Do you think saying "Well in Expanded Universe that plot point/lore was explained" is a poor excuse to justify narrative problems?

[TheGamingNewsGuy]

For context, Linkara during his Attack of the Clones Reveiw brought up the idea how in Star Wars - explaining away a problem with the Star Wars Prequels with saying - "well the EU just explained it" is not a good justifaction. Linkara argued that you shouldn't need Expanded Universe Material in order to explain the plot whole,charcter and lore problems of a story. For example - the prequels didn't do much with the Jedi Lore and Ethics besides a few key details while the Expanded Universe went all in those details. It's not a justfication saying - well the ethics of the Jedi is fine (from a writing standpoint) because the expanded universe explains it:



I am curious to know if you agree with this statement. Personally i agree - i like the EU Star Wars material well enough but they do not fix the problems with the Star Wars prequels at least in my opinon as that stuff should have really been in the movies.

 

[thediamondage]

It is an extremely poor excuse, a better example imo is Rise of Skywalkers ridiculous "there was a fortnite event which explained how Palpatine is back". c'mon

If your movie/show can't explain something without needing viewers to see comics, books, websites, etc, you fucked up.

Destiny was another great example with its grimoire, which wasn't even in game for Destiny 1. Not sure about D2.

This imo is EXTREMELY different though than other properties giving MORE backstory. Like Clone Wars and Rebels "fleshes" out the prequels quite nicely imo, and I really appreciated them for that. They are additive materials to the prequels, not "required viewing".

 

[Deleted member 52442]

Yeah it might be fixed in the overarching cannon, but its a narrative problem in whatever it is that didnt cover it (movie/book/show etc.)

 

[Platy]

Yes

THAT BEING SAID stuff like "your father fought in the clone wars" from new hope is NOT a narrative problem when it was released. It was just fluff to make the audience feel like the world is bigger. Like what were the clone wars does not matter to your enjoyment or understanding of the plot

 

[Omanisat]

Linkara's absolutely correct. If it's that important it should be in the movie.

 

[Lord Vatek]

He's right.

The EU explaining away stuff that doesn't really matter to the movie itself is fine but plot-critical stuff needs to be in the movie.

 

[Tacitus]

I think it depends on the importance of the point being explained.

 

[killerrin]

It depends. Is the Universe a known Multi-media property? Then there is absolutely zero problem with referencing and using information established elsewhere in the universe. Thats kind of the point of having a Single Universe instead of multiple independent stories in their own universes.

As long as the plot critical stuff is esablished in the media your viewing, everything else in the universe is fair game

 

[MadLaughter]

Of the three outcomes:

1. A plot point works on its own with no outside info needed
2. A plot point doesn't work but there is outside stuff that improves it
3. A plot point is just trash and is never rectified outside of the work

Sure, A is a bit better than B, but B is still miles better than C. So I don't get all mad about it. Would it have been nice if they stuck the landing in the movies? Totally! But we live in a world where we have more access to other forms of media than we've ever had before, so it's really not that hard to catch up in other ways or just look something up.

90% of the time when I see someone say "THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE MOVIE" it is a defensive reaction when someone tries to be helpful and shares/explains something to them.

 

[jml]

99% of people who watch the movie are never going to look at that expanded universe companion book or whatever. You've gotta fix that narrative problem in the movie.

 

[Shiloh]

Star Wars and The Matrix are both terrible at this, and the movies are hurt for it.

 

[Parthenios]

It depends on what's being explained.

What happened to Blonsky/Abomination after the Hulk movie is fine to shove off into expanded lore, as it doesn't matter for the film.

The Emperor that's been dead 40 years putting out a podcast is maybe something that should have occurred on screen.

 

[Kinthey]

A movie should generally be able to stand on it's own (prequels/sequels aside) so I'm not a fan.

It can even be annoying when it's a neglible thing like C3POs red arm in force awakens. That just screamed "check out the EU guys" while adding nothing

 

[krazen]

Moves should stand alone as their own properties, or unless specifically tied together as sequels or quasi sequels in the case of universes.

But asking me to to spend some cash on a comic book, novel, streaming service to get the 'full' story of a movie? Fuck outta here.

 

[Jakisthe]

This raises an interesting issue. How expanded of an expanded universe are we talking? For instance, in Captain America: Civil War, the conflict is made much richer by relying on motives from other films in the series. Yes, they're all the same series of movies, but at the same time, that's, what, like 4 other movies that need to be watched to get to the central framing? I guess you could say that the film sets things up in a pretty contained manner, but what about Infinity War and the 20 or so films that came before that? What about when Doctor Strange 2 pulls in [presumably substantial] points from a 7 hour TV show from a subscription service?

Does it only get truly bad when it relies on different mediums? How far back should movies reference? Is there never any maximum heavy lifting of historical inference that can be done with simply better writing? I have to wonder if we'll start seeing this with the MCU before too long specifically, since they're so tied together, objectively a large series, and increasingly diffuse.

 

[Vanillalite]

What about Marvel? Are the shows EU?

 

[Caped Baldy]

Final Fantasy XV: The Thread

And even after watching the movie, and all anime episodes, it still leaves out huge chunks. That just shouldn't have happened.

 

[Bladelaw]

So two ways I think about this:
1) if it's serialized media (comic books, TV shows, book series, etc) I'm a bit more lenient on it, especially when it's clear where to get that info. Comic book editor's notes are pretty solid on this. Things like the CW's DC crossover is fine because it's part of the selling point of the event. WandaVision generally expects viewers to be familiar with Age of Ultron, Infinity War, and Endgame. I'm fine with these things.

2) If a movie is based on a book, manga, TV show, whatever and plot critical info is only found in that media, then I have a problem. Alita: Battle Angel kind of has this problem even though I love the movie. You'll see this in a lot of adaptations, Harry Potter movies are another example of expecting people to read the books to connect some dots instead of containing it in the movie. E: FF15 is a perfect example of this thanks for pointing that out.

 

[TheMadTitan]

What about Marvel? Are the shows EU?

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Kinda sorta, but Marvel, whether it's the comics, movies, or shows, don't treat the other mediums as secondary and not important. Star Wars canon was built on "movies are important and then everything else; everything else must follow the movies, but the movies can ignore everything they want to" which lead to problems where something was built up in the EU and utterly disregarded in a movie so the explanation that was there didn't even mesh with what happened in the movie.

Marvel at least attempts to keep some sort of consistency. Even with the stuff that kinda diverged like Agents of Shield or the Netflix stuff stuck to that consistency in ways that the Star Wars stuff never did.

 

[Khanimus]

What about Marvel? Are the shows EU?

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No. The shows are put up on that story timeline and introducing central characters that will carry into the movies.

 

[TheDinoman]

100%.

Like what the Plinkett Phantom Menance review said ages ago, what matters is the movie.

 

[MarvelousIntent]

I think it depends on whether or not the plot point is designed to be explained in the EU and how important the plot point is for the movie. If it's a major plot point/lore that's necessary to understand the main plot of the movie, it should be explained and resolved in the movies.

 

[Poppy]

if it's critical information that can otherwise lead to confusion about the plot then yeah thats just poor work

 

[StreetsAhead]

The movies should be able to stand on their own. Canon should reinforce the events and characterizations in the films, not fix holes in their writing.

 

[blame space]

expanding on story should be just that. i don't get into arguing about plot on the internet though.

 

[Kor of Memory]

It depends on the context of course.

Or rather, the initial question and where it's answer lies.

My favorite example of this in Nedry from Jurassic park. In the movies we are given the impression he's a greedy asshole. There is a brief allude to him having financial problems from Hammond in the movie. And Nedry has one single line about "i'll get on the phone with my guys to debug it later".

In the books this is fleshed out a bit more. Nedry has a gambling problem and he is also more of a Programing Director. He has a full team of coders off the island that he dials into overnight for the internet connection, so they can update code remotely.

Now, does omitting that information hurt the overall story? Not really? Does it enhance it? Ehhh... maybe. Personally, I like the way the characters allude to certain things and let us infer their meaning. A good movie will have a good dose of that compared to non stop exposition.

If Hammond dropped a line about Nedry having gambling problems surrounded by several other people, I would think Hammond is (more of) an asshole. But the line in the current movie tells me this is a previous argument they've had before, and Hammond doesn't want to get into that whole thing again. It makes me curious, but not left wanting.

 

[WildGoose]

I used to enjoy EU material for a lot of franchises but it needs to be extraneous and not required viewing/reading. In terms of games, Gears of War specifically was really bad for this. There were like 3 full novels set between Gears 2 and 3 that explained a load of shit about what happened to the world, where the Lambent came from etc that the game just didn't mention because they expected you to have to read them. I hate it.

That Star Wars E9/Fortnite thing is just the worst, though. What were they thinking?

 

[PeskyToaster]

Kinda sorta, but Marvel, whether it's the comics, movies, or shows, don't treat the other mediums as secondary and not important. Star Wars canon was built on "movies are important and then everything else; everything else must follow the movies, but the movies can ignore everything they want to" which lead to problems where something was built up in the EU and utterly disregarded in a movie so the explanation that was there didn't even mesh with what happened in the movie.

Marvel at least attempts to keep some sort of consistency. Even with the stuff that kinda diverged like Agents of Shield or the Netflix stuff stuck to that consistency in ways that the Star Wars stuff never did.

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That's not a problem imo. Anything in the EU should be bowled over if a movie or tv shows wants to do it. Every time these EUs become a thing, the main thing we are all here for suffers. Look at Mass Effect for example.

 

[deimosmasque]

To be fair you can reference past events, and events that never happened (ie the Clone Wars Part of a New Hope before the Prequels were a thing) what you can't do is have a plot point make no sense and then later go "Well if you read this book/read the novelization/Saw the deleted scenes/watched this other show it would make sense"

And the MCU does this correctly. Captain America Civil War happens because of the events of previous movies. It doesn't however pretend you obviously know those events. Instead it spends any entire scene catching the audience up.

I suspect when Scarlet Witch, Bucky or Sam show up again in a movie they will have some sort of explanation of the changes too them that happen in thier shows.

Linkara's point is that they don't explain ANYTHING, not even a little throw away line like "The Jedi believe...". Just Anakin spouting off his justification for his own feelings. We don't get context except that an outsider has said something she thought the Jedi believe and he countered it. Thus the problem with whole love plot conflict is that without those explanations anywhere the audience is like "Well if Jedi are encouraged to love, why is there any issue at all?"

 

[TheGamingNewsGuy]

MHA SPOILERS

Spoiler

Aizawa's backstory from Vigilantes is a good example of this. Should have been in the main MHA manga

 

[TheMadTitan]

That's not a problem imo. Anything in the EU should be bowled over if a movie or tv shows wants to do it. Every time these EUs become a thing, the main thing we are all here for suffers. Look at Mass Effect for example.

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That's one thing; having a TV show explain something and then the movie changes the setup on a way that doesn't connect with the original explanation, and then going back to tell the confused people to look at the TV show for a proper explanation, and then going into the next movie with an explanation that muddles the previous movie somewhat and utterly disregards the TV show is a problem. Because that's what the old Star Wars canon was, which is why they tossed it all out.

 

[ScoobsJoestar]

MHA SPOILERS

Spoiler

Aizawa's backstory from Vigilantes is a good example of this. Should have been in the main MHA manga

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No way, the author is a fan of American superhero comics and he wanted his audience to have the same feeling of "excuse what the fuck why is this massive plot point not part of the supposedly self contained story I'm reading" comics fans get. The man is a true artist!!

(I was okay with it but yeah lol)

 

[TheGamingNewsGuy]

No way, the author is a fan of American superhero comics and he wanted his audience to have the same feeling of "excuse what the fuck why is this massive plot point not part of the supposedly self contained story I'm reading" comics fans get. The man is a true artist!!

(I was okay with it but yeah lol)

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

Really hope the anime includes it (even if they do it apperivated)

 

[CloudWolf]

If it's a real narrative issue, yes. If it's just worldbuilding fluff that doesn't need explaining, no.

Something like "your father fought in the Clone Wars" or "I did the Kessel Run in so and so parsecs" doesn't need explaining. Nobody cares what exactly the Kessel Run is or what the Clone Wars is and so you can just mention it and never explain it without issues.

 

[Lynd]

Yes I hate it. Do not put vital info in a dumb comic book that less than 5% of people will read.

Star Wars etc needs to drop that.

 

[SaintBowWow]

This raises an interesting issue. How expanded of an expanded universe are we talking? For instance, in Captain America: Civil War, the conflict is made much richer by relying on motives from other films in the series. Yes, they're all the same series of movies, but at the same time, that's, what, like 4 other movies that need to be watched to get to the central framing? I guess you could say that the film sets things up in a pretty contained manner, but what about Infinity War and the 20 or so films that came before that? What about when Doctor Strange 2 pulls in [presumably substantial] points from a 7 hour TV show from a subscription service?

Does it only get truly bad when it relies on different mediums? How far back should movies reference? Is there never any maximum heavy lifting of historical inference that can be done with simply better writing? I have to wonder if we'll start seeing this with the MCU before too long specifically, since they're so tied together, objectively a large series, and increasingly diffuse.

Click to shrink...

While the MCU does contain a number of different properties sharing one universe, the requirement to have seen other films to understand what's happening in others is often overblown by fans. While having seen most movies definitely makes watching others a richer experience, they are still mass market films and are designed in a way that someone new to the franchise can watch most movies without being completely lost, with Infinity War/Endgame and Civil War being the main exceptions (but again, these are also the final movies within their own MCU franchises so they're probably not a good starting point anyway). Basically, there's no way that WandaVision is required viewing for Doctor Strange 2, and viewers who haven't seen it will be brought up to speed with 30 seconds of exposition.

 

[Shiloh]

As a huge Kingdom Hearts stan, I forgot it in my jab against Star Wars and The Matrix.

Kingdom Hearts is the king of this bullshit, yet I lap it all up.

 

[QuigleyMcShine]

If I need some detail from a prequel comic or official novelization to fully appreciate your story, you fucked up. If I need to know something that happened in the last movie that's fine, but it gets a little obnoxious in the Marvel case because there's so damned many movies now, to the point where each one feels like an episode of a TV show rather than a stand-alone thing.

But yeah, when you need books and comics and stuff to do some of your movie's heavy lifting, that sucks. Especially because all that stuff will be rendered non-canon in an instant if the next movie or main franchise entry wants it to be so.

 

[Doomguy Fieri]

No I fucking love it when nothing in a movie makes sense because I haven't read the 4 part Dark Horse Comics mini-series.

 

[NookSports]

It is an extremely poor excuse, a better example imo is Rise of Skywalkers ridiculous "there was a fortnite event which explained how Palpatine is back". c'mon

Click to shrink...

I also said "Yes, it's a bad excuse," but this in itself is a bad example IMO. The actual dialogue was cringy and video-gamey, and the opening crawl gave away about as much information as what Palps said in fortnite. I guess why it's become a flashpoint of criticism for that movie, but honestly, explaining Palpatine's return in the crawl was the least of their problems. (Or put another way, the movie would've been just as unintelligible with that line of dialogue from Fortnite said in the movie)

 

[TheGamingNewsGuy]

As a huge Kingdom Hearts stan, I forgot it in my jab against Star Wars and The Matrix.

Kingdom Hearts is the king of this bullshit, yet I lap it all up.

Click to shrink...

KH is reaaaaalllly bad at this

 

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

It depends. If we're talking about C-3PO's red arm, which was an inconsequential gag, then no. If you're talking about how "literally nothing Palpatine does in the Prequels or Sequels makes sense without a 7 series TV show or a reference book", then yeah.

 

[AndyD]

I think if you stay in the same medium (Books/movies/comics) you are good. Jumping around loses people immediately.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

Yes, I don't care whether something was explained in a comic book or a game or a book or whatever.
If I'm watching a movie I expect to get the full experience and have no interest in doing detective work afterwards to figure out if something that was poorly explained in the movie was slightly better explained in a comic book from 5 years ago.
As far as I'm concerned "It's explained somewhere else" is basically "It's not explained at all"

 

[Zomba13]

I think if it's not in the "main" thing then it shouldn't be used as justification. Like, if it's so important that a piece of information is needed from an outside source to have something work or make sense in the "main" thing (movie, TV show, book, game etc) then it should be included or hinted at in that piece.

eg, a series of movies or games referencing things in past movies/games to justify something or have something make sense is fine. Sometimes there are retcons and if done well are fine, sometimes it's something left intentionally out of the first entry to be revealed in a subsequent one and that's fine.

What isn't fine is something like, oh, you need to read the comic to understand why this character hates this character now in this movie.

I prefer when things are "kept in their lane" so to speak. Where everything in a movie franchise plays off each other rather than relying on the tie in books or comics. I'm totally fine with spin-offs and expanded universes etc but prefer that if a movie is going to use something from a book or TV spin-off then they incorporate it in a way that someone only watching the "main" thing (movie franchise in this case) could understand.

 

[Deleted member 6173]

Yes. The eagles could have flown the fellowship to the volcano

 

[Jedi2016]

Considering most of the relevant material is written after the fact and by completely different writers, absolutely. They're not part of the narrative, they're an attempt to fix it. It does nothing to change the fact that the original plot holes are still there.

 

[El Bombastico]

I roll my eyes anytime someone tells me the PT is "good" now because all the plot holes and shit characterization were fixed by a cartoon.

No, sorry, movies are still ass. I shouldn't have to watch 5+ seasons of a show for them not to be.

 

[Human Resources]

EU stuff is fan service. Your narrative needs to make sense in a vacuum or you have failed. Providing suitable context can be quick and efficient with some forethought.

 

[Ramala]

I think it's absolutely fine so long the story you're telling isn't compromised by the omission.