simply not a sitcom that I ever enjoyed watching. Somebody would put it on the telly and I’d struggle to sit through it. And breakout character Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) was a big reason why. Quite simply, he embodies something I despise about old-school network sitcoms: their tendency to generate humor by extensively focusing on the antics of downright despicable, often unsympathetic asshole protagonists.

A genius theoretical physicist, Cooper combined a huge ego with the personality of a manchild, a trait that made him so irritating that I loathed almost every moment he appeared on screen. So, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I really enjoyed watching the early adventures of kid Sheldon (Iain Armitage), who is a 9-year-old child prodigy about to attend high school in Texas when Young Sheldon begins.

He is often smarter than everyone around him, yet also very bad at social interactions. But unlike his adult counterpart, young Sheldon comes off as much more likable and endearing. Partially, I’d say this is because when he acts like a petulant child here, it feels far more appropriate, for he actually is a child.

And despite the fact that he is indeed a genius, he still has to deal with a lot of the stuff that kids his age have, like an overactive imagination, having to live with siblings, and a simple lack of understanding of how the world actually works. So, even if you hated Sheldon on Big Bang Theory, you might just come to like him here.

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This plays into the fact that Young Sheldon has a considerably different tone from its parent series. It is a lot more emotionally grounded than Big Bang Theory and so avoids overly outlandish or petty character behavior just to score cheap jokes.

In turn, it manages to work as a drama in addition to a comedy, and it grows more dramatic over time, particularly in its fifth and sixth seasons.* So, yes, the show is funny but it can also get serious and hit you emotionally in ways you’d not expect. I was particularly amazed at what it pulled off dramatically with Sheldon’s parents, his grandmother Connie (Annie Potts), and his older brother Georgie (Montana Jordan).

*Fittingly, the series also looks and feels different from Big Bang aesthetically, ditching the three-camera sitcom style in favor of a more cinematic format.

Speaking of which, did I mention that this is, despite its title, an ensemble series? All the family members are very-well developed, and get their own respective storylines, allowing them to function as endearing protagonists in their own right.*

*When I began to revisit the series recently with my parents, I was surprised to discover that Connie doesn’t actually appear until the third episode of the series. It seems that she was likely conceived as a recurring character before the writers recognized that she brought an amazing energy to every single second she’s on screen, and so made her a series regular. 

Key to this is the fact that the series still adheres to the classic sitcom format of 22 episodes per season (extenuating circumstances notwithstanding). The writers thus have enough time to give every cast member their due, which also allows Sheldon to even occasionally be more of a guest star in some episodes.*

*Perhaps unsurprisingly, a new spinoff series focusing on Georgie Cooper and his wife Amanda is now in development.

Sheldon’s arrival on Netflix was likely meant to coincide with the show’s return for a seventh and final season on CBS in February 2024. This feels like an appropriate place for the series to end, with Sheldon graduating from college and going to grad school.

Sadly, due to the Writer’s Strike and then the SAG Strike, the final season has been shortened to 14 episodes, which means the series has to move at an accelerated pace on its way to the ending. The story arc about Sheldon and his mother going to Germany for the Summer, for instance, was compressed to just the opening three episodes of S7. This was a tad disappointing, as the show had barely one half-hour to show Sheldon adjusting to his new German teacher and classmates.

*This fits the unfortunate trend of long-running popular series with serialized stories getting abbreviated final seasons.

I hope 14 episodes is enough time for the writers to wrap up everything properly without rushing through storylines or cutting corners. There are a LOT of characters that need to get their due, and not a lot of time left to do it.

In any case, if you haven’t checked it out before, then now is the best time to catch up and maybe give the Young Sheldon finale a nice little ratings boost when it airs on TV.

But what do you think?   

Is Young Sheldon a good series? Is it better or worse than The Big Bang Theory? Anything you’re hoping to see happen in the final season? Please,

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If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, then you may be eligible for a really cool, yet largely under-the-radar student discount for the Hulu and Disney Plus bundle, which reduces the total price of both platforms with ads to $3.99 from $9.99/month.

Read on to learn how to get this special rate, which can’t be signed up for directly.

Table of Contents

1. Disney Plus as a $2 Add-on

2. The $1.99 Hulu Student Deal

3. Limited Time Offer

Disney Plus as a $2 Add-On  

You might be aware that Disney has recently introduced some discounted bundle price options with Hulu, the cheapest of which is the “Duo Bundle”, which gives you “Hulu with ads” and “Disney Plus with ads” for the price of $9.99/month.

One way to get this bundle is to sign up for it directly via either the Disney+ or Hulu interface. But you can also get “Disney Plus with ads” as an ‘add-on’ option to Hulu if you meet the following criteria: you must be billed directly by Hulu, already carry a Hulu subscription, and you must not be already subscribed to Disney Plus or ESPN+.

Meet this criteria, and you can upgrade to get Disney Plus with ads for only an extra two bucks, as visible in your “Manage You Plan” menu on the Hulu interface.

*Eligible subscribers include those who are directly billed by Hulu for a Hulu (With Ads) plan or Hulu (No Ads) plan, and do not have the Disney Bundle, a standalone Disney+ subscription, or the ESPN+ Add-on. 

• Hulu Disney Plus add-on help article

Basically, you save about $6 per month from the regular “Disney Plus with ads” sub-scription rate. How much you pay in total for both platforms thus depends on how much your original Hulu plan costs.

Traditionally, of course, the cheapest possible Hulu plan is the $7.99 “Hulu with ads” plan, meaning that with the add-on, you’d pay $9.99/month, which is equivalent to the ‘duo bundle’ minimum. But, in fact, there’s actually an even cheaper, yet lesser known plan that gives eligible customers access to Hulu with ads for only $1.99/month.

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The $1.99 Hulu Student Deal

Called the ‘Student Discount’ Deal, this plan is available exclusively to college students, be they undergraduates or graduates. When you sign up for it, you’ll have to go through a relatively simple enrollment verification process that will require you to submit evidence that you’re a student at an accredited university.

Once verified, your new rate for Hulu content is locked in until your enrollment ends.

“Student discount offer for Hulu (ad-supported) plan only. $1.99/month so long as student enrollment status remains verified, then $5.99/month or then-current regular price. Offer valid for new and existing Hulu-billed subscribers enrolled at a U.S. Title IV accredited college or university who meet verification qualifications.

Verification performed through SheerID; enrollment information (e.g. first name, last name, college/university name, date of birth) must be shared with SheerID for verification purposes. Automatic re-verification performed annually. Hulu reserves the right to determine eligibility in its sole discretion. Not combinable with any free trial of the Hulu (ad-supported) plan or any other promotional offers or pricing. Any plan switch after redemption of this offer may result in forfeiture of discount pricing.”

• Hulu Student Plan Terms

What nobody at Hulu really tells you though is that you can actually combine the Hulu Student Plan with the “Disney Plus with ads” add-on option, assuming you meet eligibility requirements for them both. This translates to just an extra two dollars on top of your Hulu student subscription price. This means that you’ll pay just $3.99 per month for both Hulu and Disney Plus content for the foreseeable future!*

*Note that you can’t access the Disney Plus content via the Hulu Interface, so you’ll have to go Disney Plus and sign in using your existing Hulu login to see the new material. You will however have access to the Hulu content library from within the Disney Plus platform.   

As far as I know, you can’t do this via a Disney Plus interface sign up (as D+ does NOT have its own Student Deal), but you definitely CAN do so via a Hulu sign-up.

So, go to Hulu, select the Student Discount Plan: you can find a tiny, tiny link at the bottom of the screen on the front page of the interface itself or use the link below.

Get the Hulu Student Deal

Then go to your ‘Manage Your Plan’ menu in Settings, go to “Partner Add-ons” and select ‘Disney Plus with ads’ option. And voila!

Limited Time Offer

Now, I don’t know how long exactly each individual promotion or the ability to combine them like this will last. In fact, from everything I’ve gathered by browsing Reddit, this was not something Disney actually intended to make available to audiences. Rather, it’s just a side effect of the way the Hulu interface and plans work.

So, I doubt it will last too long, especially as Disney is almost certain to discontinue the standalone Hulu application in the future, meaning you’ll be forced to eventually subscribe only through Disney Plus to Hulu content.

But whatever the case is, it’s a very, very good deal right now if you’re a student, especially one in a film, television, or media studies program. 

Hulu has a really good library of television series, especially now that content licensing has come back in a big way, while Disney Plus features a pretty robust movie catalog, not to mention The Simpsons, Star Wars, and MCU properties. 

So, my advice is: take advantage of it while you can!

If you found this article helpful, then spread the word! Share the link with or forward this email to other students who can take advantage of the discount!

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Or spare some change by making a custom contribution to my tip jar to help keep this publication up and running! I really appreciate your support!

Please Contribute

Also, please check out some of my other posts on the subject of streaming to learn more about the current state of the film and television industries.

Anything to add? Did the process not work for you? Please,

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For the most part, I thought Part 2 was great and an improvement on its predecessor in almost every way. Though retaining the beauty and visual prowess of Part 1, the sequel replaced the cold, emotionally subdued performances with lively and engaging ones, while embracing the pulpiness and theatricality its predecessor seemed ashamed of. But once the movie reached its conclusion, I couldn’t help but fixate on one question: “Why was the climactic action sequence of Part 2 so rushed?”

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Contents

1. The Rushed Climax

2. Theories

3. The Lynch Comparison

4. Additional Notes

The Rushed Climax

Allow to me elaborate.

For its first two acts, Dune Part 2 is a very well-paced film. Like its predecessor, it moves gradually but purposefully. It has a slower pace than the traditional summer blockbuster, yet doesn’t really waste any second of screentime. For sure, there are some places here and there where you can potentially sense things have been cut down but nothing that ever really detracts from the experience or immersion.*

*I was particularly surprised that we never really see Paul actually cross the desert, with the film skipping over the resolution of this subplot in an elliptical manner, and am willing to bet a much longer version of the sequence is on the cutting room floor.

But then the third act comes around and the plot starts making huge leaps forward.

Paul takes the Water of Life, almost immediately assumes the role of ‘Lisan Al’Gaib’ and unites millions of Fremen into a single army, then gets the Emperor to come to Arrakis and goes on the offensive. Up to this point, we had seen relatively small-scale skirmishes between the Fremen and the Harkonnens. Now, the story suddenly plunges audiences into a BIG BATTLE to end all battles.

Paul launches (nuclear?) missiles against the Emperor’s ship, then Paul and his Fremen followers ride 3 Massive Sandworms against the Harkonnen and Sardaukar armies. It looks like we’re in for an elaborate, exciting, adrenaline-pumping finale, an all-out war with thousands of soldiers from both sides going up against each other!

But then – we cut back to the Emperor’s throne room.

The first Sardaukar defense line goes out into a smoke-filled hallway, only to vanish. Paul and his Fremen then enter, presumably having dispatched the troops with ease. This makes it clear to the audience that the conflict is over and Paul has won.

This means we only ever witness the beginning of the massive Fremen vs. Sardaukar battle and its conclusion, but the actual meat of it is completely SKIPPED OVER.* I’m pretty sure that anyone who understands film editing and can keep track of the cutting of a picture as it plays, found it quite jarring, much like I did.

*Sure, the movie does cut to the outside and allows us to see some more of the battle later, but it’s really just to showcase the one-on-one duel between Gurney Halleck and Beast Rabban.

Why? Why does Dune 2 spend over two hours building to a massive war for the fate of Arrakis, only to deny us the actual visual pleasure and spectacle of it?

Why does it tease the Sandworms for so long only to then unleash them for like a minute of screentime? Why is its big climactic action set-piece ultimately so rushed and dissatisfying? I don’t know for sure but I can offer three theories.

Theories

A runtime limit

Despite having a runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes, Dune Part 2 feels like it could’ve and perhaps should’ve been longer, especially during that climax. My estimate is that a proper runtime for it, given its scale and scope, would be around 180-190 minutes.

Such a length, however, likely wouldn’t have been accepted by Warner Bros. Discovery, given that this was an expensive tentpole production and the fact that 3-hour movies get less screenings per day than 2.5-hour movies.*

*The Batman (2022) got a 3-hour runtime, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.

So, even if Villeneuve indeed wanted a longer running time for the theatrical cut, he’d likely get pushback from studio executives on the grounds that a 3-hour duration would diminish the film’s total box office gross.

The budget

Not counting the print and advertising expenses, Dune Part 2 has a reported produc-tion cost of $190 million. Though in reality the film probably really cost around $230 million,* it is still cheaper than the past decade’s average summer blockbuster, which typically would have a cost of $250 million and a runtime of about 135-150 minutes. 

*Studios almost always underreport their tentpoles’ budgets nowadays, so one can safely assume it is larger than the official number. 230 is just my estimate based on my knowledge of how much blockbusters cost these days.

The longer a movie runs, the more it tends to cost, especially when it comes to VFX-heavy tentpole films. So, it’s entirely possible that the climactic battle may have been initially longer and more elaborate, but had to be cut down to the bare essentials to save on money.

A deliberate choice

Watching both parts of Dune, one gets the sense that director Denis Villeneuve isn’t all that interested in high-stakes spectacle. Whereas most summer blockbusters nowadays tend to have at least one standout, large-scale action sequence that draws attention to its staging and craft, both Dune films tend to have action scenes that are largely functional. That is, they serve their narrative purpose yet don’t seem overly showy in terms of style or even all that exciting.

From this perspective, Villeneuve may have deliberately rushed through the climax, as he wasn’t all that invested in or comfortable delivering massive, crowd-pleasing action the way James Cameron or Christopher McQuarrie are.

The Lynch Comparison

Whatever the reasons ultimately were for the rushing of Part 2’s action climax, the end result evokes another Dune – specifically, David Lynch’s surreal and incoherent 1984 adaptation, where the final battle sequence lasts about 5-6 minutes and at times comes off as a cliffnotes-style montage (set to admittedly some excellent music).

Now, one cannot know for certain if Lynch would’ve delivered a longer climax had he not been limited to a 2-hour runtime by producer Dino DeLaurentiis. But this is quite likely, given that in terms of storytelling the film as a whole is a rushjob from start to finish, especially in its second half, and Lynch had been famously denied the option of releasing a 3-hour theatrical version during post-production before later being prevented from completing a 4-hour director’s cut for video.*

*Giving further credence to this is the fact that the sequence ends on an out-of-context shot of Paul’s kid sister Alia seemingly in bliss on the battlefield with a crysknife in one hand and a gom jabbar in the other, apparently part of an actual scene or scenes from the book, where she would be running around on the field murdering Sardaukar and Harkonnen soldiers.

In other words, the rushed climax in Lynch’s Dune was a natural byproduct of the need to whittle the movie down to a too-short mandated duration. Having seen it, I thus had the natural expectation that Villeneuve and co. would succeed, where Lynch had not. So, you can imagine how surprised I was that the new Dune ironically also ended with a rushed climax, despite having had over 5 hours to tell the whole story.

Though my personal sense of disappointment was magnified by the fact that this is the second time it has happened cinematically, I wouldn’t say that this ruins the film as a whole. Dune Part 2 is simply is too well made to be undone by its climax.

And it helps that although the big climactic setpiece is a disappointment, the film still nails the smaller, more personal action sequences. Paul and Chani’s guerilla attack on the Harkonnen spice harvester, for instance, is a great example, as is the final one-on-one knife fight between Paul and Feyd-Rautha, which is carefully and methodically staged, as well as receives the breathing room that the assault on the Emperor’s ship lacked, partially making up for the disappointment of the action preceding it.

Indeed, if this fight weren’t as well as executed as it was, I don’t think there would be nearly as many people coming of Part 2 ready to declare it a masterpiece. In my opinion, Part 2 doesn’t deserve that accolade but it is nonetheless a massive cinematic achievement. I just wish it hadn’t stumbled a little towards the end there.

Thus, I hope by the time Villeneuve gets around to making Dune 3, he will have grown more comfortable with making climactic large-scale action setpieces.

His saga thus far works incredibly well on an artistic or formal level. Now, it’s time to amp up the entertainment level…

Additional notes

• Overall, I’m really happy that Part 1 and Part 2 were made separately from one another, rather than back-to-back. Villeneuve clearly assessed what worked and didn’t work in Part 1, using the feedback from that to make Part 2 better.

• I’m quite certain that one thing the director realized is that the dialogue in the first movie was sometimes a wee bit indecipherable and so ensured that Part 2 had a clearer sound mix. At the very least, I never once struggled to understand Timothee Chalamet or Rebecca Ferguson here, even in those instances when the characters are whispering their lines.

• I love Stilgar (Javier Bardem) in this film. He is a laugh riot and I am convinced that when the film comes out on video, somebody will make a supercut of all the times he says “Lisan Al’Gaib.”

• Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), as written and portrayed as a murderous larger-than-life psychopath, is the biggest evidence of Part 2’s tonal shift. He simply could not exist in the more grounded and tonally subdued reality of Part 1.

• Lynch overall wins out when it comes to the portrayal of the Harkonnens though. He treats them not so much as characters but embodiments of human vice and never shies away from the operatic aspects of the source material. The death of the Baron in Lynch’s version is grand and over-the-top, while in Villeneuve’s it is swift and ignominious.

• One of the difficulties with the source material is that the heroes and villains almost never share any scenes together. Feyd and Paul don’t meet until the end and so have little opportunity to truly develop an antagonistic relationship before they face off. (Though I like the ‘cousin’ dialog.)

• I do wonder if in a few years, we will get an extended version of Villeneuve’s Dune trilogy, maybe as a TV miniseries a la The Godfather Saga, despite the director’s claims he will never put out the deleted footage. In my opinion, given the amount of cultural penetration the new Dune films are having, there will simply be too much demand for the cut scenes to remain unreleased at a certain point.

• If an extended cut does indeed happen, I hope that: a) the climax of Part 2 will be lengthened and given enough time to play out; b) the cut subplot with Thufir Hawat will be restored.

But what do you think?   

Did “Dune Part 2” provide a satisfying action climax for you?

Did you also find the film a bit too short or somewhat rushed? Or was it the perfect length for what it was trying to do? Can Villeneuve pull of a Christopher Nolan-esque improvement when it comes to directing action? What are your thoughts on the adaptations? Would you like it if he ever made an extended cut or released the deleted scenes? Please,

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But it happened anyway: after 17 or so weeks of regularly publishing without interruption, I was forced to skip last week.

And, unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be able to regularly post over the next three months either due to a confluence of unexpected real-life events. Thinking about it, I am reminded of “What He Beheld,” the excellent first season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was all about how the best laid plans go awry.*

*No, nothing blew up in my case. But the status quo has been distrupted.

From now till the end of April then, there could be some potentially big gaps in the publication schedule, ones that I’d prefer to avoid.

So, I’d like to ask my fellow Substackers: would you be interested in possibly publishing a guest post here on pop culture, film revision, television, etc.? I’m open to different topics and I’d be largely hands off as an editor. And though T.V. doesn’t have that many subscribers, it could still potentially introduce you to a new audience.

If so, then please send me a pitch by responding to this via email or…

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Best,

Mikhail

this is going to be an uncharacteristically short post, where I mostly preview some stuff I’ve been working on that is going to come later.

Part 1: Little Things

So, first off, I want to mention that I’ve successfully completed a guest post for another Substack that I believe should come out later this week, likely on Thursday. Whenever it happens, please expect to see an email cross-post of the article in your inbox. This is going to be a substantial post (what I like to internally refer to as a ‘tentpole’) of about 5,000 words and I believe will likely be very interesting for those of you who like to watch television and/or read Tolkien.

I have a number of other posts that are in various states of completion and should appear throughout the month on Tuesdays, which I’m intending to be the regular publication day going forward. But I also hope to possibly do another guest post every once in a while, and those might come out on a different day than I usually publish. 

Next, I want to talk about something funny I realized about Twitter/X. 

You might’ve heard that Twitter had earlier in 2023 started blocking Substack article links. If I recall correctly, early on, links were blocked outright. Now, however, it’s more that the articles don’t get embedded links (with a social media featured preview image). This is why, as I understand it, one reason Substack started generating its own preview images for posts when they are completed.

Well, I’ve just discovered that apparently a Substack article actually shows up as any other linked article on Twitter as long as you have a custom domain. I don’t know how well publicized or well known this fact is, but I have confirmed it with some other writers, and it was a real surprise to me.

Basically, as long as the term ‘substack.com’ doesn’t show up in your publication’s address, your articles qualify for the now-standard (though admittedly downgraded) Twitter/X external link embedding preview image. So, if you are a Substack author on the fence about switching to a custom domain, this might be a good reason to. 

I personally am not going to, as I don’t really want to deal with the hassles of maintaining a custom domain and I don’t think I’m ever going to get a huge Twitter following. I sadly missed out on the days when Twitter was truly accessible (pre-enshittification) and its algorithms actually worked in your favor, allowing you to build a following that would actually receive your tweets.

Part 2: Layout Issues

Finally, I want to summarize some frustrations I’ve had with Substack’s interface changes that have solidified in the past week. See, back in May 2023, the platform introduced an interface change that allowed for new layouts for publications. This created somewhat more flexibility in designing your publication’s homepage. But I also feel it was a step down quality-wise from what Substack pages used to be.

I liked the overall page design/interface that was there at the beginning of 2022, where you could have your posts appear like a magazine but nothing was substantially different from what came before. The images remained the same size and shape. Meanwhile, each post had some basic stats always appearing next to it, such as the number of likes and comments.

In the new standard layout, the stats vanished. Yes, they would re-appear if you highlighted a given post with the cursor but they would otherwise be gone. This meant that neither the owner nor the visitor any longer would have a shorthand for how well a given page was doing, or how popular it was.

For a comparison, see the preceding two images of the homepage from James Tynion IV’s. I used them as this was the only Substack, the 2022 front page image of which I could find. I don’t have one of my own, sadly.

I really wanted the stats back. I complained about that to Substack. And if I recall correctly, they did bring back permanent stats for a little bit. But then they removed them again. For me though, the bigger damage was done to the images.

I had previously learned to tailor my screencaps to the Substack standard, making them perfect for appearing both on the platform itself and as embedded links elsewhere. This was especially the case with my “SERIALS” section, where I used images to both list the name of a given TV show’s episode and a Grade of it. 

Here’s an excerpt from my complaint from Notes on May 26:

So, I’m pretty sure Substack covertly rearranged the individual newsletter section menus, which kinda sucks. For one thing, these submenus no longer show the ‘stats‘ (eg. likes, comments, etc.) on the page and the images have now been resized in a way that throws off their formatting (left image). Look, Substack Writers , I specifically tailored my images towards the squarish shape that used to be standard, esp. so that they could have a standard text layout over the image. For instance, my episodic TV reviews have episode names and Grades, which are now cut off by the new format….

And here’s a couple of screencaps to illustrate how different the two formats look:

As my letter points out, I discovered that one way to work around this was to use TAGS to re-list my episodic reviews. So, I created new tag pages for them and essentially re-created the classic Section Menus. And all was well.

Until about last week, when I discovered that Substack had now changed up the TAG menu format as well, making my effort for naught.*

*Speaking of which, I recommend using tags. They’re great. 

Here’s an excerpt from my Note on January 2:

“I should’ve figured it wouldn’t last forever…. I thought I’d found a workaround by using the TAG feature to arrange my posts as opposed to the ‘section‘ feature. Tagged posts were appearing on pages in the classic format, with classic image dimensions and full stats (likes, comments, etc.). Today, I discovered that Substack changed the Tagged Pages to display in the SAME format as the Sections. Again, my Episodic Review Posts suffer.”

As you can imagine, I was pretty unhappy there for a little bit. But then I thought about it and realized that the constraints could actually foster my creativity. So, I decided to take this up as another challenge and started working on my own custom menu page for the episodic reviews. It ain’t gonna be perfect but it will be better than the alternative, imo. I have finished my episodic review image template and will be uploading the new menu pages some time over the course of this month.

What follows is a sample of what a graded review preview image should look like.* 

*Substack sadly doesn’t let you add hyperlinks to images themselves. But thankfully the captions are not restricted. EDIT: As it turned out, I was wrong, you CAN hyperlink images by highlighting them and clicking the “Link” icon in the upper toolbar of the post. This is simply not very evident. Doing this, I created an index of my TSCC reviews.

Do I wish that Substack hadn’t done this? Yes, I do. Honestly, I feel the platform changes its interface a bit too much and is maybe a little too concerned with staying ‘up-to-date’ with the latest in phone and app design trends. I don’t think this is good for the writers, who get used to working within the parameters of the interface, only to get the rug pulled out of them. It happens way too quickly.

But at this point, I can only adapt and roll with the punches. Just hoping the current interface stays stable for a little while. 

Since it’s the end of the year, I wanted to talk a little bit about my newsletter’s prog-ress, highlight some of my best/favorite posts, and talk briefly about Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (dir. Chris Columbus, 1992), which I had just rewatched.

T.V. Newsletter Updates

I like to think that, although Textual Variations launched back in March 2021, it really started in July 2022. The first year plus change was a period when I didn’t really know what I was doing and getting the hang of how Substack worked. My posts were infrequent and irregular, and I was still figuring out what my newsletter’s relation was to my output on Medium. 

I changed up my approach in July 2022, scheduling a bunch of weekly posts in advance, to regularly post new content. Sadly, despite my having a backlog, I didn’t manage to meet my initial goal of maintaining weekly posts for a whole year, eventually leading to some sizable intervals between articles.

Nonetheless, I’d say 2023 was a real breakout year for me. Over the course of it, I’ve learned to write faster, to manage my schedule better as well as to be more flexible with it. I discovered how to get people to engage more with my writing and made some good friends here, who have helped me build my confidence as a writer and allowed my work to gain greater visibility. And finally, I developed a better overall sense of what kinds of articles work best for my publication.*

*This is one reason my CUTS series still hasn’t returned. I plan to relaunch it at some point in the future, but probably not until the latter half of 2024 at the earliest. 

The past four months in particular have been some of my most productive and creatively satisfying. And I hope to continue my streak into 2024, not taking any real breaks until the Summer. Until that point, I’m going to try to keep up the weekly posts, most of which should come out on Tuesdays.

With that out of the way, here is a list of what I consider some of my best work in 2023.

My Best Posts of 2023

The Film and Television Newsletter Catalogs

This was made from a desire to provide a directory to the numerous film and television Substacks available here on the platform. Quite simply, there was no directory like this, and I thought it would be great if there were. It is one of my most popular posts, and I keep updating it as I find more and more interesting newsletters to add. And man, there are a LOT of those here. 

Thank you to everyone who commented on it. I didn’t know how people would receive it, but it looks like most were happy to see their publication pop up here. 

I’m sad though that itself still doesn’t offer ‘Film’ and ‘TV’ as separate categories on its “Explore” Tab. I mean, ‘Culture,’ ‘Literature’ and ‘Fiction’ all have their own sections. But nothing for Film or Television, even though there are over a hundred publications about those topics on here.

How The Others Hinder Martin’s Progress on 'Winds of Winter'

This is a post I’d been thinking about since around 2019. It is the first of what I consider my ‘tentpole’ articles - long, extensively researched posts meant to dive very deeply into a topic few others have looked into and provide an original argument.

I’ve changed its title multiple times as until recently I couldn’t find one that best captured what this piece is about, which is the idea that George R.R. Martin still hasn’t finished the sixth book in his series, as he struggles with the contradictions of writing for the supernatural beings known as ‘The Others.’

You might say I wrote it for my parents, who like myself, are avid fans of both the ASOIAF books and the Game of Thrones television series.

Apple TV Lets You Physically Save your Digital Film Library

This is a revised version of one of an older piece from 2021 that I had tried to publish here and then pulled as it wasn’t really getting much traction. After I changed the title and rewrote it somewhat, it’s become one of my top performers on Google.

My main intention was to talk about the fact that Apple TV is actually a really good TVOD platform, in part because it allowed you to actually download copies of your purchased films and TV episodes. Video critics continue to talk all about physical formats like Blu-Ray, but it’s sad how Digital Retailers like Apple don’t get discussed. 

Emotional Realism vs. Plot Holes in Film and TV

This started out as a section in a Matrix Retrospective essay that I was writing about the first movie’s narrative and why it works as well as it does, despite having some blatant plot holes. (That became an essay I published on Medium about the powers of the Agents.) Eventually, I realized that it deserved its own article, and expanded it, allowing me to discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs among other works.

I’m really proud of this piece and the enthusiastic reception it has received, especially from other writers here on Substack.

A Wide-Ranging interview with Joseph Mallozzi

This was my very first interview for this newsletter! I was really, really nervous about reaching out to a showrunner on social media and was over the moon when he agreed to talk about one of my favorite series. Twitter may be running on fumes at this point, but it can still be useful! I hope to conduct more such retrospective Q&As like this in the future. Hope to find some showrunners, writers, or directors interested in discussing the evolution of ongoing screen narratives.

If you are enjoying this post so far, then please consider signing up to support my work and receive my posts via email.

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Why Removed HBO Max Originals Return in Other Formats

Though I’m sad it hasn’t quite gotten the traction I hoped, I am very happy with how this tentpole article turned out following the vast amount of research I conducted. In large part, it was my reaction to the oft-repeated myth that when platforms like HBO Max removed their Streaming Originals, they were effectively erasing their works from existence or committing an act equivalent to burning film negatives.

I wanted to show that the reality was much more complicated, and works that get pulled actually have a good chance of coming back elsewhere. 

How Neo’s Character Arc Reveals The Matrix Superpower System

This was another post that began as a section before growing into a full essay. I was originally going to include in a very long piece about The Matrix Reloaded but realized I needed to first delve into the intricacies of the first movie and explain why Neo actually becomes The One at the end of it. 

I think it’s by far my deepest dive into one of my favorite movies. And though it stands on its own, it helps set up things that will arrive in the future.

How Slashfilm Plagiarized My Original Shymalan Article

This was a post that came from a very personal place.

I had wanted to open up about the plagiarism of one my first articles for over a year but I could never bring myself to do it until recently. It hasn’t impacted the copycat piece produced by Slashfilm but at least my truth is out there now. 

I thank Harry Brewis for really opening the door that allowed it to happen. And I thank all of you that have responded to it and helped spread the word about it.

What to Expect in 2024

A lot of cool stuff is coming in the next few months. I’m planning on doing some guest posts here and there, while also keeping up the weekly postings here on T.V., so there shouldn’t be any disruptions to the regular schedule. One thing I’m really looking forward to is to finish up a very cool article on the post-production shenanigans of the unfairly maligned superhero movie Morbius and have it out at the end of January. 

And hopefully in the first quarter, I will have finally completed an extensive deep dive article into The Matrix Reloaded that I’ve been meaning to write for almost 20 years. It’s something I’ve been building to with my Matrix articles and I look forward to finally paying off the setups.

There might be some Godzilla stuff in the works as well - at one point I hoped to discuss what happened to Godzilla vs. Kong but for one reason or another never managed to really get that off the ground. There’s a lot of stuff I want to say now about King of the Monsters, the new Minus One movie that came out recently, and the good-to-great Apple TV+ series Monarch. We’ll see what happens.

In any case, I hope to maintain the level of quality I’ve managed to achieve in the past four months or so, and with that, hit my next goal of 1000 subscribers. 

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!

Funny thing happened: I rewatched Home Alone 2 this Christmas Eve, and was surprised to see that it wasn’t that bad. Really, I think over the years, despite liking it as a kid, I became convinced through all the negative reviews and discourses that Lost in New York was a terrible rehash of the now-classic first film.

And yes, to a considerable extent, it IS a retread of the first movie, especially in the beginning and then the third act, where the kid lures the Wet/Sticky Bandits into a booby-trapped NYC building. And yes, you have to get through a LOT of narrative contrivances to have Kevin McAllister arrive all by himself to New York City. 

But - there’s a whole lot here to actually enjoy. 

The middle of the movie where Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) explores NYC and has to repeatedly outsmart the staff of The Plaza hotel, lead by Tim Curry, to rent an expensive room, where he can fill up on junkfood and goof off, is solid gold.*

*Also, just want to say that when I first saw it as a five-year-old kid, Kevin’s New York adventure was like an introduction to a different world.

I was really surprised to discover that this was the Home Alone movie that originated the now-unforgettable quote “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal! And a Happy New Year!” The fake noir movie gag here is already great. But it gets even greater when Kevin later uses the movie to scare the staff into thinking there’s an actual madman in the hotel with a machine gun. Despite the sheer ridiculousness of it, it works!

The film peaks at the point where Kevin leaves the Plaza sadly and never recaptures that energy. But overall, it ain’t that bad. So, if you’re looking for a movie to watch during the Holidays, then check out Lost in New York, ya filthy animals!  

Also, if you’re looking for a laugh, take a look at some funny videos called Home Alone with Blood by Bunni Walker (fka BitMassive), which remixes footage from the two films to show what would happen to Harry and Marv if the movies actually ascribed to the laws of physics.

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But what do you think?

What are your favorite posts from Textual Variations? Any thoughts on Home Alone or its sequel? Any cool movies you’d recommend seeing for the Holidays?

Please, leave a comment!

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By discussing Slashfilm’s act of plagiarism, I intend to get the copycat article either taken down or amended to give me proper credit. In the process, I hope to bring attention to how damaging widespread plagiarism of pop culture writing can be. 

Contents

1. Originality and Visibility

2. Slashfilm Raises More Questions than Answers

3. Imitation and Anger

4. Content Mills and Mass (Re-)Production

5. The Decline of Film Blogging

Originality and Visibility

On 17 October 2021, I published “On the Unseen Alternate Endings of Unbreakable and Glass” here on Textual Variations. I wrote it, as I am a big fan of Shyamalan, and realized nobody else had ever really talked about the evidence pointing to Unbreakable having an alternate ending, nor discussed in-depth the specifics of the original ending to its sequel, Glass. Both alternate endings were unreleased and unavailable for public consumption, yet evidence of their existence was definitely out there - in interviews, script drafts, and leaks dispersed across the web. 

So, here was an opportunity to write something unique and original about two of the best movies made by one of my favorite filmmakers. I had only about 20 subscribers at this point, so naturally very few people read it. But it has over time become a relatively high-performing post for my newsletter. Its popularity may wax and wane but it still brings in new views on the regular, in particular thanks to Google.

Now, I am not the type of writer that has a strong social media presence. And though I’ve tried my best to grow it when I decided to write professionally for the web, I started doing that rather late into the game, after Twitter and Facebook had already undergone what Cory Doctorow describes as ‘enshittification.’

Consequently, these platforms rarely manage to substantially increase my work’s visibility. And so, I’ve become heavily reliant on good SEO practices and Google Search to get my articles discovered by new readers. I can’t say that this always translates to new subscribers, but it certainly helps grow my site’s overall footprint and so motivates me to keep at it.

As I learned how to make SEO work for me, I started checking to see where my articles show up on Google and how well they are doing.

Do they appear at the top of the first page? (Or rather, the feed, now that Google has completely removed pagination from searches.) Do the titles display correctly? What are the keywords that bring them up the most? 

Slashfilm Raises More Questions than Answers

In September 2022, almost a year after initially publishing my essay, I decided to do a google-search for ‘Unbreakable alternate ending,’ and was happy to see my article pop up as the top result. But below it, to my surprise, there appeared another article courtesy of the popular film blog Slashfilm, that apparently tackled the same subject called “The Original Ending to Unbreakable Left More Questions than Answers.”

The post was dated December 6, 2021. This means it came out about six weeks after my own. Curious about the timing, I clicked on it and was shocked to see that it had several peculiar similarities with the first, Unbreakable-focused half of my article. 

To begin with, much like my post, the opening passage of the Slashfilm article sets up the idea that, unlike the finished film, an earlier draft of the script did not have freeze frames with text inserts. It then goes on to cite the same specific passage from a 2015 Shyamalan interview by Creative Screenwriting to discuss how differently the script concluded and speculate about why Shyamalan changed the ending.

I argued that the change was likely made to provide the picture with more closure, as its scripted ending was basically a cliffhanger that left the fate of main character Elijah Price unresolved. The Slashfilm article reaches a similar conclusion about Shyamalan not wanting to leave the viewers with “more questions than answers.”

It then moves on to use the exact same Nina Jacobson quote from Entertainment Weekly. My article used the quote to support the claim that the original filmed ending was likely changed in response to test screenings and studio pressure. By contrast, the Slashfilm article used it to speculate, as to whether or not there was some other ending for the film that wasn’t filmed, linking it to another quote from the same source.

Though author Sandy Schaefer did not directly copy my text from the first half of the article, they paraphrased its central argument that Unbreakable clearly had a different, much more ambiguous ending in its screenplay from the final film, replicated its overall structure and then used the exact same sources as well as the exact same quotes from those sources to prove their claims.

In fact, I suspect that Schaefer may have initially copied the Unbreakable half of my article entirely, then just removed all my text, while leaving the citations intact. Whatever the case is, they never credited me or my article for the “inspiration.” (And no, I’m not entertaining the possibility that this was all just a big coincidence.)

I immediately created a side-by-side comparison of the similar passages in my article and Schaefer’s before sending an email to the staff of Slashfilm (staff@slashfilm.com), where I demanded that the article be either pulled from the site or amended to include clear and direct attribution of my article.

I referenced the fact that the Slashfilm website states in its policies:

“We take great pains to make sure we trace facts and information back to their original sources as often as possible, and include links to those primary and (if necessary) secondary sources for full transparency. If we can't support an assertion, we don't assert it.”

They never got back to me. 

Several months later, after realizing that there was a /Film Newsletter run by the site’s editor , I posted a comment on one his Substack posts.

There was also no response.

As Evangelista’s newsletters have practically no comments whatsoever, I’m pretty sure Chris saw mine but decided to ignore it. Perhaps in both instances, responding was thought to be unnecessary, as I am not the ‘original’ source of the quotes that were copied by Schaefer. But I don’t really know.

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Imitation and Anger

In any case, it seemed pretty clear that Slashfilm was not going to respond to me unless I did something public to get their attention. And I couldn’t really bring myself to do anything public at all at the time. In part, this was because I was afraid to potentially stir things up online with a film blog that reportedly pulls in something like “25 million people around the globe every month,” according to the official site.

So I made no more efforts to try to contact them.

I convinced myself that it was really no big deal, that I should be flattered that my work was worthy of being plagiarized, that talking about it publicly wasn’t worth the trouble, that I probably wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything anyway.

And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder: “How many views is Slashfilm getting from the article ‘inspired’ by my article? How many potential subscribers am I missing out on as a result? How many other people did Schaefer or Slashfilm similarly take ‘inspiration’ from without giving credit?”

I kept trying to forget about all this and move forward.

But the thoughts would eventually come back. Because, for a small, independent publication like mine, every view and click matters. 

So, as I watched Brewis’ video, I came to realize that, even though I was indeed a little flattered that my article was found worthy of imitation, I was also angry.

I was angry that when my article popped up in response to an engaging search query like “Unbreakable ending,” Schaefer’s weak imitation appeared as one of the first results. I was angry that Slashfilm has not done anything at all to address the issue, and not even bothered to reply to me about it. I was angry that someone could do this to my work without any consequence. And so, I had to talk about it.

Because it’s simply not fair. It is unethical.

The fact is, I shouldn’t have to tell Slashfilm about any of this. I shouldn’t need to email or inform them about their SEO editor ripping off my work. It is their job to make sure things like this do not happen, which leads me to believe they know this happens but are not willing to do anything about it. And giving credence to this is the fact that the Slashfilm of today resembles less a film blog, than a content mill.

Content Mills and Mass (Re-)Production

Content mills are web companies whose main goal is to produce as much content as possible as fast as possible. Typically, this content appears in the form of cheap, low-quality, yet clickable blog posts, articles and videos that maximize ad revenue. It’s very much about quantity over quality. The more you produce, the more money you stand to make (though the pay for writers reportedly sucks).

According to writer Chelle Stein, intrinsic to content mills is the creation of “content that is going to rank in search engines.” The author additionally states that plagiarism constitutes “...a major problem with content mills because these writers are typically not experts in their field, so they simply search in Google and then rewrite what is already there.”1

This fits with Brewis’ argument in his video essay that a primary motive for YouTube plagiarists is to make money, an action enabled by the industrialization of internet video production and the rise of YouTube Content Mills. He points to how a content mill’s massive, low-quality approach to production “dovetails very nicely with ripping people off, if not outright plagiarism.” (1:06:42) In other words, faced with the need to keep up the rampant pace of production required by a content mill, employees are bound to start taking from, imitating, and outright copying other people’s works.

Though focusing on YouTube, his video directly uses Screenrant, a pop culture article content mill that predominantly focuses on text, as an example. Occasionally, there may be an interesting article or original interview on the site, but most of what it puts out is easy, low-quality content specifically designed to generate a quick bit of cash. 

According to their linked-in page, Sandy Schaefer had spent 10.5 years working at Screenrant (and a little over a year at Comic Book Resources) prior to becoming ‘SEO News Writer’ for Slashfilm in November 2021.

So, they clearly gained lots of experience with content farming at a site that has already been proven to have engaged in blatant plagiarism. This, alongside the fact that their copycat article clearly did not alert the Google Duplicate Content police, evinces that Schaefer is really good at hiding the fact that they can take another person’s work and make just enough ‘adjustments’ to pass it off as their own. 

The Decline of Film Blogging

Once a reputable film blog that was listed as one of the best blogs in 2009 by Time Magazine, Slashfilm today very much looks and acts a lot like Screenrant. What it lacks in quality, it makes up for in sheer volume by inundating the web on a daily basis with short, facile, film and TV-related articles that can rank on Google.*

*Sure, that’s not all that the site puts out now. But the good, substantial material now seems to be fewer and farther between.

So, it’s only natural that the company would condone its writer plagiarizing other people’s work. This is key to their mass production and thus helps them profit!

And if a writer for Slashfilm ripped me off, it’s almost certain that they’ve ripped off other independent writers that are trying to put original analytical articles and essays about film and television out into the world.

I see many such writers right here on Substack, creators who are trying to grow their newsletters, who are already struggling to find audiences amidst ever-changing social media algorithms and the looming threat of A.I. 

The enabling of plagiarism by and within publications like Slashfilm and Screenrant is a threat to original critical writing and could very well prevent ripped off creators from deserved success, in turn annulling their ability to produce more quality work.*

*I mean, it’s hard enough already to produce original writing that gets discovered without some plagiarist flooding Google with lesser copies of your work. 

I believe this issue requires serious attention, for it is symptomatic of a larger decline in the quality of mainstream pop culture writing sites that, imo, is happening across the board. Blogs and publications that used to regularly offer good and unique writing nowadays seem to be increasingly dependent on clickbait-y, mass-produced content, like needless ‘ending explained’ or ‘best order of viewing for [insert franchise]’ posts.*

*Is it really a wonder why so many established film and TV commentators from such sites have migrated to platforms like Medium, Ghost, Patreon, and Substack?

It’s entirely possible that more and more film sites will reach the stage where they resort to the same practices as Slashfilm, perhaps as a means to keep the lights on.

And that is scary.

Look, I don’t know the future and I don’t know if there’s a way to fix such issues. 

But I do know that if you’re going to make a cheap, SEO-gaming content mill post that mostly draws on another person’s work for its substance and offers little of anything that’s actually unique, you at the very least owe it to your sources to give them the credit they deserve.

Please spread the word! Help me get credit for my work and/or get the Slashfilm post taken down by sharing or cross-posting this article! 

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Also, what about you?

Have you ever had your work or ideas stolen? Have you ever tried to fight back? Is imitation without attribution at all flattering?

Do you agree that mainstream film sites and blogs are indeed declining? Please,

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Unlike the majority of superhero narratives, however, The Matrix establishes a logical system for how and why its characters are able to develop superpowers. This power system is key to the picture’s central ideas and themes, and is directly intertwined with Neo’s character arc. Understanding how Neo changes emotionally as a person over the course of the film is thus intrinsic to understanding how superpowers and in turn the concept of the One actually work in the Matrix universe.

To illustrate all this, I will show how the film establishes its superpower system, how it builds up the concept of The One, and links all this together through Neo’s character arc. In the process, I hope to shed new light on what The One was originally intended to be and clear up misconceptions perpetuated by the Matrix sequels.*

*Please note that this article will focus on the human characters that exhibit superpowers and will not discuss the Agents, to whom the system does not actually apply.

Contents

1. The Trinity Chase: Superpowers and Enigmas

2. Defining The One

3. The Oblivious Mr. Anderson: Neo’s Emotional Arc

4. The Questions of the One

5. Freeing Neo’s Mind

6. Redpills

7. There is No Spoon: Potentials

8. Belief and Superpowers

9. Taking Charge: Neo Becomes a Believer

10. Being the One is Like Being in Love

11. A World Where Anything is Possible

The Trinity Chase: Superpowers and Enigmas

The Matrix revolves almost entirely around the character of Thomas Anderson/Neo (Keanu Reeves). In terms of plot, we could summarize it this way: Neo - an office drone by day, hacker by night - comes in contact with the mysterious terrorist Morpheus, who reveals to him that he lives inside a computer simulation called “The Matrix” and claims that Neo is really ‘The One,’ a God-like reality warper prophesied to free mankind and destroy The Matrix. After undergoing various trials and tribulations, Neo becomes The One and embraces his destiny.

Even before introducing Neo, however, the film establishes for viewers the fact that superpowers exist in its world. In the opening prologue sequence, which I like to call “the Trinity Chase,” we see Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) seemingly break the laws of physics, such as by jumping impossibly long distances between buildings, running up walls in defiance of gravity, performing superhuman feats of strength, and surviving what should arguably be fatal falls.

Clearly, her feats – and those of the Agents pursuing her – are not normal, a fact underlined by one of the police officers exclaiming “That is not possible!”

Naturally, what we see here raises many questions for the audience, such as: “What sort of reality is this? How is what Trinity did possible? Is this a superhero movie?”The use of superpowers here is meant to communicate to us that something here is off, something is abnormal about the setting. It piques our interest with these power-related narrative enigmas, promising that things will be explained later on.

A less eyecatching/foregrounded detail is the fact that the opening scene also includes the very first mention of the term “The One,” even as its true significance is not yet apparent to viewers. During phone conversation between Trinity and Cypher, where latter cryptically states when discussing Neo, whom Trinity is surveilling:

“Morpheus believes he is the one.”

All we know by the time the sequence ends is that some individual named Neo is important to both Trinity and the Agents, but we don’t yet know how or why.

Defining The One

The second time there is mention of “The One” is when Morpheus tells Neo over the phone following his arrest by the Agents right before their meeting:

“You're the One, Neo. You see, you may have spent the last few years looking for me, but I've spent most of my life looking for you.”

Taken together with the first instance, this cryptic reference means to similarly intrigue viewers and raise questions, such as: “who or what is The One? What does being ‘The One’ actually mean? Why is ‘The One’ important?”It’s not until after Neo is unplugged from the Matrix and learns the full truth about the system that Morpheus explains to him who ‘The One’ is via an extended expository monologue:

“When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth : 'As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free.' After he died, the Oracle prophesied his return, and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people.

That is why there are those of us who have spent our entire lives searching the Matrix looking for him. I did what I did because… I believe that search is over.”

The monologue establishes that Morpheus and his crew are essentially modern-day zealots on a crusade to find God. Now, Morpheus never uses the term “God” in reference to The One. He also claims that the First One died, which suggests that the First One wasn’t immortal.* And yet, there can be little doubt that the description of “The One” is basically that of God with a capital G: a being with the power to do whatever he wants to the system, capable of bending the fabric of reality to his will.

*This, of course, raises a lot of questions about the First One that could be explored in another story. Indeed, back in a 1999 Online Chat, the Wachowskis have stated that they hoped to tell the story of the First One someday in an anime series. As of 2023, this has not come to pass, and indeed the story of the First One would be heavily retconned by the sequels.

Based on Morpheus’ description then, The One should be a reality-warping, nigh-omnipotent being, and Neo may very well be his return/reincarnation. In effect, Neo is positioned as the second coming of the digital Christ, whose destiny is to save the real world by bringing about the destruction of the virtual one.*

* Though it is not explicitly stated, it can be inferred that destroying the Matrix would in turn end the reign of the Machines, who are dependent on the system and their artificially grown human batteries for survival. In other words, take out the energy source, and the Machines will die, ending the war with the humans victorious.

From this moment forward, the plot of The Matrix begins to explicitly revolve around the central question of whether or not Neo is The One.

The Oblivious Mr. Anderson: Neo’s Emotional Arc

To reiterate then, the plot or external story of The Matrix is about how Neo becomes a nigh-omnipotent being with the power to control the system itself. But the film’s internal story is about how a skeptic learns to believe in himself and overcome his doubts, becoming a man of faith that wishes to spread his newfound beliefs with other people. It is this character arc that serves as the main emotional throughline of the picture (aka the “lower layer of storytelling”) and the connective tissue that binds together all of its disparate elements, while covering over its gaps and inconsistencies.

These two aspects of the storytelling are closely intertwined and feed into each other, with Neo’s becoming the One in the course of the plot being directly tied to his learning to believe in himself and his higher calling on a character level.

When we first meet Neo, he is a passive and reactive character that doesn’t have much of a clear plot-driving motive or goal. Instead, Neo initially ends up mostly doing what others tell him to do (The Agents, Morpheus, etc.) after getting pulled into situations beyond his control. His lack of agency within the narrative is reflective of his lack of awareness about the fact that he lives in a simulation where anything is possible.

Sure, he seems to recognize that something is off about the world but he is still obli-vious to its true nature. Fittingly, during the first half of the picture, Neo is often confused and expresses utter disbelief whenever seemingly impossible and ‘insane’ things happen to him.* He doesn’t understand why government agents are after him, a ‘nobody,’ or how Morpheus is able to instruct him over the phone about where exactly he needs to go. He isn’t able to make it to a scaffold that would allow him to elude the Agents because he doesn’t believe that he can make it - he’s simply too scared to fall.

*This in turn translates to the viewers, who are also perplexed by the increasingly bizarre and unexplained turns of the story.

He initially shrugs off the mysterious insectoid device that crawls inside him during his interrogation as a dream - because how could anything such as that be real?

Tellingly, even after being unplugged and shown the full truth about his reality by Morpheus, Neo yells defiantly that he does not believe it. And though he does subsequently accept the fact that his world is a lie and that he was born inside a simulation, he still initially remains in doubt about the prophecy of the One, unconvinced that he is what Morpheus believes him to be.

The Questions of The One

Now, before going any further, I want to highlight the fact that the film never really addresses the question of how or why Morpheus is absolutely certain that Neo is The One at the beginning of the film. In other words, when the film opens, Neo has been already identified by Morpheus as a potential candidate for being The One, but an explanation for why he specifically was being sought out never comes up. Neo, in fact, never really raises the question, never asks Morpheus: “Why Me?”

The early scenes, especially the one between Trinity and Neo in the night club, indicate that Neo came up on the radar of the Nebuchadnezzar crew due to his being a hacker that frequents internet chat rooms and possibly questions the nature of his reality. This is presumably why Neo already knows the term ‘The Matrix’ and wants to know what it is at the outset. By inference, other potential ‘redpills’ are located in a similar manner by those who are already unplugged.*

*‘Redpill’ is the in-universe term used from the second film onwards to refer to people freed from the system. I shall refer to them as such from this point forward.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of questions left unanswered in regard to how and why Neo was identified as a potential One, such as: “What is the criteria used by Morpheus to determine a potential One? How is a potential One distinguished from other ‘redpills’ or people questioning their reality and so having the potential to be unplugged?* Can anyone become ‘The One’ or is it supposed to be a specific individual? If it’s the latter, then what makes Neo so special?”

Some of these questions were addressed in a cut subplot, wherein Neo discovers that he had 5 predecessors aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, other potential Ones who died fighting Agents. Morpheus, it was revealed, didn’t really have any criteria. He was under the erroneous impression that he could just pick someone – and that person would turn out to be The One. When it comes to Neo, Morpheus has only faith and conviction that he is The One, not actual tangible evidence. This played into the idea that Neo really wasn’t fundamentally different from any other redpill.

Freeing Neo’s Mind

In any case, Morpheus in the final film fervently believes Neo is the One and begins training him so as to unlock his powers, thereby proving what he believes to be true.* In the course of showing us how Neo learns martial arts via data uploads, tests his skills in a sparring program with Morpheus, and tries to jump between buildings, the film establishes an explicit causal link between belief and superpowers while steadily advancing Neo’s emotional journey.

*We might also say that Morpheus does this so as to turn Neo into a more effective crew member. Notably, after revealing the truth, he never really gives him a choice of whether or not to work for him. In effect, he’s shanghaied Neo into service.

Consider what happens during the dojo fight. Morpheus means to get Neo to ‘free his mind,’ something only he can really do himself. But what exactly does this mean? Wasn’t Neo’s mind freed when he was unplugged?

The answer, though never explicitly stated, is simple: Neo’s mind is still shackled, still limited by his own internalized beliefs and perceptions, which had been formed by his time inside the Matrix. He lived his entire life under the impression that he existed in the real world and so was programmed to believe his reality ascribed to the laws of physics, as well as to logic and rationality. As he never recognized that anything irrational was possible, he couldn’t do anything that defied those laws.

Everything Morpheus says during the various training sequences indicates that he’s trying to get Neo to change his way of thinking, to let go of his preconceived notions of how the world should operate, to believe that he can perform unreal actions.

He begins by introducing Neo to the fact that inside the Matrix-like training world they are in the rules don’t necessarily apply. As he puts it:

“It has the same basic rules, rules like gravity. What you must learn that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system.

Some of them can be bent, others can be broken.”

When the fight begins, we witness both Neo and Morpheus display superhuman strength and perform gravity-defying jumps. Morpheus dominates Neo physically during their first bout. Their subsequent dialogue again underlines the fact that the rules of reality don’t really apply.

“M: How did I beat you?

N: You’re too fast.

M: Do you believe my being stronger or faster has anything to with my muscles in this place? Do you think that’s air you’re breathing now?”

What Morpheus is saying here is that within the Matrix his actual real-life levels of strength and speed are irrelevant. Because the Matrix is not real. He then highlights the fact that Neo isn’t even breathing air. Because it is also not real.

Morpheus appears to be stronger and faster than Neo in the Matrix because he is more aware of the fact that he is inside a simulation. Because he recognizes, or rather believes to a greater extent than Neo that he can overcome its rules. Because he is less tied down psychologically by the idea that impossible things are impossible. Or, to put it another way, because his mind has fewer self-imposed limits.

This, of course, plays into Neo’s character arc.

Having been only recently unplugged, he is still skeptical, still adjusting to the idea that the world he knew to be real was really fake. He is still largely programmed to believe he is only as strong and fast as he is in real life. He thus doesn’t believe strongly enough that he can break the laws of reality to best Morpheus.

As they begin round two, the film has Mouse highlight the fact that Neo seems to be moving a lot faster than normal. Yet Neo still isn’t able to overcome Morpheus. After pulling back a punch, Morpheus again pushes Neo to believe in himself. He tells him:

“What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are. Know you are... stop trying to hit me and HIT me! ”

Now, look at what happens as the fight progresses: having been told to know that he’s faster, Neo literally becomes faster, to the extent that he is basically moving at blurry super-speed, akin to what we would later see from Agent Brown. How?

By beginning to believe that he is faster. By changing how he thinks. By letting go of his pre-existing doubt and rationality.

Doing this breaks his self-imposed real life-based limits within the Matrix. The more Neo believes, the more he can bend reality and so perform impossible feats. Or to put it another way, the more he believes, the more powerful he becomes.

All this is supported by what we see in the ‘jump program’ sequence that follows. Morpheus’ dialogue here, right before he leaps what looks like 50 feet between the rooftops of two skyscrapers (in manner evoking classic Superman before he could fly) encapsulates the idea that one must believe that it is possible to break the laws of reality in order to actually break them. He states:

“You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind.”

One might say that his huge leap is literally a leap of faith.

Neo psyches himself up but is unable to make the jump. Because he ultimately doesn’t believe strongly enough that he can. He isn’t able to free his mind from the logical notion that if he jumps such a distance (in real life), he’s supposed to fall.

And so he does fall.

If you think that my reading here is inaccurate, consider the fact that the reason why Neo falls was explicitly stated in the final shooting script. This little conversation was almost certainly shot but cut from the final film.

Redpills

Now, I want to consider what Neo’s training scenes tell us about the other redpill members of Morpheus’ crew. It is evident from the context that all of them – Apoc, Switch, Mouse, Cypher, and Trinity – similarly underwent such training, learning to fight in all styles of martial arts and freeing their minds to the point where they can perform various superhuman feats within the Matrix.

All of them, in other words, are able to defy the laws of the system and manipulate its simulated reality to some extent. Admittedly, the only other crewmember we ever explicitly witness displaying abilities is Trinity, as seen in the film’s opening chase and later the assault on the government building, but it is reasonable to assume that her superhuman strength, speed, durability, and agility are fairly standard.*

Notably, however, none them ever demonstrate what can be classified as non–physical powers. But why? Why do all the redpills we meet seem limited to Captain America-level abilities? Why aren’t any of them capable of something more outlandish or fantastic, such as manipulating fire, transmuting matter or teleporting?

*It is sad that, despite getting some action stuff, neither Apoc, Switch, nor Cypher ever show us their kung-fu or super-jumping skills.

Is this the extent to which the rules of reality can be bent or broken? The level at which the reality-altering potential typically plateaus? The released film never really offers any explicit answers to these questions.

Nonetheless, there is just information for audiences to infer an explanation. To understand, we have to look at the scene, where Neo meets the ‘Potentials’ – little children seemingly capable of magic – when he first comes to visit the Oracle.

There is No Spoon: Potentials

There are A LOT of things to talk about when it comes to the deliberately ambiguous scene with the ‘Potentials,’ which is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, but in this article, I want to focus on what the sequence means for the film’s superpower system, and especially how it frames the God-like abilities of The One.

First, take note of the fact that when Neo enters the room, the Priestess refers to the many children he meets inside as the “Other Potentials.” It is never explained what the term ‘potential’ actually means but in this instance, Neo is referred to as such.*

*One might assume that perhaps the kids are other Potential Ones but that doesn’t quite make sense given the context of the scene. The Oracle can immediately discern whether or not you are The One, so why would she have potential Ones living with her?

Now, what do the children have in common with Neo? Superpowers.

Theirs are more advanced, of course. Neo first sees two girls who are capable of levitating blocks in the air, presumably through a form of telekinesis. Later on, the Oracle will have referred to having one of the kids ‘fix’ the broken vase, suggesting that one of the children can manipulate matter or possibly reverse the flow of time.

And, of course, there is the monk-like Boy (Roan Witt), who seems capable of bending spoons with his mind and reading Neo’s thoughts. What he tells Neo after handing him the spoon is perhaps the closest the film gets to spelling out why human minds are able to manipulate the simulated reality of The Matrix.

“Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth…. There is no spoon…

Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

Spoon Boy’s words here echo those of Morpheus. He beckons Neo to recognize that the spoon isn’t real, that it does not exist. Rather, it is an extension of one’s own mind. That is why it’s pliable. You can control it because it is an extension of you. In effect, he wants Neo to recognize that he too can bend the simulated ‘reality’ of the Matrix because it is on some level a part of himself, a product of his mind.

Neo seems to indeed take his advice, concentrates, and for a brief moment the Spoon bends as Neo does, as though the two are one. This establishes that Neo can achieve what seem like magic feats when he puts his mind to it.

By accepting there is no spoon, that there is really no limit to what is possible in the system, he is able to warp reality to a degree that we have not seen from any of Morpheus’ crew members, demonstrating the same ‘potential’ as the other children.

Side Note

It is worth mentioning that the scene originally had a lot more context and was far less ambiguous in the 1996 draft of the screenplay. By the time the story gets there, it was made very clear that the Potentials were all human children with the ‘potential’ to manipulate reality inside the Matrix and so were meant to soon be unplugged from the system. It is established earlier in the script that most redpills are unplugged as children, for as people grow older, their capacity to manipulate reality diminishes due to them becoming more bound by rationality and so more closely tied down by the Matrix. It is repeatedly underlined that Neo was actually too old to be unplugged.

In the final film, a reference to these ideas remains in dialogue uttered by Morpheus when he first talks to Neo after revealing the truth about the Matrix:

“I feel I owe you an apology. We have a rule. We never free a mind once it’s reached a certain age. It’s dangerous. The mind has trouble letting go. I’ve seen it before and I’m sorry. I did what I did because I had to.”

Belief and Superpowers

Everything that is established within the Neo training sequences and later the Oracle and Potential scenes points to a consistent superpower system in The Matrix universe.

‘Superpowers’ manifest when the simulated reality of the Matrix is manipulated, meaning when the rules of the system are bent or broken. Theoretically, any human mind plugged into the system should be able to manifest them, but most do not because their minds are not free, meaning they do not recognize that their reality is simulated and that breaking the rules of the simulation is actually possible. In other words, it is a case of mind over (simulated) matter: you have to believe that you can manipulate reality in order to become able to manipulate reality.

In that sense, superpowers are the products of self-belief, meaning that one can bend the rules of the system only to the extent that one believes or recognizes that it is possible to do so. So, the more strongly a given mind believes in the self, the more it can let go of the logical rules and limits that define the real world. And the more it can let go, the greater are the feats it can perform in The Matrix.

From this, we can draw at least two conclusions.

First, the reason why most redpills, even Morpheus, are not able to develop beyond enhanced physical abilities is that they ultimately do not believe strongly enough that they can. Second, the power of The One to remake the Matrix in any way he wishes should adhere to the same principles as those of the other Redpills.

That is, The One is not an exception to the rules of the world’s Superpower system. He is not fundamentally different from a typical redpill. Rather, The One takes the potential of a redpill for manipulating reality to its logical extreme. He is someone whose mind is so unshackled, whose self-belief and recognition of the Matrix’s artificiality is so strong, that he has no self-imposed limits whatsoever.

Taking Charge: Neo becomes a believer

Up until the point he meets the Oracle, Neo doesn’t think that he is The One and the Oracle confirms his doubts, in addition to telling him he’ll have to choose between saving himself or saving Morpheus. Ironically, it’s not until Neo sees the Oracle’s prophecy start coming true that he legitimately starts to believe in himself.

By making the choice to go back inside the Matrix to save Morpheus’ life, Neo finally takes charge of the narrative at the end of its second act and transitions from being a passive participant in the plot into a man of action. Despite Tank’s and Trinity’s protests, he acts like a man possessed, a man who has no doubt that he will succeed in rescuing Morpheus, despite the overwhelmingly low odds of success.

Everything he does from this point forward both pays off his training earlier in the movie, yet also progresses his transformation from skeptic to believer.

The big action sequence in the lobby of the government building illustrates how far he has come already. In contrast to the uncertain, timid man that was constantly questioning himself and couldn’t work up the nerve to climb into the scaffold, Neo now moves with grace and confidence, displaying no doubt or fear as he takes on multiple security guards and then a team of heavily armed soldiers.

His internal transformation seems to fuel his superhuman powers, so much that he manages to actually dodge Agent Jones’ bullets at point blank range, moving as fast as the Agents themselves do, a feat that Trinity claims to have never witnessed.

No wonder then as to why he instinctively, without a second thought or a moment of hesitation, jumps out of a helicopter to catch Morpheus after he’s shot in the leg, or then chooses to stand his ground and face off against Smith in the subway.*

*One could think of this as an indirect payoff to Neo failing to make his jump earlier in the movie. Now, it seems he really has freed his mind. (Enough at least to leap without thinking.) On a side note, isn’t it weird that Morpheus really doesn’t seem at all debilitated by his gunshot wound after Neo catches him? I mean, he doesn’t seem at all bothered by that in the real world and I’m not even sure he limps at all before he exits.

Because the character layer of the storytelling is executed so well, you are fully immersed in Neo’s internal story and nothing can detract from it (not even the fact that the Agents’ body-jumping powers cause all sorts of holes in the plot layer).

And that carries all the way to the film’s amazing ending, which sees the culmination of both the central narrative and character arcs.

Being the One is Like Being in Love

Not taking into account any of the sequels, why exactly does Neo become The One at the end of The Matrix? Why is it that after Smith shoots him in the chest at point blank range does he have a Christ-like resurrection?

I’m pretty sure that, upon first seeing this scene, many people thought that this was always Neo’s destiny – he had to die to become The One, because in a way he always was the One. That is, he was always special and chosen. His returning to life, in that regard, is a miracle, the kind that tends to happen in fairy-tales and mythopoeic narratives valorized by Joseph Campbell.*

*I always thought it fascinating how much Neo’s revival seemed to mirror that of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.

But the film’s superpower system points to another, more appropriate interpretation of events. Recall what the Oracle says earlier in the film:

“Being The One is just like being in love. No one can tell you’re in love, you just know it. Through and through, balls to bones.”

Now consider what Trinity does here: she confesses to Neo that she learned from The Oracle that she’d fall in love with a dead man and that the person she loved would be The One. For Trinity, these two things are causally interconnected: if she loves someone, then that person must be The One.

By this point in the movie, she knows that she loves Neo. Therefore, Neo must be The One, which in turn means that he cannot die. For Trinity, these are all indisputable facts, things that she believes in with all her heart.

And once Neo hears her, the moment he knows that she loves him, he then comes to realize/know/believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that he IS The One.

And so, he BECOMES The One.

Trinity’s confession has in effect filled him with so much self-belief that he was able to overcome any lingering internal doubts and break all his mind’s self-imposed limits. Including that of death. Remember, the mind makes death (of the physical body) real. But it ultimately too is a construct, and thus something that can be overcome. Trinity’s confession is thus the final push Neo needs to fully free his mind.

Now, he can see the Matrix for what it really is – lines upon lines of streaming code. He can stop of the flow of time to freeze the Agents’ bullets in midair. He seems to know every move Agent Smith is going to make before he makes it, as if he is omniscient. He can phase inside Smith to fully eradicate his code, effectively killing a being that seemed to be immortal due to his regenerative body-jumping ability.

Everything that we see here corroborates Morpheus’ claim that The One could change anything he wanted to and remake the Matrix as he saw fit. This means that, via his self-belief, Neo has transformed into a nigh-omnipotent GOD in control of the System itself, which now literally seems to function as an extension of his body. When he breathes, the Matrix ripples with him as though mimicking his movements, much as the spoon did earlier. (It is not The Matrix that breathes, it is himself.)

A World Where Anything Is Possible

Taking into account the film’s established superpower system, it is evident that Neo becomes The One as he learns to fully believe himself to be The One, having under-gone a complete emotional journey from a skeptic to a believer. And this journey, in conjunction with what we see of the other Redpills and the Potentials, suggests that any human plugged into the Matrix has the potential to become The One.

Neo is simply the first person in a long time to have fulfilled it. From this perspective, rather than being a ‘chosen’ One, Neo is a self-made One.

Long before the sequels would muddle it with increasingly indecipherable bullshit about anomalies, equations, and source codes then, the concept of the One was rather simple: by fully embracing the truth that the Matrix was a simulation, you could free your mind from all self-imposed limits and bend the fabric of reality to your will. By believing strongly enough in the self, you could become a God in the machine.

So, in the end, for all its confusing, mindbending plot twists and turns, The Matrix is a film with a simple yet brilliant emotional arc at its core.

It is a film about the power of faith, about how believing in the self and overcoming internal doubts can allow us to change the world. No wonder then, as to why its final scene has Neo declaring to the Agents that he will show everyone what the Agents don’t want them to see and going public with his powers by flying into the sky right in front of a crowd of un-awakened, oblivious denizens of the system.

This is a Neo fully in control, fully aware, with absolute confidence in himself. He has no doubts, no qualms about what he’s doing. He wants to spread awareness, make everyone recognize that the Matrix is a false reality. He wants to make everyone believe in themselves, thereby remaking the Matrix into a place where everyone can demonstrate superhuman abilities. In other words, he wants to free humanity by freeing people’s minds from their own limits by making them aware en masse about the true nature of reality, an act that will eventually lead to the Matrix’s destruction.

The film thus ends with the promise of a fundamental shift in the status quo, the transformation of the Matrix into a world that is truly without rules or controls, where the Agents have no power and the people are free to do anything, for they know that anything is possible. Sadly, it is a promise the sequels wouldn’t keep…

But what do you think?

Does the superpower system as outlined here make sense? Is Neo’s flight indeed meant to wake up the world? Did the Wachowskis put a lot of thought into it or did they just wing it?

What was your impression of the scene with the Potentials when you first saw it? Were you ever hoping to learn more about them?

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Interested in learning more about The Matrix? Then check this out:

• Neo was a High Schooler in Earliest Matrix Script (MEDIUM)