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i-just-like-commenting · 5 years

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“Venom” and Romance Story Structure

Given the structural mess of 2018′s Venom as a superhero movie (look in your hearts, you know it to be true) I thought it was worth taking seriously the idea that this works better as a romance. To this end I checked out romance author and editor Gwen Hayes’ Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels, part of her “How to Write Kissing Books” series. Her four-part structure is a modification of the traditional three act screenplay structure, with the lengthy second act divided into two halves, the development then the collapse of the relationship.

How well does Venom match her structure? The answer is that in some ways it actually matches quite well, since it is a story with two protagonists (Eddie and Venom) learning to overcome their aversion to each other and develop a partnership. However, Venom misses some key beats in her outline, and I think looking at these beats can give us an indication of how this movie might have been improved. (And as a side note, I think more writers subdividing their second acts into “it all seems to be going well” and “then it all falls apart” would help the weak second acts of many stories, regardless of genre).

Part 1: Set Up

Hayes subdivides this section into five beats. The first two are introducing your two main characters and their central flaws that they will overcome through their relationship together. To a certain degree, Venom actually does this in its first act. We establish Eddie, the successful and driven reporter who we see violate his fiancee’s privacy to get his story. Eddie can’t compromise on his ambition and goals, even if it hurts the person he cares about the most. Meanwhile, he is irritating and pushy with his coworkers and boss -- he needs to learn to work better with others.

Our introduction to Venom is unfortunately weaker, as we meet them as one of the symbiotes, and their weakness is the same general one as the rest of them: killing their hosts in order to survive. They need to learn empathy. But we don’t get to know Venom as a distinct personality until much later, and in general their development is weaker than Eddie’s.

What is missing entirely are the “meet cute” and “no way” beats where our heroes become aware of each other but reject the idea of a relationship. Instead Venom and Eddie never meet until the fifth beat, “adhesion,” where your couple becomes stuck together.

Imagine if, instead of Eddie’s career dying over a tangentially related malfeasance, he instead actually encountered the symbiotes. He wouldn’t have to know what they were, just catch a glimpse of them, and be filled with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. Imagine if Eddie was discredited as the crackpot talking about aliens in the Life Foundation’s Labs, the symbiotes becoming his obsession even as he hates them, and then he gets infected by one once Dr. Skirth breaks him in.

Or, alternatively, eliminate most of the movie before the time skip, introduce Eddie already disgraced along with why, and turn the “meet cute” and “no way” being Eddie viewing footage of the symbiotes brought to him by Dr. Skirth. This would be my preference, as I felt the first act of Venom was overlong. Either way, however, it would help make the first act more cohesive than it is now.

Part 2: Falling Love

After the point of adhesion, however, Venom meets almost all of Hayes’ beats and structure point by point. We have “No Way 2,” as Eddie slowly realizes he’s been infected and looks for a way to get the symbiote out of him. This beat is more of a slow development than a one-point moment, but Hayes admits the structure can be shifted around and take several scenes.

We get our first “inkling this could work” from Venom helping Eddie escape the lab, and then shutting down his noisy next-door neighbor; we don’t have “deepening desire” because at this point Eddie isn’t aware that the symbiote is sentient and a part of this relationship. This, again, is where the lack of development for Venom continues to be a problem. It needs a few more moments of Venom talking to Eddie, to give us insights into how Venom’s conception of this relationship is changing, how their empathy for Eddie is increasing.

It definitely hits “maybe this will work” during the big action sequence where Venom and Eddie first start collaborating to escape Drake’s goons. Venom reveals themself to Eddie, explaining what their deal is and even declaring that “you are mine.” If anything, “deepening desire” gets shifted to this point, as they negotiate infiltrating the newspaper offices. Ideally this beat would have been more spread out over part 2 to ease up the suddenness of their relationship shift.

Because then we reach Hayes’ “midpoint of LOVE plot thrust.” This is when romance characters have their first moment of true intimacy (opening up about their feelings for the first time, having sex for the first time, having meaningful sex for the first time, etc.), where this becomes a real or serious relationship.

And so, “Mask on.” “Roger that.” Eddie voluntarily lets Venom take over, Venom refrains from eating the police officers when Eddie asks, and they work in sync, and start to say “we.” This is their midpoint, the false high that’s going to collapse.

Part 3: Retreating From Love

Our “inkling of doubt” and “deepening doubt” are also rather quickly back to back on each other. In spite of their established partnership, Venom sometimes switches back to “I,” which Eddie calls them out on. Is this partnership real or is Venom just parasitic? Eddie doesn’t trust Venom enough for them to get in the car together with Annie, and has to be reassured that, no, Venom won’t eat the woman he cares for. We as an audience are reassured that this relationship is good, however, by Venom convincing Eddie to apologize to Annie. Eddie has made Venom more empathetic, and Venom encourages Eddie to be more considerate and admit his past mistakes.

“Retreat” and “shields up” come into play when it’s revealed that Venom has slowly been consuming Eddie’s internal organs and killing him. Even though Venom intends to repair the damage now that they care about Eddie, Eddie isn’t willing to trust him and his defenses go up, demanding that they be separated, even using the knowledge of Venom’s weakness to sound against them. We have our “break up” when Venom and Eddie are separated.

This part goes relatively fast, but given the very real damage that Venom does to Eddie, I feel like this is justified. This isn’t just Eddie’s own failings leading him to think that Venom is betraying him, Venom did in fact betray him by not revealing that Eddie’s sickness was caused by them. That leads to a very precipitous collapse in their newfound relationship.

Part 4: Fighting for Love

The “dark night of the soul” beat corresponds to the low point at the start of the third act in a traditional screenplay structure. Venom is forced into the body of a puppy to survive, Eddie is captured by Drake. The “wake-up/catharsis” comes, I think, to Venom, though again their lack of voice makes the exact moment when they realize they need Eddie - not just as a body but as a partner - hard to determine. But given Venom’s immediate body hopping into Annie and then body-hopping through a kiss back to Eddie, then opening up about how seeing the world through Eddie’s eyes has changed him, it must have happened while at the hospital.

That kiss is the first of Venom’s two “grand gestures.” But since Venom is more at fault here than Eddie was. they make a second, final grand gesture through almost sacrificing themself to save not just Eddie but Earth in general. Venom really has changed, and has proven it to Eddie.

This is where there’s another big problem in the movie: we don’t get to see our couple reunite. The “grand gesture” beat is only complete, in Hayes; model, if you see it accepted. We got a resolve to grand gesture #1 through Eddie’s willingness to work with Venom again, even reuniting with him after their separation in the final fight, but we don’t get one for grand gesture #2. Eddie’s panic over Venom’s seeming death indicates that all is forgiven, but it’s missing the catharsis of seeing them get back together.

The ending of the film does, however, manage to absolutely nail her final beat: “this is what whole-hearted looks like.” Here you show the couple together and mirror scenes from earlier in the story, showing how much more whole and happy they are together than they were apart. We have an interaction between Eddie and Annie that mirrors their scene from the (post time jump) first act, now friendly rather than hostile. Eddie goes back to the same bodega as from the opening, and now with Venom’s help is able to stop the thug terrorizing the owner, whereas before all he could do was look on. Good echoing, good bookends, along with the well-written banter and camaraderie between them this is why the ending is the best part of the entire film.

Conclusion

Venom isn’t precisely structured like a romance, but it gets close, and its strongest moments are when it does. Of course, this structure can work for any kind of story where the central conflict is whether a duo can get along; buddy cop films often follow a similar structure, just centered on friendship. However you want to consider Eddie and Venom’s relationship, I do think viewing this as a relationship-centered story is to its benefit, and had the studio embraced that earlier on, it would have been a better structured film.

#venom #symbrock #story structure #meta #gwen hayes #this is over 1600 words long what am i doing with my life

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kiev4am · 5 years

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The AU that nobody asked for. Really, nobody.

Okay, so (a) this is a terrible idea and I'm a terrible person, but please consider (b) Brexit is legitimately horrifying if you live in the UK and aren't a xenophobic 'rah rah Blitz spirit' wingnut, because if we leave the EU without a trade deal we will have a degree of difficulty importing essentials like fresh food and medicines that has 100% not been honestly evaluated. Supermarkets, hospitals, factories etc. have been stockpiling supplies for months in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit in six weeks' time and our political leaders are so busy chasing their slim margins of power that they'd rather run the clock down while trumpeting jingoistic slogans than materially protect the country. People are writing unironically in the papers about stockpiling food at home and it scares the crap out of me. So much of the language of Brexit harks back to imperial nostalgia, mythical glory days when Britain supposedly forged ahead and didn't answer to anyone, and I'm already obsessed with a TV show whose major theme is 'people finding out in cruelly short order that Britishness isn't magical and you can't eat patriotism' so, well, here we are: with bitter sincerity and many apologies, I give you the Terror No-Deal Brexit AU. Feel free to skip this if you feel it's too close to the bone. I've split it into three posts to try and spare mobile users some pain - it's loooong because apparently I derived catharsis from this wreck of a concept.

Part 2 | Part 3

Setting: 2 years into a no-deal Brexit. Imports into the UK are subject to catastrophic delays and huge cost increases, which means demand for anything home-produced or home-grown is far in excess of supply. The wealth/quality of life gap hasn't been this stark since the 1800s, and nobody in power is losing sleep over this since most of them are hard-right Tories who've spent their careers fetishising the undeserving-poor Victorian model of society. Almost all the EU citizens who were living here have gotten the Tories' 'hostile environment' message loud and clear and departed, leaving many sectors struggling to survive without that workforce; this especially impacts healthcare, agriculture and local councils. Non-critical clinical and surgical care is almost non-existent, medicines are being rationed (officially only non-essential ones, but there's increasing reportage of insulin, heart drugs etc. being withheld, plus things like anti-depressants and contraceptives are ruled 'non-essential', fun times), waste collection and water purification in cities is compromised, fresh food is a luxury, unrest and rioting is commonplace with typically harsh response by overstretched but well-armed police and security services who've been given the 'state of emergency' nod to use extreme force. Schools are on a three-day week with much depleted class sizes (the research into why those numbers have gone down makes grim Dickensian reading) and many local authorities have introduced water and electricity rationing. There is rhetoric about 'temporary measures' and 'light at the end of the tunnel' and 'Britain once more proud and independent' but the politicians who engineered the mess have all moved to their second homes in Spain and Italy, and in their few carefully curated television appearances the ones who are left speak with ghostly, heartsick cheerfulness. Every local council is effectively on a wartime footing and their offices are like seige towers; with fuel, transport and public safety compromised, people frequently sleep at their workplaces rather than chance their route home every night. There's a sense of everything being one explosion, one riot away from full-blown dystopia; of society hanging in the balance, trying to stay polite and bureaucratic on the very doorstep of anarchy. No-one sleeps well. Everyone who isn't super-rich has nutrition problems and is obsessed, on one level or another, with food.

Erebus House is one of those brutal 1960s office blocks with grandiose names that typically house local government departments; surrounded by the closed shops and boarded-up arcades that once made Barrow city centre a cheerful hive of activity, it is Northwest Council's last remaining administrative hub. From these chilly beige rooms, shuffling in the dead-grey flicker of the last few striplights and guarded by a ragtag division of local police and army, a skeleton staff attempts to maintain law, order and some kind of subsistence for this once-prosperous Middle England town.

John Franklin was the local Tory MP who campaigned vigorously in favour of Brexit and was re-elected comfortably on the strength of his rich, confident visions of independence and national pride. A keen amateur historian specialising in Victorian industry and exploration, he was also among those whose intransigence and hubris propelled the country towards a no-deal Brexit, convinced as he was that home-grown manufacturing and invention would flourish in adversity. Unfortunately, he and his confederates were so sure of this outcome that they never underpinned it with any realistic contingency planning. As the consequences unravelled so did Franklin, succumbing to a heart attack eighteen months in. His widow Jane now channels her grief into fierce party activism, stubbornly insisting that the problems are transitional and that her husband's legacy will be a stable, thriving Northwest county. Driven into town by her personal security staff, Jane Franklin visits Erebus House every fortnight to plead support for her causes and stress the need for 'visible, inspiring' gestures.

Francis Crozier was never a politician. The closest link he ever had to government was his heartfelt but ill-advised attachment to Franklin's niece Sophia - an attachment which has mellowed now into genuine, if wry friendship. An outsider, he always meant his stay in Barrow to be temporary, his job at the council a purposely dull stop-gap until he collected himself and moved on, preferably back to Ireland or to the itinerant sailing life he'd enjoyed so much in his youth. Two things have held him back from this goal: his frequent bouts of debilitating depression, self-medicated with alcohol, and the fact that - against all expectation - he turned out to have an excellent, intuitive grasp of town council management and infighting, combining logistical and bureaucratic shrewdness with an angry compassion that keeps him from walking away even at his most despairing. His bold advocacy and fairness made him well-liked by activists and local grassroots organisations while setting him at odds with Franklin's complacency; their relationship became strained in the run-up to Brexit, then disastrous in its aftermath. On his worst days Francis holds himself responsible for aggravating the stress that led to Franklin's death (his closest staff have offered to bar Jane Franklin from the building, but he doesn't have the heart). On his best days he runs Erebus House like a ship in a squall, holding the shreds of the town's welfare in both shaking fists.

#as all the other brits in the fandom yell at me #i'm so sorry #the terror #francis crozier #this has legit been gnawing at my mind for weeks #brexit is a last dying cough of imperial madness so as a terror au it practically writes itself #i wish it didn't fit so well but it fits like a fingerless glove on a frozen corpse #it's really something to watch your alleged leaders intentionally walking the country towards dystopia #sorry about the politics #terror modern au #terror brexit au #kiev rants #kiev is really worried

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illiax · 3 years

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Just finished WW84 with some buds and

wooooooooof did it need another few drafts and rounds of editing

Diana can just cast Greater Invisibility out of nowhere, that’s a thing now for some reason

Why did Steve quantum leap into an existing body??? why did the movie waste time on that instead of just having him be rezzed???

The movie wasted time on a lot of things it shouldn’t have

Several sequences ran wayyyyy too long for what they were trying to accomplish(?)

Mall heist scene went on forever, car chase went on forever, wish montages went on forever

Bless Pedro Pascal he gives so fucking much to his roles and I love him and I wish the end product had done him justice

Theming was inconsistent and weird

Barbara/Cheetah’s throughline was muddy

Diana can also cast Fly now for some reason

Just so much extraneous stuff, just so much

Please no on the people getting racist wishes, and also on racist stereotypes of people wishing for more ways to do terrorism

If they were gonna monkey’s paw it, they should have done it properly - the thing abt the monkey’s paw is that the punishment is ironic re: what you wished for

The Alistair stuff fell flat bc the movie had this fucking child be left in a deserted office for hours with nobody to look after him and the kid doesn’t even start breaking shit or playing with the weird artefacts bc he’s not a character he’s a symbol of a child?? I think a) the kid should have had a character (have him be an 80′s kid with 80′s kid obsessions!! have fun with it!!) and b) Max should have been very concerned that his kid was being looked after properly, and given fun things to do and never left alone or treated badly etc, and the only part he doesn’t comprehend is that his kid wants to spent time with him - bc Max hates himself and deep down thinks if his kid is around him long enough he’ll Realise that Max is worthless. That’s how self hate works!! So kidlet is well looked after throughout the movie so Max isn’t just straight up negligent but thinks he isn’t good enough for this kid he thinks the world of and you still get the emotional catharsis of bb telling his dad he loves him whether he’s king of the universe or not

Srsly childo was just wandering around unsupervised during the wish apocalypse. Wtf was he??? how did he get to where Max was at the end? I’m so confused

Actually making the theme be more about loving yourself as you are also would help Barbara’s storyline too. Diana’s message to Barbara should have been that she thought Barbara was wonderful and funny and worth spending time with just as she was (and that should have been built up by having them be actual real established friends (girrrrlfriends?) at the start of the movie)

That makes Diana’s theme of accepting loss a bit out of kilter with the other characters but it could be made to work, or else broaden it out into accepting things as they are/accepting yourself as you are? there could be a nice bittersweetness to it maybe but if that’s what the movie would go for.

anyway yeah it was a weird mess and needed tightening up on several fronts, but pedro carried the movie bc he’s just great

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