BEWARE of the RULE OF COOL. How to do it right!
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- čas přidán 24. 06. 2024
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Adding elements into a story because they're cool is great but comes with a very serious problem if not approached correctly.
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i see what you did there. this whole video is an excellent demonstration of the rule of cool. you didn't have to make this video on a movie set, but it was cool. you didn't have to slowly tour around the set the entire video, but it was cool. you didn't have to go off on tangents about your surroundings literally being the aftermath of an intense fight scene, but it was cool. and you didn't have to make the end of the video perfectly mirror the beginning, but it was cool.
Shad must have taken his time to choreograph this video.
@@kangirigungi Time well spent, I just say.
Oh yeah, definitely was, wasn't it?
yeah, i see what he did
@@kangirigungi All great results are part planned, and part dynamic; enough to make it feel naturally falling into place but also enough to make it cool.
On the gun thing: Constant misfires every time the gun is pointed at the hero would be annoying. A misfire during the final showdown with the bad guy loudly yelling "FUCK" could be hilarious.
To bad, that this happen nearly each time, when guns are involved.
It doesnt matter, how many enemy fire on the good guys. They misfire nearly each time. Even, when the good guys run a straight line for a longer time and the enemys are in a line to this to. they can only hit, when it is needed.^^
Good excuse to solve the situation with a cool hand to hand fight.
It definitely could be, but funny is another variant of the cool factor and the rules apply to it, too. In your envisioned scene, there's a risk of "Deus ex machina," which creates a different kind of sceptical reaction. "Oh, wasn't it convenient that the bad guy's gun jammed, right then?" This, too, can be fixed with good writing. Earlier in the film you could state that the bad guy's gang skimped and bought lousy guns, and show other misfires and jams on occasion. Perhaps you also establish that the main baddy is aware of this and pissed about it. That would make it consistent and hilarious when the cheap gun robs him of an easy win and he flips his lid!
@@benkpeltz It could also create some minor tension, will the gun fire and hit the mark or will it jam? If done right could be a nice gag
Well, what if jamming guns is kinda the superpower if the character? Or rather, they have some very good luck with guns. But then to create tension, the big bad villain just pulls out a knife
The rule of cool can bend the rules but it can't break them, it still has to follow the in-world logic.
The most obvious "one line fix" that comes to mind for me, is from the second Matrix movie.
It's established in the first one that Neo can wreck Agents without trying, but they wanted to have a good fight scene in the second movie, so when his first attack is blocked, he says "Huh, upgrades..."
And then they fight.
Agreed. A single line that perfectly explain why MartialCyber Jesus with all the guns and also reality manipulation doesn't just wreak all comers.
I like Mark Twain's perspective on it.
"Get the facts straight and then twist them at your leisure."
I feel the rule of cool applies best when you follow this mentality.
Hollywood: Makes everything woke with forced diversity and inclusion or a half baked remake of something on their streaming service that butchers the soul of the original source material and expects you to just consume the product while they make money off of you.
Actually good creators: Researching and taking notes in the corner to make their own creations with originality.
The rule of cool is very much a real world phenomenon. After all weapons and armor have long had decorations or elements that serve no real function other than looking cool, intimidating, symbolic etc. Sometimes these can be impractical too but they still existed.
The massive codpieces on some plate armor comes to mind. Henry VIII's armor in the Tower of London, particularly.
on that topic, do the "wings" on the Winged Hussars actually serve any purpose other than the fact that it looks sick?
"Engravings give you no tactical advantage whatsoever"
Though on the flipside, they don't typically weaken a weapons durability either. There might not be much point as it's largely a waste of money and will just get beat up using it in normal combat/ everyday use, but other than that- if you have the money and want it to look nice- you can do so, there just isn't any point other than for looks.
Though in fiction a lot of times people who use weapons like that tend to be hothead style over substance young idiots who lack of discipline to be properly skilled because they are too concerned at looking cool.
@@CrysResan they dont take out functionality tho, is just engraving or cool whirls or twists in the metal
@@YataTheFifteenth I've heard a hypothesis that they made them sound like they're a large army, which would have made them more intimidating (and might also scare away untrained horses). I'm not sure if there's any actual evidence that suggests that to be the case, though.
When a sword hits Jackie, the question is NOT "Why did it not cut him?", the question is "Why did it not shatter?".
As the man himself says, "Jackie always okay!"
Jackie literally has metal bones
@@absolutedumbass5337 and stone skin
It's too bad Jackie shills for the genocidal and tyrannical CCP at the expense of his home in Hong Kong.
@@cattraknoff If jackie doesn't, jackie not okay anymore
Where most youtubers have to recommend someone else's book when doing an audible sponsorship, Shad can promote his own book. Thats pretty cool.
it's not even a damn sponsorship anymore lol
There are very few who are able to get an audible sponsorship AND have written their own book.
You could say it's pretty chad?
I'll leave now
My dad was a writer and writing teacher and he often dealt with this issue. He'd say that there is a thin line between dumb and cool but good writing makes it work.
Can I reach out to him for advice? Sorry if that's rude.
I heard something similar once: "No such thing as 'too stupid.' If something is 'too stupid,' it's simply not creative enough."
Fallout 4: Dumb.
Fallout New Vegas: Cool.
New Vegas is an uninspired, derivative cash-grab made by people that didn't care
@@Sigilstone17
Until it wasn't.
9:54 About this, rather than pursuing "realism", what a story is looking for is plausibility. The question to be asked isn't "does this conform with reality?" but rather "does this conform with other facets of the world of this story?", in other words, is what's being presented plausible given what we know about the world of a given story? It's about maintaining one's integrity, and it all comes back to internal consistency.
yes, its not about being real, its about respecting its own internal logics. most of the time those internal logics don't need to be in the open for everyone to see, or the author doesn't even need to have figured out them yet, but every time a new rule is shown, then it needs to be respected from there on.
Best advice I ever heard was, "If it were real, what would happen?" This was coming from a pro wrestler named Al Snow.
You can have whatever crazy stuff you like, so long as it's consistent and your characters react believably.
Consistency. It doesn't matter if it conforms to the normal laws of physics, most people aren't experts on those anyway, it matters if what is happening is obaervably consistent, and if you're going to make something to try and extend those rules (you should to leave room for discovery, we don't fully understand our laws of physics, why should the characters in a fantasy series have discovered every single thing that can be done?), you should either make relatively clear that not everything is known, or foreshadow it (which, I have to admit, I don't fully understand foreshadowing, I very much take shows and books as they come, I can usually recognize foreshadowing of the variety that occurs a few seconds or minutes before the event, but other than that I'm liable to miss the implication even when rewatching or rereading something, which doesn't leave me confused, because I just take things as they come).
That is what he says in the video
I like to use the term "realistic" in the context of the setting or characters.
Like, X character has always hated.... orcs. So why the hell is he suddenly working with orcs with no problems? That isn't realistic to his character.
My favorite explanation for 'sound in space' comes from Babylon 5 (can't think of an earlier example), where they have characters mention turning sound simulators on or off for various reasons. For instance, a character might go to an observation deck and turn simulated sound off so they can watch ships passing by in complete silence. And combat ships have simulated sound based on sensor data in order to allow the crew to take in information with all senses during a battle. But you only hear those simulated sounds in control rooms or gunnery stations, not in the hallways of big battleships, for instance. They also borrowed this explanation for Eve Online and Mass Effect, both of which took significant inspiration from Babylon 5, by the creators' admission.
B5 presumably took inspiration for that from Star Wars, because there's the same thing in the novelisation of the original film from 1976. No idea where Star Wars got it from, probably some Golden Age writer like Asimov or Clarke.
The early Elite games also made a point of mentioning sound simulators as a feature in the ships because, if I remember right, pilots tended to go a little crazy without sound.
@@MisterHalt That doesn't really follow though, since I'm pretty sure real life pilots _don't_ yet have sound simulators and they... OK, maybe there _is_ something to them being driven crazy after all.
If I remember correctly Gundam is another example of the onboard systems replicating sound in space as a way to provide more information to the pilot. The sounds were retroactively justified this way, which also had the additional benefit of explaining why weapons and other things sounded so similar across the board despite being so different between series since they were all using similar sound emulation systems.
@@WJS774 They kind of do, though. Most critical warnings (to include the Radar Warning Receiver and missile warning systems) on modern aircraft are primarily sound warnings.
Shad was on point with the loki superstore scene. Loki struggled with regular humans, the same loki who was kicking captain america's ass in avengers movie. They also heavily toned down his powers far below what hes capable
The MCU really does a constant disservice to the capabilities of its characters for the sake of specific confrontations and sub-plots. Hulk in particular is neutered constantly, and while he's been far too powerful in his comic adaptions, the film and show versions as of late have been made so laughably weak that he seems to not even deserve the reputation he has.
frankly, I find it a bit harsh. there's any number of behind the scenes reasons this could have happened. we don't know how "regular" or "human" most of the characters in loki are. I mean, sure, a decent chunk seem to originate for earth, but so does a number of other superhumans? and Asgardians don't seem like the only race that are more powerful than us either. I mean, similar stuff has happened in the thor movies. more importantly, it fits really well with trying to humble loki. a theme throughout the show that is explored in almost every way possible. the first episode even shows that he can't use magic in the tba, meaning that if any of his fighting power came from magic, then he will by nature be unable to fight as well while under tba observation. it's just nitpicky imo, and there's so much more to get from the show than the handful of brawls in it.
@@milkmonstrosity I'd argue that it's one of it's strengths actually. the comics are messy. really messy. a byproduct of having a bunch of properties under the same umbrella really. the MCU reduces a lot of the more ridiculous powers with things that are a lot more grounded and sort of even the playing field. as a result, you end up with less questions like "why not just call in professor X? he can take care of this brain washing issue no problem" and widens the scope of what the characters are able to have conflicts with. meaning more story opportunities. now, IT IS getting more complicated in recent years, and frankly, I'm very interested to see how it handles this. cause it is starting to have questions like "where were you in endgame?" and "why didn't they just call the avengers" coming up more and more. tbh, with the house of M and multiverse threads they're starting to form, this could get really out of hand. and crash or burn, it's going to be worth paying attention to I think.
Not the same Loki.
@@tegopro86 the loki in the loki series and mcu are the same person. The show even begins with the avengers EG scene of loki escaping using the tesseract.
That example where you figured out how to improve your own fight scene by thinking about how to make it logically consistent is a prime example of why discarding in-world rules for a visual or emotional payoff is a terrible idea. When you make a cool scene and then find a plothole that initially seems like something you'd have to sacrifice the entire scene to fix, the solution to that problem you can find with a little focus will more often than not produce a superior scene to the original draft in every aspect. You're only depriving your audience of a better end product by dismissing plotholes as trivial.
Yes.
JP from Terrible Writing advice actually said a similar opinion in one of his videos about Cliches. If you run into a cliche, use that cliche as a base, and then try to rework it into something more unique and simultaneously bringing more options for a writer to work with.
He used the cliche of a thief bumping into the main character and stealing something as an example and went into detail on how to change it and add character nuance to the scene.
Source: czcams.com/video/tZ3FnbzNwss/video.html
I see the rule of cool as something like a "plot twist":
If it has enough set-up. If it makes sense in the story setting and makes sense for the characters to pull it off... Then it's gonna be good... If it doesn't, then it's gonna be forced like a fart, and you don't force a fart.
Quoting certain Scottish whiskey enthusiast: Nobody has ever complained that "Bah! This shit makes too much sense!"
Bro, in "Mad Max", the world with a lack of oil, people drive cars. Also its in Australia, but Max drives black (!) car and wears black (!) leather (!) clothes. Im surprised he hasnt died bacause of heatstroke during Australian winter... People should ride horses and camels there and wear light color baggy clothes like Arabs and Berbers, but its more "cool" to wear tight, black, leather clothes in a desert according to film creators. ))
Well said
Bah! This shit makes too much sense!
@@jus_sanguinis That's why he's called "mad" Max. Anyways, those movies are allegories, everything is exaggerated on purpose. So your comment fails at the rule of cool.
Forcing a fart is a good way to poop on yourself.
When I explain the "Rule of Cool" to some people, they look at me sideways. CinemaSins and channels like it have re-wired their minds to think that everything needs to be realistic. Even in fantasy and science fiction movies.
There is a logic though. It's the in universe logic. Does the rule of cool adhere to previously established lore? Does it bend them to a believable degree, or is it breaking it in an unbelievable way?
As a writer it can get frustrating. Live your videos by the way underdawg
I wonder if it plays into the larger narrative of the ethicization of materialism.
Everything does need to be logical, though. Just not realistic.
I hardly think CinemaSins encourages logic.
7:10 I feel like having space be completely silent can be quite cool as well, especially in a horror/ thriller movie. I remember how creepy it was when playing dead space and in the sections where there was no air, the necromorphs would jump at you completely silently and the only thing you hear is the breathing from the character and the beep from the timer of your oxygen supply.
Sure, but at the same time having sound in space is easily one of the most exceptible brakes from reality a movie/show
I'm pretty sure "Jackie Chan receives fatal attacks and walks away unscathed" is the plot of The Medallion.
To be honest, I believe he would do that in real life as well.
@@jackwriter1908 The innumerable broken bones in Jackie Chan's body would say otherwise.
@@jackwriter1908 That man has suffered numerous severe injuries during his career. He walked off some I'm sure, but he has had to spend a great deal of time in recovery for pretty severe injuries.
@@ArifRWinandar yeah, he has. But he most of the time still pulls himself through the movie, before recovering. At least as far as I know.
Watch the end credits of Jackie Chan's movies and you'll see all the stunts that went wrong and he does get badly hurt sometimes.
This reminds me a lot of LOTR vs The Hobbit. LOTR had me on the edge of my seat at all times cuz I knew the stakes were high. Aragorn falling off the cliff made me sad in the moment cuz there was a possibility that he died. Now look at the Hobit and the Goblin Mines scene. Everything is over the top. People could fall several hundred feet through several scaffoldings and come out the other end just fine. It completely killed the stakes for me
Not to mention the cartoony CGI and the lack of grounded visuals that made LOTR feel so real.
What do you mean? How could you not feel the tension when Legolas defied gravity and jumped off pieces of falling rubble?
I haven't watched the whole video yet, so I don't know if this is addressed. In any case, the ironic thing about the thumbnail with Legolas jumping between the bits of rubble is that it demonstrates something that is both very true to the source material and at the same time not. Most people of course know that Legolas is not found in the Hobbit book. But, the sequence in the movie reveals something many don't realize about Elves in Tolkien's universe. Physics doesn't apply to them in the same way as other races. They perceive and interact with the world as though it were flat, even though in Tolkien's universe Arda (Earth stand in) is spherical by the Third Age. Elves can sail to the Western continent of Aman because for them Arda is flat. For others, like men, if they sail west they either get lost, or, presumably sail to the eastern coast of Middle Earth because Arda is a sphere for them. This is one of the reasons Elves can see farther: the horizon doesn't block their vision. It's revealed in the Lord of the Rings book that Elves are more-or-less weightless. Legolas is able to walk across freshly-fallen snow without sinking down. The movie scene shows how Legolas could, theoretically, jump from a falling rock.
Yeah, but don’t forget that hobbit was made this way deliberately. Like the book itself, the movies were made to appeal to the younger audience, which is why everything seems much cartoony etc. Peter Jackson already filmed the LOTR movies at the time of even pitching the idea for the hobbit ones. I don’t believe he was not aware of what he was doing.
Yes and the barrel scene in the desolation of smaug. However I will say the reason I think the hobbit did this was because they figured most of the audience had read the book or knew more or less what would happen. So they played a lot of what would be high stakes scenes as comedy. So if u were laughing at the ridiculous side of those scenes then the director did his job right for his intentions. Unfortunately this was a bad idea really and a better choice would've been to change things. Make one of the dwarves die to the goblins in an unexpected journey so that we actually fear for the dwarves during the barrel scene. Then down play the ridiculous side of everything by a lot.
Something that helps me is saying, "Things don't happen to the protagonist because he's the protagonist, he's the protagonist because things happen to him, so why do things happen to him?"
I like how you pointed out magic vs physics. Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files" has magic obey the laws of physics (more or less) and treats magic as an energy source that formal mundane science doesn't yet understand. In one memorable scene, Harry Dresden freezes the surface of a fairly sizeable portion of Lake Michigan to create an escape route from a stricken boat by using his natural inclination for fire magic. What he did was cast a fire spell into the air and use convection to his advantage. The sudden rush of cold air created a localized area where the temperature was well below freezing (and he also tapped into the kinetic energy of the water surrounding him as a source for his fire spell) created a pier-to-pier sheet of ice several inches thick for him and his friends to use to get to safety.
See Also: Fate/Zero and it's sequel of sorts El-Melloi Case Files.
@@poisonouslead85 Except that's magecraft, not magic. Magic in the Fate setting explicitly doesn't follow rules and is magic in the most oldschool traditional sense, the realm of god and the ability to create miracles. That's why there's only 5 things in the setting that are Magic, and they're all things that are impossible for humanity to do.
>the power to create something out of nothing
>the power to move at will through parallel worlds
>the power to physically manifest the human soul on the material plane
>complete knowledge and control over every atom in the universe
>the power to move through time, not just in the BttF sense but that you can change yourself into the point in time where you exist at your strongest.
Magecraft by comparison is just fantasy science.
Yeah, Butcher has a really good system with reasonably hard magic with soft limits. There are limits to mortal power, and the various immortal ones mostly keep themselves in check. Magic is materially affected by immaterial stuff, like belief, will, faith and sacrifice, so that means the costs can be very consistent but still sufficiently blurry as to not remove drama and uncertainty.
To paraphrase the Sanderson principle: the more you understand a magic system the more you can use it to solve problems.
It's a fine line to walk, especially in novels and game design. I've learned a lot from you and I appreciate that you show respect for fantasy writers and role-playing gamers. Thank you for that.
The bit with the Star Destroyers is a trope that JJ Abrams seems to live by. He just loves the image of ships rising up out of things and works it in as often as he can, whether it makes sense in-universe or not.
Tue only crime with that scene were enlarged ISD 1s. Not a new single 8km ish super cruiser or something.
The emerging is litteraly not an issue. Waterborne ships can surface through ice. These are ships that can SSTO.
As a person on earth i have been in the closest thing we have to a starwars space ship and gone through ice.
@@OrDuneStudios The issue isn't "can these ships burst through the ground"
The issue is "why were these ships buried in the first place?"
There is no logical reason for that to happen in the film, it just happens because JJ Abrams is a hack writer and allows cool visuals to dominate a film that tonally isn't about super unrealistic things happening. Star wars is fantasy, but it's also not a comedy.
Like shad said: it would have been quite easily fixed if the reason for the ships being buried was actually explained, even if just by saying a single line.
Should have just made it a few SSDs or something, since just one of those is a match for many MANY smaller ships. Hell, in the books they had a Super Star Destroyer buried underground on Coruscant.
One of my favorite shows, Firefly, was really unique in that exterior shots in space have no sound effects, but instead are accompanied by mood music. It made for either very elegant, imposing, or creepy scenes. If they wanted a dramatic action packed sequence, they'd do it in atmosphere, and it seemed even more exhilarating because you had that contrast of silent in space, and noisy in atmo. It made it really feel like space and atmo were very different, and even the ships would be less maneuverable in atmo, or certain maneuvers would be significantly more risky due to the extra stresses of drag and gravity. Brilliant show.
Exactly the example I was thinking of. That little detail made it so much cooler.
Immediate bash of the sequel series. As it deserves. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
The planet in Rise of Skywalker should have been Kamino, it was already a "lost planet" in the Attack of the Clones, it was a water world, so the ships could have been hidden under the water to similar effect, and the emperor (who is a clone himself) could have been making a clone army there, this would have been the perfect solution.
I would prefer if they burst out of hangars, implying they have a whole fleet of brand new or refurbished ships, making them even more threatening
It wasn’t just that thought. The sheer number of star destroyers was ridiculous and beyond anything credible. Where did all the people to build them come from, toCrew them? The fuel, supplies, the canteen ladies and portaloos. And if you did have that many why hide them? No one could have done anything about it.
@@davidmc8478 yeah, it was stupid, but at least if it was on kamino, you could have explained the building staff as being clones, and that they were waiting for enough clone soldiers to be trained to staff them, it is still stupid (the whole trilogy is a mess), but that would have made mote sense.
@@jackmcslay you are right, but I was just saying that if they wanted that specific shot of the ships rising up from below the planet's surface, a water world would have made more sense, especially an established cloning world that explains where the crew and construction staff came from. The movie is stupid, but using Kamino as the Emperor's planet would have helped.
@@williamporter5009 at least there would be precident for it though. as opposed to the simple somehow palpatine has returned, apparently leading a bunch of cultists and has ginormous number of starships because reasons.
The main question is always "does it make sense in context?" and the second question is "if not, how can we make this specific instance make sense in context?". The less times the second question needs to be answered the better, as that means the context is sufficiently explained already, and resorting to this too often, or too late in the story where we should already have all the information needed to understand what's happening, will feel like the author's just making shit up as they go to write themselves out of a corner. Unless of course it makes sense IN CONTEXT to have the whole story be an Indy Ploy full on contrived coincidences. A comedy can get away with someone escaping from a pursuer because they first tripped on their shoelaces, then stepped on a dog crap, then hit a lamp post, then fell down a manhole, slapstick is timeless after all, but that'd be lame for a more action-focused piece. Again, the expectations that come with the genre in question.
Seriously, that I felt like whenever I read the original Fate/Stay Night. The amount of times it was incredibly obvious that the writer had cornered himself, and yet the characters still somehow manages to eek out a victory by some never before mentioned thing, some hidden interaction, or just random luck just boggled the mind.
@@matteste Asspulls are a cornerstone of Japanese action fiction.
@@weirdofromhalo Doesn't have to be. There are plenty of works that properly set things up in order for things to lead to a satisfying conclusion.
The thing is that Fate sets itself up as one of those harder pieces of fiction, has all these rules and interactions and then it just repeatedly throw it to the side the moment it is inconvenient for the heroes.
And it doesn't do it with just the magic and rules, even the characters bend in similar ways just so that the main character can win.
What I am saying is that the way Fate does it is with downright frustrating frequency and approach.
Always remember: "a poor craftsman always blames his tools."
But a master knows certain tools are simply harder to use.
The _Firefly_ episode “Bushwacked” had a ship explode in space with no sound. Turns out, that’s even more cool.
Exactly the example I was thinking of!
Lots of scifi has used silence in space very effectively. The example of Star Wars, well that's not science fiction, that's space opera. And in space opera, things are ridiculous at times and sound existing in space is one of the less ridiculous things that Star Wars does.
I think it is cute that Shad is so proud of his filmset that he walks around in it in the video.
Yeah! It's also a great way to keep the watcher focused. It would have benn boring if he stayed in the same place for 30 minutes.
0:09 this is quite possibly the best shad greeting ever
this needs to be a meme :D
-and your watching Disney channel
It is
I think the ultimate lesson here is that consistency is way more important than realism
Dear Shad, here is an idea,
Your sunforged people could be more interesting like this,
When a person is sunforged, only the living cells (plus bones and stuff) at the time become sunforged, so as cells reproduce the new cells are not sunforged. Additionally, the sunforged cells can still die naturally. This would make sunforged people have a very limited time before a whole crop of health problems start to occur, meaning that it would be almost certain death for the sunforged person , a slow and painful death. A bit like getting every cancer at once. Bones especially would be a problem as they'd be unable to be broken down by the body, leading to excess bone growth around and within the original bones, destroying bone marrow and causing painful joints. Thus A) doesn't even need to be a lost technique as only fanatical people would volunteer for this (and you can't use non-loyal folks for the job), and B) I can totally see this as potential for a character, probably a villain, who is undergoing this and has a limited time to achieve their aim, and suffering in the meantime, and C) this could be used as a really nasty death sentence, if you can hold such a person in confinement.
I think Guts' Dragonslayer sword from Berserk is a great example of the rule of cool done right. It's a giant sword that's too big and impractical for anyone to use... except Guts. He's the only human strong enough to wield it and it's one of the only weapons in-world that are durable enough to kill demons without breaking. That's what sets it apart from other ridiculously huge fantasy swords
The super shotgun of doom slayer too, irl a gun like that is going to destroy anyone trying to use it and have no practical uses, but in a game where you control a superhuman that is slaying demons? Hell yeah!
@@chaddusmaximus643 100% agree🤘🏻 Doom (especially in the new games) is full of sci-fi tech weapons, so I love that the ol' fashioned double-barrelled shotgun is one of the most destructive
And it's the only weapon with enough mass and size to deal significant damage to big monsters corporeal form. Later in the story his sword is somehow cursed due to absorbtion of residue dark energy for killing so many monsters that it can have effect on otherworldly beings ethereal form.
Well, even then the dragonslayer is a weapon designed to be a manifestation of Guts' will. Guts himself is strong and has an indominable will. From a story perspective, its meant to represent the reason why there arent rando's going around killing demons. Guts is unique, being a manifestation of an unshatterable and feral will, and the viewer may simply ignore the impossibility of the weapon as guts is seen as being a superhuman entity more than he is seen as a man. Its a proper reason as to why the reader can ignore it instead of something stupid and handwavy like black widow somehow surviving that 100-200 ft fall in her movie.
@@Schlumbuo Dragonslayer was a product of trolling by the old blacksmith. A big fuck you to the noble who wanted a "greatest weapon".
Turns out fate has different plan.
The way he just walks around the room the entire video and then goes out the door at the very end it is absolutely amazing
The issue with "rule of cool", and suspension of disbelief, is that it's very subjective. One person might have no problem suspending disbelief for something, while another is completely ejected from their immersion. You have to convince your audience that what they're seeing is reasonable within the universe of the subject.
And some people need everything to be completely realistic, or else the story is shit.
This runs hand in hand with the advice "Kill your darlings" To remove unnecessary story line, character or pieces of creative writing because despite it maybe looking cool, it doesn't add anything to the story and may in fact detract from continuity.
What if the entire point of the work is to be cool, like Fast in the Furious? That everything else is secondary to it?
@@SeruraRenge11 Then uh, your good to go.
When I saw that Stardestroyer scene in the cinema, many people (including myself) were laughing, because it just was too strange to be taken seriously.
Ah yes, let's bury our massive space crafts to the bridge under sand in the desert by the thousands.
Just because.
Would make sense if there was any crack on set.
I mean it's Star Wars. That scene is fucking stupid but only a dime in a dozen
@@pmester228 you’re implying Star Wars is stupid just because it’s about space wizards?
@@pmester228 the original star wars trilogy and the prequels aint that bad
Or when they were riding horses... on the surface of the space ship... I swear, this fucking movie.
My brother and I have been watching The A-Team for a few months now, and the series is completely dependent on rule of cool. The main characters build these insane weapons and machines out of random stuff and win. But it works because they don't do the insane stuff from the start, they begin from doing stuff like taking thick steel plates and welding them to cars to make bulletproof cars in the first season, and they start making more strange weapons gradually, until there's even a part where they make a working plane with parachute silk, wood, rope, and the engine from a truck in the middle of a forest with pretty much nothing but stuff you use to fix a car, and it doesn't seem unrealistic at all.
Yeah I remembered the re-runs in early 2000's that was cool cuse all of them were part of the army and they learned to adapt anything into a potential weapon
Especially in the fight scenes, where they are shooting thousands of bullets, but never ever does anyone (including the bad guys) gets shot.
Look up "The Great Escapists". It's a top-gear style partly scripted reality show. By the end of the show they literally build a working flying vehicle out of scrap from their crashed boat. The only problem they had was it was burning fuel too fast so the gas tank ran dry after about 1 min.
@@cjd2889 also every protagonist of a cool Shone//seinen or Videogames such as Kotor, Lord of the Rings Shadow of Mordor and so on.
Reminds me of the MacGyver pilot about 30 years ago when he built an ultralight aircraft out of a few pieces of pipe, pieces of tents, and duct tape.😁👍✨
As someone who's suspension of disbelief often hangs by a very thin thread, I greatly appreciate your efforts to justify the cool.
I really like the idea you did for the line about them being sunforged, since not only do you answer the question but it also the last part of the line "even I didn't stoop that low" instantly adds character to both the speaker and his opponents.
Alternate title: Shad talks about the rule of cool as he takes 30 min to walk across a room and walk through a door.
Shad sees the invisible confirmed.
Honestly, a bunch of star destroyers decloaking would have been more terrifying, although probably less visually impressive. Imagine a legion of star destroyers that can cloak. That's a game changer in Star Wars.
I'm not sure there's any way they could have made "we assembled the largest ever fleet of star destroyers on a hidden planet with no resources and no population and then just kinda sat on them for who knows how many years instead of retaking the empire" make sense. To me the fleet existing (and Palpatine being alive) was way more of a problem than them being underground. The star wars universe has economics, iirc they literally complain the death star is too expensive, so where did Palpatine get the money to build all these ships (and where did he get the materials and work force without alerting anyone to this hidden planet)? And why didn't he do anything with them once they were constructed?
The Star Wars writers would probably gimcrack up some Force-based BS that completely negated the cloaking advantage because internal consistency is for NERRRRRDS-cloaking works in the Trek 'verse because it follows rules that (at least in the TNG/DS9 era; I don't give a steaming hot pile of shite about anything made post-Voyager) the writers follow.
@@danieljensen2626 TBF until the NR was wiped the NR-Navy probably could take them.
The Radius (3km) was old. Three StarHawks took on a SSD.
It really wouldn't be a game changer. Cloaking devices were standard equipment on Star Destroyers. It's not really that big a deal because larger ships and space stations have cloaking detection sensors as standard too.
@@danieljensen2626 Not bothered with the new films, how many ships are we actually talking about here? The Empire had hundreds of thousands if not _millions_ when they ruled the galaxy, the galaxy is a big place. The Death Star is equivalent in volume to about a million star destroyers, so if they can build _that_ then a few thousand ships is nothing to them.
Shad, there is a certain grasp you have on reality that is constantly earning my appreciation and gratitude! You remind me that im sane, and thank you for that!
Shad if you read this I gotta ask. Did the name "Shadow of the Conqueror" have anything to do with Shadow having Shad in it? Lmao I'm pretty sure I would do it too if I had the chance. Baller move if you did
"You're going to quesiton how physics works in a world with magic?" Yes, actually, because even worlds with magic have physics.
I can think of no better person to teach people about the Rule of Cool.
Edit: To clarify, I made this statement in earnest, not sarcastically.
Obviously a man who appreciates the value of THE STICK! understands the rules of cool.
Mh can't tell if ironic or not...
Damn right
@@petermuller3995 no I’m being serious, Shad is really cool. A little goofy sometimes, but still cool.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I can smell the sarcasm from here.
I think the thing that's the most important factor with "the rule of cool" is how it impacts the tone of the story. Honestly, I think tone should be the most important factor when it comes any type of media.
This is why the Star Destroyers rising from the ground doesn't work, whereas all the crazy nonsense in something like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Fast and Furious DOES work. Mostly.
Star Wars, despite being kinda dumb, is still tonally supposed to be a dramatic fantasy series. Sure, it's made for kids and adults alike, so sometimes Star Wars can be silly, but for the most part, the tone is one of adventure and struggle. Particularly, struggle against oppression that mimics our real world past, present, and future events. The protagonists are supposed to be presented as underdogs that are vulnerable, going up against an enemy that is believable. When you have the bad guys do stupid things that make no sense, you cheapen the struggle and drama that are what the main draw of the franchise is.
When crazy shit happens in JoJo's or Fast and Furious, on the other hand, it's entertaining. Because the tone from the get-go is that EVERY character in the story is capable of crazy inhuman feats. You are watching a bunch of superheroes battling it out with either Hamon, Stands, or Cars, and while sometimes it does get dramatic, that's not the tone of the overall story.
Plus jojo's Bizarre adventure has a consistency like a sci-fi film.
Each stand is grounded in different kinds of understandings of physics and chemistry.
Harmon is the power of ripple(simplest energy definition).
Stand is the power of the individual.
Spin is the rationalizing the ideal through movement of everything we know exists.
Ed Edd N Eddy runs on the same fuel as Fast and Furious. When you have an insane universe, you can do increasingly insane things. That subgenre of "cool" can trace a direct line to Tex Avery realizing that "in a cartoon, you can do anything." (And yes, Fast and Furious is a live-action cartoon and you can't convince me otherwise.)
"When you have the bad guys do stupid things that make no sense, you cheapen the struggle and drama that are what the main draw of the franchise is."
Totally agree. That ruined the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, and I'd argue that good guys doing stupid things that make no sense is what ruined the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. I would rather have seen Palpatine really outsmart the Jedi instead of the Jedi being dumb so that Palpatine could take over.
@@G360LIVE Hey at least Jedi had excuses to be idiotic. Jedi Order basically integrated into republic which got corrupted. Sith tried hard to conseal it and by the time jedi masters understood the situation everything was already set up.
Fives, jedi investigation, dark jedi apprentice.
All of them happened in ways that somehow achived completion without failure. At least in those you can say that universe wanted to kill off the jedi Order to get to the situation of new republic.
Learning things out of thin air is what we call "as*s pu*ll".
Personally I'm not sure the tonal consistency of a story is actually that important; some of my favourite stories are ones that go from slapstick comedy to deep psychological analyses. Perhaps what's more important is tonal pacing, as you generally don't want your heartfelt scene to be capped by a dumb joke... unless you're specifically using that to comedic effect, so even then it's less of a rule than a tool to be used in different ways.
Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors, because he gets it. All of his writing (that is his alone) has an underlying logic. As bizarre as that logic might be, it is consistent, and that's what matters. Fiction where something can do anything, is fantasy. Star wars is a classic example of this. The original trilogy made sense, because the force wasn't space magic. That happened later, when they made just plain silly stuff happen, that didn't fit the logic of the three original films.
The force helps you be slightly better at predicting what will happen. You can do physical feats that a normal person would not be able to do. Emote or use empathy at enhanced levels. Admittedly, the return of the jedi had some silly crap in it (the ghosts for example) pushed those boundaries to the limit, they weren't bad enough to be dis-believable. At least in my opinion.
But episodes 7-9 are just silly.
Rules of special forces:
Rule 1: Look cool
Rule 2: Know what you’re doing
Rule 3: If you don’t know what you’re doing, refer to Rule 1
The simple act of giving the audience a reason for something can justify so many things. Hero has the strength to slap heads off the bad guys bodies? Oh, he doesn't want to kill them so he is holding back. Or in the case of a deadpool type main character who doesn't care about killing people, maybe they're trying to interrogate them. It ends up as one or two extra lines, and opens the possibilities dramatically.
I appreciate your solution and the sentiment behind it. As somebody who’s done extensive writing of my own, though, I’d warn this: it’s important that the solution that the patch to the hole not have a hole in it as well. What I like to do with my superpower characters, to keep fights interesting and prolonged, is deliberately plot things so that the main set pieces revolve around confrontations with equal or better characters. OR, and I think this far more applicable, the condition for winning the fight dictates that they can’t just brute force their way through it. If the solution is that “my badass character can kill anybody in seconds”. Then guess what? There’s no story anyways when confronted by ordinary opponents. It’s like writing a story about a journey to the next town over and having them get in a car that works perfectly. Which means that all logic being followed, the condition for resolution is met very simply.
The key in an action set piece is the need to make additional choices and additional efforts to reach the original goal. So, ten car pile up requires a detour. But the road for the detour is crappier, so you run over a nail. Oh, and your spare is flat, too. You call the wrecker service. Or try, because you forgot to charge your phone. Yeah, it was supposed to be a ten minute drive, you knew you could plug into the wall at the destination. (See there? People make mistakes for understandable reasons). So, you spend a while running the engine to charge the phone. Wrecker takes an hour to arrive, gets you to the shop. Where you discover that the tires cost more than you got…. Point is, fights are the same way. It helps if your character’s means are not too extraordinary… or if your character’s abilities don’t satisfy the condition for victory. If he cannot kill any of the opponents without failing the mission, then the ability to punch right through them is not a plot breaker. If you have an immortal fighter, but they’ve got a train to catch, or can only fulfill a mission if they arrive somewhere at the right time, then you can have mortal characters defeat the immortal fighter just by delaying them sufficiently.
The rule of cool… In my philosophy, storytelling is shared dreaming. What we call suspension of disbelief is staying with that dream, not waking up from it. The key thing is to either align the audience’s wishes so strongly with the character that they talk themselves into allowing it, or you make the break from reality subtle enough that folks just walk right past it. Part of that, I think, is getting people involved in the question of how something resolves, and then providing satisfactory resolution. Satisfactory is the key word. Even the most logical conclusion can be unsatisfying. That’s part of why the rule of cool exists. People don’t necessarily need or want everything explained, but the story has to power interest in and involvement in the action strongly enough that the storyline doesn’t fall on its face.
Making the victory conditions more complicated than just "kill the bad dudes" is my favourite approach. Maybe doing so would cause more problems than it solves, or innocents are nearby that are likely to be harmed in the fight. It forces superpowered characters to be creative and makes the conflicts more interesting.
@@phodon129
I agree up to a point. If you go too much into conditions, then the story can start to feel contrived. For example, this...
"So, ten car pile up requires a detour. But the road for the detour is crappier, so you run over a nail. Oh, and your spare is flat, too. You call the wrecker service. Or try, because you forgot to charge your phone."
...feels so contrived that, as an editor, I could not possibly support that type of thing in a story, unless it's a comedy in which the characters are going through a chain of bad luck events and the important thing is how they react (hopefully, funny). My point is that a chain of events should be the result of characters' decisions, not simply a string of accidents or bad luck. Maybe the car does work perfectly, but some outside forces such as weather or picking up a hitchhiker (a decision made by the driver or someone else in the car) changes things. It can't be convenient that certain things just keep happening on their own, including in victory conditions. I mean, a great example of victory conditions is from Superman II. When Superman has the advantage over Zod and co., the villains begin causing chaos that puts people at risk, distracting Superman by forcing him to focus more on saving the people, allowing the villains a better chance to attack Superman successfully. That scene is what I thought of when I read, "The key in an action set piece is the need to make additional choices and additional efforts to reach the original goal," from the original comment and "innocents are nearby that are likely to be harmed in the fight" from your comment.
But sometimes, you can't simply go with a victory. Sometimes, you have to ask yourself, as a writer, if total victory is what's really best for the story. Depending on the story you're telling, perhaps allowing the villain to win, but showing his good intentions bearing fruit, at least initially, is the better way to go (I refer you to the graphic novel Watchmen, which has a very logical and satisfying conclusion, given the characters we follow through the story and what each character is dealing with and how), or perhaps a balance between victory and defeat is the better option. It all depends on the story, though, making sure that characters follow their own logical paths really is a sign of good writing. Even the Joker in The Dark Knight, as erratic as he was compared to other characters, still followed his own logical path. Every abnormal thing he did made sense to him, which made Joker a great comparison to Batman, because every abnormal thing Batman did, including dressing up like a bat, made sense to him.
@@G360LIVE I, for one, heavily dislikes strings of bad luck and strings of good luck. When the hero gets a lucky shot in because the villain stepped in front, underneath something and the hero did not plan but capitalize on the moment can be eyerolling. I see it as a too much crafted situation and when the craft is visible my immersion is broken.
"The record for the longest bare-knuckle fight is listed as 6 hours and 15 minutes for a match between James Kelly and Jonathan Smith, fought near Fiery Creek, Victoria, Australia, on December 3, 1855, when Smith gave in after 17 rounds" just for some reference mate.
"It needs to be consistent with its own rules" Finally! I've been saying that for years. Fiction, especially based on magic and mythology, lives and dies by its own rules. You can bend them occasion if its jusrifiable, but never completely break them.
Unless the entire point is to keep showing the audience "you thought you knew what the rules were. You thought wrong motherfucker!" in shows like Gurren Lagann.
There is a very thin line between really dumb and really cool
Sunforging a person is a really cool way to make them more intimidating, I love the logic of this technology!
The future story possibilities are fascinating.
I really wish Hollywood sat their directors down and forced them to watch this video! I think one of the problems is that the bigger writers/directors are able to force through the Rule of Cool and ignore anyone trying to ask questions as to "how/who/why/what?" And because these people are still able to get their stuff out there, it makes others think that it's okay to do it too.
The problem is the Hollywood producers who keep sending notes to the directors demanding more "rule of cool" stuff.
I knew you were the one behind Adolin's greatsword fight scene in Rhythm of War. Everything about it just fit you so perfectly.
I enjoy hearing Shad talk about these kind of story elements. I am coming up with my own story and these help me pay attention to details. This one in particular. I am a big fan of cool stuff and tend to go overboard with some moments, so hearing this, especially the example of your fight, helped me rethink about the fights that i created and make sure they either make sense or to fix them with such statements.
The Star Wars example you cited (haven't watched it) reminds me of a case of a movie doing something similar, but it being done right - that is the helicarriers in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier". What makes it work? It is far easier to believe in airships taking off from construction bays underwater, because we think of water as far more moveable. Plus it was construction bays, so the helicarroers were not put there wholesale, they were carried in, in pieces. It is a logic so easy to see that it explains itself.
The sad thing is that Rise of Skywalker has concept art of the Star Destroyers lifting out of hangers in the ground, with opening bay doors and everything.
Just a note on the thumbnail, when I saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in theatres, people literally burst out laughing during the scene when Legolas is running up the bricks as they're falling. Compare this to the scene where he uses a shield as a surfboard that slides down stairs while he still fires arrows. The former just pushes things *way* too far, and people laugh. The latter makes everyone say "goddamn that was awesome".
just a question but, are you American? it seems a common thread that American cinema goers are really vocal during the movie, where I as an Australian who has been all around the country find we're typically not so loud. oh we talk and stuff but, there aren't a whole lot of cheers or universal laughter. (outside of comedy movies)
@@TGPDrunknHick I'm Australian too and yeah you're right people are generally pretty quiet in movies here unless it's a big Marvel release. But this was very noticeable laughter. The Eagles got a round of it too.
@@wafflingmean4477 fair enough
How you solved the problem was really clever. Not only it justifies the scene but also shows how far some may go in order to attain their desires.
I need Shad to look into Devil May Cry. The main character Dante is the definition of "the rule of cool". Why can Dante survive being impaled in every game?; because he's a half-demon and it's cool. Why do his pistols never run out of ammo?; because they are enchanted, and it's cool.
And on top of that, all these elements (and many other things) both reflect the personality of Dante and the gameplay as well. And top of that I want to see Shad lose his mind examining the many different weapons from the games, like Nero's sword Red Queen.
The Red Queen is the definition of rule of cool. Slap a bike engine to a sword and then make it rev and spit fire.
Exactly. Why are anime like DBZ and Yu-Gi-Oh so beloved? Because regardless of how childish a lot of elements in them are....the cool factor is very strong.
@@night1952 Then there is Nevan, an electric guitar that shoots electric bats. Cavaliere a motorcycle that spilts into giant buzzsaws. And every single gauntlet weapon through out the series.
I’d like to see Shad try to convince us why dual wielding motorcycles as weapons is not possible or practical.
Let's make this gun shoot two bullets that rotate around each other.
BECAUSE IT'S COOL!
when i lok for realism in something, i look for what is realistic in that particular setting, like for example, it's not realistic for someone to pull out a 9mm handgun in D&D and shoot the mage before he can cast his spell, on the other hand, it's realistic for a wizard to blow someone up in meaty chunks with a fireball.
on the other hand, it would be realistic for Rambo to shoot someone with a 9mm handgun, but highly unrealistic for him to start blowing bad guys up with fireballs he shoots from his fingers.
9mm no, but firearms are part of dnd 5. They have been featured in forgotten realms books, the head dark elf has had first hand experience with them, carried by creatures and if you kill said creature you get the firearm as loot and even featured in arcs of AI being ran by Chris Perkins that directly used content from wizards products....
* Points gun at DM * *"THIS IS ROLE PLAY"*
9mm vs magic casted from a smartphone :y
+1 Glock
D&D was based on the pulps, from before the time when genres became fixed, so as long as you can come up with an in universe reason, like planar or planetary travel, lost civilizations, magic portals to other worlds, that sort of thing, pretty much anything goes. Psychotronic gameplay.
Star Wars also has a really cool in-universe explanation for the 'sound in space' thing. In the book, Han tells Luke about how the Falcon's targeting computers track the fighters and the gun turret has a surround-sound system that uses audio to help the gunner track where the other ships that are outside his field of view are.
Having the audience question something in the story and then afterwards providing a satisfying explanation can provide additional pleasure to the audience.
Possible copouts for the star destroyer scene:
a) have a scene that establishes a huge underground hangar with all the star destroyers
b) the star destroyers were on the surface of the planet and got buried by years of dust storms. the crews are all droids so it's fiiiine
_Space Battleship Yamato_ did it right: the eponymous ship was built underground and burst through the surface.
Where did palp get the resources for a whole new army tho?
That was the same explanation I thought of. Just show the ships coming out of underground hangars- it makes the scene just as visually appealing and now it makes sense PLUS it makes the emperor seem even more crazy prepared.
Or change them from star destroyers to some ancient ships that were constructed on the planet by the Rakata(?) so long ago that the hangers have been covered by layers of earth, and Palpatine has been working to provide the Dark Side energy to get them operational. That would not only make the "rise from the ground" scene more logical (and arguably cooler, since it wouldn't just be star destroyers but ancient Rakatan capital ships), but would also tie into KOTOR and the Revan works, which would help appease many of the fans who dislike the sequels and what they've done to the canon.
This evening I was planning/ sketching a drawing of a knight and a squire fighting goblins and in my head a had an cool image of the Knight with his sword over his head after killing a goblin, blood trailing. But a voice in my head said: shad won't approve, because it would leave the Knight completely open for a counter attack. So first I drew him with a more proper stance... but it wasn't as cool as I had in my head.
So the second sketch is with the big dramatic swordstrike but he has a shield now, protecting him...
With so many manhwa/novel really lean on power fantasy genre, this explanation about rule of cool comes out at the right time. Now I understand why I only like early parts of power fantasy stories: its where the transformation from normal to epic, where the stakes are high. The later parts (for most of them) are just dull because the protagonist became so overpowered, nothing can even scratch him/her.
try the "Survival Story of a Sword King in a Fantasy World". the main mc is very overpowered but at the same time very nerfed.Its pretty cool how hes nerfed. I think its one of the only manhwas that i keep up to date with.
keeping that sword in your hand the whole time is a rule of cool as well!
Making them sunforged was creative. My guess was that they had put an anti-magic field up to suppress his powers or something.
or drained him accidently some how with darkstone so he could not power out as much
"We kept them lightly covered in sand and debris. We are quite lost, but once in a while a smuggler gets a little too close for comfort. No corners cut. We are more than ready now." Or something to the effect of that. Boom. Fixed. Er- fixed enough for the people who liked the movie anyway. They aren't looking that closely in the first place so it would do.
Another problem with the rule of cool- aside from sacrificing realism- is that sometimes it can undermine already-present coolness of the story or fights. For instance, in Naruto, what made the fights interesting was the tricky ninja tactical maneuvers. Unfortunately, some of the characters got so powerful that it was basically full-melee DBZ. Do not let coolness undermine what made your stuff cool in the first place.
That's basically similar to the problem the Star Wars sequels have, they keep making bigger and bigger ships or absurdly large fleets and it stops being interesting.
@@AlexanderRM1000 exactly. And it’s not like that’s even rule-breaking: in Star Wars, you could say that their technology is just more advanced now. But even if that’s the case, it still undermines what made the medium cool before.
That's my biggest problem with Naruto. After the fight with Zabuza, the whole mission rank system is forgotten, and after the chuunin exam, the whole ninja rank system is forgotten! It has this issue of adding new concepts into an already big pile of one-off concepts that never get elaborated on.
First time, I was probably 11, and I was watching Naruto, hoping that he would grow and he would become a chuunin, then a jonin and then finally hokage, taking riskier missions, with intrigue and sneaky ninja stuff, while he discovers things about his past.
But we had giant monsters fighting, and energy balls, and Madara, and chosen one prophecies, and now aliens, I guess.
@@renard6012
It's kind of sad to watch that first season, with the teases of deception, and having thought out strategies when fighting. After that, it really devolved into a bludgeoning-fest. And don't get me started on Naruto himself, who is championed as someone without talent but works hard, then proceeds to win every fight using magical reserves of strength almost no one else has access to (nine tails).
@@renard6012 A series that does strategic fighting well throughout the entire series is World Trigger.
Shad you are living every nerds dream, married with kids running a fantasy channel as king of some sort of club with a published book and a movie coming. Keep slaying it my dude.
the rule of cool even applies to real life. there are many examples of historic armour that sacrificed practicality for style.
There are also a number of historical films which either put real things in and people thought they were unrealistic, or left things out because the guys making the film were afraid the audience would complain about it being unrealistic.
@@cp1cupcake I can imagine some movies guys bribing a museum and using actual medieval weapons and armor artifacts and people would still give negative reviews for it being unrealistic.
@@cp1cupcake It's always a mistake to change away from realism, at least in the modern era, when it comes to period pieces. We have the internet now, and there's no shortage of people with a basic web search education who want to lord it over critics, for free, in defense of your artistic work. Every comment section will be filled to the brim with pedants tripping over themselves to rush to make corrections on everything. It's for this reason especially, that I can't stand the dumbing down of media for the audience. It has never been easier for audiences to learn anything and everything they could possibly need to learn. And with the vast marketing budgets being poured into advertising modern movies and TV shows, why not spend some of that on educational media if some lesser-known detail needs to be explained? Scifi properties do this, with all sorts of barely-disguised press releases in the pop culture media explaining every little bit of lore ahead of a major release. Marketing people could easily grab a few historians, pitch them at various media orgs, and have them write up gushing articles about how carefully the filmmakers were in recreating historically accurate things in their new film. By the time the film comes out, everyone can know all about why this particular prop or costume looks the way it does, and if anyone somehow missed it, well, chances are their buddy who went to the movie theater with them saw it and can explain in the car ride back home. All these studio CZcams channels can flood the internet with short documentary features explaining this and that, as part of the pre-release hype build. Infographics can be tweeted out. This stuff is so easy, I will never understand why they don't do it.
In Jackie chan's drunken master #1 it's established that Jackie gets superhuman durability from alcohol
Ways to fix the rule of cool.
1: don't hire J.J Abrams
2: see #1
I think it was the PC game Tyrian that had an in-universe explanation of sound in space: your ship is equipped with a system that plays sounds in the cockpit if it detects weapons fire as an additional indicator for the pilot. The explanation came in the form of a written advertisement for the sound system.
I sort of feel this could be a mini series for the channel where you theory craft ways to fix scenes that break the rule of cool.
Great video. I just finished the audio version of your novel last night. Kudos, mate! It was fantastic. I can't wait to read a sequel novel.
:D
I'm still interested to see how they make a short film out of a 19 hour long audio book
The book was so good, Michael Kramer and Kate Redding are absolutely top notch readers
@@bloodstoneore4630 19 hours? How long is the novel? I havent got my hands on it yet
@@CorwinTheOneAndOnly the audiobook is 19 hours long and the story is a few dozen chapters
For me the rule was broken when Godzilla made a hole in hong kong down to "hollow earth" in GVK
To be fair, there is pretty much nothing realistic in that movie so it didn't really bother me...
Well, that’s at least technically possible.
@@rigel9228 I was ready to accept everything this movie could throw at me, but my brain already replugger itself during the weird portal scene, I took the hole as a "fuck you" to my intelligence at the end. And guess what? At the end of the day the Zimaut animation is still the superior GVK
Your not joking about the amazing value of an audible subscription. Without it I never would have been able to afford the retail cost of my library.
It's so cool to know you helped conceptualize one of my favorite fight scenes in Rhythm of War. Thank you for that!
An idea off of that gun misfire thing. Make it something the hero knows happens, then at that final scene, make sure it doesn't happen. Add some stakes.
Bungie and the HALO games they made are good examples of being well researched and taking from the Rule of Cool.
I honestly agree. When I first saw Halo, I was mostly fascinated by its architecture, vehicle and weapon designs.
I'm really impressed that he kept a consistent pace throughout that entire single cut starting at the door proceeding around the room and then ending at the door again. Stopping at times to make a strong point before catching back up to where he needed to be pace wise. Well shot.
Sorry to nitpick here; this wasn't a single cut. You can make make out multiple jump cuts. I do agree with you however. Even though it isn't one cut start to finish, every time there is a cut he maintained amazing continuity. So much so that you almost don't notice the jump cuts. Very well shot!
I've been aware of and contemplating how to deal with "the rule of cool" for many years now, as a fledgling writer, and I think it's nice seeing a video from Shad about it.
In one of the novels I'm writing the main character manages to slow down time for a little while, and to justify it I made it follow the laws of physics in a way. "When you affect your surroundings, they also affect you". By slowing down time he spent a great amount of the limited energy he had, and sped up time for himself, getting a couple years older in exchange for slowing down time for a few seconds.
Just added the info about sunforging a person to the wiki, that is such a cool concept!
Edit: Added it to the trivia section if you want to read what I wrote, in trivia cause it's not in the book and the film isn't out yet.
He describes sun-forged, I hear Mega-Juicer from Rifts Palladium...
The first matrix uses the rule of cool pretty well
I loved the content, as usual, and the circling around the room to return and exit through the same door.
I listened to the novel and I'm still waiting for a sequel. Good luck, Shad, and I'm excited to see the short film. I'm also planning to write a story of my own, and I have you to thank for inspiration.
Sometimes you don't even need to give an explanation, but rather just acknowledging within the story itself that something strange is going on can sometimes enhance the plot.
One example of this is the anime Armored Trooper VOTOMS, a mecha series with a protagonist with lots of plot armour, but characters within the story knows something is strange about that, to the point that even the villains rationalizes and believes he is a superhuman or almost mythological being that the universe itself won't allow to die.
As a result the plot armour ends up being a driving force for the plot rather than a problem, even though the story never actually give a definite explanation for it.
Much truth told here that disney should take to heart.
Keep up the great work shad! Can't wait to watch the short film 👌
I think something that helped with this video was the fact that you were moving around, showcasing this great looking set for your film as opposed to your usually static camera. If you can come up with some ideas to incorporate that sort of thing in future videos, it'd be great.
The amount of knowledge and awareness Shad possesses is amazing
I had this unusual concept in my head for my story that I want to literally HAMMER down into my narrative.
"Goons don't shoot like Stormtroopers"
I want to take the usual cliche action where the main characters effortlessly dispatch multiple enemies in a gunfight, and crank up the difficulty so much that they can't just go full-frontal guns'blazin.
Every encounter with unnamed mooks is a lethal threat to our characters. To both sides actually. Every time they're outnumbered and outgunned, they will have to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Magic system that rules my world is centered around being "World of Glass Cannons" where there are millions of creative applications of powers that involve you turning your opponent into bloody paste, but only few or so of defensive, durability enhancing, and wound healing solutions.
But when both hero and random thugs have the same human bodies AND shooting skills, how will I make sure that my hero will NOT turn into swiss cheese every action scene?
Videogame-like deflector shield that can stop few bullets at the time.
It shows the uniqueness of the character (damn, this guy's a mage!!), gives him ability to do "cool" stuff in combat that would otherwise be suicidal for baseline human US Marine, but also keeps the stakes high at all times with very small margin of error available for them.
Single hit from 5.56mm NATO while jumping from cover to cover will make the shield flinch, but 8 rounds at the time will overwhelm and crack it open.
I consider this to be perfect solution for the narrative I'm aiming for, as combat, for the most part, will be secondary to build-up and drama that leads to it.
Ironically the Star Wars films are actually not good examples of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy trope. The Stormtroopers in Star Wars have a high bodycount, and win most of the shootouts they engage in. It's just a combination of the plot armour that _all_ action heroes have and a couple of sequences when they were deliberately _not_ shooting the main characters that make people think that.
@@WJS774 I know, in original saga reason stormtroopers didn't fire accurately is justified. Fact remains, cultural impact of their appearances leaves them as epitome of bad aim.
When Average Joe hears "star wars stormtrooper" he immediately thinks of disposable mooks and minor obstacle to the main characters. I refer to the "stormtrooper aim" as a general trope, even when its not exactly true in the source material.
@@Basement-Science Actually I just finished detailed ruleset about shields to keep them consistent further down the story as power level of characters expands. I won’t dump it on the viewer, maybe not until training segments, but it will help me with internal consistency.
There are two general classes of shield, passive Bubble Barrier and active Arcane Barrier. Bubble is both weaker and harder technique that not everyone can master to practical degree. Protagonist stops pistol round in exposition (he reacts to it with absolute terror however), meanwhile his apprentice never really gets around it for years despite magnitude higher power.
Also, the scenarios you mentioned, like dangerous ricochets, partial deflections, and penetration with redirections will play large part from the beginning to the end.
@@krzysztofbyrtek7848
actually its kinda explained that the force does somewhat passively improves the "luck" of some people after all "there is no luck only the force"
People have argued that in the first movie, the ones on the death star were missing on purpose because the whole point was for the heroes to escape so that they could be tracked back to the rebel base. They weren't trying to kill them, they were trying to funnel them in the directions needed for them to get away. By comparison almost everyone in the death star attack run was killed off by TIE fighter pilots.
I know that problem. I like to create little scenarios, mostly world building for fun, which start with a cool idea that usually comes from a history setting + technology/concept mashup.
The last was the idea of a 1900 industrialised society, but a medieval way of warfare. No guns, but factory armor, weapons and mass armies. The implication on a culture are quite the rabbit hole, not even talking about tactics.
At that point i rather create a ever falling universe.
That's actually a cool idea. Modern war in a world without gunpowder.
This is one of my new favorite videos from you, Shad! When I'm worldbuilding, I always make sure to tackle any possible inconsistencies and such, coming up with realistic solutions.
About Loki: I know that Marvel should have answered this in the show, but my headcanon for the power levels is that
a) Sylvie enchanted the people she had possessed to be as strong as Asgardians;
b) The TVA are very strong compared to humans, thus explaining jo they manage to capture even incredibly strong variants;
c) Loki was drunk in the train, he wasn't thinking straight;
Cheers!
"Prototype built within existing vessel, providing camouflage to deceive enemy" the one line of dialogue that explains why the ship bursts out of the ground and why it looks the way it does
This video couldn’t have come out at more of a, perfect time for me. Because I’m actually in the middle of writing a something . And this “Rule of cool” is something I noticed is, quite difficult to get around. And the cooler/action oriented parts of my project POPS! Into my head first then and it happens more often. Then how I would like have my characters act, behave, or just have a personality in general.
I appreciate that Shad thinks about this stuff. Good sign of a good story teller.
I think saying that you've fixed it with a single line is a bit disingenuous, as your change introduces ripple effects that also need to be dealt with. With your Snyder Cut example, sure it would explain why Darkseid couldn't find Earth earlier but now you need to explain what changed that allowed him to find it now. In the short film the fact that the antagonist has sunforged henchmen changes the implications for what kinds of resources they have available and you need to make sure that the rest of their plans make sense with those new levels. At the end of the day the problem is that the writer is not looking at the full scope of what the action on page/screen says about the world they have made. If your explanation just covers up the moment but also fails to build properly upon the rest of the story, then you haven't actually fixed anything you've just moved the problem up a level. The actual answer is to look at the big picture and make sure things are flowing cohesively, and not limiting your focus to just the immediate problem.
You are correct regarding the short film (we still need to see it to find out if the change really does impact the rest of the story), but not about the Snyder cut. The reason steppenwolf finds Earth is due to motherboxes being triggered. And it would happen regardless of Shad's fix, because it's hardly a stretch to think that motherbox "calling" steppenwolf would overpower the invisibility. Imagine you were sitting in a bush hidden from sight, but then began to scream. But even so, there's your second line that fixes the plot hole. So, the fix isn't *literally* a "one line fix", but it's damn close to it.
1:31…. What’s really important is to understand the more the universe is established in fiction the more important it is to be grounded in the rules of the universe. As well as adhere to the rules in every scene. Disney does this so terribly that it’s hard to watch