You Should Have Focussed On That!

wallyj84

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Have you ever watched a movie or read a book where you felt like the creators focussed on the wrong thing? Like there was a really cool idea, character or location that wasn't given the attention it really deserved?

For me it is Eywa from Avatar. Eywa was that giant tree neural network that the blue aliens worshipped. Eywa was basically a non human super intelligence that controlled all the animal and plant life on that planet. In my head canon it engineered all the life on the planet. That is a cool, if not slightly horrifying idea that I would love to have seen explored in greater detail in the movie.
 
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Beedie Tijii

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I remember thinking this too. It's at least a better plot hook than the lazily thought-up-on-napkin idea of "unobtainium". Although the concept of a giant plant-like intelligence that covers a whole planet is not a new trope to sci-fi or fantasy, just... a new take on it would've had the potential to be a bit more interesting.

A good example of something else I think of like this is The Borg in Star Trek. Don't get me wrong, we saw them a bunch of times, and there were some great episodes. But what made them memorable in the first place and gave them that inscrutable feeling of invincibility was the techno hivemind concept, which they focused on less and less the more often we saw them, until they became more about the style than the concept.
 

wallyj84

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I remember thinking this too. It's at least a better plot hook than the lazily thought-up-on-napkin idea of "unobtainium". Although the concept of a giant plant-like intelligence that covers a whole planet is not a new trope to sci-fi or fantasy, just... a new take on it would've had the potential to be a bit more interesting.

A good example of something else I think of like this is The Borg in Star Trek. Don't get me wrong, we saw them a bunch of times, and there were some great episodes. But what made them memorable in the first place and gave them that inscrutable feeling of invincibility was the techno hivemind concept, which they focused on less and less the more often we saw them, until they became more about the style than the concept.

I never thought about the Borg like that, but you're right. The focus moved on to them assimilating people, didn't it? That really became their thing.
 

Beedie Tijii

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I never thought about the Borg like that, but you're right. The focus moved on to them assimilating people, didn't it? That really became their thing.
Once the focus moved onto assimilating stuff, they basically became zombies. Once they introduced the Borg Queen character, she became their necromancer. The best Borg appearances/episodes are the first three times we see them on TNG, and there are still some decent stories after that, but I always felt that more consistent writers could have done a lot more with the concept.
 

wallyj84

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Once the focus moved onto assimilating stuff, they basically became zombies. Once they introduced the Borg Queen character, she became their necromancer. The best Borg appearances/episodes are the first three times we see them on TNG, and there are still some decent stories after that, but I always felt that more consistent writers could have done a lot more with the concept.

The assimilation of Picard was such an iconic moment, I almost can't blame them for wanting to make that a bigger part of the species, but you're right.
 
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The magic mirror in Snow White.

In every version of the story that I've seen the mirror is pretty much a deus-ex machina -- one which facilitates a plot mostly involving the Evil Queen on a jealous murderous rampage, because... reasons. It's basically just a fable about self-destructive vanity and jealousy and that's why it's a talking mirror and not a talking anything else.

But actually the mirror itself has some interesting properties. We know that the mirror can talk. Is the mirror sentient? If so, was it once a person, or did it always appear as it does now? Is it possible that someone or something else is speaking through the mirror across some great distance? Does the mirror have an agenda? Is it cursed?

We also know that whatever force that responds to the user's questioning from the within the mirror is capable of seeing across vast distances. Is the mirror omniscient? Are there limits to what it sees? Can it see things from the past? The future? Does it know what people are thinking?

Did someone make the mirror? Who were they? Why did they make it?
 
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wallyj84

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The magic mirror in Snow White.

In every version of the story that I've seen the mirror is pretty much a deus-ex machina -- one which facilitates a plot mostly involving the Evil Queen on a jealous murderous rampage, because... reasons. It's basically just a fable about self-destructive vanity and jealousy and that's why it's a talking mirror and not a talking anything else.

But actually the mirror itself has some interesting properties. We know that the mirror can talk. Is the mirror sentient? If so, was it once a person, or did it always appear as it does now? Is it possible that someone or something else is speaking through the mirror across some great distance? Does the mirror have an agenda? Is it cursed?

We also know that whatever force that responds to the user's questioning from the within the mirror is capable of seeing across vast distances. Is the mirror omniscient? Are there limits to what it sees? Can it see things from the past? The future? Does it know what people are thinking?

Did someone make the mirror? Who were they? Why did they make it?

That is a good one. The story behind a lot of those fantasy items would be really interesting.

Here is one, Hoosiers. In the movie a small town basketball team wins the Indiana high school basketball tournament. In the championship game they go against an integrated basketball team. A racially integrated basketball team in Indiana at that time is kind of a big deal. When Oscar Robertson was playing high school basketball back in the 50's, he went to a segregated high school. He had to endure racist comments from fans and some teams refused to play against him. I think that integrated team probably had the much more interesting story.