How Real is Realism?

I don’t know how I’m supposed to pay attention to anything at all this week so here’s me bitching about Disney and the MCU again before I shutter my house and hide in the basement until this election is over, however long that may take.

Maybe You Should Watch Agatha All Along

I was initially skeptical of this show because I thought we were doing this simply because that “Agatha All Along” song from WandaVision got big on the internet for a few weeks and Disney decided that meant people desperately wanted an entire show about Agatha Harkness and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Hollywood is still Not Very Good at understanding the intricate relationship between Internet Popularity and Actual Popularity (see: It’s Morbin Time).

But it’s obvious in hindsight this show was written by people who actually had a story to tell with these characters. It’s a direct spin-off to WandaVision but otherwise doesn’t require any more MCU homework and besides a few little things in the last episode doesn’t really connect to the wider universe at all which is fucking refreshing. The casting is fantastic – Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza and Patti Lupone are of course perfect but honestly the standout to me was Sasheer Zamata as Jennifer Kale, who I have not seen in anything since she left SNL and now need to see her in so much more. And I honest to goodness thought I would go to my grave at ninety-three still being queerbaited by the MCU, but this is, in fact, the gayest thing Disney has made so far and the representation is so pivotal to the plot I can’t imagine how they would edit around it to air it in more homophobic markets.

It’s also, somehow, the cheapest show Disney has made for the MCU so far. By a lot. Reportedly the budget for the show was $40 million total. As opposed to Loki which cost $23 million per episode, and that fucking terrible Secret Invasion show which cost $224.3 million and almost all of my goodwill for killing off Maria Hill for absolutely no good reason.

I say ‘somehow the cheapest’ but honestly you can tell just by looking at it. And that’s a very good thing.

Down The Witches Road, But Not Too Far. We Only Built Thirty Yards Of It.

The plot of Agatha All Along follows Agatha Harkness who collects a coven of fellow witches to walk the Witches’ Road, which will all give them something they need if the successfully navigate the trials. Now, the trials are all done in different house-shaped sets – easy to build for realism or to film in an actual house – but the Road between the trials is paved with colorful leaves through a dark, night time wood. And at no point does it feel like the actors are in the actual woods. It’s a set. It’s all sets.

Now this does, in fact, have a plot-related reason, but what I’m saying is that even if it didn’t, having the entire Road constructed with obvious sets is perfectly fine. Better, in fact, than forcing all the actors into the woods in the middle of the night and leaving them to catch pneumonia while gaffers fiddle with background green screens and lighting set ups, and for two reasons:

1. It’s not a real road in the woods, it’s the Witches’ Road. A magical road. It should look a little off from reality.
2. It’s not a real road in the woods, it’s a television show. Even if there was no magic in the show, no reason for the artifice, even if it was supposed to be regular women walking down a regular dirt path in the regular fucking woods, I would accept that it looked like sets on a soundstage because I do not expect absolute realism from television and I don’t think anyone else should, either.

Also: the Road sets were gorgeous. The sort of gorgeous you could not achieve attempting realism in actual damp woods. There’s a scene midway through the show where the witches take to their brooms and fly over the road and it doesn’t look real, but it does look perfect. It’s very reminiscent of the broom-flying scenes in Hocus Pocus and probably done the same way, and the fact that it’s not CGI’d to hell to convince me that Patti Lupone is fifty feet in the air on top of a sturdy branch doesn’t take any of the emotion away from the scene.

I Think Sometimes Producers in Hollywood Forget Broadway Is Still a Thing

Or, like, what about community theater? What about stage plays in the days of Shakespeare when all of the sets and costumes were made out of straw and wood? What about old epics where someone would just sit on a stool in the middle of an empty stage and tell a story? What about fucking reading, where all that’s literally, actually happening is words on a page?

Humans do not need absolute reality to become involved in a story. I actually think total realism in movies, television shows, and video games should be nothing more than a curiosity. Like 3D movies or those theaters where the seats rumble for some reason. Like, yeah, it was fun the first few times when the de-aged actors for a couple-minute flashback, but now we’re just actively resurrecting the dead because we want Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia back? I don’t know if you kids remember, but back in my day when we wanted to flashback to a time when the character was younger, we just pancaked the shit out of the actor’s face with makeup and put them in a bad wig, or hired someone else altogether. And it worked. Because humans are fully capable of playing along with artifice as long as the story is good.

Yes, I Am Still Bitter About The Acolyte

The official line from Disney is that this show got cancelled because it cost too much money but my brothers in Christ you are the ones who decided how much to spend. Yeah, I know just by its nature a show that takes place in space on multiple planets is going to cost more than something that takes place on earth but like…does it really have to? We have a long history of Star Trek shows where a variety of alien planets looked suspiciously liked the deserts outside of Los Angeles. Or just, you know, soundstages.

Yeah, sure, go all over the planet if you’re making a movie but if it’s a television show, especially one you’re not super confident about, fuck it. Do it all in Hollywood. Or Orlando, if you even still actually use Hollywood Studios to film anything. Build a ship set, a Jedi Temple set, and a set for where those space witches lived, I forget what it was. Did you know you can build those sets right next to each other in the same building and, through the magic of filmmaking, your viewers won’t know? Did you know California has beaches? And forests? Did you know if you film in a normal California forest but tell me it’s a forest on another planet I’ll believe you for the story’s sake?

You do not need to spend a billion dollars to convince me your show takes place in Middle Earth, just film somewhere pretty and tell me it’s in Middle Earth and I’ll believe you because I specifically showed up for a story that takes place in Middle Earth and I understand that Middle Earth is not a real place so as long as you know that I know that all of this play-pretend we can continue on with this farce.

I don’t know, I’m just complaining to keep my mind off things, but it seems like everyone in Hollywood has fallen into this belief that everything has to be 100% realistic to keep the audience watching and honestly that feels a little insulting. Like if we notice the alien is actually just a working actor in a rubber mask we’re going to become confused and start crying and turn the television off.

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