films – sethlewis.ie

Time-Travel With Care

Time-travelling is one of the standard plot devices of our stories and films, from H.G. Well’s The Time Machine to Interstellar, Dr. Who, The Terminator, and hundreds more. It’s not hard to see the appeal—it’s interesting to imagine what it would be like to visit the world of the future or the past. It’s exciting to think of dipping into a different era, something totally unlike our normal everyday lives here and now. But it’s also easy to see the risks that this kind of time-travelling would bring with it. In the Back To The Future films, Doc Brown gives several stern warnings to Marty about the dangers and potential consequences of interfering with the past. He knows that time-travellers must be aware that even the smallest of actions can change the course of history in surprising ways—as we see in the films.

The World Needs Your Story

“All dreams deserve to be seen, and all stories deserve to be shared,” said the Netflix ad. “The world needs your story. Show them!” But that wasn’t the real point—it was an ad, after all—so it ended with “Discover the world’s stories.” On Netflix, of course.

But Netflix isn’t showing my story among “the world’s stories.” They don’t have any plans to produce it, either (that I know of). So how will I get my dreams to be seen? How will I get my story to be shared? I need to figure this out. After all, Netflix said, “the world needs your story.”

Does it, really? Another regular guy doing regular things in regular ways? That’s the story that the world needs? It isn’t as entertaining as the stories they already have. It isn’t as impressive, or interesting, or mysterious, or anything fun like that. There’s a reason Netflix hasn’t called for the rights to my story. Who would want to watch it?

Me, Dorothy, And The Kung Fu Panda

Dorothy Gale (of the Wizard of Oz) and Master Po (the Kung Fu Panda) have something in common. As different as the two characters are, and as different as the styles and storylines of their films are, they both still end up in the same place. Master Po opens the legendary Dragon Scroll expecting power, but finds instead that it is simply a reflective surface. He learns from this that the power he needs is actually in himself, the one being reflected. Similarly, Dorothy travels the Yellow Brick Road all the way to Oz, only to discover that the famous Wizard is just a regular guy and that all along she had the power in herself to achieve her dream. Different stories, different genres, same point: if you’re looking for answers, look inside.