![]() One of the most challenging aspects of plotting a story is how to sustain audience interest and narrative momentum for the long haul. The reality of having seven characters more or less demands that if we’re going to have any kind of personal investment in them, there has to be time spent on getting to know each or most of them first.īut the slow roll out of characters also proves to be an effective storytelling strategy. One of the things that I love about Blood Origin is that it takes its time introducing its seven heroes and bringing them together. What is it about seven that seems to work so well? When you see something works, why mess with it?īut that doesn’t really answer the question. Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, and Mad Max: Fury Road all draw direct inspiration from Kurosawa's tale of seven ronin hired by a village to fight off bandits. The easiest and most straightforward answer as to why so many team stories involve seven characters may be that Akira Kurosawa did it in Seven Samurai in 1954, and it was really effective. Obviously, not every story does this: try as I might to make Lord of the Rings fit the pattern, it mostly doesn’t (although for the period that Gandalf is dead, the core fellowship does drop to seven). Gerry Duggan’s X-Men comic currently has 7 members so does Ben Percy’s X-Force so did Tini Howard’s initial run on Excalibur. DC Comics sometimes talks about its 'Big 7: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and the Flash. The great '00s scifi mystery show Fringe had a core cast of 7 so did the first season of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Once you start looking for it, you’ll see groups of seven all over the place. Avengers has Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Nick Fury. Mad Max: Fury Road has Furiosa, the five wives fleeing Immortan Joe and Max. So for instance, Star Wars: A New Hope has as its core team Luke and Obi-Wan, Han and Chewie, the droids and Leia. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it, but when it comes to 'team' stories, seven is often the magic number. It’s the fact that the story is about a group of seven heroes. No, it’s not that they introduced Minnie Driver as an elf who can apparently time travel and maybe knows everything and is controlling events, but then were like, 'But anyway, two thousand years ago….' ![]() ![]() (More Meldof and Gwen, please!) But there was this one thing that I just couldn’t let go of. I watched The Witcher: Blood Origin over the holidays, and really enjoyed it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |