Death and narrative stakes

[swan_tower]

The immediate motivation for this post is John Scalzi's response to Infinity War, and it's going to have spoilers for that film. So if you haven't seen it yet and wish to avoid spoilers, go no further.

Short form: I don't often wildly disagree with Scalzi, but this is one of those times.

And the short form of "why" is: Apollo 13.

I've watched that movie easily a dozen times. Furthermore, it's based on real history. So I know, every time I sit down in front of the TV, that the astronauts are going to get home safely. They won't die in outer space. Everything will be okay.

Despite that, I'm still on the edge of my seat, every goddamned time.

This, btw, is why I'm generally not too upset by seeing spoilers. I'll make a reasonable effort to avoid them (I didn't open any of the Infinity War posts in my RSS reader until today, because I didn't see the movie until last night), but I won't go into a total social media blackout or anything like that. Because, as Marissa Lingen recently said, any story whose value is lost by knowing in advance how it ends was pretty cheap to begin with.

Apollo 13 holds up even on the twelfth watching because while I may know how it ends, the characters don't. The story isn't whether the astronauts get home safely; it's the tension and fear of everyone in that tale, waiting to find out whether the astronauts get home safely. It's them clinging to each other during the radio silence, and then dissolving into tears of joyful relief when it ends.

Which is why I don't care that yeah, I know half the characters who went poof are already slated for sequel films, which means they'll come back. It's like knowing the Apollo 13 crew won't die. Heck, if anything, I'm glad to know that: because the last thing I need right now is a film that goes, "welp, sometimes you just lose and there's nothing you can do about it, haha, eat that, suckers." But the characters did lose . . . and they're going to have to live with that loss for a good long while (probably through a goodly percentage of the next movie). That moment -- the hollow shock as they realize they brought to bear everything they had and more, and it wasn't enough -- that, not "will all those people stay dead?," is where the impact lies.

Now, I will grant the impact wasn't quite as big as I would have liked. There were so many "oh no person is dissolving!" moments that none of them individually wrung as much pathos from the loss as they could have; the one that came the closest was Peter Parker, and that's because he had a chance to express his fear. For the rest, you mostly have to read between the lines, Okoye realizing she failed her king, Cap losing Bucky, Rocket losing Groot. Basically, the emotional work there was done in other films: you need to bring those to the table for the full effect. So it's possible that the correct way to gloss Scalzi's post is not "this didn't move me becaues I know there are more films coming," but rather "this didn't move me enough to turn off the part of my brain that points out there are more films coming."

For me, though, the impressive thing here is the willingness to commit to "the heroes lost" for more than a few seconds. Contrast it with, for example, the end of Doctor Strange: Strange and his allies realize they arrived too late to protect the Hong Kong Sanctum, but that lasts for, what, a couple of minutes? Strange is able to fix it almost immediately, so he never really has to live with the knowledge of his failure. The surviving heroes of Infinity War will (I presume -- I could be wrong and the opening sequence of next year's movie will make it all better, in which case I'll be annoyed). And, if the storytelling in the sequel is good, fixing this mistake is not going to be easy or cheap.

We'll see, next May. In the meanwhile, I'm interested in Ant-Man and the Wasp (which I think is set pre-Infinity War) and Captain Marvel, not least because both of them will help rectify the still-massive gender imbalance in the MCU. (When are we gonna get a Black Widow movie, dammit? Red Sparrow doesn't count.)

Comments

[moon_custafer]

For the rest, you mostly have to read between the lines, Okoye realizing she failed her king, Cap losing Bucky, Rocket losing Groot.

I choose to believe that, having lost Vision not five minutes earlier, Scarlet Witch's expression as she dissolved was one of relief, but that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking.

[swan_tower]

Yes, I meant to include that! She's the one person who may have almost welcomed it, after first having to endure killing the man she loves, then watching that sacrifice be erased and rendered meaningless.

here from network

[kore]

Yeah, Apollo 13 is a great example. Another one is Pride and Prejudice. People KNOW that story. Even if you don't know it, you can tell Elizabeth will get with Darcy. People will still tune in in record numbers, they will still stay up just a bit longer, for that story. It's still suspenseful! It still draws people in.

And yes, the characters don't know they're in the middle of a giant money machine and everything's going to be OK. Just like Elizabeth and Darcy don't know they're in a story with a HEA. That doesn't matter for them.

So it's possible that the correct way to gloss Scalzi's post is not "this didn't move me becaues I know there are more films coming," but rather "this didn't move me enough to turn off the part of my brain that points out there are more films coming."

Yeah, and I don't think that's the fault of the spoilers, or the story, but it's on the storytellers. And in how this isn't a complete movie in and of itself really -- it's an entry in a series, with a giant cliffhanger, and will probably pack a giant punch when seen in sequence. But as of now it kind of feels like a whiff.


I am VERY excited for Hope in AMATW, and maybe some Jan too. And Captain Marvel. They're making noises about a Black Widow prequel or TWS-shared film, which, what? and Red Sparrow SO does not count. Although Jennifer Lawrence in a blonde wig was intriguingly close to Yelena Belova.

Re: here from network

[swan_tower]

Even if you don't know it, you can tell Elizabeth will get with Darcy.

This is true of romance in general. The point is rarely to surprise the reader with "will A and B get together?" It's to explore the emotional journey they go on together.

But as of now it kind of feels like a whiff.

I'd say mileage varies on that. It doesn't feel like a whiff to me, though it didn't hit quite as hard as it could have. I do wish we were getting the second half in December or something, though, instead of waiting until next May.

They're making noises about a Black Widow prequel

They've been making those noises for years -- but the internet tells me they got a screenwriter in January, so maybe it will actually happen? I wouldn't mind it being shared with the Winter Soldier so long as it's a BLACK WIDOW movie also featuring the Winter Soldier, not a movie about him with her in a side role.

[mrissa]

For me.

And I recognize that this is not universal.

Having death treated as happening but able to unhappen is very different from knowing that it will not happen.

You're very right that it means that it shifts the stakes to things like "did I fail someone I love, did something very important not happen" in each case. But to me it does so differently in the two cases. In the one case it allows for backsies on literally anything else also, so...not only does it nerf death, it nerfs disappointment, pain, frustration, any other consequence.

And one of the questions for me is: if it is supposed to NOT nerf those other things. If the characters are supposed to experience all the grief and pain and frustration and then get their friends, relations, etc. back alive again, does the story deal extensively with that emotional whiplash? Is there structural portrayal of what that would be like? It's possible. But historically, the movies that do ONE character's death and then surprise! not-death are not great at it. And I am feeling very, very skeptical that a movie that does it with AN ENTIRE SUITE OF CHARACTERS will do a good job.

Not for a few days. But permanently. Does this change who they are permanently. Because it should. It would. So "more than the first few minutes of the movie"...still strikes me as a very low bar.

I suspect that exactly what you're talking about here with leaving the viewer to fill in backstory will have to happen, because there will not be TIME, even in a three-hour movie. To show Rocket's grief and (probably bad) coping, and then Groot's (probable) return, and then Rocket's total emotional whiplash and how (probably badly) he copes with that. AND THEN THE SAME FOR EVERYONE ELSE. And one of the questions will be: will it even be structured so that a kind and helpful viewer can do that internally? or will the structure step on that, showing too much of things with timing that doesn't work so that there are no blanks to be filled in?

Obviously passionate fandom will MAKE blanks. There doesn't have to be logical/timeline space for fanfic to exist, to write in these things, to make it better. But I think that only makes for good fanfic, it doesn't make the original well-structured.

I haven't seen this movie yet, for reasons mentioned in my post, but have been extensively spoilered for it. Maybe it'll work better than I think, and the next one will too. It's playing on a pretty high difficulty mode, though, and it makes any later consequence have less impact the less this one reverberates permanently in the characters.

My original experience of this was The Last Battle. Narnia has been destroyed. Holy shit. The stars have fallen, it is a wasteland of nothingness, all the talking animals and mythical creatures gone. Now look! Here is the new Narnia, brighter and better than the last one! And THIS one will be eternal! And at the age of...4? just barely 5? I looked at it and thought, you said that last time, I had no reason to doubt that last time, I don't believe you.

[swan_tower]

I don't consider myself to be part of fandom per se, but I do have the "fill in the blanks" impulse, thanks to the weight of the preceding films. Do I expect the next movie to fully explore everybody's grief and guilt? No, because there are too many characters here for that to be possible -- and while I think they did a remarkably good job of integrating an absurd number of heroes into the story, "remarkably good" is being judged by the yardstick of previous superhero movies that tried to cram too many people into them and wound up abysmal as a result.

But what this film does well at, and what makes me think that (presuming the next one is comparable in quality) the overall effect will work for me, is giving you those brief moments -- a line or two, a reaction shot -- that function as a pointer toward the entire body of story and characterization you've gotten prior to now, calling up all those associations in the space of a couple of seconds. So if they do that for the grief and guilt, hitting those notes that make me say, "yes, you have nailed the core of how that character would react to this," then even if those notes are brief, it will work pretty well for me. I'll want more in-depth exploration for at least a few of the characters, but I don't personally need it for every single one of them.

Mileage varies on this, of course, and it's going to faceplant for anybody who's insufficiently familiar with the MCU up until this point to have those pointers function as intended. (I've seen reviews that say "Infinity War does nothing to introduce you to all these people!" Well, uh, yeah. Because if it had to do that, it would have no room left for the actual story. The introductions have been coming fast and thick for the last ten years.)

As for the rollback -- in responding to another comment, I realized it isn't the deaths that I'm focused on. It's the failure. It's the fact that the heroes do their best, and find out it isn't enough. My experience of that kind of thing is that it sticks with you, even if you manage to come back and beat your opponent later; I've made mistakes in my life that I then did my best to make up for, and in some cases I've managed to heal the damage, but it never takes away the memory that I created the damage in the first place. So what would make me check out of the Avengers story entirely is if the people who failed not only rectify it, but don't remember it happened. (Which, let's face it, is the kind of thing superhero stories have done before.) If they bring people back but live with the memory of their failure? I'm there for that. Even if the constraints of a film with a huge cast of characters means they won't be able to give me all the interiority and emotional exploration that a novel could.

[davidgoldfarb]

The original comics did somewhat the same stake-lowering thing. Yeah, a bunch of heroes and beloved characters disappeared, including the entire Fantastic Four. But...they could have been just brought back and life (as it were) would go on. But then they had cosmic shockwaves causing both Japan and California to slide into the ocean. And that made it clear that the whole thing was going to have to be just retroactively unhappened. (Which is of course precisely the way the plot went.)

[swan_tower]

I'm far less moved by things like Japan and California sliding into the ocean, because that's faceless. It isn't the ability to retroactively save the day that bothers me -- done right, that's just eucatastrophe, which can be very moving -- it's when the destruction is made so abstract that it carries no emotional weight.

(This is why I killed a central character with the plague during In Ashes Lie. A hundred thousand Londoners dead in a year is a statistic. A hundred thousand Londoners + one character you know and care about is tragedy.)

[davidgoldfarb]

The thing there, in context, is that the Marvel comics universe includes both cosmic-level stories and street-level stories. And for the street-level stories, the world at large can't move too far away from the world outside our window. Permanently destroying Japan does that. Which meant it wasn't going to stick. Which in turn meant that the whole story was likely to be just rolled back.

[lookingforoctober]

As someone who reacted emotionally almost exactly like Scalzi, just a data point: I wouldn't describe my reaction as "this didn't move me enough to turn off the part of my brain that points out there are more films coming."

Because I don't privilege the emotional story of the characters over my personal reaction to the story, and I don't think I should. Maybe turning off part of my brain is what I'd have to do to fully appreciate this movie, but there are other movies/stories where that is not a thing I'd need to do, so I don't think turning off part of my brain is a universal part of the story-appreciating act.

In fact, there are some stories which are totally predicated on their impact being the journey of the reader discovering things, rather than the story of the characters changing. Sometimes, the story is designed so that the reader's or viewer's change is the change in the story, or at least an important part of what the story is about.

So me predicting what's going to happen is not me doing something extra, something unexpected in the context of a story.

Tension is about expectation, and this story is not over, clearly (even in story, there are plenty of hints that this end is not the end, that the predictions of Dr. Strange have not played out), and in this case my expectation is that all the sacrifices that were the meat of this story are going to be undercut by the characters not having to live with the consequences, because some part of what happened is going to be undone completely.

It's not about the characters, who yes, are inside the story having totally real reactions. But the story, which was 2 1/2 hours of sacrifice and impossible choices, leaves me at the end not knowing how much of that is going to turn out to have any consequences at all. But I do know that some of the action I watched is going to end up not being real in the universe of the story.

I guess what I'm saying is that what makes this unsatisfying to me isn't knowing how it ends, or what happens next, but not knowing how it ends, not exactly, but having a feeling that some part of the story I've seen doesn't matter.

YMMV, obviously, but that's where my reaction is coming from.

[swan_tower]

Because I don't privilege the emotional story of the characters over my personal reaction to the story

I don't see it as privileging one over the other, or turning off my brain -- rather that my reaction to a story tends to be deeply tied into the reaction of the characters, unless it's (as you say) the type of story where that clearly isn't the point. It's also why I almost invariably bounce off stories about unlikeable protagonists, because if I don't care enough to share in their emotional experience to some degree, then I just don't care at all.

I totally get that other people don't necessarily respond the same way, though.

in this case my expectation is that all the sacrifices that were the meat of this story are going to be undercut by the characters not having to live with the consequences, because some part of what happened is going to be undone completely.

For me, I don't need them to live with the consequences forever. I just need them to live with them for long enough to feel it -- which is why I contrasted it with the destruction of the Hong Kong Sanctum in Doctor Strange. That was undone in an eyeblink, with no time spent on the impact in between.

I guess what I'm saying is that what makes this unsatisfying to me isn't knowing how it ends, or what happens next, but not knowing how it ends, not exactly, but having a feeling that some part of the story I've seen doesn't matter.

This makes me think of how I react to "it was all a dream!" stories. Hate those. Haaaaaaate. Which in my case arises from the same thing I described above, me wanting to share in the experience of the characters (and then feeling cheated when it turns out that experience was fake even for them).

This at least won't be fake. Temporary, yes, to some degree -- as you said, some percentage of it will be undone, though we don't know yet how much -- but for me there's a difference between "phew, that never happened" and "god, that really did happen, but at least we were able to do something about it."

[lookingforoctober]

Yeah, I don't think I said that well. The way I engage with a story, I don't always follow the characters emotionally, especially in such a big cast, but also, I don't think being more moved would have made me like it more, if the underlying story problem stayed the same.

But I think I get what you mean about long enough to feel it. Possibly part of the reason I felt unsatisfied is that when I jumped ahead mentally to oh this is going to be undone I just skipped this is going to be hard to undo and meanwhile they're going to have to live and strive to change things in this world where this just happened -- which I'm starting to see has possibilities.

But watching this movie, it wasn't even clear for a long time as I was watching who was going to survive and several characters who'd been important in this movie (Wanda, Peter Parker, Dr. Strange) were gone, leaving me a bit adrift except for knowing that it couldn't be permanent, and I do think it's a problem that the ending basically demands this will be undone. Not just overcome, but undone, and leaving it totally open for just how much. I figured "undone" meant "time rewound", in the same way that Thanos rewound Wanda's actions when she destroyed Vision and the mind stone. (So yeah, the dream scenario -- some kind of "this never actually happened" -- is pretty close to my expectations.)

And actually, usually I'd be all for a do-over type of plot, it's a type of thing I generally like, but in this case the relentlessness of the sacrifices/impossible choices meant that ... I just don't think you can do over impossible choices and have them stay the same kind of impossible choices. And I'm sort of weirdly invested in them being impossible choices, not because I like impossible choices so much, but because I "lived through" them, watching the movie.

So at the end of the movie, I expected time to be rewound in the next one, but I didn't expect to like it, even though I do prefer the MCU without half of everyone dead. On the whole, I think I'd have preferred a plot that doesn't involve half of everyone dead at all.

I dunno, but I do have to admit that I like your expectations about what's going to happen next much better than mine.

[swan_tower]

I figured "undone" meant "time rewound", in the same way that Thanos rewound Wanda's actions when she destroyed Vision and the mind stone. (So yeah, the dream scenario -- some kind of "this never actually happened" -- is pretty close to my expectations.)

That might be how they wind up doing it, yeah. I hope for something different and more interesting -- one of my friends suggested this might involve a "parallel worlds" scenario instead -- but who knows. The one saving grace of rewinding time is that people seem to be aware of the rewinding, so at least their memories wouldn't be wiped; hitting the reset button to that degree would bounce me irrevocably out of the story.

I dunno, but I do have to admit that I like your expectations about what's going to happen next much better than mine.

Fingers crossed that I'm right, then -- or that if I'm wrong, it's because the writers have thought up something better. :-)

[sholio]

Yes, thank you, I completely agree! I think the thing is, there's more than one kind of narrative tension that you can get from a character death or the threat of it. I think the commenter upthread who compared it to the narrative tension in romance is right on: with genre romance, you know exactly how it'll end, but that's actually what makes it possible to go all-in on enjoying the delicious anticipation and the underpinnings of potential tragedy. You know you're going (almost certainly) to get the desired outcome, so you can feel all the feelings without having to draw back your emotions to protect yourself from the possibility of an undesirable ending. And if it's well written, the uncertainty won't feel like cheap melodrama; you'll be right there suffering along with the characters, because they don't know a happy ending was promised.

... which is not to say that irrevocable character deaths are worse, of course, as a storytelling choice, any more than a romance that doesn't work out is "worse" than one that does. It just depends on what kind of story is being told. But neither do I think they're always better; in this kind of superhero story (one that is generally upbeat and not grim; one that relies on emotional connections between the characters for most of its impact, rather than unexpected twists) the emotional gut-punch of watching the characters cope with the deaths of their friends and lovers is the point, not the deaths themselves, and it actually works much better for me knowing that it's not actually a "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending and most of the dead characters are almost certainly coming back.

Like you said, I will feel cheated if the resolution is easy and cheap. If the next movie opens with a reset-to-status-quo, I would be very angry. But the MCU has generally been solid enough with emotional follow-through (not that they've always hit the mark, but they do more often than not) that I'm reasonably confident they aren't going to completely miss the mark on this one.

"Presumed dead but not really" is a trope I unashamedly love if it's done well. I don't mind if deaths are reset, fixed, or turn out to be a giant misunderstanding, as long as it's not done in such a way that the death doesn't matter. There are a lot of ways you can use a character death and the emotions surrounding it, and yanking on the reader/viewer's grief by genuinely killing off a character is only one of those. You can even do it in a very serious genre; there's one neo-noir movie I love in part because it has such a good hero death fake-out at the end, made all the more believable because it genuinely did kill off a character I loved a bit earlier in the film.

[swan_tower]

you can feel all the feelings without having to draw back your emotions to protect yourself from the possibility of an undesirable ending

This has been one point on which I've disconnected from a few romance novels -- it's felt to me like they flinched back from really exploring the consequences of the conflicts they set up, because the author was worried that really digging into them would hurt too much and make the happy ending feel less happy. Whereas I love it when things really go through the grinder before they get resolved.

the emotional gut-punch of watching the characters cope with the deaths of their friends and lovers is the point, not the deaths themselves

Actually, on reflection . . . for me at least, I think the core of the story here isn't the deaths at all. It's the failure. It's the fact that they did everything they could, and still got crushed. And that won't be undone: they can bounce back and do something new, something better, something that mends the damage, but unless the characters' memories get rewritten (which will make me throw things at the wall if it happens), they will forever live with the knowledge that when it mattered, they came up short.