What the New Spider-Man Movie Got Right

Over on Twitter (annoying, I know, but I refuse to call it X) a user posted the following in response to a discussion about Spider-Man: Brand New Day in regards to what is or isn’t a MacGuffin, whether they’re used in the movie (they’re not), and if using them is really such a bad thing in the first place. Along the way, the comment shown below came along, which motivated me to post a note here going into the situation in detail. (In case the individual would not want their name used, I’m omitting it and including just the content.)

Literally every superhero story in history has had some sort of a macguffin pal. It’s a requirement. A trope if you will. Just because Cinema Sins told you it was a bad thing doesn’t mean it really is.

The first two sentences are correct, but the intent is wrong because what the comment describes is exactly the problem. A MacGuffin (MG going forward just for brevity) is just one tool in a writer’s toolbox for purposes of structure. There are as many ways to get into and out of a story as there are stories. Can a good movie be made with a MG? Of course. The Maltese Falcon, Citizen Kane and Raiders of the Lost Ark are just a few that come to mind.

The problem – and it’s a real, quantifiable issue – comes when the MG structure becomes ubiquitous, which has happened and continues to happen with an ungodly number of comic, SF and fantasy movies (but let’s stick with comics for the moment).

A MG movie is about the characters chasing after a given item for their own purposes, or to ensure that someone else, the putative bad guy, doesn’t get hold of it. This is absolute, baseline storytelling: “X goes on a mission to get Y.” This isn’t meant to disqualify it, only to point out just how all-pervasive that premise has become in comic-based movies, just as noted in the comment quoted above, and how this is ultimately self-destructive.

Rather than being first and foremost about the characters, putting them in first position, a MG story is about the characters as a subset of a search for the stone, the orb, the tesseract, the godkiller sword, the spear of destiny, the aether, the mother box, the trident, the Golden Apple, the gauntlet…the list goes on and on.

Here are some reasons why that’s problematic, starting with the very real likelihood that what some call “comic book movie fatigue,” is actually MacGuffin fatigue because that structure has become so endemic to the form, and used so consistently.

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that 70% of all comic book movies in the last 10-15 years involved saving a puppy. Saving a puppy is great, everybody wants to know that a puppy in danger has been saved. It’s hard to argue against saving a puppy. In one movie. Stepping back to see the endangered puppy in a slew of movies, year after year, sooner or later the audience clues into the fact that they’re being told and sold the same essential story every time.

And yes, the details around the puppy – or in this case the MG – can vary wildly, and some have more personal side-stories than others, and from a production, acting and directing standpoint they may be very well done…but the worst thing any film, in any genre, can do is to fail to surprise the audience, by virtue of showing them something they’ve already seen many times in various forms. After a while, they dial out.

People aren’t tired of superhero movies, they’re tired of the same old story being repurposed. On balance, audiences like superheroes, and want to see a story that’s actually about that superhero (and or their alias) in first position rather than a story where the movie is focused on an inanimate object and the superhero is a subset or a supporting character. That’s the poison in the punchbowl.

The corollary problem is that MG movies are, by their very nature, inherently predictable. There are only a few possible outcomes to such stories (with slight variations): the hero gets the MG, doesn’t get the MG (which often then destroys the antagonist or is found to be less powerful than imagined), or decides that nobody should have the MG and destroys it, spurning power.

Having repeatedly seen every iteration of that of that structure and solution, the audience can often see what’s coming, and again, predictability is the death knell for any form of storytelling. A character story, on the other hand, can start in a thousand different ways and resolve itself in just as many. The audience’s emotions are engaged, they’re trying to get ahead of the story but they can’t because it stays one step ahead of them, and in the end, the solution is character based, not based on what happens to an external, inanimate object.

Here’s a question to conjure with: when was the last time you saw a really good, mainstream character drama that was based on a MG? I won’t suggest never, but I’d say that the number would be relatively small. Character stories generally stand on their own without the need of a prop. Or if there is one, it’s really used more to illuminate character, e.g., again Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Citizen Kane). Further, each of those movies was, for the most part, a one-off, it didn’t flood the zone with scores of MG movies.

This ties into the reason so few screenplays for MG comic movies are recognized come Oscars night. That kind of structure (fairly or otherwise) is viewed as less of an artistic endeavor than a story that hinges on complex characters and surprising plot turns. MG movies are perceived as shallow and superficial, which doesn’t actually have to be the case, one can try to elevate or mitigate the MG structure, but the struggle to avoid superficiality based strictly on that over-riding structure can be daunting.

Again, I’m not saying the perceptions noted above are right, or right about all movies all the time, but that genuinely seems to be the attitude of most of the town when it comes to comic movies, even when helmed by the best and the brightest of directors, actors and writers. Is it prejudicial? Yes. Is their assumption wrong? Depends on who you talk to, and what film you’re talking about.

It says something that some of what are generally considered the best comic book movies in recent memory are not MG films. The first Superman movie. The .first Thor and Iron Man movies. Logan. Dark Knight. Captain America: Civil War. And now Spider-Man: BND comes into the spotlight hitting massive numbers because it’s driven by emotion and character. While I enjoyed all the previous Spider-Man movies, this is the one I’m all in on because it’s authentically about Peter and Spider-Man, rather than one more hunt for an object. (And without spoiling anything the clue that’s given is not a MG because it’s not an inanimate object, it doesn’t come into view until later, it’s a subset of the larger story and not the entirety of the core story. It’s information acquired in pursuit of a target, a clue, as noted, not a MG.)

In the arena of comics films, the MacGuffin structure has become a crutch for storytelling, and over-used to the point where audiences can not only see it coming up Fifth Avenue, it’s walking in a parade and carrying a banner.

As stated toward the beginning of this screed, there are an endless methods for getting into a story, and out of a story. A MacGuffin is a legitimate form but just one of those many other approaches. The audience is tired of seeing this one trope over-used, and wants stories about the characters they love, which is why Spider-Man: BND is rightly breaking all kinds of records, with the second-biggest worldwide and domestic weekend opening in movie history, topping $927,000,000 in global receipts.

If Backrooms can be held up as a wake-up call to studios and producers suggesting that they consider different methods of storytelling, Spider-Man: BND should serve the same function stressing the necessity of character-based storytelling prioritized above formula and over-used literary devices.

JMS