Jacob Minkoff on "no business being good"

Makkon

Because you know how much I love plugging ponies.

Jacob Minkoff, the lead developer as Naughty Dog for Uncharted, posted an interesting article:

Action flicks, romantic comedies, children’s movies – those are the difficult stories to tell. Easy to get greenlit, hard to execute well. Robocop, Die Hard, Groundhog Day, Toy Story — these are all films that had no business being good. Literally. They didn’t need to be....
...Instead, those who made them decided to try harder. They didn’t see the constraints of popcorn cinema as a limitation. They saw it as a challenge!

http://jacobminkoff.com/2011/07/11/omgponies111/

Thoughts?

know-it-null

But, frankly, I find “blue sky” concept development boring and a little decadent. To be presented with constraints, to innovate within the bounds of what is considered “commercial,” to color within the lines, to sneak something unique and wondrously crafted through this machine – now THAT is what excites me.

And he's right. Look at old NES or C64 games. I'm not saying that these games all hold up, but you have to look at what they actually did. Devs pushed past weak hardware and strict limitations to make their dreams come true. And the limits they couldn't bypass ended up influencing their creative decisions in some surprisingly cool and memorable ways. Mario would've looked way different had the hardware of the time been more powerful. We owe his iconic look and moves to limitations.

My brother pointed me to a web page that challenged artists to create a scene using only 10 cubes. No vertex tweaks. Just scale & rotate 10 boxes and see how creative you can be. Amazing sh** out of that challenge. People thought of stuff that they probably wouldn't have without those limits.

"Blue Sky" design is an illusion. You give some people no limits and they get lazy. They end up falling into the same cliches. Give them hard limits and they get inspired to create something different because they're boxed and have to find ways to exploit the system.

jipe

I think he makes a good point -- when people work within the constraints of having to produce a commercially successful film/game that appeals to a wide audience, and they go above and beyond and make something legitimately great, that's pretty fantastic and should be commended.

But I disagree that such projects are more impressive than cerebral films or games that challenge audiences and still succeed at entertainment. If you don't have people running around or things blowing up, it's pretty hard to hold someone's attention. And it's hard to communicate ideas, regardless, but especially so if you want to do it in a mature way that provokes thought but doesn't jam it down the audience's throat.

He's totally right that Die Hard was way better than it had to be, but a huge chunk of the film is just Bruce Willis running around shooting people. That's going to entertain and hold people's attention no matter what. Now, Memento? Trying to describe how a character functions without short-term memory, making an audience feel sympathy for a character who's not even sure who he is? And then leaving the audience with unsettling questions about identity, memory, and the worth of vengeance? It's hard for me not to have an incredible amount of respect for Christopher Nolan for what he did with that movie.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with Jacob -- it's always impressive when people execute at an extremely high level, particularly when they don't need to do so. But I don't think escapism and stories that relate to the human condition are mutually exclusive, and execution isn't everything. I don't think we have any shortage of entertainment that "washes over us easily", but the opposite is pretty hard to find.

Ace-Angel

So essentially, Thor and Iron Man were pop-corn summer movies with pretty simple A to B plots, but they were better then Transformers which tried pulling double stunts in the storyline.

Yep, I agree with him.

Mezz

This reminds me of a story our teacher told us back when I was in college for Animation...

Does anyone remember A Goofy Movie? The movie about Goofy and his son that was in theatres back in 1995? Well, the story went that the team at Disney was given this project to work on and were told it would be a "straight to video" film. This didn't fly with them, so they decided to make the movie so damn good it would have to be shown in theatres. And so it was.

I find this to be, if nothing else, very inspiring. Don't let limitations others put forth stop you from being the best damn artist you can be. Don't view a lackluster project as something to just get done, but something to show your best work with.

(I can't actually prove this story is true, but I sure hope it is...)