According to some psychological ideas the human animal has a shadow. I.E a part of yourself that's all the darker impulses and desires, or at least the more selfish ones. Like you might have the desire to say, say something mean to someone for the fun of it or because you feel threatened by them. It's more or less the lizard brain.
The thing is, every human has it. Which is why I said "the human animal". It is trait that everyone has, and has to come to terms with. The thing is, you shouldn't just deny or bow to the shadow. To put it simply, you need to find a middle ground. Completely denying the shadow just means you'd flare up into it's behaviour when your least expecting it and bowing to it means giving into your worst impulses. The problem is, that it feels like no one is trying to solve this problem anymore.
Like, look, humanity has many issues. One of them being sociaty, which by virtue of being made by humans is flawed, but it is still vital to deal with the shadow aspect. Most old movies and games and what not tried to do this. Namely, I think of Star Wars, the original trilogy, with Vader more or less being Lukes shadow and Palpitine being the bowing of oneself to the shadow. In other less wtf words, Luke needs to accept the good of the shadow, with the ideals of love and emotions, but not let it control him. He is still logical and has to be logical to not just fall to the Dark Side.
But then we look and Ray and... What is her shadow? Being, born of someone who is evil? That's not a fucking shadow that's just edgy set dressing man. It would have worked better if she was actually raised by someone from the Imperials side, learnt how to be a sith or how to be evil from them and keep trying to counter it and live as a good person. Or, you know, we could have followed the character that does that, Flynn.
Okay, moving past the Star Wars issues, another problem is a fixation on self actualisation. Look, being okay with elements of yourself you can't changes (like race, age, gender, sexuality, nerodivegence, religious beliefs, physical limitations, mental limitations, interests, hobbies, cultures and so on...) is a good thing. But sanding down every character into "no, they were pefect already" is boring, shit morals and fucking repeatative. First of all, people can change some things about themselves, like say working on your anger issues to better control them. We are not slaves to the lizard brain, we are above the lizard brain, it is merely the Hardware we run on. So, why for the love of fuck have we had less and less arguements of self betterment?
Betterment is human, humans have done this for years. Yes, we had mythologies about ever same characters and fairy tales being mostly one note, but these were made for different reasons that other forms of artistic story telling. Movies, books and plays tried to lean into the shadow dynamics. Like say, Othello, in which Othello is manuplated by Iago using his shadow more or less. Like Iago convinces Othello that he isn't enough for his wife because of Othello's self doubts, and because of racism, but Othello's response is because of his shadow taking over. He responding to a threat in a violent manner as he is a warrior, it is in his nature.
This fucking works, we have Iago, more or less playing a devil on the shoulder sort, to convince an otherwise good man, Othello, into surrendering to his shadow and it destroys everyone involved in classic shakespearn tragidy fashion. The thing is, now-a-days I don't think they would have granted Othello the humanity to be capible of evil. I say this, because of Black Widow.
Marvels Black Widow movies sucks ass for many reasons, one of which being none of the characters are three dimensional. For one the mother has no personality and merely exsits for like, the plot and all, and the Red Gurdian has not exploration of his shadow he instead has to repent for it and Natasha's sister has no moral questioning about having been a mind controlled assassin and Nat herself never freaking deals with having KILLED A CHILD! Yes, turns out the kid somehow returned, and somehow was turned into a mindcontrolled supermerc and somehow- You get the idea. Not one of these character exsit outside of their binary roles or are allowed to interact with their shadow in any meaningful well, and as a result the damn movie feels bland. It's not action dumb enough to get away with all the lack of depth.
Like I don't think all movies should be highbrow French Arthouse Films that only smart people understand, I am merely asking for a binary goal. If you want dumb fun, like Godzilla x Kong: Rise of a Kingdom, or you've gotta dive into the characters. Movies like Rambo: First Blood does both. It is a fasinating action film but also leans into how war broke Rambo and makes him have to rely on his survial and trauma to, in his mind, survive. But Black Widow does neither. It's not big, action packed and hyped up enough to skate with pretty graphics and cool fight scenes and it is not nearly in-depth enough to actually be less dumb fun because it literally doesn't try.
Allow me to explain. You have Natasha's sister, Yelena, who was used as a mind controlled super assasin. She killed someone who was trying to free her from the mind control and that the sister knows. But does she, say, lement having being pulled away from her humanity and forced into being a weapon? Does she slip back into her training and lash out at people she didn't mean to hurt? Does she try maybe try to completely distance herself from her old life in small ways atleast, like cutting her hair or changing her style to be less tatical? No... No, she fucking doesn't. She's just, mad at her dad for, not fully explored reasons, but not at her mom who invented the mind control pheromons?! What?!?!
And, note, Natasha's sister's (Yelana, my love~) character was my favourite of the line up of characters. Like, you know, I thought she was fun, bubbly, interesting, kinda hot (look at the prior brackets). But I can't argue that she is written well. Or at least that the movie allows her to explore anything other than Natasha but younger and more hip? Like don't get me started on Red Guardian and the mom, both are one note to a joking degree. The mom is smart scientist that created mind control that ended up being used on her daughter, and she's just, fine? No moral problems with having made mind control? No moral questions of said mind control being used to harm her adoptive daughter? Did she even love her adopted daughters or was it a cover? If it was a cover, how does she feel about it? Why did she torture and kill a pig named after the Red Guardian by using the mind control and like, no one has a problem with this woman torturing an animal? No fear that the villains can just use that to kill our leads? No fear from Yelena than that could be her?
Or what about the other widows? They went through simallar things as the leads, each was an actual person with actual problems and what? They don't get to exsist as anything but a collective of "mind controlled to now totally fine actually"? Like, think logically, why would all of them be just fine after having been raised as a weapon than turned into mind controlled maniacs that murdered an untold number of people? Why wouldn't some of them be so scared about the unknowns of normal life that they try to stay with the abusive system because at least it is a realible hell? Why wouldn't at least one of them still hate the leads for killing thousands of Widows along the way? Why don't they hate the mom? Like, the fucking mom made the mind control technology, she only know decided to try to free them from it, and there's not mild hesitiation? That's like if the Germans after World War 2 were not treated like complicent if not participating in World War 2. It's illogical.
Fucking hell. I feel like this was a first draft that didn't get a chance to be patched up. If it wasn't written purposely bad to not be difficult to understand in any manner. There is a theory that companies have been watering down films and series to appeal for mass audenice and "second screen status"-
Look, here me out. It is a known fact that Blackrock own every fucking major media company or at least consults and funds them, Blackrock being an American finance compnay. As a result, when blackrock decided to do a Corporate Social Responsibility and fund companies more based on diversity and progressive themes, as a result companies (who rememer worship money above all else and don't actually care about CSR or people) starts hiring anyone who claims to be into this stuff (Some who are but those get quickly cast aside for more controllable hires), they then also try to water down plots to still appeal to mass audience (and so called second screen status of trying to reach the same market as TickTok). As a result, right wingers hate it, left wingers don't quite like it, but because of political reasons these two fight over the morality of it (which is ususally not even relevent to the problem on hand as the morality of Captain Marvel doesn't suddenly make it a good or bad film) and the actual people, (grand majority who pay for movies and games and books and-) fucking hate the sloppy writting.
Boo ya, that's my theory. You hire people based on how loud they shout that they are good people (remember corpos can't do morality by virtue of corparates and so they can't even spot a good person or a bad person), these people don't want to acknowledge their shadows, so they can't write character that work with their shadows. As a result all character come across as mary sues/stus who have no depth, and because of the whole political war going on, nobody fucking solves the problem. Because instead of focusing on the actual problem, (bad actors in the indusry, lack of depth or entertainment, focusing on streamlining artistic mediums into products, hiring people who focus more on message than delivery, cutting out time required to work on projects, overworking staff, underpaying staff, over budgeting projects, trying to appeal to the wrong market base like say Fallout's TV Show not being for fallout fans first, rehashing old scripts again and again, reboots, focusing on franchises instead of original content, making original contant that is too niche and budgetting it too high, attacking consumers for some reaon and so on.), both sides get into a fucking slap fight over bullshit politics. Corpos obviously side with the life-wingers, because CSR and PR above all (not to mention, accountablity is a natourously difficult thing for corps to do), but they don't solve the issues meaning nothing is working out. And right-wingers, who don't actually care about the shadow and depth either, fixate on aesthetics over actual content, more or less false flagging actually good content because of random visual?
That's how you get people defending a corpo remaking a movie with not real meaningful change other than a race swope or something surface level! Or how you you get reboots that try to mimic the original character ideas but instead of these characters having a shadow they're one dimensional. Bland one-note explorations of morality or socaity. Downplaying prior moral issues and so on.
Like take the Legion between the Fallout TV Show and Fallout: New Vegas. In F:NV the Legion is well built, more terrifyingly their understandable. F:NV Legion is scarily realistic. The faction is realistic as in a world filled to the brim with violence, raiders, monsters and so on; would trumph might above all, with Ceaser holding Rome as perfection. It's a cult born of survial and utility, fixating on gaining control, waging war and purging or using the weak.
Meanwhile the F:TS (Fallout TV Show) Legion is more or less a bunch of weirdos who like acting like Frat bros? Why? For what reason? Why does the F:TS Legion suddenly lose their hostility and harshness to woman the second Lucy talks at all? How did they let a random cowboy ghoul into their camp, armed mind you, and talk to their leader and than waltz out with their slave and left without letting a random weirdo around their explosives? How?
Like in the game the only reason you make it to the Legion camp is because Ceaser let's you, and they take all your weapons you didn't try to hide with a stealth check. You're a political pawn more or less, and if you're woman courier, they blunetly tell you, you're only here and not a slave because Caeser is allowing it. It is consistant and feels logical. The Legion feels realistic, and works realistically, and is logical. Cruel, yes, absolutely twisted, defintely, but as history says, possible and sadly logical.
This carries over to the NCR and Robert House. But the point stands, in order to write compallingly, you have to have humanity. That's why movies focused on non-human entities, aliens and androids and mermaids and bugs, humanise them until they are just pallete swoped humans. Whihc is why we find the new characters robotic.
THAT'S RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS! I WAS RIGHT. I WAS ALWAYS RIGHT. WHAT MAKES HUMANS DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS IS THE INNATE ABILITY OF EVIL THAT HUMANS HAVE. AS A RESULT TO WRITE HUMANS AS INCAPIBLE OF HUMAN TRAITS (THE SHADOW) MAKES THEM FUCKING BLAND!
God damn, am I a fucking GENIUS or not?
Fen is an idiot that over thinks things. The shadow is vital to life and story telling. Good stories are not good because of political means more because of artistic means. Blackrock can suck my- And stories must either be dumb fun, deep and smart, or both to be good.
Oh, and uh, Fen is also a maniac who loves conspiracy theories.