Just saw it this afternoon with the fam.
Really enjoyed it. I think there was a story there, but I don’t have a solid idea about the storyform.
Anyway if anyone’s interested, I’m game for analysis.
–FAIR WARNING (AS USUAL) SPOILERS BELOW–
2 Likes
Haven’t seen it, got a spoiler synopsis of it.
As to the question in your title, I don’t see why not. There’s a difference between “I can’t remember something, and that troubles me” and “I have some physical problem, and my amnesia complicates that problem.”
1 Like
Yeah, that question was a little sarcastic. Should I change it? It’s not a huge spoiler if you’ve seen any of the trailers.
She doesn’t seem like much of a Be-er to me.
Probably it’s this. But I’ll be really interested to hear what others think.
I’m waiting for End Game to come out so we can do a mass analysis to see what the one overarching storyform for all twenty plus movies is! Lol
1 Like
I was wondering this, too. She doesn’t seem like a Be-er, but I can only think of Do-er examples that are more in the OS, so it’s possible.
I think her problem seemed more that she’s the one who absorbed the Tesseract’s power, but that also feels more like the OS.
1 Like
I was thinking that her personal problem (Situation) might be more that she was a human who was taken by the Kree (and part of that was losing her memories).
I keep wondering if this could be like the Bourne Identity in which he’s a Be-er who does quite a lot in the OS. But it doesn’t feel like that to me. And the movie feels more like a lower left (or possibly lower right) story than an upper left one.
I did notice Yon-Rog (Jude Law) was repeatedly telling her to control her emotions, which sounds kind of Preconscious-like but that could be a signpost too maybe. My first thought was that there was an IC/RS handoff between him and Fury.
I’m thinking Situation. She has a subjective, twisted understanding of her past, now she wants the real thing, and whatever her personal problem is, it prevents her from uncovering that objective Past.
Now, in the OS, the concern might initially seem like Obtaining, but I think it’s Understanding that causes conflict. Misunderstanding each other, misunderstanding oneself… that’s what makes it so hard to Obtain what they need.
As for Main Character Resolve, I have two ideas:
She transforms from “Veers” to “Carol”. She changes from trying to conform to Yon-Rogg’s controlling, oppressive attitude to saying “I have nothing to prove to you.” In this story, Nick Fury, Maria Rambeau, and Talos could serve as Impact Characters that push her to change by remembering her and helping her understand her memories.
My other idea is that she could be a Steadfast hero. In this story, Yon-Rogg is the one attempting to get her to Change. The reason I think this is because she never seems to actually follow any of his advice throughout the film. So his advice never actually breaks through to her, and instead she becomes more resolute in not listening to him. The problem with this one is that he doesn’t play a big enough role to handle the IC throughline alone, and the other characters only really exist to support Carol in her resolve against him.
I’m guessing she’s a Changed MC, but I’m curious about her relationship with Yon-Rogg. He certainly prevents her from coming to an Understanding of herself (and the war) in the OS, but is that all he is?
1 Like
I should preface this by saying it’s possible that not everything is there in the story. I enjoyed it, but that’s not an infallible guide (I enjoyed Incredibles 2 and we never reached a conclusion on that).
I agree with that I think.
So I started to write all this stuff and then I realized we should probably go in order if we can, starting with Resolve. (I have a bad habit of jumping around).
I agree with you that the key moment is when she says to Yon-Rogg “I have nothing to prove to you.” My inclination is to say this is a Changed resolve, because it contrasts with the beginning when she’s training with him and seems to be trying to control her powers, though I could understand Steadfast as well.
What do others think?
1 Like
I think it has a schizophrenic “pieces of multiple storyforms rather than one storyform.” Is her angst the discrimination or is it her lack of memory? The few times it showed up, I saw more “reaction/emotion” shots of Carol when it was about discrimination. But that could not have been 3 minutes of runtime compared to the >10 minutes of amnesia run time (and the emotion of that didn’t land as well as say, The Bourne Identity–I saw Carol be miffed but not overtly troubled with her amnesia).
And the IC candidates are fragmented as she travels since there is no one character that seems to offering a different perspective in every act. You could argue Yon-Rogg’s message of “prove yourself” has the first and last, but then who is there in the middle? Is the IC Lawson, Yon-Rogg, Fury, or Maria? Do any 2 of them share the same perspective as co-IC’s? I suspect not. Edit: Perhaps the dad/“Iceman”/dude-bros in the montage share the perspective of “prove yourself to me / you can’t measure up.” But that’s a stretch.
More importantly, I feel like they rushed (i.e. literally montaged) the critical “getting to know the character & her personal problem” scenes. It was effective to some extent, but I feel like 1 proper scene would have had a lot more impact than a montage. is not primarily dramatica but “getting your audience to care 101.” An excellent example of how to do this well is the opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy. And this montage-ing is in addition to downplaying this personal problem to make room for the competing personal problem of amnesia. I think this is the #1 reason people criticize Brie Larson’s performance–it’s really in the writing not the acting. Specifically, it has–at best–an anemic and fractured MC throughline and a handoff-heavy to absent RS throughline.
And destroying a jukebox didn’t help. Is the opposite of “save the cat” now “blow up the jukebox?”
2 Likes
I looked at elements such as Unproven, Test, Feelings, and Control, and I think you can find all these elements in the story. However, I think those are all pieces of storytelling that originate from the true personal problem. So here is my best guess at the MC Throughline, since this something a lot of people seem uncertain about:
Carol Danvers is pushed to conform to the status quo of the inhabitants of Halla and planet C-53. Other characters are constantly pushing her to accept the way things are, the way things ALWAYS will be. However, she seems driven to question everything, to challenge and Change that status quo. And that is when she encounters opposing forces telling her to conform to status quo (MC Solution of Inertia):
“You’re not strong enough!”
“You know why they call it a cockpit, don’t you?"
“You gonna smile for me?”
“You have to control your emotions.”
At any moment, Carol could accept that she will always fail, always be considered weak, always have to smile for men, always control her emotions. This would resolve her problems.
Also, each of those lines could represent the MC symptom of Perceptions. Their negative/oppressive perceptions of her seem accurate, as she fails again and again. However, by ignoring the false perceptions of herself and searching for the truth of who she really is, Carol is able to piece together her past life. She is eventually able to remember her past selves rising up again and again, and reaffirms her drive to alter the status quo.
Concern of Past, Problem of Change, and Symptom of Perceptions. Steadfast resolve.
Big Scene #1:
A huge part of Carol’s growth is when she overcomes the perception that the Kree are noble warrior heroes and accepts the actuality of the war. Throughout the film, she’s pushed for others to see reality objectively, to overcome their false perceptions. Now, Talos shows up and challenges her to more take a huge step in building up her resolve, to accept reality and help him.
Her subjective Memories of Talos impact her towards the outdated attitude that “people are the way they seem.” and “Skrulls are the bad guys”. She’s tempted to resolve the problem by accepting false perceptions and embracing the solution of Inertia, which would be like saying: “You can’t be good because skrulls are bad. They’ve always been bad. And we’ve always been good.”
Carol remains steadfast and ends up helping her worst enemy now turned friend.
Big Scene #2
Finally, probably the most critical and most important scene that shows her resolve is when Yon-rogg tries to get her to prove herself like he did at the start. He urges her again to conform to his way of fighting, because he pushes the perception that unless she does this, she’s weak. In response, Carol blasts him (just as she did at the start) with a response of: “I have nothing to prove to you”, Carol shows yet again that she’s not going to conform to an injust, oppressive attitude.
She’s going to push the world to keep moving “Higher, further, faster”.
Okay, with all that said, yeah. They could’ve emphasized a lot of storypoints better. They could’ve told the story better. But I think it’s closer to making an argument than Infinity War or Ant-Man and the Wasp were. You can tell they’re trying to send some sort of message with this one. Something along the lines of: “Refuse to conform to the status quo, and you can come to a greater understanding of your identity.”
2 Likes
I’m ambivalent about this. I actually really loved the montage/flashback scenes and the way they compress what otherwise could have been a tedious backstory slog. At the same time, I agree that there could have/should have been more illustration of this.
So this was the question implied in my title. The MC has amnesia. Insofar as this is a source of personal conflict for her, does this mean her through line have to be in Memories? If so than the story is broken/confused because she’s clearly not a Be-er/Mind/Memories character. But I’m not sure that it follows. If I didn’t have Dramatica in the back of my mind, would this have bothered me? Is there another way to look at “amnesia”?
Yeah, I thought this too. I agree that it thinly illustrated/rushed in places, but I did think there was something there.
I kind of see this.
This quad could maybe fit with the problem of the skrulls in the OS – literally they’re not what they seem.
This part I’m not sure I see. I feel like she accepts the status quo. In fact isn’t that part of her problem?
Okay, so given the possibility that a) I’m wrong and/or b) the story’s missing something, it’s probably not worth going through the whole process of storyforming only to reach a point where everyone just pronounces the story broken (a la Incredibles 2). So, all cards on the table, here’s my best take on the storyform (without going through all of it). @BillyBenji @HaroldLloyd feel free to poke holes 
or propose an alternative.
I think we can agree that we have a typical OS Physics/MC Universe superhero arrangement here. Her situation is that she’s basically been kidnapped and had her memories erased.
I think the Concerns are upper right. (Doing, Progress, Preconscious, Being)
OS Doing: “Stopping the war.” This is Mar-vel’s stated goal, and Carol actually spells it out in the trailers “I’m not going to fight your war, I’m gonna end it.”
MC Progress: “Is Veers making progress in her training?” (I need better examples of this)
For the IC, I see a per act handoff 1. Yon-Rogg 2. Fury 3. Maria 4. Yon-Rogg
IC Preconscious: Yon-Rogg tells her to control her emotions. This is classic guardian/mentor Preconscious IC stuff (e.g. Obi-Wan, Yoda, etc.) (though he’s obviously a “false” mentor).
RS Being: The relationships between Carol and Yon-Rogg, Fury and Maria all grow or are challenged by their respective roles.
MC Problem/Solution: Proven/Unproven. Again this is almost spelled out for us. At the beginning she is trying to prove herself to Yon-Rogg and the Kree. They tell her she’s not ready, but then she’s given a mission – a chance to prove herself. This is what we see in the montages too–she’s constantly been forced to prove herself as a girl/woman in a boy/man’s world. Her change comes at the end, when she say says “I don’t have to prove anything to you” (Unproven). The final montage scene is the visual representations of the justification process being torn down.
Then this is mirrored then in the OS: it’s assumed that the Skrulls are evil (Proven). It’s only by “not accepting something as fact just because the theory has worked so far” (from the Dramatica definition of Unproven) that the story comes to resolution.
In Jim’s narrative argument terms: “Stop believing that you have to prove yourself and you can end a war.”
1 Like
While watching it, I interpreted the “not good enough” montages as something in the proven/unproven pair. Ditto for the “prove yourself to me” last desperate attempt from Yon-Rogg. But I was distracted by amnesia and little to no exploration of a MC TL problem of proven between those two bookends. I would say:
Certain story points are consistent with the storyform you propose, but I wonder (I admit I’m not sure–it just feels this way) if the story itself is broken due to missing story points and/or distracting story points from at least one more competing storyform.
In fairness, Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t have any more MC TL exploration than Captain Marvel. So it’s not like I’m dumping on Captain Marvel as much as it may sound like. Guardians also had basically 2 bookends for an attempt at a MC TL: opening scene of Peter refusing to reach out and then the ending change resolve scene of Peter reaching out (oppose/support? hinder/help? the MCU standard avoid/pursuit?).
But Guardians did those 2 bookends very well and also humanized Peter better between those 2 bookends in a storytelling non-dramatica way. That is, Peter showed he had a grand passion (music/dancing) and, most memorably, went back to the prison he just broke out of in order to retrieve his stupid walkman. An early “joy of flying” 1-minute scene for Carol could have gone a long way. It’s hard to have an amnesia mystery and get to know you / grand passion scenes. Carol even says this–“You don’t know me. I don’t even know who I am.” I still liked it overall, but I felt like a few revisions could have made it one of the greats.
2 Likes
I totally agree with this. In fact, this was one of those cases where I think Dramatica could have helped without adding too much effort.
Jim has been talking about finding a better way to talk about the gray area between complete and incomplete. I feel like this story might fall into that category.
Thinking through this I felt like I could illustrate most of the static storypoints at some point but not all the levels consistently, at least one for each act.
Well, there was the scene where she blows up the jukebox to prove to Nick that she’s not a Skrull BTW I think that’s a not bad example of a Non-accurate (inappropriate) Direction.
Okay, so is it worth continuing the discussion here? Figuring out how the story could be improved? Or do we just leave it at this…
2 Likes
Saw the movie. A lot of very thrilled little girls in the theater, so the thing worked for its audience. I had a lot of fun. It was a big sprawling mess but a) that’s kind of the nature of Marvel Comics too and b) they pulled it together for the most part.
What a political movie! Politics from one end of it to the other.
I have no Dramatica points to make about it. I need a few days of perspective.
3 Likes
Random thoughts:
This could be another case of an emphasized benchmark–i.e. memory/past like Coco. Or, more likely, a case of 5 screenwriters! It felt a little overstuffed and, as a consequence, underdeveloped. Discrimination or amnesia–pick one! The more co-IC’s you have, then more they usually get shortchanged as individuals & the weaker the RS/heart becomes.
The movie Oblivion came to mind once the twist happened. My memory/knowledge of past is mysterious, I’m a foot soldier that helps get rid of the Scavs/Skrulls, and then I discover I’m on the wrong side as my memory/knowledge of my past returns with the help of someone I care about from my past.
I feel like Guardians of the Galaxy was more complete because the MC TL landed better (and the co-IC’s could be mom/Drax or even Groot), but that was judged to be incomplete on narrativefirst. I only compare it to that movie because this is essentially an offshoot of that movie with shared characters / planets.
1 Like
Though I believe Jim reverted that after getting an e-mail about a group IC interpretation.
Sounds like this shows horribly for Captain Marvel. It also explains the lack of any interesting material for the trailers.
Well, at least I now know I was right not to spend money on this one. Thanks everybody!
1 Like
That’s exactly how I read it. I couldn’t figure out if it was just that the story was underdeveloped or muddled (I personally wish they would have done more with the amnesia side of things), or if it was just the benchmark that was REALLY REALLY pushed.
I think it was the latter, given the focus on Dr. Lawson and Mar-Vell.
You could also maybe fit in the SHIELD stuff here – Fury and Coulson are initially completely dismissive of everything that Marvel says initially (because none of it has been verified/there’s no proof), and eventually come around to build a task force to ‘avenge’ those as-yet-unproven threats.
2 Likes
In fairness, I’m focusing on what could be improved. But I would certainly recommend it if you have enjoyed any of the other MCU movies. I like it more than Thor 2, Iron Man 2 & 3, Guardians 2, Avengers 2 & 3, and the Ant Man movies. And anything in the DCEU (i.e. Man of Steel onward). It has roughly the same level of completeness as Doctor Strange.
1 Like
Unfortunately unless she’s a holistic problem solver (I don’t think so) or I have the wrong storyform (possible), the Benchmark is Present/Conscious. The last signpost is Memory/Past though…
That just doesn’t sound right to me at all. If anything, the Memory/Past signpost should be the first (the whole ‘who am I’) or the third (revealing who Lawson was/what happened), right?
She definitely felt more linear to me, but I haven’t thought properly about a storyform so I can’t disagree or suggest alternatives to yours just yet.
All that said, I’m really struggling to think of a clear IC. I actually think the most likely candidate for IC would be Talos (when she realises he’s trying to protect his family/people, he kind of motivates her change), but I’d have to think about what his perspective would be.
2 Likes