Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was real. Everything I remember about it feels like some kind of fever dream. Like I just sat down in the cinema and hallucinated a movie.
Writers for big budget movies and TV really have given us all a masterclass in how NOT to end a big story.
Like, I worry sometimes that the ending I write may somehow be unsatisfying but damn, there's no way it could be worse than some of the things that actually made it onto our screens. Both the Star Wars sequels and Game of Thrones had such laughably bad endings that they retroactively erased all the pop culture impact those things ever had.
Seriously though, I think the important lesson in all this is to plan the ending of your story. You don't need to map out the plot and structure (although I always do), but make sure you know where you're going. Make sure the whole thing actually has a point.
Astonishing that someone would make a whole trilogy in one of the most popular movie series of all time without having any idea where they were going or how to get there. Like deciding to go to Trinidad by just randomly diving into the sea and hoping for the best.
@XanIndigo "Somehow, Palpatine returned." It encapsulates how slapdash the storytelling was and is a meme by now xD Evidently the story & endings of these blockbusters are perpetually in flux to avoid giving away the "twist" and even the actors might not know the full script, which obviously affects the quality of the acting and production as a whole. Well plot twist, it sucked!
@ljwrites @XanIndigo this is dissing a different show, but it feels relevant here: «I’m incredibly frustrated by the trend of authors acting like their story is worthless if the readers can anticipate what’s going to happen next, especially since it’s arising in the age of the Internet where if anyone can figure out what’s going on, everyone can find out. It’s a bad writing paradigm to begin with (foreshadowing is a good thing!), and it gets worse the harder you have to work to hide your secrets.»
@Satsuma @ljwrites Honestly, the fact that the same can be said of many different shows feels like an indictment of what modern writing has become.