One other option (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, March 19, 2018, 07:08 (2446 days ago) @ cheapLEY

So you walk in to the theatre not having played Halo. You don't know who this guy is and why he's important. The people who do have to sit through it being explained to them.

A movie has to work without you knowing anything else.

I don’t understand why you think that would be hard. I saw Star Wars without knowing why Luke Skywalker was important. That movie did an alright job explaining it. That was his point—you tell a new story with familiar characters and everybody wins.

I think it’s an issue of fragmenting the story.

Using Halo as an example... if you’re making a movie about Johnson, or a new character(s) in the UNSC or something like that, you can’t really throw Chief in as a background character without opening a whole can of worms about what Spartans are, why they can do the things that they do, why everyone reacts the way they do when they see one, etc. It’s like a plot-wormhole that sucks in all this extra time and explaination and detracts from the actual story that was being told in the first place. It’s such a substantial and complex piece of the world that you kinda need to tell it properly as it’s own story, or just not go there at all.

That, or Chief just gets thrown in as a background character who does something awesome with no explaination, which basically boils down to cheap fan service at the expense of the story. Nothing breaks a viewer’s emmersion like having the film scream at them “Hey, if you knew about this universe then what you’re seeing right now would be really cool, but you don’t so lol FU!” (Side note: this exact point is why I think Rogue One is by far the worst Star Wars movie, and why that scene at the end that everyone flips out about is the worst part of the whole movie).

So it really depends on the specific characters and stories that we’re talking about. To run with Star Wars a bit longer, it made perfect sense to have Chewbacca appear in Episode 3. It’s logical that he would have been on Kashyk at that time, and if you know who he is then you get a nice moment of recognition, But if you aren’t familiar with him, you lose nothing.