How Mythic Quest Shifted Its Focus

Season four of Mythic Quest wrapped up on Apple TV+ at the end of March. It was a sitcom about the people who work at a video game studio in Los Angeles. Their personalities. Their lives. The typical sitcom stuff that makes that type of show so easy to consume. The romantic entanglements of the two leads were a major focus, as were the moral quandaries, depressive self-loathing, and creative jealousies of others. All in all, it was a solid season of pushing characters into new emotional areas.

By the midpoint of season four, something clicked in my head that I wasn’t able to move past. Mythic Quest had changed since the first season. That was fair to say. Most shows change by the time they’re four seasons into their runs. But Mythic Quest changed in a way that is very specific to sitcoms. I don’t mean half hour comedies with serialized stories. No no. I mean the more episodic, situational comedy.

Many sitcoms start with a certain premise. By the time the third or fourth season rolls around, the premise has moved to the background while the characters take center stage. A sitcom that began with a certain premise or situation morphs from being about that premise into being about the characters interacting with one another while that premise exists in the background or disappears altogether.

Take a look at Mythic Quest. The first season was about the studio behind an MMORPG working out the kinks of their newest expansion, Raven’s Banquet. One episode was about how to use an in-game tool. Another was about creating the background of a mysterious character who debuted in the expansion. There was also a storyline about getting overtime for the staff and another storyline about the studio hiring one of their employees as a streamer to play and promote Raven’s Banquet. There was a little bit of character work as well, with creative head Ian Grimm getting backstory and family introduced. But the first season was primarily the inner workings of the studio that made Mythic Quest.

Fast forward to season four and the show became much less about the game and much more about the characters. The studio worked on both Mythic Quest and Playpen, a sandbox game-creation platform. Some work stuff still came up, whether it be negotiating contracts, banning certain content to keep a child-friendly game platform child-friendly, and the legality/morality of profiting off letting children create games for Playpen. However, most of those stories came from a character-driven place. The length of the meeting about what to ban in Playpen was driven by the studio manager’s desire to make friends. The negotiations for contracts were used to build the romantic relationship between the lead programmer of Playpen and one of the producers in the studio. The characters came first in a way they didn’t always in the first season.

The majority of season four was spent on the love triangle of Ian Grimm, Poppy Li (lead programmer turned creative co-head of Mythic Quest), and Poppy’s boyfriend Storm. That relationship story was the crux of everything that happened. It led to the changes in the power dynamic of the studio. It led to a pregnancy. It led to Ian somehow, maybe, starting to mend his fractured relationship with his son. It also led to the creation of a new Mythic Quest expansion, Elysium, which was hailed as one of the best video game works ever. That was the result of all the Ian and Poppy relationship stuff. Great art comes from relationships and struggle. Elysium was no different.

There were two season four episodes that really highlighted how far the show got from its situational roots. The first was a murder mystery episode. A bunch of characters from the studio went to an old mansion for a murder mystery game. Most of the episode involved Ian being jealous of Storm. He accused Storm of cheating, revealing his feelings for Poppy in the process. That wasn’t even the only relationship stuff in the episode. The whole murder mystery was built as a way for the creator of Playpen to propose to her girlfriend, a producer within the Mythic Quest studio. Nothing in the episode had to do with the video games.

The other episode was a mostly standalone episode. Mythic Quest had one of those each season. The difference this season was that it was about an already established character. The episode focused on Pootie Shoe, Ian’s son, as he tried to force himself into adulthood before he was truly ready. The only series regular in the episode was Ian, and that was only to selfishly help his son in a single scene. Pootie Shoe was a streamer who called out another streamer and challenged him to a boxing match. This had nothing to do with the Mythic Quest studio. It barely had any of the regular characters. It was an entirely character-driven episode about a side character. The closest I could say this came to being about Mythic Quest was that it was a side quest, but not in the way that the spin-off Side Quest is.

Mythic Quest fully made the sitcom flip from being about the situation to being about the characters. It’s the trajectory of numerous sitcoms throughout the decades. Community began as a sitcom about a community college and the personalities within it. It became a show about people who just happened to be at a community college. Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place was about friends working at a pizza joint but dropped the pizza place after the second season. Cougar Town began as a recently divorced woman getting back into the dating game by going after younger men. That didn’t even last a full season. It turned into a show about friends supporting each other. Even Cheers left the bar eventually.

It is inevitable that a sitcom with a limited premise will break free of that premise at some point. The longer a sitcom goes, the more it will home in on the characters and make them the focus. It allows for more stories to be mined. There are only so many stories that can be told with the concept of making a video game before the stories start to feel repetitive. Opening the world keeps things feeling fresh. Shows grow. This is the growth curve for sitcoms.

This idea has been rolling round in my head since about halfway through the fourth season of Mythic Quest. It’s kind of how my writing has evolved over time. For so long, I limited myself to writing about bad movies. Nearly a decade of just that. There was more to me, though. I wanted to branch out. Like a sitcom, I switched things up. The bad movie posts are still there. So are posts like this. So are posts about Bubly, seasons, and hockey. I opened up the other sides of me. I moved beyond the original premise. That’s what happens in sitcoms and in life.

My Movie Awards 2024

Welcome to the deepest depths of awards season. The vast majority of awards shows have already come and gone. We have the Academy Awards this weekend, which brings awards to a close for movies. Almost. We have my own personal awards coming out this weekend, too. In fact, they’re coming out today. You’re reading them.

I decided to keep track of the 2024 movies I’d seen in a different way than normal. I essentially wanted to come up with some fun ways to celebrate the movies. Of course, I haven’t seen every movie that came out last year. I haven’t even seen a lot of the movies that people consider to be the best of last year. However, I did see 74 movies released in 2024. My awards, as of this time, are based on those 74 movies.

I’m cherry-picking from my spreadsheet of awards categories for the ones I came up with this year that I found the most amusing and most fun. Or, in the case of a few of them, I went with categories that were quintessentially me. I might save one of those until the end of the awards because it makes sense in my mind to do that.

It’s about time to get to the awards. I’ve written enough for an introduction. This is the first year, so this might be a little rough. I’ve been making a spreadsheet for this year, so I should be able to work out some of the kinks for the next one. As for this, without further adieu, let’s get onto the awards.

The Sunday “Bad” Movies Memorial Award

I said I was going to end with one of the awards that was quintessentially me. I thought I might as well start with on, too. This award is dedicated to my other blog, Sunday “Bad” Movies. Throughout 2024, there were some bad movies among all the good and fun. But there’s a certain kind of bad movie that I write about in that blog. This award goes to the movie that most fit within the idea of Sunday “Bad” Movies. It goes to the movie that would make the most sense as part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies lineup.

 

And the nominees are…

·         Destroy All Neighbors

·         Hot Frosty

·         Madame Web

·         Stream

·         Borderlands

 

Choosing a winner for this category was one of the tougher choices in these awards. Two of the movies have already been featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies. There’s one other movie that was really pushing for the award, but it couldn’t overcome one of the movies that I already wrote about.

This award goes to Hot Frosty! It’s a movie that perfectly captured the Sunday “Bad” Movies spirit. It had a goofy idea with a romantic comedy Frosty the Snowman sort of thing. There was one of those Canadian actors who was in a bunch of stuff in the mid-90s to early-10s. It was the Netflix version of a Hallmark Christmas movie. Everything seemed to fit just a little better than it did with the other four nominees.

I want to quickly state that Hot Frosty won multiple awards this year. Its other win was Joe Lo Truglio beating out Tom Lennon (Destroy All Neighbors) to win Best Appearance by a Member of The State. Lacey Chabert lost to Lindsay Lohan’s appearance in Our Little Secret for From Mean Girls to Netflix Romantic Lead.

Nepo Baby Acting Award

The next award getting the spotlight is about a bunch of actors who get the spotlight in part because of their famous families. In fact, this award is meant to highlight how much their specific role and performance might have been the result of that nepotism. The winner may not have given the best performance. In fact, they probably won’t because that would imply they got the job based on their talent rather than their familial connection.

 

The nominees are…

Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt Russell, in Night Swim

Ray Nicholson, son of Jack Nicholson, in Smile 2

Olin Reynolds, son of Ryan Reynolds, in Deadpool and Wolverine

Saleka Shyamalan, daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, in Trap

Mason Gooding, son of Cuba Gooding Jr., in Aftermath

 

This award was really a two-way race between Olin Reynolds and Saleka Shyamalan. The winner was Saleka Shyamalan for her work in Trap. The movie was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. He put her into a Taylor Swift superstar type of role, performing her own music. It was this bigger role written for her by her father that truly catapulted her into winning this award. I didn’t see any bigger case of nepotism this year in film.

Trap was another multiple winning and nominated film this year. Josh Hartnett won the I Didn’t Know They Had That Performance In Them award for Trap. It also won Too Many Endings. Trap was nominated for Shit-Eating Grin Villain, which it lost to Conor McGregor’s character in the Road House remake. There were some other awards it was involved in as well, but at least one of them will be getting bigger focus, so I don’t want to spoil the results yet.

Oddest Meet Cute

Here’s a fun little award. Movies like romance. It could be a romantic comedy. It could be any comedy. It could be a drama or an epic. There’s usually some sort of romance in a movie, and that romance must have a beginning. The characters meet somehow. They fall for each other somehow. That “how” is the focus of this award. Specifically, the strange hows.

 

The nominees are…

Blame the Game – The characters met because their dogs started humping at a park

Música – The main character went to the fish market, saw the girl, got knocked out with a fish to the face

Hit Man – The man pretended to be a hit man, then tried to talk the woman out of hiring him because of love

Lisa Frankenstein – The guy was a zombie that walked in on the girl, they hit it off

Megalopolis – The woman saw the man freeze time during a building demolition and connected through that

 

This might have been the toughest award to choose a winner for so far. I mean, look at all these nominees. Each one is as strange as the last. I decided to just go with the one that stuck with me more than the rest of them. Ever since I saw it, I’ve thought about how weird it was to put it in the movie. Some of these odd meet cutes were just part of the story, where this one could have been changed, and the story would have played out the same.

The winner is Música with the main character being hit in the face with a fish.

The Most Tropeyest Trope

This one kind of goes hand-in-hand with the last award. The meet cute is one of the building blocks of a movie romance. Some of the other building blocks of any movie are the tropes utilized. The tropes aren’t necessarily a bad thing. In the case of this award, though, they just might be. The Most Tropeyest Trope celebrates the most ridiculous use of a story trope in a movie.

 

The nominees are…

Rebel Ridge – Drifter comes into town and cleans up corruption

Aftermath – Die Hard on a… trope. They’re on a bridge.

Música – Two dates in the same restaurant at the same time

Players – Romantic comedy where the main character realized the best friend was the best partner

Bad Boys: Ride or Die – A dead character left a video message to the main characters about the current story

 

The reason I didn’t go through Música’s other wins and nominations when it won Oddest Meet Cute was because it also won The Most Tropeyest Trope. I don’t know how you could top a modern-day romantic comedy that still used the two dates at the same time trope. That’s insane. I had to just go straight onto this award.

Música was nominated for a couple other awards. It lost the Strange Mental Abilities award to Twisters. Música had a character who could turn any sound into music. Twisters had a character who could predict tornadoes by staring at the clouds. Camila Mendes lost Best Riverdale Cast Appearance to Cole Sprouse, who was in Lisa Frankenstein.

Movie Clearly Made for Lead Actor to Star in It

Here’s an interesting award. We’ve already had an award for roles given out to actors thanks to nepotism. What about roles that were specifically written for an actor? These five movies featured such roles. The lead was always going to be the lead, and everything was tailored around them. Whether it was their personality, or just the fact that they fit that specific role, these movies were made with them in mind.

 

The nominees are…

The Underdoggs – Snoop Dogg

Hit Man – Glen Powell

Deadpool and Wolverine – Ryan Reynolds

Música – Rudy Mancuso

Deaner 89 – Paul Spence

 

This was another one of those awards that wasn’t quite fair to a couple movies. I wrote off the Deadpool sequel and the Fubar prequel pretty quickly because those actors had already played those characters multiple times before. They got the nomination because those characters wouldn’t be the same without them, and they helped inform the stories, but they couldn’t ultimately win over a fresh movie that was still written for someone specific.

The winner of this award was Hit Man. It was a close race between the remaining three movies, but I felt like Hit Man was designed with a purpose. It was meant to showcase Glen Powell’s range and show that he was more than the character type he was starting to get typecast as. There was some of his usual onscreen persona, but the various fake hitmen that his character played showed the range that he had. If he ever wanted to play a different character, he could point to Hit Man to show he could. It was essentially a demo reel for his acting chops.

Hit Man won two other awards this year. Austin Amelio won for Best Performance by an Actor from Everybody Wants Some!!!, and it won for How Did They Get Away with Clear Law Breaking for the end of the movie. If you know, you know. It was nominated for Title I’m Likely to Get Confused With Another Movie, but lost to Upgraded.

The Cops Are Bad

By this point, we should all know that the police aren’t the best people. There’s brutality and racism that we’re seeing on a regular basis. These movies helped to highlight how bad the police are. There were different ways they did that, but they all ended up with the same idea. The cops are bad. Which cops were worse?

 

The nominees are…

Hit Man – A cop blackmails people to get some money

I Used to Be Funny – A cop sexually assaulted someone

MaXXXine – The cops cared more about the serial killer than the victims

Code 8: Part II – Police brutality to rid the city of superpowered people

Rebel Ridge – Illegal seizure of money made legal because they’re the cops

 

All of these police were bad for their different reasons. The winner was Rebel Ridge, if only because it was the police using their power to be bad and justifying it by their position in the community. Unchecked power. Full corruption. With that sort of attitude, any of the other things could happen without repercussion.

Rebel Ridge also won The Marine Memorial Award, given out to a movie where there’s an action situation and a military man in a non-military situation steps up to stop the bad guys. It’s named after The Marine franchise because that’s exactly what all those movies were. Rebel Ridge had a soldier try to bail his cousin out of prison only to take down a corrupt police precinct.

That Story Seemed Familiar

Have you ever watched a movie and thought you’d seen it before? Here’s the award for you. Here are five movies where the story felt like the story of five other movies. There are no parodies in this category, as those would fit into another category that wasn’t really a thing this year. Instead, these movies earnestly told a story. That story just happened to feel very familiar.

 

The nominees are…

Marmalade – Felt like The Usual Suspects

Jackpot! – Felt like a comedic The Purge

Rebel Ridge – Felt like a riff on First Blood or Reacher

Time Cut – Felt like Totally Killer

Carry-On – Felt like Phone Booth, Grand Piano, The Wall, etc.

 

And the award goes to Time Cut. This really felt like it was a closer race than it was. It was the specificity of Time Cut that really took it over the edge. There aren’t too many movies where a character went into the past to stop a serial killer who stalked and killed a family member. From the time I saw the trailer until the time I saw the movie, I thought it felt exactly like that earlier film. A lesser version, but the same story. The rest of the movies were able to stand on their own, albeit feeling like other movies. They were different enough to justify existing.

Time Cut was also nominated for Dumbest Movie Title, where it lost to Family Pack. Neither were good titles, but Family Pack was dumber because the original French title made so much more sense.

This Song Belongs to a Different Movie

There are certain songs that when you think of a movie, you think of that song. Or when you think of that song, you think of a specific movie. Sometimes other movies use those songs and everything feels a little bit off. A little dirty. A little wrong. Here are five times in 2024 where movies used songs that I associate with other movies, and it felt wrong to hear them in these instances.

 

The nominees are…

Wave of Mutilation – Lisa Frankenstein – This belongs to Southland Tales

Bette Davis Eyes – MaXXXine – This song belongs to The Final Girls

Ace of Spades – Borderlands – This song belongs to Shoot Em Up!

Hurdy Gurdy Man – ‘Salem’s Lot – This song belongs to Zodiac

A Thousand Miles – Time Cut – This song belongs to White Chicks

 

As much as some of the other nominees pained me a little more, I have to go with A Thousand Miles from Time Cut on this one. When people hear that song, they think of Terry Crews dancing to it in White Chicks. That scene has become much more popular than the movie. The cultural impact lifts it above any of the other song uses.

Lightning Round

Now I want to do a quick blitz of some awards before getting into the final few.

Best Appearance by Euphoria Cast went to Zendaya in Challengers.

Best Appearance by Game of Thrones Cast went to Pilou Asbæk in I.S.S.

Best Disney Star Performance went to Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy.

Best Performance by a Ken from Barbie went to Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy.

Best Actor Reunion (Non-Sequel) went to Speak No Evil for bringing Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy back together after Halt and Catch Fire.

That’s Some Crazy Weather went to Twisters over Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and Challengers.

Best Appearance by Stranger Things Cast went to Eduardo Franco in Y2K.

Best Appearance by a Saturday Night Live Cast Member went to Chloe Fineman for Megalopolis.

The Character Who Felt Like the Biggest Waste of Time went to Mary Parker in Madame Web.

 

And, with that, we have five more awards to go. I hope you enjoy them. I sure did.

Nostalgia for Nostalgia’s Sake

Movies have been playing on nostalgia forever. Whether it was the 1950s using the silent movie era or the 70s and 80s looking back on the 50s and 60s. Nostalgia sells. People want to see what they experienced in their formative years. The good stuff, at least. That’s why many of the nostalgic moments in the movies of 2024 happened. Some were worse than others. They didn’t suit the story at all. They just got that nostalgic hit.

 

The nominees are…

The Fall Guy – The actors from the television series made an appearance

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – Peck was brought back as mayor?

MaXXXine – They showed off the Bates Motel and house

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – The librarian ghost made an appearance

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F – The Heat is On and Shakedown were both played

 

I’m going to give the win on this one to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire for the librarian ghost. Why? When it comes to the story of the Ghostbusters movies, this ghost shouldn’t even still be in the library. She has been there since the 1980s. Forty years. At some point in those forty years, the Ghostbusters should have busted that ghost. Right? It feels like they simply wanted the audience to perk up at seeing her.

Most Interesting Time Structure

I’ve always been fascinated by how a movie will play with time when telling its story. There’s a fairly standard way they use time, cutting out any unnecessary stuff so that things flow better. Taking place over a longer period of time to allow emotions to sink in or travel to happen. Allow more time for characters to grow. Things feel more natural. All that fun stuff.

This category is about breaking the conventional use of time in movies. Condensing things or moving them around altogether. These movies found ways to play with time. They used time as part of the story. Time was important to how the story was told, or even structured. These are the ones I liked the best in 2024.

 

The nominees are…

Sixty Minutes – Almost real time as the character had to travel across Berlin in sixty minutes

Trap – Most of it took place during a concert

Saturday Night – Took place in the hour or two right before the first episode of NBC’s Saturday Night

Time Cut – Time travel

Family Pack – Board game sends them back to medieval France

 

The winner of Most Interesting Time Structure goes to Trap. It was, for sure, an all in one night movie. Most of that night was spent at a concert where a serial killer was evading a police sting. The semi-real-time structure as well as the confines of the concert led to a great little thriller. It didn’t completely live up to the potential of that concept because of the stuff that followed, but the concert idea had a lot of promise. It was interesting. That’s for sure.

No Guys, This Place/Thing is Meaningful to Me, Specifically

This is a tougher award to gauge from the title. Characters in movies can get sentimental, just like any person. They get attached to a thing or a place that other people might not have that same attachment to. Me? I’ve got a Chinese coin I found at work that I fidget with a lot while I’m writing. That’s not the only thing I’m sentimental about. It just happens to be the one right next to me that I can use as an example.

Movie characters have those same sentimental things and places. This award is a little more narrowed than that. This award kind of points out some of the goofier, more ridiculous examples of this sentimentality. Those objects or places that characters were attached to where the audience might chuckle a little bit. They might have been played as a joke. Or they might have been serious, but characters went a little overboard over those items. You know?

 

The nominees are…

Y2K – An action figure of Kelso from That 70s Show

Upgraded – A painting of a swan that wasn’t a swan and was actually just circles

Sixty Minutes – The cake for his daughter

In a Violent Nature – The necklace that brough the guy back to life

Road House – Tree Fred, a tree in the middle of a road

 

I don’t know why I ever struggled with this one. The winner is obviously Tree Fred. Every other item played a part in the story of the movies they were in. Tree Fred was mentioned at the beginning, then called back to at the end. But Tree Fred never played into anything that happened in Road House. Tree Fred was just there. Tree Fred was just a tree in the middle of a road. Congratulations, Tree Fred.

The Perfectly Mid Movie

This time of year, we get awards for the best movies and awards for the worst movies. What about a movie that perfectly fits in that middle ground? It was good enough to be watchable, but wasn’t anything more than that. It was bad enough to be forgettable, but not bad enough to be actually bad. It’s a movie that rode that fine line right down the middle. It did absolutely nothing to fall on either side of that line. There were only three nominees for this one.

 

The nominees are…

One Fast Move

Players

A Family Affair

 

The winner of The Perfectly Mid Movie was One Fast Move! It was a movie about a young ex-con finding his absent father so he could learn to race motorcycles. KJ Apa from Riverdale. Eric Dane from Euphoria. It wasn’t anything special, good or bad. It simply was. That’s why it perfectly fit as a perfectly mid movie.

And now we move onto the final award.

The Paul Blart Memorial Award

This is a tough award for me to truly figure out. It’s an award that could have a different winner as time goes on. It all has to do with both my enjoyment of a movie and people’s semi-negative outlook on something.

The idea comes from Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I like that movie. Most people wrote it off as dumb, Kevin James comedy. It is. But it’s also a fun enough comedic riff on Die Hard. I’ll stand by Paul Blart: Mall Cop being better than most people give it credit for, and, because of that, I’ll keep championing it. That’s what happens with movies that get this award. I champion them when most people won’t.

I’m going to quickly check all the 2024 movies I’ve seen because I have one picked, but I’m not as confident with it as I have been in other years. I like the movie. I really like the movie. I’ve seen it three times. But I’m not championing it when other people aren’t. I don’t think it’s looked upon negatively in the way that these movies normally are. So, I’m going to see if there’s something else that better fits the spirit of this award.

You know what? I’m going to do five nominees for this one, too. I wasn’t going to, but I will. I’ve got a new one that is definitely the right pick, but I’ll give you five movies that sort of fit what this would be and then share the one that’s taking home the award. At this point in time, at least.

 

The nominees are…

Meet Me Next Christmas

Twisters

Lift

Kraven the Hunter

Ricky Stanicky

 

You see, Twisters was my original pick. I’ve seen it in theaters twice, and at the drive-in once. I don’t think it’s looked at all that negatively, though. People tend to think it’s okay. The movie that will actually be winning, however, isn’t looked at as favourably. What is it?

Congratulations, Kraven the Hunter. You have won The Paul Blart Memorial Award for 2024. There’s no prize for it. Know that you’re better than people say you are, and I will defend you as a decent superhero movie. Even if you didn’t know what kind of movie you wanted to be.  I could see myself watching you again and learning to love you.

And that brings the 2024 edition of… I don’t have a name for these awards. It brings my movie awards to a close for 2024. Or does it? I have a bunch of awards in my spreadsheet that I didn’t even get to. I could do a second post a little ways down the road. Maybe I’ll update some of the awards I gave out now with new winners. Maybe I’ll highlight some awards I hadn’t yet shared. Maybe there will be new movies included because I’m not going to just stop watching 2024 releases now that the awards are wrapped up.

I hope you enjoyed my awards. I know I enjoyed putting them in the spreadsheet this past year. I enjoyed coming up with some fun categories that weren’t just the best movies of the year or best performances of the year. It’s more entertaining that way. Why figure out the best movie when you can figure out the perfectly mid movie? Why highlight the best adapted screenplay when you can highlight the movie that tried the hardest to yank that nostalgic bone in the audience?

If you want more of this, let me know. I could toss together another one next month. An update. If not, the next awards post will wait until next year with the 2025 releases. I’ll see you in between with a bunch of other posts, I’m sure. Until then… I’ve got nothing.