Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

This being summer and all, I thought it’d be fun to do an activity unique to the season: camping. When I was a kid, camping meant living in a magical woods, going on endless adventures among the fireflies beneath the stars. It was campfires and song, lake swims and long hikes through an endless forest. On this blog, though, we’re taking a different road with camp.

campy

adjective

ˈkam-pē 

campier; campiest

: in the style of camp : absurdly exaggerated, artificial, or affected in a usually humorous way

Or, we can use this definition by my daughter Blondie:

“It’s so campy, you could roast marshmallows on it.” -Blondie

At last, the summer storms have come to Wisconsin. Not all camping trips experience perfect weather–some have a rainy day or two mixed with the sun. That’s how I feel about our final camping trip here, my friends, as we travel the multiverse to find…The One.

Y’all know I’m an action junkie, and that includes martial arts movies. Before Marvel made the multiverse a thing with its Avengers, Jet Li was traveling to other dimensions to kill other versions of himself so he could gain their strength, intelligence, and skill while two multiverse cops hunt him down.

It’s a pretty simple premise, and allows for one of the oldest plots in the book: mistaken identity.

After repeated viewings of The Matrix, I was especially up for any scifi-action like this. Yet I also remember sitting in the theater thinking, “Good God, is this cheesy.” Now here we are, decades later, and I’ve finally watched it again with my kids along for the trip.

The movie kicks in when Jet Li kills the 123rd (yes, that’s right) number of himself. The opening scene plays up the hardcore-ness of it all, what with all the heavy metal music and Jet Li kicking ass. It’s a solid first scene–which is a bit of a shame considering the opening segment (more on that later).

The premise has been done before–yes, even the killing to gain power from other selves. Diana Wynne Jones plays with that very idea in Charmed Life. (Spoilers Ahead!) Young, wimpish Eric Chant has been called “Cat” by his elder sister Gwen because nothing seems to kill him. It turns out she was the one killing him to take more and more of his magic; only the powerful Chrestomanci helps Eric see that with every life he’s lost, HE should be the more powerful one. He just needs to take his magic back from his sister before she becomes a divine ruler in another dimension.

And we all know where we’ve heard “There can be only one” before.

The One follows Jet Li hunting his final other self down, and Jet Li gets to show how good and evil he can be (sometimes in the same scene). No cop, no wife, no dog will stand in Evil Jet Li’s way until he’s absorbed the powers of Good Jet Li…only Good Jet Li harnesses his awesome goodness and vanquishes the evil Jet Li in a final duel set in a factory full of sparks.

What’s a writer to get out of this camping trip?

Sprinkle in the absurdity with care.

Jet Li’s photos of his other selves are hilarious. Someone had fun in the wigs department!

Humor does not always blend well with other genres, but when the premise, characters, and story technology allow for some melodramatic acting and theatrical fight scenes, why not have a little absurd humor, too? Plus, it helps your audience see that you intend the story to be fun. Fun is hard to find when everyone in the story is dead serious all the time.

This can be tricky, though, when characters are more tropes and archetypes than unique individuals. Part of this is for The One’s story–there are different versions of these characters, after all, so they can’t just act like the same person over and over again. There has to be something dramatically unique with each one. But because of that, the acting has a layer of melted cheese on it from everyone, including seasoned actor Delroy Lindo and rising star Jason Statham (another martial arts powerhouse who shows no martial arts skills here because Jet Li’s the star, dammit! They do get back together years later for War, but that’s a different camping trip).

As much as my son Biff may contest this, there is only so much cheese a person can take. I get it, Evil Jet Li–you’re strong enough to pick up two motorcycles. But the CGI version of that is never going to look as awesome as a real-life roundhouse kick.

It’s a good reminder that a little humor and absurdity are fine so long as they’re used sparingly. The story should be fun, sure, but we don’t want the audience to roll its eyes and groan at our scenes, either.

Avoid déjà vu.

Mistaken identity storylines are not uncommon–we all know stories like The Prince and the Pauper, plays like Comedy of Errors, movies like The Parent Trap. And for an action junkie, it’s awesome seeing Jet Li fight himself (well, not technically, but you get me) with such fluid power.

It’s also important to make sure that the audience doesn’t feel like they’re getting the same stuff over and over. I don’t say this because Jet Li fights himself repeatedly. I say this because action scenes can easily feel repetitive, whether it’s duels, shootouts, chases, etc. I can listen to the same song on repeat (especially when writing), but watching a story beat over and over and over is too much, even for this action junkie.

That goes for twists and stylizations, too. Oh no, after all Good Jet Li’s trials and tribulations, the multiverse government is going to put GOOD Jet Li in the Hades Universe because the other Jet Li said he’s the bad one? Why on earth would these people not lock both up until they know who’s who? Because the story wanted this final mistaken identity to happen for the plot so you STILL don’t know if it’ll end well. But of course Jason Statham fixes things with seconds to spare and Evil Jet Li ends up in Dark Warring Hell Place. Add this to stylizations already done over and over since landmarks like The Matrix bullet dodge, and you end up with portions of stale cheese.

Subtle world-building is always appreciated.

Showing the story-world’s technology in action is always more fun than being told how it works. The One shows us the painful act of shifting from one world to the next, complete with pieces of screaming faces. It reminds me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only amped up to 11 with lots of lightning.

Now why does one universe police the others? No idea. Why does one universe have to be the dumping ground for everyone else’s evil? Are there only prisons in that universe? What’s it like growing up there? Say, there’s a story idea: “My Hades Childhood fighting Jet Li.”

Anyway, The One does not take the time to explain how multi-verse guns are different or how the teleportation watches and scanners work. They just keep showing them so the audience learns what they do, and that’s all that matters to the story. I’ve always been a fan of “show, don’t tell” when possible, and this movie shows it’s possible. I especially feel this with my Dieselpunk WIP. That’s a galaxy built up from scratch, and it’s tempting to feel like a guided tour for the readers could establish ground rules for them so they better appreciate the plot.

But imagine grinding the story to a halt for that. Momentary explanations are okay, like brief visits to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to learn about Vogons. And in The One, it makes sense for Jason Statham to run through the multiverse premise with Good Jet Li because Good Jet Li has no clue what’s going on with this Evil Jet Li guy hunting him down.

But if one’s going to have that quick exposition to explain things, one doesn’t need a prologue.

WHY DID YOU HAVE A PROLOGUE, MOVIE???

Ahem.

Is the prologue really necessary? No. No, it isn’t.

If the story can show fantastical elements, like a multiverse or multiple versions of a person, with just a few scenes, then why not just do that? The first filmed scene of The One pulls this off by showing a Prisoner Jet Li getting killed by Evil Jet Li. This sets up this idea of duplicate people. Having a background television show a presidential address with one who lost the vote in a past election reflects another possibility–another universe. The teleportation scenes takes the characters (and therefore audience) to the multiverse control center, and we hear about all those other universes at the trial.

Why oh why have someone talk before we see all this? Why make someone narrate the laws of the multiverse while the audience watches a bunch of lightning and spheres merging and splitting? We learn about all of these laws within the first two filmed scenes of the movie. What was the point of the prologue?

The audience is ready to be engaged. Audiences also dig mysteries. To explain the mystery before the first scene kills momentum before it’s even had a chance to start. When you can introduce a mysterious super-powered individual who looks just like the person he killed, you’re going to have an audience that wants to know why and they’ll want to keep watching. If you already tell them why, then there’s nothing to find out.

It’s one thing to have that prologue for drafting reasons. Come editing time, though, go back. Did you cover what’s in the prologue elsewhere in the story? Then behead that prologue no matter how hard it fights.

Overall, The One is…okay. It’s not my favorite camping trip, but it’s not a waste of an adventure, either. The essentials are there with the goofy moments and the kickin’ fights. But as writers, we don’t want folks reading our work and saying it’s…okay. So let’s take care to avoid the repetition, utilize true traits along with the tropes, and, on occasion, laugh a little at ourselves.

Coming up, I have my own family adventure, so you won’t hear from me for a week. After that, stay tuned for another dandy author interview, a silly interlude a resource highlight, and of course adventures in podcasting and the Story Empire.

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!