Benjamin Franklin once famously quipped
that there are only two certainties in
life death and taxis and that's what I'm
here to talk about today the shocking
rise in personal income tax rates over
the past 10 years
sorry death specifically death and media
surely the ultimate and most permanent
conclusion to any character's Story the
end of everything they are and
everything they ever could be everything
they might have said and thought every
task they might have accomplished every
life they might have touched it all ends
when they draw their final breath and
just like in real life they're passing
off and leaves behind an aching void of
emptiness and grief that other
characters and even the audience
themselves must struggle to come to
terms with at least it used to nowadays
the death of a major character is
treated more like a past and
inconvenience that can be easily fixed
whenever the plot needs it to happen or
a hack writer wants to jangle some shiny
keys in front of the audience for a bit
of cheap Nostalgia or the studio decides
they want to squeeze a bit more money
out of a once popular Legacy character
whatever the reason it all adds up to
the same problem nobody stays [ __ ]
dead anymore and that creates some very
obvious additional problems that we'll
get into later believe that but for now
at least let's consider some of the most
popular and convenient paths for
character Resurrection I mean we'll
leave out the absolute Chads who just
bring people back to life with no
explanation whatsoever somehow Palpatine
returned somehow Palpatine returned
somehow Palpatine returned how the team
returned
probably the least damaging method is to
work more or less within the confines of
the fictional world that you've created
usually when you've got highly Advanced
Science and Technology to fall back on
it'll definitely stretch the audience's
suspension of disbelief but with luck it
can be done without completely breaking
your own narrative rules like the Matrix
resurrections for example remember Neo
and Trinity remember how they both
totally died at the end of Matrix
Revolutions when Trinity took a steel
guarder to the gut and Neo got
assimilated by agent Smith and then his
brain exploded or something and he
turned into sci-fi space Jesus I mean it
wasn't High art or anything but it got
the job done I suppose but what happens
when you're a studio desperate to
squeeze a little more money out of an
old franchise but you desperately need
your two main actors to be involved
again [ __ ] it let's just say that the
machines fix their bodies up brought
them back to life and plugged them right
back into the Matrix like nothing
happens genius or how about colonel
quarich from Avatar remember him
probably not because apparently half the
world's entire population went to see
that movie but most of them could barely
tell you a single thing about it today
apart from the blue people were cool and
the planet looked nice and that made my
brain do a happy but the point here is
that korich ultimately got turned into a
human pincushion and ended up very dead
as a result but what do you do when it's
15 years later and you need an
antagonist for your Sequel and you can't
be asked coming up with a new one [ __ ]
it let's just say he downloaded his
brain into an avatar body off screen
despite the fact that his entire
character was driven by his complete and
utter contempt for the navi and he
absolutely would never have agreed to
such a procedure and bingo he's back in
the game like nothing happens
[ __ ] off film I mean [ __ ] man sometimes
we don't even need to wait for a sequel
we can just bring characters back to
life in the very next scene like in Star
Trek Into Darkness when Captain Kirk
sacrifices his life to fix the
Enterprise warp core by kicking it until
it starts working again he can't be
serious honestly if you want a single
moment that pretty much exemplifies the
attitude of modern Star Trek then here
it is anyway because JJ Abrams only
knows how to repurpose stuff that other
people have already done far better the
whole scene is basically trying to
mirror the death of Spock in The Wrath
of Khan but whereas that scene was
poignantly handled and the audience was
given an entire movie to process the
grief of his death and Kirk ultimately
had to sacrifice his career his ship and
even his own son to get Spock Back Into
Darkness brings Kirk back to life
literally minutes later by injecting him
with dark Benedict bunder snatches
magical Superman Bloods which can
apparently cure just about any disease
or ailment up to and including death
itself damn man I sure hope they get a
sample of that so that they can
basically prevent any disease ever
instead of just forgetting about it at
the moment it's accomplished the one
thing that the plot needs it for
[ __ ] another variation of the Techno
jargon [ __ ] approach is to use the
magical [ __ ] approach insteads like
in Wonder Woman 1984 where Diana uses
the magical dildo Crystal thing that
grants wishes to bring Steve Trevor back
from the Deads and for the purposes of
this video we'll just ignore the fact
that Steve is actually an habiting the
body of a completely innocent bystander
who absolutely didn't give permission
for any of this stuff to happen to him
and couldn't consent when Diana decides
to have sex with them because I guess
stuff like this is morally and ethically
fine when a woman does it anyway the
goal of the writers was once again to
bring back a popular character that had
already been killed off because they're
so [ __ ] lacking in anything even
resembling imagination that all they
could think to do was replicate the
relationship Dynamic of the previous
film thus making his sacrifice in that
movie completely and utterly pointless
another approach which is possibly the
most destructive in terms of its
far-reach and plot repercussions is used
in time travel and or alternate
timelines to bring Dead characters back
to life I mean how many times have the
Terminator movies use branching
timelines to wheel out an increasingly
saggy and decrepit Arnold Schwarzenegger
to do his T800 thing again a rule that
he hasn't been able to convincingly play
since the 1990s and each time they do it
they have to ask the audience to
conveniently forget whatever happened in
the previous films because they've just
been overwritten Terminator Genesis
effectively canceled out the events of
well basically the entire franchise up
until that point whereas dark fate asked
us to pretend that everything after
Terminator 2 never actually happened
while trying to replace it with a
storyline that was infinitely worse in
every possible way it's a bit like going
on a first date that's not really
working out and instead of just leaving
you burn down the entire restaurant and
everyone inside it or Avengers end game
which suddenly threw in a time travel
machine that allowed the writers to
bring not one but two major characters
back to life not only making their
deaths in the previous movie completely
meaningless but opening the door to much
bigger problems like why don't you use a
time machine to recruit entire armies of
superheroes from different timelines to
counter any possible threat you could
ever come up against why not do this
every time someone dies or something
goes mildly wrong why not go forward in
time to procure Advanced weapons and
technology that can totally help you in
the present why haven't other people in
factions invented time travel as well
why isn't there a [ __ ] massive
Universal arms race for such
world-shattering technology questions
like these will simply never end because
time travel is the ultimate narrative
can of worms once you've opened it
there's no logical way to close it again
and it's only going to grow until it
consumes your entire fictional Universe
invalidating every plot point and
destroying even the illusion of stakes
and consequences the final method is a
word that I've come to utterly despise
over the past couple of years a word
that's largely responsible for speeding
up the downfall of modern superhero
movies a word called multiverses
basically it's the writing equivalent of
playing a video game in sandbox mode
where you can spawn in any character
situation location or item it will want
to bring back a dead character played by
the same actor or one from a totally
different version of your IP no problem
just Multiverse them into existence and
you barely even have to come up with a
justification because who even cares
really the fans certainly don't they
just want to see different versions of
their favorite characters interacting
with each other making jokes and
fighting bad guys it's the movie
equivalent of watching a little kid
smash together their GI Joe and He-Man
toys it doesn't really make any sense
but it's entertaining at least from a
novelty point of view I mean Spider-Man
no way home at least did a decent job
with the concept mostly because the
characters were handled with a hint of
respect there was a compelling emotional
core driving things forward and the
movie knew to keep the narrative
relatively contained in ground AIDS the
problem is that just like with time
travel it opened the floodgates to a
gigantic tidal wave of [ __ ] to Florida
into Cinemas suddenly everyone was
jumping on the Multiverse bandwagon
because it was a fun gimmick and when
you're out of actual serious creative
ideas gimmicks are basically all you've
got left that's why we had Michael
Keaton's Batman taking on CGI space
aliens in a desert in the middle of the
day or Doctor Strange fighting an evil
version of himself with a third eye for
some reason or carrying in this [ __ ]
floating potato threatening to conquer
all of existence it's what happens when
one good idea gets hijacked by a bunch
of useless hacks desperate to exploit
the next big thing before everyone else
gives up and moves on and that dear
viewer is the Fate that awaits so many
movies to try this kind of [ __ ] because
the obvious result of routinely bringing
Dead characters back to life with the
most flimsy justifications is that
nothing that happens carries anyway
anymore because it can all be undone
whenever the writers feel like it
whether it's through some contrived
scientific or magical [ __ ] alternate
timelines overwriting past events or
different realities merging together it
all adds up to the same basic problem
nothing matters anymore so there's no
reason to get invested in any of it if
your favorite character dies so what
there's no reason to feel bad because
they'll probably be back in the sequel
if the villain gets defeated what
difference does it make because they'll
return for payback sooner or later it
becomes nothing more than a crutch for
writers who can't stand on their own two
feet and come up with new original ideas
to move a narrative forwards because why
take a chance on that when you can just
bring back recognizable things that were
once popular and leech off the success
of other people's hard work the end
result is a kind of creative inertia
like a car spinning its wheels in the
mud splattering [ __ ] everywhere without
actually making any forward progress
combine this with the over-reliance on
sequels reboots and remakes and we're
fast becoming a culture mired in
stagnation recycling inferior copies of
old ideas and properties with decline in
skill and passion the stories we tell
ourselves now have become simple
Commodities as disposable and
forgettable as a fast food lunch rather
than actual Artistic Endeavors with
something meaningful to say Hollywood
might be able to resurrect any character
they've bought the legal rights to but
the one thing they can't bring back to
life is the interest of their own
audience and I think this year they're
gonna learn that lesson in the hardest
way possible
anyway that's all I've got for today
go away now