About a couple of months ago, some of my friends and I went to see The Dark Knight at our local theater. Now, when I first saw the previews for this movie, my initial reaction was incredulous. “What?” I said. “They’re making another Batman movie? Wasn’t this series old sixty years ago?”
This wouldn’t have been my attitude If I had already seen the other Batman movie directed by Chris Nolan. After seeing The Dark Knight for the first time, I was so impressed that I returned to watch it twice more. Then I bought a DVD copy of Batman Begins, and I watched it three times as well. Nolan is an excellent director, and he had a great staff of actors and film makers working for him. These two movies enforced my belief that it is essentially possible to create good fan fiction. While Batman Begins and The Dark Knight aren’t technically fan fiction, being that DC Comics has officially sanctioned both movies, there’s still a powerful point to be made. For these two movies, none of the production crew, actors or management had anything to do with the original Batman comics released back in the 1930’s. The character Batman and the setting of Gotham City depicted in these two films are purely Nolan’s interpretation of the story.
Now, while I’m always trying to strengthen the perception of fan fiction having the potential of being good storytelling, this isn’t the point of today’s article.
There’s one scene in The Dark Knight that struck something deep in me. It’s only about two seconds of video, but there’s something important to be said for those two seconds. Take a look at this YouTube video. At the one minute mark (1:00 on the time bar below the video), Batman is racing down an alleyway. He bursts through a wall of debris, and makes a turn so sharp that the front wheel of the Batpod turns laterally before coming to a dead stop. Apart from being a sweet bit of action film, this short snippet makes a powerful point about the value of storytelling.
Imagine if you had been contracted to write the novelized version of The Dark Knight. Imagine the overwhelming task of describing these action scenes with words alone. It’s a daunting idea. Sure, you can describe it. You can simply say, “Batman blew through a stack of cardboard boxes, turned the Batpod to the side, and its front wheel rotated five times on its sideways axis to break momentum and bring him to a standstill.”
Yeah, that’s pretty clunky. I don’t doubt that with some work and care, the written description could be made passable. It might even give the reader a halfway decent idea of what he’s supposed to be picturing. But no matter how well you word it, the written word will never, ever match the impact of seeing it acted out in a high-grade film like The Dark Knight. How do the clichés go? A picture is worth a thousand words? It’s better to show than to tell?
Here’s another example. Recently, I re-played through my favorite video game of all time (to which the Touhou games are a close second), Half-Life 2. This game is, to me, the epitome of the first-person shooter genre. Valve did everything right in the creation of this game, making the ultimate immersive experience. The adrenaline-pumped battles, the moments of creepy tension, the mournful scenes of a world taken over by hostile aliens. While the overall atmosphere deserves all praise in Half-Life 2, there’s also much to be said for the details. The irrigation canals loaded with garbage, the paint peeling off the interior walls, the dwindling human populace all looking generally worn and ragged. Bioshock is another excellent example of these same principles. No shooter before or since these two has made such amazing use of detail to tell a story.
After having played Half-Life 2 and watched both of Nolan’s Batman movies, I feel defeated. In these exemplary examples of their respective media formats (video games and movies), one wonders how the humble written word can possibly hope to compete. There’s no amount of words, no matter how eloquent or well-chosen, that could adequately describe Gordon Freeman’s adventures through City 17, or Bruce Wayne’s crusade in Gotham. Words alone simply aren’t powerful enough, forceful enough, direct enough, to tell these tales with the impact of a good video game or movie.
Now, no intelligent person could honestly say that movies and/or video games are a better storytelling format than writing (such as appears in novels and magazines). But this then begs a question. If we’re aware of the advantages that video games and movies have over written storytelling, then what does the written word have over them?
Let me dispel the first weary answer that comes to most people’s minds. So many among us, when talking about a film that was based on a novel, have used the buzzphrase: “The movie was good, but I liked the book better.” I’ve said this more times than I can count, but now I’m wondering why I said it. What about the novel did I like better than the movie? Can we put the preference into words?
The only coherent reason I’ve ever seen is the value of character immersion. In books, people say, it’s possible to expose a character’s internal thought processes, thresh out their motives, and generally look into the character from the inside out. While this is true, the same is equally possible in film, even though it has to be done in a different way. Let’s use another classic example, the film/novel pair of The Lord of the Rings. (Yes, you get a Wikipedia link for that one too.)
In Tolkien’s novels, starting from the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, and consistently through to the antagonist’s defeat in The Return of the King, the narrative tirelessly documents the internal struggles and agony of our hero, Frodo Baggins. When Peter Jackson came along and made three live-action films out of these novels, he certainly spent no less time on Frodo’s challenges. In the films, they were depicted differently, but in a way that’s appropriate for the format (a movie as opposed to a novel). Jackson couldn’t show Frodo’s pain through narration, so instead showed it through every other resource that a movie can draw upon. He used Elijah Wood’s acting abilities. He used makeup and costume. He used dialogue and scenario. He used tension in the relationship between Frodo and his servant, Samwise.
Yet another example. In the first Mission: Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise, there is a scene halfway through the movie that depicts a character’s internal thought processes without actually using any words. When Ethan Hunt is found by his mentor, Jim Phelps (who Ethan had hitherto believed to be dead), the two of them sit down to discuss the strange conspiracy swirling around them. Ethan already suspected Jim of being the antagonist who was causing all the chaos, but played it cool as Jim attempted to trick Ethan into blaming someone else. Ethan feigns agreement with this, and begins thinking through the methods by which Jim’s scapegoat had killed all the members of Ethan’s team earlier in the movie.
Now here’s the good part. While Ethan is saying out loud, “Kittridge must have killed him this way, so that means he must have done her this other way...,” Ethan’s dialogue is interspersed with flashback camera cuts to the deaths of each of his team members, where Jim Phelps was the instigator. This is a cinematicly brilliant way of showing how a character can say one thing but think another.
So, put simply, it is indeed possible to show the internal thought processes and emotions of a character in a movie. It’s not as simple or easy as writing it out in narrative, but it can be done. But sadly, this brings us back to square one. If not for narrative, what advantage does written storytelling have over these other formats, such as video games and movies?
There necessarily must be some advantage that novelization has over other formats, or we wouldn’t read as many books as we do. I have thousands of dollars worth of books in my home, and I still can’t quench the desire to buy more and more books. A library card is a dear friend for a bibliophile such as myself. But why? What is the allure of written storytelling?
Time to dispel another misconception, albeit a misconception that touches closer to the truth. The next argument that people bring up for written storytelling versus movies, video games (among other formats), is the age-old argument of the mind’s powers of speculation. They say, “With a book, I can go as far as my mind will take me! The only limit is my imagination!”
This is true, but it leaves out a vital point. It’s correct to say that, in written storytelling, your imagination is your only limitation. Sadly it’s also true that, for many people, this is a huge limitation. The mental block keeping them from imagining things is about the same as the only thing keeping the United States from touching Japan, the minor matter of the Pacific Freaking Ocean. Or how about the only limitation keeping human beings from touching the sun being eight light-minutes of distance? (Prohibitive heat not withstanding.) These are analogies to show the mental block too many people have against using their imaginations, even with the help of a written story. My own younger sister is a great example of this. She summed it up perfectly when, not long ago, she told me, “I don’t like to read because it’s too much work. I’d rather wait until the movie comes out.”
So while, yes, the only limit is our imagination, in some people’s cases this is a pretty significant limit. The power of imagination can’t be the only reason we like to read books, even if it is a large contributor.
So, once again, we come back to the original question. Why do we like to read stories, when more intense storytelling is available through other formats? I’ve been pondering this problem for a long time, and I believe I’ve finally come to an answer. All this time, I failed to realize that I was looking at only one half of a supply/demand equation. I paid attention only to the “demand” (we consumers who love to buy and read books, and why), instead of the “supply” (the authors and publishers who create the books). Realizing this, the answer is simple. And now, finally, we come to the point of this article. Ready for it?
And there you have it. A novelized story costs almost nothing to produce, compared to the more high-profile media formats. Both video games and movies can take millions of dollars and thousands of man hours, just to create one good product. A novel takes only a few hundred man hours, and has essentially no production budget (except what it costs to feed and house the author, and the costs of publishing, which are nothing compared to a movie budget.)
Now keep in mind, when I say books are “cheap”, I’m talking about the cost of production, not the price presented to the consumer. Especially after a product has aged for a year or two, the prices between books, movies and video games aren’t all that different. I bought a copy of Batman Begins on DVD for ten dollars from an online retailer. Half-Life 2 currently sells for twenty dollars on Steam. Most paperback novels cost about seven dollars. There isn’t much difference in the price, but the game and the movie cost far more to make than any novel ever did.
So this is why. This is why we have exponentially more books written than movies made, than video games designed. And in the end, what does this tell us? That, of these discussed formats, the most popular is also the cheapest, most discounted, thrift store-variety of entertainment? Yes, but this isn’t a bad thing. Using the human diet as an analogy, the cheapest foods tend to make up the core of our diets, while more expensive and fancy foods are occasional indulgences. The bulk of our calories should come largely from grains (like the stereotypical bread in Western countries and rice in Eastern countries) and less so from other plant foods. We shouldn’t eat pounds of meat or dairy or candy every day. Not only are these more expensive per calorie, but too much of them will make us fat and unhealthy.
Put it another way. The best movies and video games are very good indeed, in that they provide great rides of fun, comedy, action and drama. No doubt, some of our most extreme emotions come from the tensest parts of certain video games and movies. But do we want this emotional extremity, these thrills, to be the main way we spend our free time? Isn’t this exhausting? Isn’t it stressful? Seeking the most intense of feelings as a desired norm is something akin to installing a roller coaster in your backyard. After the first few dozen times riding it, you would get sick of the motion and the noise, and yearn for for the quiet and peace that your life used to be.
I’m not trying to say that written storytelling is never exciting or thrilling. Some of the best books are utter thrill rides in and of themselves, but this is beside the point. What I’m trying to say is that while movies and video games, by the sheer control they have over human senses, perhaps have greater thrill potential than the written word does, this does not lessen or replace the value of written storytelling. Novels can still satiate our craving for entertainment, our craving to learn and be enlightened, our craving for engaged thought, without wracking our nerves or stopping our hearts. And books can do it all without a million dollar movie budget.
So here’s the conclusion I come to regarding storytelling’s worth. Just like physical hunger, there are many ways to feed our desire for a good story. We can feast on the richest sustenance, and we can subside on the lowliest of home cooking. Either way will keep us going, and a balance between the two will keep us happiest and healthiest in the long run. What’s most important is that we consciously realize the value of both the luxurious and the mundane, and that we find the appropriate compromise between the two. Going too much in either direction will, of course, be less than good for us.
Being aware of storytelling's worth, in how one format compares to another, is the first step. The next step is to figure out why we human beings like storytelling so much in the first place. Why do we think some fictional adventure is worth our time? This (I hope) will be covered in another article in the nearby future. In the meantime, get off this website and go read your favorite book.