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Universes - Good or Bad for Creativity · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm
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  the director of the Centre and I'm also a novelist and get involved in many other forms
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  of writing as well. And today I'm joined by my frequent podcast partner Jacob Renika. Jacob,
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  you are, for those of you who are watching this, you can see that Jacob has got a different
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  background. You're actually in what looks like a very exciting Santa's grotto or something.
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  Yes, exactly, you know, he's gearing up, it's holiday season, it was elves at heart work.
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  Yeah, so Jacob's at work, so Jacob tell us a little bit about where you are and what the connection
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  to that behind you is to fantasy. Yes, so I work at Robinsburger Games and Puzzles and behind me
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  you have Sig Wizard of Oz, looks like we have Marvel, we have Hocus Pocus, we have Disney and
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  non-Disney properties represented here. So I'm a narrative manager and writer at Robinsburger
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  Games. So yeah, this is going to get a peek behind the curtain to where your games come from.
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  Excellent, now that strangely enough is a wonderful introduction to today's theme because
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  we've been excited here in the UK because Doctor Who has come back and the reason it came back
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  is it's celebrating 60 years as perhaps one of the longest running television series in the world.
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  Is it the longest running sci-fi series? I'm not quite sure about that, but it's certainly
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  going to be up there. And it gave me the thought that one of the things that have changed recently
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  in the landscape of fantasy and fantasy programming is the way streamers, program makers are developing
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  their own universes. And I think where this started was with Marvel and Doctor Who since the BBC
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  has linked up with Disney is now going into a similar kind of idea, which they're calling
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  the Hooniverse. I think I've got that right. And I thought it'd be worth having a look at what's
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  going on as creators, as fantasy creators, when these universes are stretched like that to become
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  a whole sort of brand. Now, obviously it can be a way of expanding your imaginations and
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  a wonderful way that you can keep thinking there are more and more stories to tell in this
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  intellectual property that I love. But it also carries with it the risk of a glut or an
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  exhaustion of the audience. And here I think perhaps a more helpful, similarly, is it being a bit like
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  an oil well that gets played out? But the people running that oil well keep going back to it and
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  pumping in more CO2 high pressure, even though they're getting oil out at quite a low yield.
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  And sometimes you do wonder looking at places where that is the feel, if they may not be
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  wiser to wait and come back after a break, like they often do with the James Bond films. They
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  have quite a few years in between. Anyway, so let us turn first to Marvel. What's your feeling about
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  the state of the Marvel universe at the moment, Jacob? Yeah, a great question, Julia. It seems
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  to be an attenuous situation right now with the expansion. In terms of the cinematic universe,
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  you had three, I think a fairly successful several year arc. It was a long year, wasn't it?
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  It was the Iron Man through to end game. Right. Yeah. So we had a long stretch, three separate,
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  kind of not quite self-contained phases, but to kind of described as arcs. So three phases are
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  arcs that kind of made up a overarching story that then ended in a two-part finale. That one
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  was really, it seemed to be well planned out and pieces fit, I think, fairly well together.
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  And I think it was relatively, relatively accessible, right? So even so, some of the movies could be
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  entertaining on their own, but we're carrying the story forward still in some ways. So the movie was
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  entertaining enough, there was enough character work that even if you hadn't seen other films,
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  you could jump in. And oftentimes they had different fields to them, right? So, say, Winter Soldiers,
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  kind of a spy thriller. It was kind of the genre that they were taking the superhero genre,
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  and kind of moving into a subgenre of spy thriller. You had Ant-Man, the original Ant-Man,
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  which was a superhero put into a heist, a genre type type of story. And you have, the first
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  door was essentially a fish out of water story, right? With a god from another realm coming and
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  what would that look like on Earth? So, so they're taking superhero genres, tropes, and then kind
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  of reimagining them or kind of translating them into different kind of subgenres. And I think,
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  so I think that made the individual rock watching experience enjoyable. So for somebody like my
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  mother, she hasn't watched all of the film, but there were a few of them that she really liked,
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  and so she could go in there and watch it and not feel like she was hopelessly, you know,
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  drowning in references, connections, didn't understand what was going on. That's become more difficult
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  with the beginning of phase four of the Marvel Universe, which is where they've introduced a
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  streaming series, limited series to the entire universe, right? So this was kind of a cinematic,
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  in terms of like cinema, actual theater, theater-goening experience, was essentially what the first three
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  phases were. But now with the introduction of streaming services, in part thanks to COVID and
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  kind of changing dynamics with how people are viewing their media, you have now it's more sprawling,
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  and it seems to be more difficult to create individually satisfying viewing experiences. So at this
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  point, you have to kind of know, already know what's going on, and it's presupposing a larger
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  body of knowledge in order for the show to be worth kind of sitting through. And I think that,
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  so there's some of the challenge. I think it's so the dynamics have changed in a bit when you
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  bring in longer form storytelling versus individual films, which are essentially short stories
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  on the screen to kind of expand it to something that's more novella length, if you will,
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  and how difficult that can be when the premise, if the primary premise is to move a larger story
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  further down the field, rather than a self-contained words, I feel like it's easier,
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  in a sense, to focus on a story, a single self-contained story. It's harder to get away with
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  just throwing in a whole bunch of other information than it is when you have more space and more room
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  for exposition. Yeah, they did have, of course. Yeah, they did have, of course, the agents of
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  SHIELD series, TV series running alongside the sort of the arc of films, but it always felt
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  at television level, you know, the product. In fact, it felt like a series you could watch
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  as well as instead of, though they were connecting characters, it largely was doing its own thing.
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  Right. I think that one of the worries I have about the current state of Marvel is that
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  they've obviously gone for a more diverse representation in this arc, and I don't think it's
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  that that's the problem. I think it's that their stories aren't very good, because even some of the
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  older films that have moved on, like the last Thor film, was not regarded very highly.
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  And they had a couple of mishits with the Ant-Man series as well. So I wouldn't put it down to
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  the fact that we've got like a female ledger turtles or anything like that. I think it's more to do
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  with them running out of really good, surprising concepts that make you want to watch it again.
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  And also, I think there's too much. I know that the money people don't want to hear this, but I
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  think I'd be much more eager to see a Marvel film if I haven't seen one for five years.
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  Right. Yeah. And we're not allowed to sort of like a little break.
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  Right. Yeah. And I think Marvel's actually trying to, I think, remedy that in the most recent
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  mini-series. There's an excellent piece in Variety Magazine recently that kind of
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  chronicled some of these challenges with because it's getting too, like you mentioned,
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  there are two kind of too much story, Kevin Feige, who has his finger in all of the different
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  films and projects. He's the executive producer for all of it, with the increase in demand
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  required by long-form storytelling on streaming. He hasn't been able to be in there and
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  help in the editing process and to make sure that you do have a singular vision that's being used.
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  So with that multiplied by time constraints, schedules, scheduled releases in the cinema,
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  and what's the requirement of CGI, the reliance on CGI and how much extra time that takes
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  to longer-form storytelling just makes it really difficult. So what they're doing now,
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  trying it with this newest series that will be starting called Echo, it's essentially
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  kind of a Hawkeye spin-off, but it's being released both on Hulu and Disney Plus and it's under
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  a, I believe it's a spotlight, is what they're calling it. So it's supposed to be, I think they're
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  trying to brand it as a series that you can jump in without having familiarity with the past decade
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  or so of Marvel Cinematic Storytelling, but I think they want to, they recognize what the problem
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  is with the audience, where the audience is sitting, and they're framing this particular series as
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  one that you can come into and enjoy for itself. And it will have references and tie in, but they want
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  to try to make sure that it appears they want to try to make sure that this is a story that is
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  more accessible and doesn't require essentially a bachelor's degree in Marvel history in order to
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  get in and to enjoy. Well, that's interesting that I'm sure they're very aware of audience feedback.
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  I've not been excited about a Marvel film for a very long time. And I do wonder if there's
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  a more of a challenge here that actually, and maybe we're over superhero tales,
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  the only one I really would probably go and see at the moment is Spider-Man, and that's partly
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  because I like Tom Holland, he makes me laugh, and I've enjoyed the cartoon spin-offs, which
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  have been doing some really interesting things with the whole idea of film and cartoons.
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  And I'm going back to the agents of Shill, what was interesting about that was they were able to tell
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  a story about the ones who aren't the superheroes within that universe. So I don't know, maybe there's
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  something in that material which would be more interesting for them to go away and think about.
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  I mean, the one exception, of course, which I haven't touched on is Loki, which has been a success
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  for them. And I think that's a lot to do with the fact that got a really good actor heading it up.
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  And they've also nicked a lot of the sort of Doctor Who-esque ideas of the time travel. It feels
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  like a sort of American Doctor Who, really. So that has gone off and found its own niche and its
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  own different genre, which doesn't feel like the superhero standard fare of. We've all known what
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  the arc is going to be. We know it's going to be a battle at the end, and they're going to learn
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  on a journey where they learn about, you know, all of that seems to have been rather
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  not what Loki is interested in doing. Right. So we've got a lot of universes to travel through.
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  So let's move on to DC, because DC is the one that sort of started a bit. It's had its moments of
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  brightness and its moments of disaster. So where are we with DC? Are they still trying to
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  churn out films, or are they retired from the field? Yeah. No, it's very much alive and kicking.
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  And I think one of the challenges with comic material, and this is really fascinating because
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  it mirrors so much the history of the comics that the source material upon which the shows are
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  based. So in the in the beginning, we've had Marvel and DC starting at about the same time
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  in America in the middle of the middle of the century. And Marvel is really the first
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  that seems to be intentionally crossing over characters from one title to another. And they had
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  several different titles at the time that included horror, medical procedures. So you had the
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  stories about the starting nurses largely, so which is which is fascinating. And then super hero as
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  well. And so you had certain of these characters in the Marvel line that made an appearance in the
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  others sooner than you did with the DC comics. They had, you know, supermembers that don't think
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  that man was something. And then at only after a while, did you have this kind of epic crossover
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  event where one would appear in the other, but they weren't seen as essentially existing in the
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  same universe, whereas that happens a lot earlier. There's a fascinating book. If you are at all
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  interested in the history of the development of Marvel comics and DC and how this is all kind of
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  playing out, this book called All the Marvels was a journey to the end to the ends of the biggest
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  story ever told by Douglas Wolk, W-O-L-K. This person, so he has, he's a journalist and historian of
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  comics. And he's read every single Marvel comic from beginning in, he has some arbitrary beginning
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  point that's before the actual label of Marvel up through about 2016. I think it's when he stopped
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  with the main titles that weren't tie-ins to other properties outside of Marvel specifically.
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  And there's, you know, there's so much, so he's argues that this is the longest continual story
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  that has been told across humanity in general. So, uh, hang on. No. Sorry. What about King
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  Arthur, just for one? Right. Well, in terms of, you know, in terms of, so in terms of printed,
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  in terms of printed material of continuous building works under the same. So yeah, so,
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  and, and I definitely want to talk about the like Arthurian Greek, uh,
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  I don't know what we're doing. Yeah, let's circle back on that. But in terms of like contemporary,
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  like printed, if you're talking about printed, what you can have in front of you,
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  it's all under a particular brand, right? A particular mode of delivery, a consistent mode of
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  delivery under this like Marvel title. This is what he's, what he's arguing is this kind of like
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  largest amount of total words that have been produced in all of the spin-offs. It's just massive.
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  Like you cannot begin reading. If you were to start now and try to read all of the Marvel books
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  that have been written since it began, that would be the, the, the, the enormity of that is staggering
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  to be able to keep up with that. So, all it is to say that you have an earlier idea of interconnectedness
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  from the outset. And so you have that with the Iron Man film with the kind of teaser at the end
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  with Nick Shield, uh, sorry, Nick Fury talking about shield that kind of opens the door to the
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  possibility of something larger in that one standalone film. But it was originally conceived of
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  as a standalone film with aspirations of expanding, but without the certainty of expanding. So
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  that made the story itself more self-contained, um, uh, circumspect and including kind of a possible
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  jumping off point with ideas for what that could look like. Whereas in DC, they're going with
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  your Batman, like they did in the comics, Batman is its own thing without really taking into
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  consideration others with several different Batman reboots, right? And then, then after the
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  success of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, you have Christopher Nolan being tapped to help
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  with a new Superman film with the idea that they could then increase, uh, the scope and create an
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  interconnected story. But they're timetable and as they're kind of coming up against Marvel,
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  who's already for several years have already put out separate movies and have their machine running.
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  You have now DC that's trying to catch up and essentially kind of short circuit,
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  uh, take shortcuts through the process to try to get the effect of that without going through the
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  legwork of individual character driven films that then culminate in a team film. Whereas DC kind of
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  like throws people together and kind of trying to put everybody in immediately or as quickly as
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  possible, put them in a box, shake them up and then see what happens. Um, it was, I think certainly
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  that it was something that was, uh, accelerated and you see the strains that happen when the
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  storytelling doesn't have enough room to breathe and get invested in individual characters to then
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  bring them all together. So they've tried to their credit, right? So they've recognized that this
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  has been a problem. And now there, there will be a kind of essentially rebooting the entire DC
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  universe for screen with James Gunn, who was the writer, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy
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  Films. He is, uh, is one of the two that is presently overseeing, put in charge with kind of
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  designing a larger interconnected DC universe on the film and streaming. So there's certainly
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  DCs certainly aware of the issue and correcting it, uh, trying to, we're trying to replicate that,
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  but doing it, it seems like they want to do it differently, uh, recognizing kind of the stress
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  and strains that put on the storytelling in doing it kind of more rapidly than, uh, it,
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  than the story demanded. So I mean, I think obviously they've had successes with the darker form of
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  superhero, haven't they? Um, which, because you don't want to studios doing exactly the same kind of
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  thing, well, what, what would be the point of that? But certainly the Dark Knight series and then
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  the suicide squad and right, these all DC, aren't they? I get very confused. So many films. Um,
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  but it does seem like they've got this kind of nastier edge, which is quite popular to it,
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  less vest family, friendly as a result, um, more in the sort of teens and upwards area. Anyway,
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  so though I did in contrast, I did actually very much enjoy, um, man of steel, original
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  version of the reboot of Superman, which obviously was very family friendly, though I never did
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  understand why it had to be Kevin Costner rather than Superman who went and got the dog, never got
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  that bit. It's always worried me. Anyway, if you've watched a film, you'll know what I mean.
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  Um, so moving away from superheroes, let's think about outer space and there are two big universes
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  out there. One of course is Star Trek. Let's give it in this order of appearance and then the
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  other Star Wars. Star Trek, I think, wasn't conceived of as a universe in the same way of interlinked
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  stories because it existed as a series on its own for quite a time until the next generation came
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  along and then he got in the 90s the spin-offs, um, which then there had been some films obviously up
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  to that point, but then you got the spin-offs with deep space nine and all the other ones that we've
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  had since, um, which has made it qualify for this idea of being a universe, which is funny because
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  of course that's what they're exploring. What do you think about the interconnectedness of the
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  Star Trek world? I think it seems simpler in many ways because you've got the basic idea,
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  which they, which they do again and again, but in different ways of you have a crew in some kind
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  of space vehicle, space station or a spaceship. And then after that, you've got lots of options,
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  which way you want to go. Yeah, it's interesting because it's based more on the procedure,
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  on a procedural genre, right? So, and it's going kind of in an opposite direction than you have
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  Marvel that we talked about earlier that was starting with individual films and the kind of
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  expanding into television series. Here you have a series that's meant to be a stand like its own,
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  its own thing, a television series that then you have films that kind of get interspersed
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  within there rather than the, than the reverse. So yeah, it is fascinating and that's,
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  in terms of storytelling in general, right? Procedureals are, you need something that has
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  an engine that drives it, right? So, uh, right? So like doctors, there's medical procedures,
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  right? So there's, they're usually not set in, uh, you know, a personal practice in the
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  countryside, although that can be interesting. The ones that are current and long running are in
• 23:04
  emergency rooms, right? So anything that's like doctor related or sort of, if it's somebody
• 23:07
  in the countryside, they're the only doctor for however long. And so there's constantly
• 23:12
  emergencies that are coming up, right? Police procedures, right? So there's police because police
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  are by nature of their job are having to cease to deal with, with problems frequently and they're
• 23:23
  large problems, um, a courtroom procedure, right? Procedureals, right? So you have these, these
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  challenge these, you know, uh, a clear winner loser, new cases being thrown every week. Um, so this
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  is the same thing with this exploration, right? So you have a crew, a core crew who then goes to
• 23:40
  different worlds and allows them to solve a different problem each time and explore different
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  questions with some overarching, uh, character development, uh, that continues from episode to episode
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  but largely you can jump in at any episode of Star Trek and you kind of get a sense for what are
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  the kind of the character archetypes, who these characters are, how they kind of bounce off of each
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  other and you can watch one half hour episode of Star Trek, the original series and you don't have
• 24:08
  to watch two whole seasons earlier to see, okay, so this is what Kirk is really working through
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  from his past and bones is angry about this because of something that happened two years ago,
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  you can sit, you can sit down and have a satisfying experience of that story and then it's even
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  more satisfying if you're following these characters from a episode to episode. So I think the fact
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  that they started as the, the medium was kind of a television, uh, ongoing series that that
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  allowed it to explore more to have a longer run, um, and ultimately to be able to explore characters
• 24:48
  in different settings that then it made it possible for films and say if you love this TV series,
• 24:53
  come see a film where it's going to be bigger, you know, bigger budget, but again, like a kind of a
• 24:57
  short story kind of a, a super concentrated episode of the series, here's something that you could
• 25:04
  look at, they have gone more to like kind of serialized storytelling in the films themselves,
• 25:12
  uh, in a sense. So there has been some, especially with the original Star Trek where the movies kind
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  of pick up, start picking up after the series and so this is kind of the continuing adventures of
• 25:24
  the Starship, Starship Enterprise and its crew, um, then it kind of becomes a film with,
• 25:30
  it was first done with then sequel, a sequel to the ongoing series, um, but then now you have
• 25:36
  kind of a proliferation of Star Trek's where you have animated and live action and crossovers
• 25:44
  between animated and live action. So they're, they're definitely Star Trek, moving from initially
• 25:50
  kind of series based with occasional crossovers, um, like you had with, you know, uh,
• 25:55
  the next generation Voyager Enterprise, um, that it didn't, it didn't necessitate seeing the other
• 26:02
  shows to, one show to understand what was happening in the new one, it was kind of a Easter egg of
• 26:07
  sorts for fans of, of both series, um, but now, and, and I think they're doing more of that
• 26:13
  with the development of kind of the Star Trek, the larger Star Trek universe, um, but you do see more,
• 26:18
  I think perhaps there might be creeping toward a little bit. I think there's always the temptation
• 26:24
  to be telling one large story through all of these different stories, but I think Star Trek does
• 26:30
  it well and does it, has done it best when they focus on individual stories with kind of occasional
• 26:37
  glances against the other, uh, properties and other characters that people know about.
• 26:42
  Yes, I think that they've obviously, they feel quite secure in what they're doing. I don't know if
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  they're all kind of employed next week, but at the moment, I feel they're able to poke fun at
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  themselves with the below decks animated series, uh, and also do sort of more serious
• 26:58
  stories like the Picard, the three seasons of Picard. I like the first season. Yeah, about the
• 27:06
  second season, but I thought the last season, actually, they did the right thing to gather everybody
• 27:11
  together and finish it off. I felt that was very satisfying bow on that particular, uh,
• 27:20
  particular actors, you know, Patrick Stewart's involvement in that particular universe.
• 27:26
  Um, yeah, no, I think Star Trek has done it quite well. And I've also enjoyed the reboot of the
• 27:32
  original series with the Chris Pine and so on. Um, I thought that was really, it was fresh because
• 27:40
  there was a long enough gap between watching, um, the original crew do it and then seeing it in a,
• 27:48
  when was that the 2010s and the 2010s? It felt, yeah, this is the same story, but this is our version
• 27:54
  of it and I thought that went really well. In contrast to which, I'm going to move us over to Star Wars.
• 27:59
  Star Wars, I've had quite a few problems with the film versions of Star Wars. Obviously,
• 28:04
  hooray for the original ones. I love that generation though, you know, they're not perfect films,
• 28:10
  but they were landmarks in their time. The return was famously disappointing, mainly because of
• 28:18
  script. That's face it. It was just a cruel crash of a script and the acting was problematic.
• 28:26
  Um, and then I was very disappointed in the return because I can't even remember what it was
• 28:33
  cool, but the one we've, when they came back, Rise of Skywalker. Yeah, so, yeah, so Force Awakens,
• 28:40
  last Jedi and, uh, yes, Rise of Skywalker. So I was very disappointed that particularly I was
• 28:47
  sitting in the cinema watching, um, the first of this batch. I thought, like goodness, I'm watching
• 28:53
  the first film again. We've got a Death Star to blow up again. So I've not actually enjoyed
• 29:03
  the, the film so much. I think that they've been doing more interesting things in their TV,
• 29:11
  offerings with, um, I forget what there's been Obi-Wan Kenobi hasn't there. There's been, um,
• 29:22
  uh, Mandalorian. Thank you. And then there's the more recent one, um, about the Rebellion,
• 29:28
  and or, um, so it does seem to me that their extensions in that way have been quite interesting
• 29:37
  because I've changed genre doing that thing you were saying. Um, but I'm, I don't know, I've never
• 29:44
  really particularly warmed to the, to the Star Wars universe. Maybe it's because I'm more of a trekkie
• 29:51
  and perhaps you can only love one of them, I don't know. What do you feel? Yeah, uh, so I'm,
• 29:57
  so Star Wars was my, uh, kind of third parent growing up. Okay, so you speak on behalf. You're part of
• 30:05
  part of my DNA is, uh, yeah, is, is Star Wars, right? Um, and so yeah, so it's, so it is, is really
• 30:11
  interesting to see kind of the evolution of those stories. And this is, I think it's important to
• 30:16
  bring into the conversation the, uh, role that the corporations that are funding these play in
• 30:23
  the production of these and the, the sort of constraints, expectations of constraints that
• 30:30
  puts on storytelling in general, right? So, um, you have, and there's, yeah, these, these things
• 30:35
  have been documented, uh, several places with, you know, the, the evolution of the original Star Wars
• 30:41
  trilogy to then the prequels, uh, who are still done by this, having the same kind of singular
• 30:47
  vision of George Lucas, um, with less constraints with more independent funding, more freedom, uh,
• 30:54
  to do the sort of story that he wanted to do and the prequels, um, and then with the, then sequels,
• 31:02
  beginning with JJ Abrams Forza Awakens, uh, and kind of a, kind of a fallow period between Star
• 31:08
  Wars films. You have, uh, Lucasfilm being acquired by Disney, um, and so there you had essentially
• 31:17
  kind of almost a rebooting. So in the, the flowering of Star Wars stories, you have initially
• 31:23
  from after the original film, you have comic books that were incidentally, uh, published by Marvel.
• 31:30
  And so the first kind of expanded Star Wars stories happened in comic books that were produced
• 31:34
  by Marvel. Um, and that was a way to kind of expand things that were happening between films, um,
• 31:40
  and then there were of course, uh, that series of novels that were produced, but then once Disney
• 31:43
  acquired Lucasfilm, then there was this kind of directive of that similar to what you have in
• 31:50
  Loki, which is kind of the pruning of timeline. So alternate realities of declaring this,
• 31:55
  this previous timeline interconnected, uh, group of stories as declared as a legend, uh,
• 32:03
  as being not officially canon to the ongoing story with what's going to be picked up,
• 32:09
  starting with the Forza Awakens. So, um, the, the series you had, you know, animated series as well
• 32:15
  that were happening with the Clone Warriors, uh, animated series with Star Wars. Um, you did have
• 32:19
  a Rogue One, which is, which was a fascinating, it was fascinating because there you had a film
• 32:25
  that is, uh, so it is telling a tragedy, right? Usually with the example exception of,
• 32:32
  of Impressed Strikes Back, Impressed Strikes Back is kind of shape wise, ends up in a sense being
• 32:37
  a tragedy ending with, uh, heroes, um, not, uh, achieving their goals, right? And kind of everything
• 32:44
  is, is, is bad. Um, but Rogue One is, you have a self-contained cast of characters that you've
• 32:50
  never seen before, uh, with hints at something that's larger. You do see characters that you had
• 32:54
  seen from previous movies, but it's kind of taking space, it is taking place in between the spaces
• 32:59
  between, uh, two films, right? Before the first Star Wars film after the last prequel. Um,
• 33:05
  and you have an entire crew that I'd, I'd been able to get spoilers, but no, no, no, no. I mean,
• 33:10
  that's Phyllis T. Jones, isn't it? Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I thought that was one of the best
• 33:14
  films, even though it's not really one I'd want to watch again, because it's very sad. Right,
• 33:20
  right? No, exactly. So it's different. It's a different feel. And so that's, and so because
• 33:23
  it, they were able to tell it, so it was a story that had to connect to the overarching story,
• 33:29
  right, uh, to connect the two to bridge the two episode three and episode four, but they had to,
• 33:35
  that they had a certain space that they could tell, uh, an original story that had mental
• 33:40
  introduced characters and create a compelling story on its own, because they couldn't take those
• 33:46
  characters necessarily and have them appear in, they had to have a reason why those characters didn't
• 33:51
  appear on the next film. Um, so that gave them a, I think a really, a really creatively fruitful sandbox
• 34:00
  to be able to play it, right? So they had certain borders, uh, on, uh, fences, right,
• 34:05
  that they had to work within that then allowed them to be creative in a certain way. Um,
• 34:10
  and you see that happening again with Andor, right? So it's, it's taking one of the characters from
• 34:15
  that film and exploring, uh, the world again, uh, from a different angle. Like you said, the
• 34:20
  agents of shield was kind of looking at the non-superpowered people, at least in the earlier
• 34:24
  seasons, right? The non-superpowered folk. What does this world look like through their eyes? And
• 34:29
  so you have an Andor, what does the world look like through the eyes of somebody who's not a
• 34:34
  force wielder, right? Somebody who doesn't have super natural powers and gifts. So you see that,
• 34:41
  I think, yeah, as a way where they are able to, and it's, and that one is kind of, essentially,
• 34:46
  a kind of like a political, it seems more tone-wise, more like an HBO show, uh, with Andor in terms of
• 34:54
  the pacing, right? So it's longer, you have a longer period to breathe. And these again are
• 34:59
  characters that you're that aren't expected to appear in other films because it's taking place in
• 35:04
  this very particular period. Um, and so I think that, so that allows for some freedom,
• 35:10
  whereas kind of going back to original point of the, uh, sequel films with Disney restarting
• 35:16
  Star Wars, essentially, they wanted to give people, because everybody wants more of the same,
• 35:22
  but different, right? Everyone wants more of the same, but different somehow. So they wanted, so
• 35:27
  it was able, I think it did a good job of capturing the sense of like wonder, and it followed,
• 35:32
  it followed the same beads, because they wanted to like have the people who were fans,
• 35:37
  have some sort of familiar ground, have new, have new fans could come in and experience the same
• 35:43
  sort of things. They know it's a successful formula. They have a lot writing on it financially,
• 35:48
  uh, and reputation-wise. And so they're wanting to mirror that. Ryan Johnson does something
• 35:55
  different in the last Jedi, which I actually like from the storytelling perspective of what they're
• 35:59
  trying to do Star Wars. So he's trying to break up that expected story, uh, story arc, and the
• 36:06
  story beats that you had, um, as well as kind of try, he attempts to kind of democratize the force
• 36:13
  in a way that like hints to at the end. And so I think a lot of the reason a lot of people didn't
• 36:17
  like it was because it did veer so far from the traditional expected Star Wars, um, uh, story,
• 36:25
  where you had a beloved character who ends up as the grouch, uh, right? Looks Guy Walker,
• 36:32
  beloved hero, champion of good, who ends up the next time you see him, he's a grumpy old guy on an
• 36:37
  island and so hermit, um, which was some really interesting things that put me off at first,
• 36:42
  but then trying to see it from a storytelling perspective and what you're doing and the possible
• 36:46
  character arcs that are available when you radically change, uh, people's frame of reference
• 36:51
  and their experiences. But, uh, one of the things that I think the problems, one of the problems
• 36:56
  that you see right now with the Star Wars expanded universe, I'd be interested to hear,
• 37:00
  you see there are some opportunities with, you know, Obi-Wan, uh, which is essentially
• 37:07
  trying to be a film. So it's a very, Obi-Wan is radically different from Andor until you wouldn't
• 37:12
  watch Andor with the same people that you would with with Obi-Wan. So I don't know, so what do you
• 37:18
  see as the challenges of the Marvel, or not Marvel's right Star Wars, uh, universe as it exists?
• 37:25
  I think that they've gone in the direction of minor characters, haven't they? And I can't, I'm afraid
• 37:29
  I can't even remember the name of the character with the extraordinary makeup, who's
• 37:35
  That's Ahsoka. Yeah, there we go. Um, I think the, the challenge is they,
• 37:45
  I think that they have a script problem in that some of their big, even their big films
• 37:51
  Muff it up on a very basic level. So things like who is Ren? That's totally a fun-bored pass
• 38:00
  in the, the, the, the last three big films. Um, the pacing in Obi-Wan, I thought going to the
• 38:08
  TV programs, I thought was very uncertain. There was, there's a lot of every day I do this at the
• 38:14
  beginning, which is you have to be a very loving Star Wars watcher to stick with it,
• 38:20
  uh, until you actually got going. And I guess that I don't know that the material stretches
• 38:31
  is my personal feeling. I don't feel it stretches. But then as I said, I'm more of a Star Trek
• 38:39
  person than a Star Wars person, and there'll be people out there shouting at their podcast,
• 38:44
  whatever. Saying, no, no, it's, it's got, they haven't, for example, done a really good
• 38:51
  um, story that establishes something new about their universe. They haven't moved on from
• 39:01
  uh, the sort of the Empire versus the Jedi's as far as I can see. That, that seems to be the only
• 39:06
  story. So, but I'm not, I'm not actually the, I'm not the expert. I haven't watched all of that.
• 39:15
  No, I think, I think, I think you're right there that that's, I think one of the challenges
• 39:18
  that you're finding it, it makes, it makes the universe seem, it's a, it's a galaxy, it's an
• 39:23
  entire galaxy, which is supposed, it's supposed to feel expansive, but when you're following the
• 39:30
  same characters or the same family line, that can feel more claustrophobic at times, right?
• 39:38
  So, that's why I think the Andor films are, they're essentially films, a long-form,
• 39:44
  you know, the short story. High production values. High production value. And that is that,
• 39:51
  it's not following, it's, it's taking the idea, what does this, you know, rebellion with an
• 39:56
  oppressive governmental regime with military power. What does it look like? What does a, you know,
• 40:03
  a fighting against and established abuse of power look like? So, that's the question that they're
• 40:07
  able to answer and explore it to different people and not just have that as a simple good versus
• 40:13
  evil. You have time with different characters who have motivations and challenges and they're
• 40:18
  put in impossible situations, tensions between the rebel and empire and their own family life.
• 40:26
  This is something that like, that you don't see elsewhere is, what does, what does family
• 40:31
  life look like? You, in Andor, you have one of the characters and they're threatening him and
• 40:36
  usually you would just either off a imperial general, but what happens when, or you just talk
• 40:45
  and wipe, but what happens when the white, when that general's wife and child are in the same room?
• 40:50
  That changes the dynamic, right? So, it's exploring how, how this impacts, it's not just about
• 40:56
  these, you know, the high flashy people in these positions, which is what films kind of have to do
• 41:01
  is take these, you know, high-powered individuals and put them against each other in a short,
• 41:05
  compact, kind of combustible story, but when you have longer form and more people that you can
• 41:11
  bring in, you can do a different type of story and explore different questions that I think get
• 41:16
  at broader human interests and explore the human predicament in different ways. And so,
• 41:24
  that's why I think they're doing it well is, is in Andor, but Obi-Wan is more difficult because
• 41:31
  there's more constraints on this character, this well-blubbed character and story that he's
• 41:35
  already been involved with with the Clone Wars series and the film and, and nine films essentially,
• 41:42
  so you have six films, but with his shadow looming over the sequels, that's a lot to have to put
• 41:49
  on one person, so that narrows the sorts of stories and the expectations that having this story
• 41:54
  from this type of film, you couldn't have, I think it would be a difficult cell to have Obi-Wan
• 41:59
  in a series like Andor. Yeah, I think it looks like the swashbuckling space fantasy that Obi-Wan
• 42:08
  is part of and I think that affects the tone that is possible or acceptable from a budgetary
• 42:14
  financial constraint there from the business perspective. I guess maybe what I'm thinking of is
• 42:19
  I'd like a really different, a total rethink, so I would be interested for them to say, okay,
• 42:28
  this isn't a galaxy a long, long time ago, what would happen if for some reason that galaxy then
• 42:34
  intersects with us, so you've got a story of a Jedi Knight turning up in New York, and really
• 42:43
  rethinking it all, just having a start track. Yeah, it's having fun with an unfamiliar where you say,
• 42:51
  okay, what would happen if this, the outline of this then, so what what is being it, anyway,
• 42:57
  that's what I would do, and they're doing it and they're actually planning on doing that, so you
• 43:00
  have so yeah, so after the Star Wars, so after yeah, the last Jedi, Ryan Johnson began working on
• 43:10
  a trilogy of new films set in a separate corner of that universe, Star Wars universe, so it would be
• 43:15
  with completely different characters completely unattached and connected to tell its own set of stories
• 43:21
  in this world, but completely detached from that. They also had the Game of Thrones showrunners set
• 43:29
  to do a similar thing with a series of films taking place somewhere else doing whatever they want to
• 43:34
  with the idea and world of Star Wars, but not but but but expressly not attached to the Skywalkers.
• 43:41
  Both of those have kind of fizzled and kind of gone on hiatus, but they have confirmed this most
• 43:48
  recent slew of film announcements, they're getting they announced three new Star Wars films,
• 43:53
  one is going to be a continuation of the current story set kind of turned around Ray,
• 44:00
  because I have to apparently, so that's I've been getting her name wrong, which shows you how
• 44:05
  how little I've searched Ray, not Ren, okay, sorry. Yeah, yeah, Kylo Ren, and that's and as an author,
• 44:10
  right, you know the challenges of yeah, yeah, you do not cardinal sin of character naming,
• 44:16
  do not have them sound similar. Yeah, so so you have Ray is kind of just going to be the protagonist
• 44:22
  that will follow a separate film, but not announced as like a trilogy of new film, so a separate film
• 44:26
  with them. A new so a film is taking place kind of in between these two periods between the original
• 44:31
  trilogy and the follow-up trilogy, which is going to tie in with the Mandalorian and Sokka and those
• 44:36
  it's a standalone film, but connecting all these parts between the two major trilogies. And then one
• 44:43
  by James Mangold, who did, directed the Logan, yes men, serious right, so this is again like a
• 44:53
  really interesting standalone film as a character exploration that's kind of detached from the
• 44:59
  regular timeline, looking at a character in Logan, looking at a character whose old past is prime,
• 45:03
  his like last story, but this and he also did the newest Indiana Jones, so he's going to do a film
• 45:10
  that is like the Jedi and Sith begin, so this is like the very first story, so he's building it as
• 45:16
  kind of like the ten commandments of the Star Wars universe, so this old early early early story,
• 45:23
  so there's a different playground that you can use exploring that world, so they recognize that
• 45:28
  there's there are people who like the interconnected stories, but then also there's a need for
• 45:33
  telling new fresh stories as evidenced by Andoran, the success, critical success, the Andoran is
• 45:39
  receiving from the academy and with the introduction of this new film that takes place a long time ago
• 45:49
  in a galaxy that already exists a long time ago, this is an even longer time ago in a galaxy
• 45:55
  even farther away perhaps for that, so but I think you're absolutely right, so you need to have
• 46:00
  something new, something fresh that's allowing you to rethink and reimagine these ideas rather than
• 46:04
  going back to the well and just kind of sucking it dry and trying to squeeze the last drops out of
• 46:10
  something. It's still not that excited about that, but let's see, I hope they can change my mind
• 46:14
  about that. Okay, we won't be able to touch on every universe out there, but we're just going to
• 46:18
  sort of hop over some others, I think that we've noticed that the Harry Potter universe is building
• 46:25
  because it's got its fantastic beasts side and it also of course has its adventure worlds,
• 46:33
  you know, the wizarding world, you can actually visit in Atlanta and elsewhere,
• 46:38
  it's just Atlanta, but I think there's another one planned. It's Florida, there's Florida and
• 46:41
  Los Angeles. Okay, but there you go. That is obviously in trouble, the Harry Potter
• 46:49
  screen versions because the fantastic beast film series lost its way and that's what I think we've
• 46:55
  discussed that before, it's a longer discussion and partly to do with some problematic casting,
• 47:01
  partly to do with the stories not being that child friendly really and not having the charm,
• 47:08
  but I noticed that they are going to go back to Harry Potter and turn it into a TV series,
• 47:13
  so a reboot in that way, I think that's the sort of the current plan. So watch this space on that.
• 47:20
  And of course, there's the added element here where it's very much associated with the
• 47:26
  fortunes and people's attitudes to JK Rowling, so I have to see how that all sort of pans out.
• 47:31
  The universe is, God, it's own peculiar dynamics at the moment. And then of course we've got,
• 47:40
  so I think we've discussed at length the expansion of the Tolkien universe,
• 47:45
  Middle Earth, into the rings of power, but we have discussed that elsewhere. So let's go back to Dr.
• 47:51
  Who before we move on to the last section which will be further back in time.
• 47:57
  With Dr. Who, what I think is really interesting is that the whole idea of creating a
• 48:05
  universe, everybody in the UK and increasingly in America and elsewhere has known that Dr.
• 48:12
  Who exists as a sequential program, a bit like James Bond, you wake up and there's another
• 48:18
  the actual apparatus of rebirth is part of what happens. And there are certain things in it
• 48:25
  that show it is a certain kind of thing. So it has a tardist, it has a doctor, it has the idea
• 48:31
  of traveling in time and space. He is or she is largely not violent. So a bit more like Superman,
• 48:40
  I.e. not blasting people apart, though occasionally some stories have done that,
• 48:46
  where there's been a fighting doctor, but that's rare. And mainly it's been a TV series,
• 48:53
  there has been one film, which was like a test to see if it could come back in the late 90s.
• 48:59
  And there has been spin-off comics and books, but came a long after. One of the problems about
• 49:06
  this now retro-fitting of a universe is it has intriguing problem of age because the early,
• 49:13
  well most of the Dr Who's I know were done on BBC TV budgets, which means the wobbly scenery
• 49:22
  and the you go to a quarry in Wales for your planet. I don't think Star Wars, which has a similar
• 49:29
  longevity and even there is a bit of problem about the original Star Trek, which feel a bit
• 49:34
  homemade now. Star Wars, because of the budget, it still stands up, you don't watch the original
• 49:43
  version and think, oh that's just, you know, that's embarrassing, whereas you do watch some of the
• 49:49
  Dr Who's I think, oh, oh dear, that's a man in a suit in a rubber suit. So is this the first time
• 49:56
  someone's tried to retrofit a universe? Yeah, the first time. No, there isn't. So there's
• 50:03
  some fascinating, so universal films tried doing this, not the first, but they tried doing this
• 50:12
  with taking disparate elements of, if you remember, the Tom Cruise, the Mummy film. Oh yeah.
• 50:18
  So that was supposed to be the first in an expanded where they took original, you know,
• 50:23
  their universal, some of the original films were, you know, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman,
• 50:28
  the Mummy. And so we're going to re-boot those but put them into the same universe and have an
• 50:36
  interconnected story with shared characters. But after the Mummy failed to meet the studio's
• 50:44
  expectations, then they canceled that. So there's been recently, fairly recent in the past 10
• 50:51
  issues, attempts to take different pieces and put them together. But you have, it's
• 51:01
  these challenges. There's one, there's a fascinating, and this maybe it would be good another time
• 51:05
  to talk about these sorts of kind of trans-media storytelling to expand past just cinematic
• 51:14
  or on the screen, large or small. But there's a book that takes the, it's the, it's called
• 51:22
  Tarzan Alive, a definitive biography of Lord Grace Stoke. And it's treating Tarzan essentially
• 51:29
  as a real person and saying this fictional, this person that was written as a fictional character
• 51:34
  was actually a real person. Here's their background. And they're actually tied to the other people
• 51:40
  that were in your favorite stories, like Doc Savage, Sherlock Holmes, Solomon Keane, Scarlett
• 51:47
  Pembernell, the time traveler from HD Wells, Alan Kordamaine. So basically all these kind of like
• 51:53
  Victorian-ish era heroes, they were all based on real people who were tied together by a single
• 52:02
  event that was this meteor that happens. The old cottage meteorite, there's late 1700s,
• 52:10
  was an actual meteor that hit. And you have people that are put treated as kind of fictitiously
• 52:19
  real, they're all affected by this meteor. Tarzan is one of them, Sherlock Holmes, and they're all
• 52:23
  kind of created a story of families that these people were kind of tied into. So it was an attempt
• 52:28
  to take all these preexisting characters that had no connection to each other and kind of create
• 52:32
  a network of relationships between them, which is really fascinating. So there have been attempts
• 52:41
  to that in literature. And you have it, Alan Moore does it in the League of Extraordinary
• 52:46
  Gentlemen in comic form, right? Which then became a film, but then did form well, but it was
• 52:50
  based on the comic, right? So it's taking these kind of just an justice league, a Victorian
• 52:57
  justice league, essentially, of Victorian heroes. So you do have some attempts like that to
• 53:04
  happen, but nothing that's been really sustained and successful. So there's certainly reasons for
• 53:12
  that, but there's, I think there in lies, when we've talked a bit about people being in the
• 53:16
  public domain to certain characters, that that's something that there are opportunities for with
• 53:23
  increasing characters being put in the public domain for new creatives to play with some of those
• 53:29
  existing universes. And perhaps mingle them and create some sort of new shared universes
• 53:34
  in their own screenplays, right, in their own novels, other words.
• 53:40
  Yeah, maybe going back to the Doctor Who, I think maybe it was always a universe, just not labeled
• 53:47
  as such, because it had its fandom. And I think one of the marks of something which is big enough
• 53:55
  to be the Star Wars universe or the Harry Potter universe, is it has its fan base? And I think
• 54:03
  those two things will walk in step. Okay, so just towards the end, let's just sort of give this
• 54:10
  the long view. So we're talking about it as a modern phenomenon. And yes, I totally agree with you
• 54:15
  that it's, I mean, it's about money. It's about marketing. So it's much easier to get an audience
• 54:24
  entity something they feel they've sort of seen before. And that means it's easier to get funding
• 54:30
  when you're thinking of doing a big budget film or TV series. But in a sense, it was
• 54:38
  ever thus, because there have been looking through the world literature, been certain stories
• 54:47
  which would get published again and again and again. And the two obvious ones that fit in with
• 54:53
  this genre and have become their own films are Robin Hood, which has had its many treatments.
• 55:04
  And King Arthur, which was a mainstay of medieval periods up to, through the Victorians up to
• 55:13
  the present day, we do have another podcast on King Arthur, if anyone's interested,
• 55:17
  where we look at the historical roots of that and the phases it's gone through. And it seems as
• 55:22
  though what's what they share, but well, particularly King Arthur is the way that it pulls in
• 55:29
  the stories, the folktales of Cornwall, Britainy, elsewhere, to actually sucking these characters
• 55:39
  and the Holy Grail, of course, which is a bit, and I spin off of the Christian story. So you've got
• 55:45
  this sort of sucking into the centre of the character of King Arthur, all these other stories,
• 55:54
  which do create a kind of Arthurian world. If I say Arthurian world, everyone knows what I mean,
• 55:59
  and you've got little images of knights and shining armour and round tables going on in your head.
• 56:05
  And of course, you've got the side characters who were like Merlin, who have their own little
• 56:11
  storylines that carry on through history, even down to their own TV series. So it does seem to me
• 56:16
  to qualify as a pretty excellent early example of a universe, which is still ongoing.
• 56:24
  Yeah, and it's more organic. See, that one, yeah, is more, it seems like that the idea of Arthur
• 56:29
  and drawing upon some of those myths and connecting some of those separate, originally disparate myths
• 56:35
  kind of created a sort of story magnet that the pull, kind of gravitational pull of the
• 56:42
  these characters that hit on, you know, really important and resonant archetypes,
• 56:48
  that it's pulling kind of sucking in other related stories to it. And I think that's why you have,
• 56:54
  yeah, like you said, there's more re-workings of the Arthurian story because there's something about
• 56:59
  it at its core with those characters and the tensions that you have with, you know, political aspect
• 57:05
  of it, right, with what Arthur's doing there, with the relational aspect with Arthur, right,
• 57:12
  Gwynnevere, and relance a lot. So you have that, you have kind of a military sense, right, with the
• 57:18
  knights of the Rangeland enforcing law. There's, there's all sorts of different, and then magic,
• 57:24
  if sorry, you know, Merlin and Magic, and that there's all these different dimensions that are
• 57:29
  essentially building blocks of story and end of themselves. And so that they're kind of baked
• 57:35
  into those core casted characters in the situation, I think allows for really rich, reimagining
• 57:41
  reinterpretation, I think continued fascination with that. So it's almost, it's a universe that wasn't
• 57:49
  created as such necessarily, like you were saying, like from the beginning, something I don't
• 57:53
  think was going to say, like, I want to make this expansive network of stories and pull in this,
• 57:58
  this, this list, but they kind of like evolved organically with oral, probably largely oral storytelling,
• 58:05
  and then continued storytelling in print, that it's kind of a creation of the universe from the,
• 58:12
  inside out, rather than from the outside kind of in creation and see that kind of the staying
• 58:18
  power that that more kind of organics sort of interconnected storytelling, certainly of
• 58:26
  staying power, that that that mode of storytelling has and how it continues to be relevant and
• 58:31
  significant to the question thing. We haven't got time to treat it in any, to the depth it needs,
• 58:37
  but there is also, of course, the different pantheons, like the Greek pantheon, the
• 58:41
  the Norse pantheon, the Egyptian pantheon. I'm thinking particularly of the Greek one with its
• 58:48
  its poetry, its plays, its reinterpretations through millennia, literally, which are doing a
• 58:56
  very similar interesting thing of doing lots of comedy, tragedy, global history, and the tiny
• 59:06
  micro story of individual relationships, which in a way is another example which we're building
• 59:15
  on when people start thinking of these expansive universes. Loki, of course, coming from the North
• 59:20
  pantheon has been sucked into, and Thor, been sucked into Marvel already, but you could have perhaps
• 59:25
  imagined that maybe others might be too at some point. So just thinking is a huge thing, but do
• 59:33
  you think that this fascination of universes in fantasy at the moment is a good thing or a bad thing
• 59:40
  for our creativity, writing, filmmaking in the world of fantasy? Yeah, that's that's that that
• 59:49
  is a great question. There's like, we've gone through with each of these. There's certain
• 59:55
  in thinking in terms of a expansive universe or an idea of certain thing treating it as an
• 1:00:01
  IP, there's an intellectual property, and then seeing the different ways that can emerge and
• 1:00:06
  and be imagined in. There's certain, yeah, constraints, certain problems, certain opportunities
• 1:00:13
  there. I think right now it is, I don't like necessarily saying it, but like that's the way
• 1:00:20
  things are is that people are geared towards that. So the people with the money, the almost the
• 1:00:26
  if it's an easier cell to have a project that has interconnected pieces to say like what you're
• 1:00:31
  going to do here, it's an investment. Yeah, no, I'm going to, I'm going to sort of challenge you
• 1:00:36
  there, though, because I agree and I can see how when you click on the stream of service, they've got
• 1:00:42
  their little losage of this, this world, this world. Right. Go here for Star Wars, here for
• 1:00:48
  something else. But is it good creatively? That's what I want. Right creatively. Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  Do we stop being original? There's always room for originality, I think, and that's yeah, and so I
• 1:01:02
  think it's, it can be there, there are more constraints on the stories you can tell. And as I think
• 1:01:09
  we tell like Shakespeare, right, had certain constraints, but it's flourished in the stories that
• 1:01:16
  he was able to tell, right? He was telling stories that have been told, repackaging stories, but
• 1:01:20
  doing so in a way that was compelling and injecting them with life and bringing in certain
• 1:01:27
  dimensions and attitudes and raising certain questions that weren't necessarily raised
• 1:01:31
  the source material. So I think it's still, yeah, so there's still opportunities, there's certainly
• 1:01:35
  opportunities for that. But if you get, but you can, I think you can unnecessarily, you can
• 1:01:42
  unnecessary constraints on yourself by thinking about your story in terms of intellectual property.
• 1:01:50
  So I think that that is it. I think it's a valuable exercise for any of the creatives that are
• 1:01:53
  listening to somebody told me this once, so I was talking with them. That was imagining your
• 1:01:59
  story, whatever kind of work and progress as an intellectual property and not just as a story.
• 1:02:05
  So what are the different modes of stories that this could be told in? Would it be like a radio
• 1:02:11
  drama like Dr. Who in addition to the television series and novels and comics? You also have
• 1:02:18
  radio dramas, right? So you have several different media that these stories are taking place in.
• 1:02:24
  And so, yeah, so I think that that's valuable to do as a creative, to imagine, okay, so are there
• 1:02:30
  opportunities? Is this story perhaps, are there modes of storytelling that could fit the story I'm
• 1:02:36
  wanting to tell even better than what I actually have it in? Or if it does become popular, if it
• 1:02:42
  does become successful and kind of pitching it as something that has a different moving parts
• 1:02:48
  that you could connect to, could be valuable, but like we've talked about before,
• 1:02:53
  that in doing so and thinking so much about the forest, losing sight of the trees,
• 1:02:59
  it has a considerable cost from a storytelling perspective, right?
• 1:03:03
  Yeah, that's what I agree. And I think there's the perhaps, I know, it doesn't quite work like
• 1:03:08
  this in terms of when they've booked out studios for decades, but actually going away and coming back
• 1:03:14
  so there's enough time pass so that your version is different from the earlier version is also
• 1:03:18
  a worthwhile thing to do creatively. Okay, right, we've, because it's a university, we've
• 1:03:28
  obviously talked at lengths and that was appropriate, but we always finish with two little things.
• 1:03:35
  First one is do you have any fantasy tips for us that you'd like to share and then we're going to
• 1:03:39
  think where in all the fantasy world is the best place for something? So do you have a fantasy tip
• 1:03:44
  that you'd like to share? Yeah, I think I mentioned it earlier, the book, all the Marvel's
• 1:03:51
  journey to the ends of the biggest story ever told by Douglas Wolk. I think that one is really
• 1:03:56
  fascinating and demonstrating the sorts of challenges and opportunities that exist in this kind of
• 1:04:04
  large-scale interconnected storytelling. So yeah, I would wholeheartedly recommend that and give you
• 1:04:11
  kind of jumping off points to show how different artists and different creatives, different authors
• 1:04:17
  have worked together to create these rich imaginative worlds. It's certainly inspiring for me to read.
• 1:04:24
  Teaching me like bringing to my attention certain stories, storylines, authors that I hadn't
• 1:04:29
  been familiar with in the history of Marvel that kind of gave me, that has given me, continues to give
• 1:04:34
  me kind of some fun rabbit holes to go down that are related to my own kind of personal, you know,
• 1:04:40
  literary and authorial interests. So yeah, so all of the Marvel's, my Douglas Wolk, is what I'm
• 1:04:46
  doing right now. And my tip is not surprisingly to watch the new season, the short three program
• 1:04:53
  series with David Tennant. I've watched the first one, which was fun and I understand that they've
• 1:05:02
  purposely made them different flavors. So the first one is like family fun. The middle one is scary
• 1:05:08
  and the last one is kind of bonkers apparently and sort of huge. So I'm quite enjoying the fact that
• 1:05:15
  even within a short season they're doing three different things. So I would, if you can get hold of
• 1:05:20
  that, wherever you are, it's worth watching. If you've given Dr. Miss for a little while,
• 1:05:26
  might be time to dip back in and just enjoy it. I think for me, Dr. who is a blend of the domestic
• 1:05:31
  and the intergalactic and that's why I like about it. So my question to finish Jacob is where in
• 1:05:40
  all the cinematic universes in fantasy is the best place to be a minor character who might be
• 1:05:47
  worth their own series. Have you got an answer for us?
• 1:05:53
  See, yeah, this is a big question. I think just because I know of the sprawling source material,
• 1:06:00
  that like a Tolkien, that in like the Tolkien, cinematic universe, knowing how deep the
• 1:06:08
  well goes on some of these the richness of characters, I think if I had to be there personally,
• 1:06:15
  then that's probably that's where you go. A minor character in a Tolkien
• 1:06:21
  cinematic universe, I feel would be where I would want to end up.
• 1:06:28
  No, I think I agree. That's my first pick. So I've got to go something different then.
• 1:06:35
  Yeah, I think it might be quite fun to, there's some that you can't do, like I was thinking,
• 1:06:41
  it'd be really hard to do Alice in Wonderland because the flavor of Alice in Wonderland is so connected
• 1:06:47
  to the mind of the creator, it's hard to imagine a spin off unless it's a sort of Tim Burton film.
• 1:06:54
  So I'm not sure, as I don't think you can do that. So maybe if you're going to go talking, I'll
• 1:07:00
  go CS Lewis then and I will, I think it'd be quite fun to do a different, not the horse in his
• 1:07:06
  boy, but something like that that's somewhere else in the Narnian world, where you could actually
• 1:07:12
  tell a backstory, like in Archenland or somewhere like that, that would be fun. So thank you very
• 1:07:20
  much Jacob for joining me on our tour around the universe and yeah, it's been really fascinating.
• 1:07:27
  I will have to look up that book that you've mentioned. I'll put a link in the show notes,
• 1:07:31
  but thank you very much for talking with me and thank you everybody for listening.
• 1:07:40
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• 1:07:47
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