Let's Discuss: Dune: Part 1 and the Hero's Journey

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well. Things have been running non-stop for me, so I apologize I did not get this out sooner. Some exciting news regarding Trinity of the Broken, I have teamed up with ACX to have Trinity turned into an audiobook, and production is well under way. The goal is to have production wrap up by mid November so we can have it published by end of November, beginning of December. The process was incredibly easy to set up and within a week I was signing the agreement to begin production. I will keep you updated as we move forward and maybe share a some sneak peak sound bites.

This week I have had the pleasure to see a movie that I have been anticipating for some time now, Dune: Part 1. While I have never read the books, I am a big fan of the original movie from 1984 with Kyle MacLauchlan, Sting, and Patrick Stewart. I was just a kid when it came out, but I watched it for real when I was in high school, and it became a spring board into my Scifi phase. I loved everything about it, the lore that preluded it, with the AI war and the development of people capable of super-computer level computations, to the interstellar feudal system that developed. If that wasn't enough, it was a beautifully developed movie that held up for decades after its release, not to mention the amazing cast. 

This, of course made me both excited and worried when I heard they were remaking Dune. My worries were mislead, however. From the opening scene, it was clear the Denis Villeneuve was looking to do right by the books and the original movie. The first thing that really hit me were the visuals. From start to finish, I was taken aback by how beautiful each scene was. In regards to the cast, I was unsure about Timothée Chalamet, and I honestly would have liked to possibly have seen a few others in the roll as my first pic, but he did a fantastic job. I feel his success came from the support of the stellar cast around him, helping and lifting him to level he had not reached in previous works. Jason Mamoa, Stellan Skarsgård, Josh Brolin, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster all helped to shape and support each other throughout the movie and allowed for an immersive experience that is so important to movies of this scope. 

My only criticism is that it ended when it did. Thought the original movie moved quickly through the three parts to the story, Villeneuve makes each arc a full story. The detail and character development is appreciated and never did I feel like I was watching a nearly three hour movie, yet when it finished I only wanted more, which we will not get until 2023.

Watching Dune had me thinking about the story structure known as the Hero's Journey. For those that are unfamiliar with this, it is a twelve step progression of a protagonist on his journey from mundane to Hero of Legend. While not every heroic tale follows this model exactly, it is standard enough that most hero stories can be broken down within its structure. These steps basically start with an ordinary person in an ordinary place, who is motivated in someway to set out on an adventure. This of course will be unwanted and rejected by the protagonist, but ultimately they are forced to go forward. On this journey, they will encounter helpers and mentors, face initial trials that will help develop their skill and mental constitution, until they are faced with their own internal fears that they must overcome. Eventually, they achieve their goal, develop a level of character growth, and travel home to complete their mission.

Dune does not hit all of these points, but it is only the first part. If taken as the first act, Paul Atreides is set firmly on the Hero's Journey. There are many authors I have talked with that feel that the Hero's Journey is overused and has outlived its usefulness, but I disagree with that perspective. People want to see and experience what it means to be a hero. People are already living in their normal, boring lives, they are not looking for a story that maintains the status norm. They are looking to lose themselves to someone who is no longer constrained by the world they themselves so often find themselves restrained by. 

The hero is what people should aspire to be. They should be the ones who make the moral choices, not because they are easy, but because they are right. They want to see the hero overcome their challenges and trial, because it inspires them to face and progress through their own challenges and trials. Finally, they want to see a hero face their own faults and weaknesses, because if they can overcome theirs, then maybe the reader can find the energy to overcome their own. 

The Hero's Journey is not a very complex format to write in, nor is it necessarily prone to ensure a good story. What it does do is work as a story trope that enables a level of familiarity that readers and writers can be comfortable in and give a level of expectation within the story. It does not mean that every story should be set up in this way, but it should certainly not be dismissed simply because it is used often. Sometimes, things are used over and over because they work. If it did not work, people would not keep gravitating towards it and I feel the world would be much less for it.

I want to thank you for giving me your time, it is invaluable and I am honored that you have shared it with me. I hope you feel it was time well spent. May your days be fulfilling and your path be clear of trouble. All the best, and speak to you soon. 

Let's Discuss: Thoughts on the movie Black Widow and Modern Horror

 Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well. I have been keeping busy, as I tend to do. I am still actively working on the sequel to Trinity of the Broken, and I have submitted a query to ACX to see if I can get Trinity produced into an audio book. The process is much easier than I ever imagined it would be. With a little luck, I will be reviewing auditions soon and hopefully get the ball rolling on that project. On the personal entertainment side of my life, the little there is, I am looking forward to my weekly D&D session. We have been playing a single campaign for the last two years. I play a high elf fighter 6 / wizard 5. We recently completed the Doom Vault, and have now arrived at a mountain fortress overrun by Hill and Fire Giants that are working together. This campaign was one of the few times I did not DM and I am enjoying being on the player side of things, however, once we reach level 20 and our story comes to an end, I have been working on a new campaign that is set in the ancient history of Trinity of the Broken. It will be a story of the first Summoning War, the rise of humanity as the dominate race on the planet and the fall of the gods. I am hoping to use the sessions as a template for a new series, in the same fashion as the Dragonlance series. This is a very distant project idea, but the groundwork for it is being laid.

This week I had the joy to finally see the Black Widow movie. I was unable to catch it in the theater, but I was glad that it made it to Disney+ so quickly. If you have not had the pleasure of seeing this film, I highly recommend it. Black Widow is set just after the events of Civil War, but before Infinity War. The main story is that Natasha discovers that the Red Room program is still up and running, with an entire new group of Widows, with the Taskmaster being the apex villain. The highlight of the movie, besides Scarlett Johansson, was David Harbour as Red Guardian. I was already a big fan of Harbour from Stranger Things, but he was amazing in this role. The character itself was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek. A Soviet super soldier, thrown into prison and forgotten, only to remanence about his glory days. His interactions with Yelena (Florence Plugh) were fantastic, and brought a level of reality to the characters that, I feel, the MCU is so good at. Overall, it is an action packed story that was long overdue. I did appreciate that they tied in a few elements of phase 4 MCU throughout the movie, like Red Guardian's insistence that he fought Captain America, giving the implication that Rodgers was not idol after returning to Agent Carter in the past. I will certainly be watching it again.

With it being October, I wanted to take a few minutes to throw around my thoughts on the horror genera in the modern era. When I wrote Trinity, I did not believe I was writing a horror novel. It was my readers that had insisted that it was horror and that I should tag it as such. It has had me thinking about what "horror" actually means. For me, horror was something that caused fear in the person experiencing the media. It was a blending of suspense, shock, and most importantly, some sort of monster as the antagonist. Now, I will admit, under that extremely broad definition, Trinity does count as a horror novel, but to me it does not cause true fear. It is in the same sense that I do not consider the movie Alien as a horror film. 

To me, it is a scifi thriller, yet many people consider it a horror film, and it does meet the same criteria. I suppose, at the end of it all, I was never afraid that a Xenomorph was going to be hiding in a nearby duct, waiting to get me. It just did not cause that lasting fear that I associate with horror. Growing up, movies like Child's Play and Nightmare on Elm Street were horror films. Despite the resolution of the story at the end, there was that little extra part at the end to let you know the monster had lost the battle, but they were not done by any measure. Also, I could relate to the supernatural danger. Toys that come to life to attack you is something that keeps you on your toes. In the movie, most toys are harmless, almost all of them. All of them, but this one. What if I was the one to pick out that toy? Freddy attacks children in their sleep. I have to sleep, the movies make a point to emphasis that we have no choice but to sleep at some point, and then you are at his mercy. The fear is in the idea that the monster in question is able to cause harm to anyone at random. You did not have to be traveling through space, or walking through a grave yard at night, this could get you at home, where you feel the safest. 

Even when I consider some of the classic horror stories and novels I have read in the past, they all had that same idea that the terrible things that occurred in the story could happen to anyone if they were in the wrong place. Lovecraft, who I consider to be an top tier horror writer, created an amazing formula for horror. It always starts with the average and ordinary. Then there is some sort of mystery, something to look into. It is not necessary, but curiosity or emotion drives the protagonist forward to find answers. They are confronted with the monster, and what befalls them may vary, but once the monster became aware of them, it became a life or death struggle, with the threat never actually going away. For a more recent example, Rachel Harrison's The Return follows four college friends, when one of them goes missing for two years. When she comes back, she has no memory of what happened to her, but her friends know that something is wrong. While some horror stories have short arcs of mundane to mystery to encounter, Harrison has a constant build up to the reveal. It is not a slaughter fest, but it is still horror. Why? Because, it leaves you with that "what if" long after you have finished. What if an old friend disappeared and came back as a different person. That could happen, it happens all the time. What if they aren't really your friend, or if they are they are not in full control of their actions. These are things that, despite not actually believing in the Boogey Man, unnerve you just enough to allow your irrational mind to do what it does.

Personally, I like the newer trends of horror. The psychological and supernatural merged into something that is far more terrifying than Frankenstein or The Man-wolf. At one time horror was defined by its violence and gore, but I think today's society has been too desensitized to those aspects that they no longer hold the same weight. Sure they can be intense and gruesome, but they no longer bring on that feeling of dread and panic like they used to. When you can find people being beheaded on YouTube, it is hard to scare someone by describing a person being cut open. My story certainly takes elements from the horror playbook, but they are moments, not the story. I did not try to leave the reader with the idea that there is a Karen waiting for them in the dark alley way, Instead, I tried to make a word that was close to our own, but clearly not. Horror is something that might just be nearby if you are unlucky enough to stumble across it.

I want to thank you for giving me your time, it is invaluable and I am honored that you have shared it with me. I hope you feel it was time well spent. May your days be fulfilling and your path be clear of trouble. All the best, and speak to you soon.