Case against continuity

[nevin]

I've not heard that put better.

well DC and Marvel have proved that. As a comic book geek from age 10 I'm beginning to hate the idea of any movie or game from books or stories that have hardcore fans. The toxic ones have way too much borked energy to spend on the internet ruining the stories for all of us.

 

[loverdrive]

going against "folk wisdom" lost whatever that thought was completly. I was simply replying to the idea of replaying stuff with no big story attached over and over as replayable content. never been a big seller.

Well, if by "never been a big seller" you mean "formula for all the most succesful videogames" from arcade era coin-guzzlers to modern day giants like Call of Duty and League of Legends...

Regardless. Whether "most people" like it or not is completely irrelevant. When someone talks about their love for jazz you don't need to chime in saying how hip-hop is more popular.

 

[nevin]

in a thread about whether or not continuity is important you definitely do. If we were talking about how great or bad Jazz was in reference to something else I'd definitely expect someone to chime in if i started talking about how much I enjoyed it in that context.

 

[loverdrive]

Adding to the "great works of fiction" examples, I've just watched Ralph Bakshi's "Heavy Traffic", and, just like his previous "Fritz the Cat" it is more or less a collection of vaguely connected vignettes. I loved both, and will continue to comb through Bakshi's filmography.

Also "Sin City", "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" and "New York Stories" should be mentioned too.

 

[Emberashh]

I'm trying to think of any great work of fiction that is a product of good scenes without a good story accompanying it and I'm drawing a complete blank. Cool scenes without a good story is just a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing. It might be a tasty treat like consuming a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but it doesn't truly satisfy like a decent meal would. Man of Steel had some cool scenes in it, but ultimately I didn't care for the movie very much because the characterizations and overall story were not to my liking. Whenever I think of a "cool" scene that has next to nothing to do with the overall story it brings me back to how much I hate Tom #%^#%# Bombadil.

Continuity does not equal stagnation. You can certainly maintain continuity in a setting while simultaneously making changes. Just because the king has been around for twenty years doesn't mean he's going to be around for the next twenty.

2001.

Requiem for a Dream.

Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

 

[MGibster]

Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

BoBS was an anthology movie not a motion picture just made up of cool scenes with no story. Each anthology was its own little story. And 2001 wasn't just a bunch of cool scenes, it had a story. A story that had some sort of crazy lightshow at the end, but a story nontheless. I havent' seen Requium for a Dream so I won't comment on that.

 

[Emberashh]

BoBS was an anthology movie not a motion picture just made up of cool scenes with no story. Each anthology was its own little story. And 2001 wasn't just a bunch of cool scenes, it had a story. A story that had some sort of crazy lightshow at the end, but a story nontheless. I havent' seen Requium for a Dream so I won't comment on that.

The ask was for such a work without a "good" story, not without a story period.

None of the films I listed have a particularly good story to them, and I still count Ballad (despite its vignettes being self-contained stories) because the entire film as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the film has no story to speak of.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Even if that's the case (it probably isn't), so what? I don't see what the most people want has to do with deliberately going against "folk wisdom" to attain new experiences.

 

[GMMichael]

Did Groundhog's Day not get a mention in the movie examples, yet?

Lots of TV shows start more or less from scratch at the beginning of the next episode. Sure, something different happens (usually), but it's often the same characters, places, villains, etc.

Video games are an interesting comparison. Some games intentionally change across playthroughs. Others are more or less the same, and the reason one plays them again is to have the same exciting/dramatic experiences from the first time. This case is like rewatching movies. Side note: this seems impossible with shared-narrative games, but who knows?

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, but fanfiction lives in a space in which someone else establishes the characters and makes you care about them, by showing us the journey they are on. Fanfiction takes characters who are going from A, to B, to C, and pulls them aside for a moment.

Which suggests that the story is valuable to establish the engagement that makes exploring stagnation worthwhile.

No story, no journey, just the moment of interest as many times as it's interesting!

I like @loverdrive's thinking here. It's novel. Speaks to game as game. Doesn't tie itself to serving traditional (read linear) ideas of storytelling.