Maybe you like origin stories.
The world certainly seems to like them well enough.
But I’m not a fan.
I in fact actively dislike them.
I pee on them. I make an angry face, and I pee on them.
Here’s why:
An origin story is all prologue.
It’s act one of a story stretched across the narrative expanse of three (or five, or seven) acts.
Just as the origin story ends is when I want to begin.
Note: an origin story differs from a story that presents a character’s origin. The latter is a tale whose primary plot is something else, but that may touch on or reveal the character’s origin in an oblique way — a side-angle, a sub-plot, a component that features but does not dominate. An origin story proper is where the character’s origin is the dominant sequence of events.
Origin stories frequently hit the same beats. Childhood. Before the powers and abilities. Gaining the powers and abilities. Learning (and failing to learn) responsibility with those powers. Epiphany and sometimes, apotheosis.
These stories are often reiterative and redundant. We know how Superman becomes Superman because we’ve seen it a hundred times. Same with Spider-Man (and they even rebooted that pesky web-head approximately ten minutes after we ended the last set of Spider-Man movies).
The more interesting stories frequently occur after the origin, and yet we remain subjected to the origin narrative over and over and over again.
Imagine if we had to sit through a film before Die Hard where we have to first learn how John McClane becomes the alcoholic hero-cop — his youth, his training at the academy, his time as a beat-cop. (There’s a comic book series that covers this, I believe; I don’t know if it’s worth checking out.) Is it necessary? Would it even be that interesting? Aren’t we better off just jumping into the story as it is? Leaving some open variables? Doors and windows yet to open?
Most aspects of an origin story can be embedded in a non-origin story. Flashbacks. Dialogue. World-building. We don’t need it to fill up two full hours of film.
Origin stories are expository.
Origin stories defeat mystery. And mystery is good.
Avengers is so much fun because it is not an origin story. We’ve gotten over all that stuff in the other films. (Curiously, of the new Marvel series, Thor really isn’t an origin story.)
The Dark Knight is a far stronger film than Batman Begins because we have dispensed with all the Stuff We Already Knew and got right to All The Awesome.
Origin stories are money-making plays meant to stretch out the potential narrative bandwidth. I’m sure if somebody could get away with an Iron Man Takes His First Dump story, they would have. (Hey, Hollywood — call me. I’m your Huckleberry.)
An origin story defies that old writing chestnut — “Start the story as late as you can.” I’m not opposed to defying traditional advice, obviously. You can do anything with a story and violate any rule and if you do it well and with aplomb, nobody gives a bag of koala cock that you did it.
That’s the thing. Some origin stories can and do work. The Star Wars prequels are a bad example, but the original Star Wars: A New Hope is a pretty solid example. I thought the first Iron Man was solid enough, though buoyed more by RDJ than by anything else, maybe.
All of this is, of course, IMHO, YMMV.
It is my cross to bear, this disgust toward origin stories.
And so I ask you:
What origin stories work? What ones don’t?
What would make an origin story better? What do we see too much of?
Noodle. Answer. I’ll sit here and stare at you, eating comic book pages like Communion wafers.
Thomas Pluck says:
I think Spider-Man (Raimi) Superman ’78, and even Iron Man work. Bad? HULK. and I an a HULK apologist. Why? it’s an hour before we get Hulked upon.
Spidey is web-spewing in the first 15 minutes.
Superman ’78 takes longer if I recall, but we see baby Supe lifting a car in his Kryptonian birthday suit early on, so we get a little super-power to tide us over.
When we go BACK for an origin- Hannibal Rising, The Thing prequel, Prometheus… it is almost always a huge mistake.
June 17, 2013 — 9:35 AM
terribleminds says:
Prequels-as-origin-stories are perhaps the worst offenders. You’re not wrong.
I liked the first Spider-Man, no doubt. But also felt kinda itchy to move the ball forward — like, “Yeah, we get it, we get this story, let’s move past Issue #1.”
— c.
June 17, 2013 — 9:38 AM
betsydornbusch says:
Hate them too.
June 17, 2013 — 9:36 AM
Ellie Di says:
I certainly feel the annoyance associated with the recent rash of re-doing origins. We don’t need to go over Supes and and Bats and WebHead every damn time they bring out a new face to play the dudes. Those characters are already so well-known that it’s boring to see the origins.
But for characters who aren’t highly recognized and publicized, I love an origin story. I used to read the League of Substitute Heroes as a kid, and my favourite issues were always the backstories for the different heroes. Same for any fictional character, really. I like to see what makes each character’s childhood different, the way they discovered their Super Special Thing, how they deal. Those stories really flesh out my relationship with the character and make me appreciate them a hell of a lot more.
The way we’re being beat over the head with origin stories in movies is exhausting and boring. I won’t argue that. But origins aren’t always pointless – sometimes we need them to better empathize with the people in the world so we can move forward with them in future stories in a more meaningful way.
June 17, 2013 — 9:39 AM
Bryon Quertermous says:
I like origin stories because they are almost always more character based than action based. I know I’m weird, but my ideal super hero movie would be a character study with no action scenes. Like Clerk’s but with super heroes.
June 17, 2013 — 9:40 AM
alexanderthesoso says:
I’d dig it. Kinda Foundation ish.
June 17, 2013 — 10:43 AM
fredhicks says:
I’d argue that Iron Man works in part because his origin story is actually largely contained to that first act. By the time he gets back to the USA, we are kinda past it. Yes, there’s a throughline, but I feel like the second half of that movie addresses at least a healthy portion of the “… and now what?” that follows an origin story.
I actually liked the most recent reboot of Spider-Man. It has flaws, for sure, but the prior edition was very much SAM RAIMI’S spider-man, and this more recent one was SPIDER-MAN, if that makes sense. The quips and webslinging and wall-crawling were just more fun for me. Note: I love the Raimi-era Spider-Man, too, but when I heard they were making a second one, I got really excited. Garfield was an excellent Peter Parker.
June 17, 2013 — 9:40 AM
terribleminds says:
“I’d argue that Iron Man works in part because his origin story is actually largely contained to that first act. By the time he gets back to the USA, we are kinda past it. Yes, there’s a throughline, but I feel like the second half of that movie addresses at least a healthy portion of the “… and now what?” that follows an origin story.”
This is actually a pretty solid point. It follows the proper course — Act One is Act One.
— c.
June 17, 2013 — 9:46 AM
Patrick Regan says:
And in related point: Captain America is only skinny-Steve for the first act. After that first act, he’s in awesome musical number and kicking Nazi ass.
But Cap is WEIRD in that way, in that he’s technically got two different origin stories (1. Super Soldier Serum, 2. Cap-sicle), but between Origin 1 and Origin 2 there’s a wealth of story because instead of doing the usual superhero finding himself, he’s MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FROM TYRANY! *electric guitar riff*
June 17, 2013 — 10:26 AM
fredhicks says:
This was really the genius of doing Cap’s origin story as a period piece that ends with him waking up in the modern day. Within the 1940s he had a perfectly lovely story arc of fighting the Red Skull. I do kinda wish they’d trimmed it with the crash and the foreshadowing of his modern day resurrection instead of following through to the wake-up, but I get why they didn’t want to waste footage-time in the Avengers movie to support that.
June 17, 2013 — 1:30 PM
Peter Hentges says:
A film origin story that I thought worked well was the first Riddick film, Pitch Black. It did a good job of introducing us to the character, building him up as a bad-ass, giving us enough about where he came from to make him seem interesting. And it’s probably a good example of “a story that presents the character’s origin” vs. and origin story.
(Subsequent films were pretty horrid, but at least didn’t retread the origin ground.)
June 17, 2013 — 9:41 AM
terribleminds says:
Yes, see, I don’t think that’s an origin story. I think it deals with his origin but is really a whole other film.
— c.
June 17, 2013 — 9:47 AM
Heather Umphrey Dudley says:
I don’t think so either. Riddick is pretty much well established as who and what he is there, and it’s not about his origin. It’s about his change from the villain to the hero (antihero, more accurately.) The other movies are B-movie dreck, but fun. Pitch Black is one of my favorites because it presents a character who really is evil; and never really becomes good. Just less evil.
June 17, 2013 — 3:42 PM
Jessica says:
I wrote the entire first draft of a novel once that was intended to be the first in a series of epic fantasy books. I then looked at my creation and realised that it was basically a book-long prologue. The main antagonist hadn’t shown up yet. It was all about how a group of people met, trained together and formed a well-oiled team that would get torn apart by war, betrayal, death, etc. in the later books. I never attempted to do anything with that book because I knew it was really weak.
I keep thinking I’ll go back to that series at some point – but I’ll probably start with what would have been book three.
June 17, 2013 — 9:41 AM
Stephanie Noel says:
I enjoyed reading Lestat the Vampire, which basically is an origin story to explain the Lestat we see in Interview with the Vampire. I’m talking about the book, here, not the movie, which was total rubbish.
June 17, 2013 — 9:42 AM
Christopher Wright says:
Didn’t like Lestat because it essentially negated everything in Interview.
June 17, 2013 — 9:52 AM
Shirley says:
I liked Lestat because it fixed everything that annoyed me about Interview.
June 17, 2013 — 12:33 PM
Amber J Gardner says:
^ A lesson in that there will always be someone who hates a book and someone who loves the same book.
June 17, 2013 — 2:52 PM
fredhicks says:
Lestat was the first thing I read, and liked it. Tried to get into Interview afterwards and just got annoyed by it. Didn’t finish.
June 17, 2013 — 1:31 PM
Shay says:
I enjoyed the way and order in which the books were written. Interview gave an overview and a simplfied version of Lestat from Louis’ POV. The Vampire Lestat, was Lestat clarifying, not negating the assumptions that Louis had made in regards to his maker. Lestat never says Louis is wrong, just that Louis did not have all the facts.
To me all three books are valid and are to some extent origin stories, or their are origin stories throughout each of the book (Marius’ back story, Akasha/Enkil/Twins back story, Armand, etc) Many of these characters get their own books later, but the framework is set up in the original 3 books and fleshed out later
June 18, 2013 — 8:43 AM
Paul Anthony Shortt says:
I actually liked Batman Begins more than any of the other Nolanverse movies, because I felt it gave us the most well-rounded look at Batman as a character than any other live action movie we’ve seen him in, rather than focusing on the villains.
I do agree with you, though, that the origin of the hero should be only one part of the greater story. Much as I love origin stories, they need to give the hero something to do other than “become the hero.” Heck, my own first novel, Locked Within, is effectively the origin story for my protagonist, Nathan Shepherd, but there’s a very clear goal for Nathan, aside from accepting his role as New York’s protector.
June 17, 2013 — 9:43 AM
Chris says:
I think X-Men First Class was a very well done origin story. But that was built more on the relationship between Xavier and Magneto, and the Cold War setting.
Otherwise, they can pretty much get stuffed. I thought the second Hulk movie they did handled it best. Just a montage in the opening credits that showed us everything we need to go, then we get right to Hulk smashing shit up in South America. And that’s what it should be. Confine that shit to like five minutes and get me to the cool stuff, please.
And please don’t do another Batman origin. Yeah, his parents died, we get it. Now get to punching the Riddler or whatever they do for his next reboot.
June 17, 2013 — 9:44 AM
terribleminds says:
I admit that I really liked First Class. Some of it felt reiterative, but it was a pretty solid entry.
June 17, 2013 — 9:47 AM
fredhicks says:
First Class + Captain America = Please do nothing but period pieces in the Marvel universe (not really, but good gravy it’s a lovely way to enjoy the material)
June 17, 2013 — 1:32 PM
John Gabarron says:
Peter Jackson told the entire 3000 year history of the Ring in a 15-minute montage, and he’s one of the most long winded filmmakers ever. No one needs more than that for a superhero.
June 17, 2013 — 9:45 AM
C J Eggett (@CjEggett) says:
I think superhero movies are the worst for it because:
a) For some reason the writers of these people seem to want to latch on for a solid sense of “change” rather than “challenge” for their narrative scaffolding
b) Superheroes are loaded up to the tonsils with metaphor and symbolism. You don’t have to know an origin story to *get* any of these characters
Which leaves us all a bit frustrated when we have to put up with a chap getting nibbled by a glowing spider, again.
The best batman comic is the Dark Knight Returns because it plays on what you know about the character already and then presents him a new challenge.
An exception to the rule may be alternative universes/timelines where it’s a subversion of the origin story.
June 17, 2013 — 9:45 AM
The Baroness says:
Origin Stories wreck it. It’s like seeing Mickey Mouse at Disney Land with his head next to him on a bench while the poor schmuck college student who wears the suit snarfs down a burger and six Gatorades (those suits are HOT) during his 23 minute lunch break. Of course there are exception that prove the rule, like Penn and Teller who wreck magic for us but make the wrecking so interesting that we don’t care. Origin stories usually aren’t interesting. Keep the Mickey Head on, wear a slightly longer dress and let fans ponder Origins. Says me.
June 17, 2013 — 9:47 AM
E.M. says:
My 6-year-old likes origin stories. These are his introduction to the character, to who they are and how they came to be. He repeatedly asks me to tell him his own origin story (the story of his birth).
He’s also 6.
I completely agree with your post, without exception. Origin stories only work when the origin itself is not the story. It’s why Star Wars (now known as Episode IV) works. It’s why Superman (from 1978) works. It’s why Tim Burton’s early take on Batman works.
I’m already familiar with the character(s). Just tell me what happens next.
June 17, 2013 — 9:48 AM
David Earle says:
Not a movie, but in the first issue of All-Star Superman Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely told Superman’s origin in four panels on a single page, each containing a simple two-word caption. Compared to the glut of Superman origin miniseries DC has put out recently, it was GLORIOUS.
I suppose the Star Trek reboot also deserves a special mention. It’s unquestionably an origin story, but wrapped in a time-space clustersnuggle embodying everything that came before and coated in a fancy big-budget shell.
June 17, 2013 — 9:50 AM
Graham Milne says:
Oh hell yes. Testify, brother. AKA, The History of Every Movie Made Over The Last Fifteen Years. Of course, that doesn’t stop the Hollywood braintrust from cranking ’em out over and over again. “We’re going back to show how it all began, where everybody came from” – the answer to the question NO ONE EVER ASKED.
As you rightly observe, Darth Vader forever lost a huge chunk of his awesomeness once we were treated – if one can use that word – to his nine-year-old “Yippee!” screaming self, not to mention his insufferably whiny adolescence. I have a feeling that as regards most comic book origin stories, much of the responsibility lies in the realm of cost – that is, the expense of FX-heavy scenes featuring superhero-supervillain throwdowns (i.e. what you get in the sequel once the studio knows they have a guaranteed hit and can confidently loosen the pursestrings) versus the vastly cheaper setup of the endless training montage, or the specific beats you refer to above.
In recent memory, the best celluloid origin story was Casino Royale. Because it gave us an adult Bond and dispensed with him becoming a 00 in the first two minutes before getting on with the plot. And it was so well executed we forgot we were watching an origin story at all.
June 17, 2013 — 9:50 AM
Chrisv says:
Oh, I have to agree with the Casino Royale origin story working great. It was an origin story, but it was a fun ride the whole way. And while the third one dealt with his origins, it wasn’t really about his origins, it was about killing a bad guy. Nice point.
June 17, 2013 — 6:03 PM
Terrie says:
Does this include coming into your power stories? I’m thinking of a couple classic fantasy novels by Robin McKinley: The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown. Both begin with the hero not knowing the power she has or the roots of it. In the course of the novel, they do learn. Actually the roots part of it is barely touched on; the crucial part is discovering the power they have and then using it to beat the bad guy. They seem fully contained to me. And they are one off novels. The world returns but the story of those characters is told in a single book. So an origin story is something different, right? It’s about a character who will really only be interesting because of the later stories? Batman Begins is only interesting because we all know there is a Batman After?
June 17, 2013 — 9:59 AM
terribleminds says:
Generally, I hold those as separate? I dunno!
— c.
June 17, 2013 — 10:00 AM
pierides says:
To get all faluttin’ here. I think you have to look at the tradition of the bildungsroman. Most [superhero] origin stories are about becoming, but superficially. The transformation is literal and external. The ones that seem to work seem to work have more going on under the hood.
But even then there is an impulse for a kind of closure/symmetry in a lot of those movies that undermines the motivation for the characters. If you can get revenge for who killed your parents in an alley, caping it up becomes a job and the character needs to come from some place else.
June 17, 2013 — 10:11 AM
Dan Thompson says:
I think the Incredible Hulk (2008, with Edward Norton) did a fabulous job dispensing with the origin story. They assumed we already knew it, and then they reminded us of the salient points via news clippings in the backdrop of the title sequence. It gave us the details in a quick exposition without falling back on something as boring as a text-crawl.
June 17, 2013 — 10:11 AM
Rick Cook Jr says:
I would say that Thor really is still an Origin story for his character. The thing is that they have to establish the universe in which he already exists, but then the movie spends most of its time developing his character to become the god that watches over humanity, aka the origin of how he becomes the dude we all know about versus the privileged, entitled, war-mongering brat he was at the beginning.
That said, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the concept of an Origin story, except that perhaps we’re mostly going about them the wrong way. That is to say, weave the Origin story into the greater narrative of a plot progression instead of making that the entire plot progression.
Pitch Black and Thor are examples of what I would consider “origin stories” done right, for the reasons already stated. X-Men First Class is the same. Iron Man? Well, we do get the “origin story” out of the way in the first quarter/half, but the second half of the first movie is the backlash and consequence of who Stark and his corporation were before, and who he becomes / wants his company to become after.
June 17, 2013 — 10:13 AM
terribleminds says:
“That is to say, weave the Origin story into the greater narrative of a plot progression instead of making that the entire plot progression.”
To be fair, the post I wrote draws that line. And I don’t consider that to be an origin story, at least not in the mode of what I’m discussing here.
— c.
June 17, 2013 — 10:16 AM
Rick Cook Jr says:
In which case I’d have to agree with your argument.
The other side of the coin is that, because they’re trying to make these franchises viable to more than just them folks already know ’bout it, there are still a lot of people who don’t the the Batman origin, or the basic beats of Spider-Man. Do most of us need the origin story? No. Do some people? Sure. Are those “some people” significant enough in terms of bringing money to the franchise? Hollywood seems to think so.
Do we get to the generally-better but more-expensive sequels (Spider-Man 2, Avengers technically, X-Men 2) as a result? Maybe. Does that make the origin story necessary in real-world terms?
June 17, 2013 — 10:27 AM
Rick Cook Jr says:
“who don’t know the Batman origin” derp
June 17, 2013 — 10:28 AM
shay says:
Pitch black CANNOT be an origin story. Pitch Black does touch in places in regards to where Riddick comes from, but not his “origins”. This is also done solely by dialogue, no flashbacks etc. You really don’t find anything out in regards to that until “Chrocicles of Riddick”
June 18, 2013 — 8:59 AM
Sutinder says:
Godfather 2 is prequel and sequel. And it rocks like Springsteen on Smack. Francis Ford Coppola is a storyteller supreme. “Fredo I know it was you. You broke my heart”. An all time classic movie moment. Thanks for the post Chuck. Have a good day everyone.
June 17, 2013 — 10:16 AM
Justin D. Jacobson (@JustinDJacobson) says:
1) Greatest origin story of all time: Young Sherlock Holmes. Nails all the iconic elements, taut mystery side plot, real emotional underpinning.
2) I see a little “no true Scotsman” going on here. “Oh that’s a good movie; it’s not really an origin story.”
June 17, 2013 — 10:25 AM
terribleminds says:
@JDJ —
Yeah, but I think I pretty clearly defined in the post itself that some stories are origin stories and some are stories that happen to also tell the origin. That I prefer examples of the latter shouldn’t be a surprise.
That said, some origin stories ARE perfectly fine stories. New Hope. Spider-Man. Etc.
— c.
June 17, 2013 — 10:43 AM
Jessica Burde says:
There may be a bit of “No true Scotsman”, but I do think there is a fair distinction between movies which have a plot and antagonist and all the things we expect in a movie or story, and that plot includes as part of it the origin of a character, and movies where the writer tried to take the origin of a character and try to turn it into a plot. At least in comic books, origins were never intended as plots, but as prologs. Trying to turn what was written, from the beginning, as a prolog, into a stand alone story is hazardous at best, as most of them lack a conflict at the heart of the story. The conflict is what comes after the prolog.
As Chuck points out, A New Hope gave us the origin of Luke Skywalker as part of the conflict within a greater story, which works. To say that A New Hope is the origin story of Luke Skywalker is… not inaccurate but missing the heart o the movie. Is anything that includes an origin by default an origin story, or is an origin story a story that is build around the origin of the character? If the first, then yeah, there is some “No true Scotsman.” and we’d need to talk about different types of origin stories. If the second, then I’d say Chuck’s nailed it.
June 17, 2013 — 12:53 PM
Sarah says:
I just read all the comments and I’m surprised no one has brought up the Wolverine origin movie…
I happen to be a fan of that one! I like how it moves through his early years quickly and smoothly, and then brings you up to the point where things really start to get shifty. (I realize people may argue that it’s not really his “true” origin story or whatever, but when you take it for what it is, with no comic book background, it’s pretty legit.)
I’m also a fan of the way they show that he has been altered from his original mutation and how it affects him.
Anyways, just my two cents.
June 17, 2013 — 10:30 AM
shay says:
Wolverine has a great many fans, and we were all sitting on eggshells when X-men came out. If Wolverine hadn’t been done properly, which includes rocking the iconic hair-do the movie would have lost a great deal more support than it did off the hop.
The Origin movie “Wolverine” was very well done IMHO. It is also an origin story that NOT everyone is familiar with. I will say there are things from the comic I would have put in the movie, that they did not. There are also things that I would remove that they put in there (see: Gambit). Overall I think it was a clear concise overview on who Wolverine is, and how he ended up with a hole in his memory.
June 18, 2013 — 9:09 AM
Curtis Edmonds (@Curtis_Edmonds) says:
One of my favorite chapters in literature is the origin story of The Escapist in Chabon’s “Kavalier and Clay.” It’s set up nicely by the chapter before, which is a discussion among several characters about what the origin of the character should be, and then the perspective shifts to the origin story itself, and it’s masterful. Having said that, it’s an impossible standard for anyone else to try to meet.
I have been writing these cheesy little pulp-fiction “Thor Slaymaster” stories for the various flash-fiction challenges on this site. I love the character, who is basically just Schwarzenegger with lateral thinking skills, but I haven’t given him an origin story. This is partly because an origin story would tie me down stylistically in ways I don’t want to be tied down, just yet, but partly also because who cares? Not every character needs an origin story, do they?
June 17, 2013 — 10:37 AM
Justin Holley says:
Dripping my quill into the blood-red ink of horror for a moment, I just wanna say that I enjoyed Hannibal Rising…even more so than the sequels to Silence of the Lambs. But nothing beats Silence of the Lambs itself, where we jump straight into Hannibal’s life. Nothing. Just my opinion…
June 17, 2013 — 10:38 AM
sebastiandefeo says:
An origin story is like foreplay. It’s great if done right, but we’re usually too eager to get involved in something else.
https://www.facebook.com/SebastianDefeoPOP
June 17, 2013 — 10:43 AM
D. Moonfire says:
For me, origin stories are fine when I don’t know the origin. If its a new world or setting, then it can be interesting. If I’ve seen it before, then less so. If the characters are established already, the prequel as origin kind of blows (I’m thinking Scorpion King as being right near the bottom of the list). Actually, any origin story that tries to make a bad guy (Vader) a good guy is going to get frustrating because you have to have that switch from hero to villain and that always ruins it for me.
June 17, 2013 — 10:47 AM
Mr Urban Spaceman says:
I was totally going to mention Wolverine! It’s by no means my favourite X-Men story, and it’s not quite as dire as The Last Stand, IMO. I have two gripes with Wolverine Origins, however:
1) It shows us HOW Wolverine is the way he is in X1, but not WHY. By that, I mean that in X1, he’s a cranky, paranoid, somewhat asocial team-sports hater, who goes out of his way to antagonise others, and has a serious attitude problem. But the Wolverine film doesn’t explain how he became this way, as it ends with Logan losing all of his memories. Therefore, everything that he has experienced in Origins is largely irrelevant to the character we know from the X-films–except for the fact that he has an adamantium skeleton and an awesome healing factor. Would have been better called “How Wolverine Got His Claws” because it doesn’t address that carte blanche that is Logan after becoming, essentially, amnesiac.
2) What the movie did to other characters. Yeah, I can live with what they did with Sabretooth, and I thought Liev Shreiber made a very good Victor Creed. But they killed off Maverick, and Blob, and Wraith, and Bolt. As for the hastily thrown-in travesty of Deadpool’s origin… m’yeah, I think I see my soap-box stop coming up, better get off this particular train right now (although I would have approved of more Ryan Reynolds in the film… just sayin’)
Hope this ramble made sense.
June 17, 2013 — 10:47 AM
Mr Urban Spaceman says:
That reply was supposed to be @ Sarah, but my browser threw a wobbly.
Anyway, rather than make a new post with my thoughts about origin stories, I’ll just add to this one.
Origin stories I thought worked:
X Men First Class; Fantastic Four (film); The Watchmen (film); Batman Begins; New Spring (Robert Jordan’s first planned, only-written prequel to Wheel of Time); The way Freedom Force very cheesily handled its ‘origins’ flashbacks/character intros in the game, lampooning other similar works.
I’ve also seen fan-fic writers do some wonderful ‘origin’ stories of lesser-known characters, and some excellent back-stories provided for characters that ordinarily wouldn’t get much public interest, which is really great.
I do think that a lot of origin stories are unnecessary, and sometimes characters are just better when you don’t know their history; like you said, Chuck, it gives more of an air of mystery. The ones which are well-done, though, I really enjoy. I just dislike it most of all when writers/directors/whatever fall back on ‘origin’ stories when they’ve run out of sequel ideas. Sorta like, “Hey, we can’t go forwards with this anymore—so let’s flog the dead horse backwards instead!”
June 17, 2013 — 10:57 AM
Greg says:
Thought I would add a couple comments on the whole Xmen First Class thing…. I liked that movie up to a point… I can’t say exactly where that point is but it was where the writers saw that the story they were telling did not fit enough into Xmen cannon and characters started acting oddly out of the character they seemed to be just to get us to the right ending…. The one with Magneto taking his own path and Charles in a wheelchair…. We know that story I as a long time fan and unfan of the series would have been better with a different story….
June 17, 2013 — 10:48 AM
Greg says:
Another thing just occurred to me about origin stories. Also strangely my example is Xmen related….
Wolverine was a very cool and interesting character before he got his own series…. I mean the ongoing comics one that often focused on his so called origin. Writers seem to want to go back and re create the wheel over and over here and now the is so much contradictory conflicting BS that Logan is a very hard character to work with or even like at times…
June 17, 2013 — 10:52 AM
Jessica Burde says:
In general, i agree with you – if there is an actual story to tell that includes the origin, awesome! A story built around the origin… meh.
That said, as someone who loves character-porn (is character-porn a thing? If not, I’m making it one. I mean, if milfic gun-nuts can have bullet-porn, I should be able to have character-porn) – as someone who loves character-porn, it can be really fun learning the background of a character that I don’t know. Telling the origin of Batman or Superman over and over again? Unless you have something really new to say (does anyone at tHis point?) Yawn. Finding one of my favorite authors has a short story on their website about the origin of their protagonist (or antagonist. Or really cool side character I didn’t get to see enough of in the book?) Yay!
But a short story on an author’s website available for the fan-atics who want to dig it out is one thing. It’s SHORT, it’s there for the people who WANT it to find it. It’s not a 2 hour excuse for a director to jack-off and spew HIS VERSION of a story we’ve all seen before across our eyeballs.
June 17, 2013 — 10:52 AM
Paul Anthony Shortt says:
Here’s the thing that I don’t understand about the specific anti-origin sentiment directed at Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man.
Count the movies that have specifically told their origins.
For Batman, it’s one*. Superman, two. Spider-man has two as well. And the new Superman origin came out 25 years after the first one.
While there’s a sense among some that these origins have been told and retold time and again, they really haven’t been told all that often in movies. Yes, fans of the characters know the stories inside out, but the mainstream movie-going audience doesn’t know them as well, and going by ticket sales, they want to see them.
*Admittedly, two if you count the animated adaptation of Batman: Year One. But in big, cinema-release motion pictures, it’s just one.
June 17, 2013 — 10:59 AM
Jessica Burde says:
Mm. Fair enough. As someone who grew up reading the comics, it is sometimes hard to remember that not everyone has seen easily a dozen reboots of these characters in the last 20 years. That said, I still think that origin stories (as opposed to stories that include the origin) are not good storytelling material and belong in DVD releases and author webpages for devotees of character-porn, not as the basis for mainstream release. As others have noted (and the Michael Keaton Batman movie did well) a 15 minute prolog can cover the origin for folks who aren’t familiar with it.
June 17, 2013 — 11:37 AM
Paul Anthony Shortt says:
You’re absolutely right. Audiences are smart, they can get everything they need in a very small amount of screen time. It seems that starting and ending new superhero series’ are the things filmmakers struggle with most.
June 17, 2013 — 11:41 AM
Jessica Burde says:
Actually, I think it has more to do with filmmakers being screwed no matter what they do when making a movie based on a comic.
Comics have to be the least film-adaptable media ever. Stories are episodic, typically run months, if not years, and almost always have multiple interweaving plots and subplots, at least one of which will require knowledge of prior events in a comic (and for Superman you are talking 70+YEARS of prior events) to fully understand. Which is why modern comics have little side bars at the beginning and end going “Here’s what happened before now” so new readers aren’t totally lost.
Origin stories are, for comics, comparatively short and simple, without all the backstory and with only on ‘plot’. Which makes them the best possible choice for transitioning to the big screen. Unfortunately, origin stories are never intended as stand-alones, they are designed purely as prologs, which creates exactly the problems Chuck discusses here..
But think about trying to make one of the actual stories from comics into a movie. You would either need to pack it so full of backstory there would be no room for story, re-vamp it to be comprehensible to mainstream audiences and cut out all the extra plots and subplots to make a functioning movie (and have the fan-boys and -girls scream bloody murder), or do your best to make a direct translation (and accept that your film will bomb with mainstream audiences who don’t have time to understand what is going on while character’s with huge backstories run back and forth across the screen playing out episode 99 of their relationship which only makes sense if you know at least episodes 75-98).
So they take a prolog, which was never intended to be more than a prolog, and try to turn it into a story.
Personally, I’d much rather see TV adaptations of my fave comics. There you have the scope to really explore the nuances and grandeur of the comic sagas, while still making them accessible to mainstream audiences. Moveimakers are just damned-if-they-do-damned-if-they-don’t and keep trying anyway.
June 17, 2013 — 12:27 PM
Paul Anthony Shortt says:
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Jessica! There’s simply no way to cram all the necessary backstory into a comic-book movie, so the easy option is the origin. Even the Avengers movies have taken an immense amount of work, and risk, to set up.
June 17, 2013 — 12:30 PM
Jessica Burde says:
Heh, the Avengers movie actually had five different origin stories (one for each character) as lead up too the Avengers. Try telling the Avengers without those background bits of who the characters are and where they came from. Each other those movies was basically intended as a prolog to the Avengers, which the studios all but admitted, and the fans didn’t care because Oh! Thor! and OMGOMGOMG, did you see that end teaser? Was that Fury?! OMGOMGOMG I can’t wait!
June 17, 2013 — 12:56 PM
S.C. Barrus says:
I’m pretty sick of origin stories too. When I saw the new Superman trailer, there were aspects that looked cool, and I was even entertained for 3 minutes the trailer lasted. But when it ended, I immediately knew I’d pass because we’ve seen it before. Even if I hadn’t seen earlier Superman movies, there’s not much variation on origins.
That being said, I don’t find much intriguing about an action hero who cannot die. Give me someone hanging on by a thread who barely slips by using his/her cunning and resourcefulness. Give me someone I’m honestly not sure will survive. Or give me Riddick, because the new Riddick movie is gonna kick ass!
June 17, 2013 — 11:37 AM
Paul Weimer (@PrinceJvstin) says:
Origin stories are a subset of phenomenon of “Where to begin the story”. Starting with the prologue is not always, or even not often,the best choice.
I understand the economic financial motivation for movie companies to do it–but I wish they would not.
June 17, 2013 — 11:40 AM
Arachne Jericho says:
I thought maybe it was because I was too stupid to write a proper origin story for my characters, but I’m finding that I’m working better without the origin story. It’s not so much that it ties me down but that I end up trying to expand on something not related to the single beat of the origin story, something that’s not very interesting or happens to be cliche in an attempt to stretch it out. It’s easy to go cliche on origin stories; there are so many of them, after all, repeated endlessly in different forms. It’s like denying the Hero’s Journey for an extra long time (mind you, the so-called master template of stories has its own problems, namely that not all stories work that way).
They say to start writing about the day that is different; but they neglect to say how different it should be. It should be a stark contrast to what went before, a cliff edge on the chart of change rather than a gradual, gradual slope of change. If you can’t write an origin story that’s more than a single beat, you shouldn’t write it at all. (Or maybe just a tiny bit of it as flash fiction. Maybe.)
June 17, 2013 — 11:44 AM
DisastrousCreations says:
The Matrix, enough said.
June 17, 2013 — 11:49 AM
fredhicks says:
I was just thinking about that. Yeah, I think that’s genuinely an origin story (for “The One”).
June 17, 2013 — 1:34 PM
rubyduvall says:
I like that origin stories can sometimes (and sometimes successfully) alter part of the origin we know. For example, I want to see the Man of Steel sequel where Lois Lane *knows* Clark Kent is Superman.
That said, I’d have been well entertained by a movie just about Krypton—about its slow decay, about the ethics of population control and children “grown” instead of conceived, about how this caste system started to buckle under its own arbitrary limits on what a child can be and how children denied their purpose (Zod not being allowed to save his people) will go insane.
I’d have liked that movie—although, better written than what I saw with Man of Steel.
June 17, 2013 — 12:06 PM
Shirley says:
I’m of the “no origin stories, ever, except flashbacks”. Even in kids/YA — in Harry Potter you start with a flood of mysterious owls, and an invitation to a weird school, which doesn’t seem to surprise Harry’s aunt as much as it should. BAM. ACTION. Later, in bits and pieces, we find out why he’s sleeping in a cupboard, who that big hairy guy on a flying motorcycle is and why he carries a lacy parasol, ect. THANK YOU.
Die Hard. There’s a reason people still watch it today; it’s mine & my son’s Christmas traditional movie to watch. Also – Alan Rickman. All movies are better with Alan Rickman.
June 17, 2013 — 12:31 PM
ajdean says:
Shit. First three pages of book is origin. Quite good, but now I’m thinking of shredding the damn thing.
Agree about Alan Rickman.
June 17, 2013 — 12:39 PM
Sharon Fummerton says:
Hello. I disagree about origin stories. I have one in “Thaumaturge”. It is titled “Prologue: Living in Limbo”, and I used the term limbo with the meaning of “a state of neglect or oblivion” deliberately. It is slightly more than a whopping three pages in length. It’s a first person singular narrative which establishes time and place and gives the reader a quick sketch of her life dealing with a chronic, invisible illness and living in poverty, Too many people dealing with these issues tend to be isolated and, therefore, largely ignored by the rest of humanity. In the last few paragraphs of the prologue, she literally runs into a confrontation with Nature which leaves her fundamentally changed.
June 17, 2013 — 12:41 PM
terribleminds says:
Hi! Thing is, that’s not the type of origin story I’m talking about — as defined in the post, the origin story constitutes the entire length of the story.
June 17, 2013 — 12:44 PM
cpierson says:
Even worse, in superhero movies, is (was?) the fad for concentrating on the villains’ origin stories. The Spider-Man movies were deeply annoying on this front, as was the first Iron Man — does anybody even remember how Jeff Bridges became … whatever … in that flick? Nolan’s Joker was much more interesting because it deliberately left his origin unknown. And when you cram that into a movie that’s ALSO a superhero origin story AND a hero-versus-villain story AND a love story, everything seems to get short shrift. On the other hand, the movie that I’d hold up as great _because_ it was an origin story is Unbreakable (at least until the very final scene). But that was Shyamalan before the fall, so that’s kind of a lightning in the bottle thing, and impossible to recapture anyway because the whole movie turned on the realization of “holy cats, we’re watching a superhero movie and we didn’t even know it” realization.
June 17, 2013 — 12:41 PM
Brian Gefrich says:
Highlander is sort of guilty of this in a big way. It should have been “I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.”
And then an hour and a half of 80s music and swordfighting.
June 17, 2013 — 1:53 PM
Tia Kalla (@tiakall) says:
I think the other issue with origin stories is that generally, they’re taking a plot that’s already done and then using that as the whole of the plot. It would be like making a Titanic movie where the whole plot hinges on whether the boat will make the trip safely. Instead, the movie focused on the people on board the ship and their own stories. The focus has to be on something other than the stuff the audience already knows. I’ve actually written a couple of backstories for RP characters – the excitement came from seeing how the characters got to the inevitable conclusion by showcasing a previously unknown plot that was actually a self-contained story. And I actually really love backstories – if something interesting is happening.
Then again, given that this is yet another example of Hollywood defibrillating an old franchise, I’m not surprised that they have storytelling problems….
June 17, 2013 — 2:09 PM
Karoline Kingley says:
I can stomach origin story, so long as they cut to the chase pretty quick. Like with Spiderman, they tell me enough to become attached to the character and understand why he is the way he is, but we get to see the crime fighting adventure rapidly ensue.
June 17, 2013 — 2:21 PM
Sonya Lea says:
I love a good origin story. And I’m like you, it has to be grounded in character, we have to know something’s at stake. There has to be mystery. Here’s may favorite — my husband went into surgery for a rare cancer and came out without any memories of his life. Who he was, wasn’t. I started writing this story from the hospital room. The first essay called, “Creation Story” can be found here. http://www.sonyalea.net/essays/
He’s my Superman; memories are his kryptonite. We do not fall in love with personality, we love essence. Or maybe We love, we love, we love. Enjoy.
June 17, 2013 — 2:22 PM
Amber J Gardner says:
I liked Iron Man better than its sequels and I liked the newer Spider-Man reboot than the precious incarnations (more because felt less cliche in my opinion, and I think that’s why they may have done it, because the last set was kinda crappy.)
I think you can do an origin story well if you do it like Iron Man. Have a strong enough character so even if the plot isn’t nonstop action/plot juiciness, you get to spend more time with the character, which is why I thin the first Iron Man was so successful.
Honestly, in my opinion, the main reason these action genre movies are so popular nowadays has nothing to do with plot, and everything to do with character and more importantly
June 17, 2013 — 2:40 PM
Amber J Gardner says:
(Sorry for the second cont. post)
It’s about relationships. I think good origin stories are good because it asks questions we want to know more about. I liked the newer Peter Parker than the older one because he was more interesting and had more questions to answer than the previous one. If you do an origins story and you know all the answers before we begin, then it’s destined to fail (like we knew already Anakin was going to turn into Dark Vader, but we didn’t know Dark Vader was Luke’s father).
That’s my two cents anyways.
June 17, 2013 — 2:44 PM
Amber J Gardner says:
Oh, but I must say, my absolute favorite new origin story is Star Trek.
You get to have characters you know and love and then completely change how they came about,thus having lots of questions and spending lots of times with them and watch them relate to each other in new (and still old) ways.
June 17, 2013 — 2:58 PM
Ashley R Pollard says:
At Chuck’s point specifically, if a story has great characterization and witty dialogue and is an origin story then it can be just awesome. Origin stories that forget that are meh.
June 17, 2013 — 3:07 PM