Don't Make the Meaningful Meaningless

 When I talked about the Snake-Eyes movie I mentioned that at the end of the movie the old ninja lady just gives him the iconic black suit with no setup or explanation.  It's just, "Here, take this."  It was kind of symbolic of what was wrong with that movie--the struggle for it to include the GI Joe stuff in any kind of satisfying way.

Snake-Eyes getting his black suit should have been a big deal, like whenever Bruce Wayne creates the Batsuit for the first time or Spider-Man creates his suit.  Or whoever.  It's supposed to be symbolic of taking on that identity.  Someone just dumping it in his arms at the end of the movie with no setup gives it no meaning at all.  And when you give your movie the clumsy title "GI Joe Origins" then maybe this final bit of his origin story should actually mean something.

Another example is for the ballyhooed "Snyder Cut" people were all stoked Superman was going to wear the black suit from the 90s comics after he came back from the dead--except that didn't have a cape.  The thing about that suit was it was supposed to help harness solar energy so he could recover.  But in the Snyder Cut he just walks onto the crashed ship and grabs it instead of the colored version.  There was absolutely no meaning or significance to it whatsoever.  And really no idea why he chose that one over the regular one.  It was utterly pointless--like most of the Snyder Cut.

A non-wardrobe example is an episode of The Orville called "The Mortality Paradox."  The ship finds a planet that's supposed to be abandoned but seems to have life.  So a bunch of people shuttle down and find a 21st Century high school--gee, what a cheap, accessible filming location--and the dumbass pilot almost gets eaten by a Rancor-looking thing.  Then they're suddenly on a 21st Century airliner--gee, another cheap, accessible filming location--and the dumbass captain hits his head or something.  Then they go to some thing for Bortas's people where dead bodies are stored and one comes to life to strangle him.  And then they're on a lake and there's a giant squid that almost kills the first officer.

Eventually a Tron-looking alien shows up and says that their race has advanced so far that they're pretty much immortal.  So they were trying to experience what death would feel like by putting the crew into these scenarios.  Which when I thought about it was sort of the same principle as the original Star Trek pilot, only they weren't just studying death.

Anyway, the problem when I thought about it is almost none of these scenarios (except maybe Bortas's) actually had any significance.  A 21st Century high school or airliner wouldn't have any meaning to people who are supposed to live in the 25th Century except as something they might have seen on their version of TV and movies.  It would have had far more impact--and helped build the characters--if the moments they experienced were things they had actually experienced.  As it was, almost 90% of the episode was just random stuff that didn't mean much.

The lesson then is that when you're writing a story, you want your big reveals to actually feel big.  They should have the dramatic importance that befits them.  Otherwise your audience isn't going to feel how important the important moment actually is.

Oh, by the way, I am your father.  (See how lame that is?)