ReLIFE: Relearning life through reliving high school

If you had the opportunity to go through senior year of high school again as part of an experiment, would you do it? Who would you be by the end? What would learn about yourself as a person and about those around you? If the impact of your actions far outlast the memory of you …

The Dragon Prince, Hilda, and the Creation of Empathy

The late great film critic Roger Ebert often called movies "empathy generating machines." In a speech he gave at the 2004 AFI Commencement, he said: "[T]he motion picture is the most important art [form] ever devised by the human race. That's because it is the art form that creates more empathy than any other. It …

The Overlooked and Distressing Toxic Masculinity of “Thor: Ragnarok”

This one is probably going to gain me the ire of a selection of the handful of people who will actually read this. But rather than dance around the issue, I will just come out and say it: I didn't like Thor: Ragnarok and I consider the worst film of the MCU. I'm not saying …

Learning from the Past, Rising Above Mistakes: A Personal Reflection of “The Last Jedi”

There aren't that many movies from the past year that I have thought more about than The Last Jedi. As a lifelong Star Wars fan, I immediately went to see it with a good friend of mine in theaters when it came out back in December. We spent some time over food and drink afterwards …

The Importance and Responsibility of Mass Appeal

I don't think I've met anyone who has said, "Boy, you know what I would like? To write/film/make [insert media here] and wallow in obscurity! Yessiree, nothing better than being forgotten." It usually doesn't happen. So, it's then strange how we (myself included) have a tendency to dismiss a band/show/movie/book/video game/what-have-you just because it's popular. …

Fire Emblem Fates: Shoehorned Mechanics

Video games are a relatively new storytelling medium. As a whole, they have been around for barely half a century and have been telling coherent stories for only a fraction of that time. The earliest video games were simply that, games where only the mechanics mattered. Pong was table tennis, Pac-Man was a sort of …

Small Story, Big Package

This week's Narrative Nuisance is going to be a little short but about the kinds of stories that are near and dear to my heart: stories that are small and personal in nature but are told in a grand and epic way. And when I say epic, I mean the original sense of the term: …

Advocating Adventure: Making the Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise Better, part 1

It's unfortunate that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, despite its box office success, is considered to be tepid at best and downright awful at worst. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 29%, it's a far cry from the 79% that the 2003 franchise starting Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the …

Age of Myth: Setup, Payoff, and Narrative Misdirection

And we're back from the brief and unplanned Fourth of July Hiatus. I was away on vacation and didn't have the means or time to work on these blog posts. But fear not! We shall return to the regularly scheduled posts on all things story and narrative related. Thankfully, this break gave me an opportunity …

Kingdom of Heaven: The Failure of the Crusades on Film

As a disclaimer, this post will contain spoilers for a twelve-year old film. If Kingdom of Heaven is on your bucket list of movies to watch, please do so before reading. The film Kingdom of Heaven, directed by Ridley Scott (of Alien and Gladiator fame) and released in 2005, was certainly an ambitious project. The Crusades …