#second act trouble

[invalidtumbls]

De-rezzed in the Second Act

So, I have this weird habit: I am fascinated not by perfect stories, but those that start well and fall apart for no particularly good reason. I remember seeing Atlantis: The Lost Empire in the theater and being carried away by the efficient setup in the first 20 minutes, only to hit a point when things slow down and thinking “wait, when did this suddenly start to suck?”

I hear ya Vinny. I’m bored too.

The problem, as story theorists know, is second act trouble. It’s that problem of the long middle of the story where initial enthusiasm fades, attention drifts, and momentum fails.

Well, that’s what it does when you’ve got second act trouble, anyways. Obviously, some movies/games/shows don’t have this problem, because they don’t have a defective second act. Nobody in 1977 came out of Star Wars saying “man, that stuff on board the Death Star went on way too long.”

Anyways, let’s define our terms. Three-act structure splits the story into three parts:

Setup — Introduce the characters and the situation. An inciting incident gets the ball rolling, ultimately leading to the first plot point, where an irreversible change occurs and the conflict begins.

Conflict — The protagonist attempts to achieve their goal, dealing with a progression of complications that arise naturally from each of their actions along the way. Eventually, this leads to the second plot point, at which the back-and-forth of the main conflict cannot continue, and a conclusion (for good or ill) must be reached.

Resolution — A new, final conflict ends the story, with the protagonist succeeding or failing (or, sometimes, a combination of both, like discovering the thing they originally wanted and have now attained isn’t what they actually need).

Thing is, these aren’t divvied up in tidy one-third portions. In practice, the acts are in more of a 25%-50%-25% split, or 20-50-30 if you go by the Scriptnotes podcast’s t-shirt. Author K. M. Weiland has an extraordinary site for story theorists that breaks all the key moments (or beats) of this structure into blogs, podcasts, and compilation books.

So, after seeing YouTube videos of the cool new Tron roller coaster at Disney World, I was reminded of 2010's Tron Legacy, the would-be franchise-relaunching, torch-passing, sci-fi film that basically did none of those things. It's another film that I remember deflates about halfway through, so I thought it would be worth a rewatch to see where it goes wrong.

This being a sequel to 1982’s Tron, you’d figure some the audience would need a reminder of the first film, since it had been been 28 years. You could just watch the first movie, but… surprise… Disney let it quietly go out of print in the year or two prior to the debut of Tron Legacy. Corporate incompetence? I’d argue quite the opposite: whatever you think of the original Tron, it’s not as good as you remember. To modern eyes, it’s clunky, talky, and slow, and certainly can’t coast on the power of its dated special effects. Chance are, if 2010 audiences could have gone back to watch Tron, they’d have been less likely to get tickets to Tron Legacy. Which is why I think Disney drained the retail market of Tron DVDs on purpose. After all, they were perfectly happy to issue a Blu-Ray of "Tron: The Original Classic" once Legacy had finished its theatrical run and got its home media release.

Come for the space frisbees, stay for the Wendy Carlos soundtrack that you remember from the arcade game.

So, instead, Tron Legacy opens with a scene of a digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges — well, a digitally de-aged back of Jeff Bridges’ head — reprising the character of Kevin Flynn, the protagonist of the first movie, a coder who went inside the computer called “The Grid” to defeat evil programs. He tells his son about how he fought alongside the heroic program “Tron”, and created another program named “Clu” to care for The Grid in Flynn’s absence. That’s basically everything you need to know from the first movie. All the other details — Sark, the MCP, Yori, Dumont — none of it matters. See how much time you saved by not rewatching it?

Next scene: info-dump. A news story reports Kevin Flynn’s disappearance, as it plays out over footage of the lonely, and increasingly troubled young Sam Flynn. It moves fast enough, and it’s fine for what it is.

Now, though, we are six minutes into the movie and don’t really know the protagonist. A 10-minute action sequence takes care of that. With an implicit timeskip, we see the young adult Sam speeding on his motorcycle, escaping the police, and breaking into the corporate tower of his father’s former company, which is having a board meeting to announce their new operating system. This is one of the already-dated bits of Tron Legacy: the now-evil version of ENCOM is a pretty obvious expy for Microsoft, as it prepares to launch its new operating system with a high new price tag and no new features.

When Apple did this, they called it “Snow Leopard” and everyone thought it was great. Shouldn’t we cut ENCOM a break?

I don’t think this bit lands today like it did just 13 years ago. People under 35 don’t recall Microsoft’s cutthroat monopoly days and mostly just know Microsoft as the Xbox company, not that different from Sony or Nintendo. An evil computer company today would probably be portrayed as directly creeping on its users, like Google or Facebook, or perhaps an Apple-style aesthetic dictatorship. Maybe with an Elon Musk caricature because, man, that dude is creepy.

As the board meeting continues, Sam sneaks into a server room and starts hacking, narrowly avoiding a security guard. As the board goes to launch their new OS, Sam’s hack reveals itself as a looping video of a barking dog, despite the “world-class security” claimed by the company. Better yet, Flynn’s last remaining loyalist at the company, Alan (the creator of the original “Tron” program), discovers that Sam’s hack has released the OS for free on the web.

At the top of the building, the security guard reaches Sam as he stands atop a crane. Sam, as the main shareholder in the company, justifies his hack as stealing from himself… then jumps off the building. Halfway down, he opens a parachute to complete his daring escape… except that he gets caught in a traffic light on the way down and the cops catch him.

Fifteen minutes into the film and Garret Hedlund is almost effortlessly charming. Pity it doesn’t last.

After bailing out of jail, Sam returns to his home — a makeshift bachelor pad built of stacked shipping containers — to find Alan waiting for him with news: Alan received an alert from a pager left to him by Kevin Flynn 20 years ago. From a long-since disconnected number.

Bruce Boxleitner has such a low-key charm, it’s a shame we didn’t see him in more stuff. Although now I’m sure you’re all going to tell me to watch Babylon 5, aren’t you?

Sam laughs off the idea that his father is waiting for him at the old arcade, but eventually rides over to check it out. Finding a secret room behind the “Tron” machine, Sam discovers Kevin’s office, and after a few ill-considered commands at the terminal, he gets zapped into The Grid.

So, in 20 minutes, there’s Act I. The essentials, from a story perspective:

Protagonist: Sam Flynn, genius hacker, prankster, lost-boy-without-a-father-figure trope.

The hook: Can Sam figure out what happened to Kevin Flynn all those years ago, and find him? And could doing so set things right both with Sam and the company?

The inciting event: Alan receives a page from Flynn’s pager, and lets Sam know.

First plot point: Sam is zapped into The Grid, the world inside the computer.

All told, this is really good. The movie efficiently gets us on board with a fun, exciting protagonist, and gives him a compelling purpose. You’d figure we’re in for a good time at this point.

(Reader, we are not in for a good time.)

OK, so Act II. There’s lots to do in the second act — it’s half the running time after all — so it’s helpful to break it down more granularly. Weiland writes, “[the] first half of the second act is where your characters find the time and space to react to the first major plot point.” Since the plot point was getting zapped into The Grid, it makes sense that the reaction — Sam’s first order of business — is figuring out where he is and what do to do. So we start with a five-minute sequence of Sam immediately being captured by the authorities, outfitted with his Tron-land uniform and identity disc, and brought to the game grid.

I hadn’t realized until this rewatch that Sam being pinned down by the Recognizer’s searchlight is a callback to when the police helicopter gets him back in Act I.

From here, we go into what everyone expects from the Tron movies: the videogame stuff. Sam immediately ends up in “Disc Wars”, the gladiatorial death frisbee from the first movie, albeit with updated effects. Using his innate athleticism and cleverness, he survives to a faceoff with the champion Rinzler, who wounds Sam and realizes from a blood drop that Sam is not a program, but a user. A mysterious figure lording over the games demands that Sam be brought to him.

As Sam is ferried up to the throne room, the mysterious figure reveals himself as the spitting image of the 35-year-old Kevin Flynn. Sam greets his dad and insists they go home, only to be told the leader isn’t Kevin Flynn after all. Sam realizes that this is Clu, a program that Flynn created (owing to the Tron convention that programs resemble the person who created them).

The convention of programs resembling their “users” also speaks to the mainframe-era idioms of the original Tron, when a user and programmer were one and the same, typically someone who wrote a program to solve computational problems for themselves.

Clu sends Sam back out to the game grid, presumably to die in combat in the lightcycle game. So, shut off your brain, we get another zippy five-minute action sequence. It’s playing out just like the original Tron at this point in the second act, arguably better because Act I established Sam’s motorcycle skills, so the lightcycle action sequence and his success in it is actually motivated by his character.

40 minutes in and he’s still charming. If only it had lasted.

Despite being outgunned by opponents with better equipment, Sam leads his team and puts up a solid fight. Eventually though, dirty tricks kill off his compatriots, leaving Sam with a wrecked bike and facing certain doom at the edge of Clu's outstretched disc. Suddenly, a four-wheeler bursts onto the grid and rescues Sam. The driver wrecks most of the pursuing lightcycles, then blasts a hole in the arena to escape to a barren outland beyond the grid, where the pursuers’ vehicles can’t operate. Removing her helmet, the driver introduces herself as Quorra, promising that Sam’s questions will be answered in due course.

Things slow down as the car weaves its way through hidden passages to a secret lair. Quorra brings Sam inside an elegant home, where a solitary figure resides in a seated meditation.

For those of you keeping track, the Blu-Ray is at 48 minutes, 30 seconds, and the movie is about to fall apart, though we don’t know it yet.

We’re now approaching the midpoint of the second act, and thus, the midpoint of the movie itself. This is a separate phase of the second act, one that is uniquely situated to keep the story from flagging. That is, if you actually do something with it. As Weiland writes:

The midpoint is what keeps your second act from dragging. It’s what caps the reactions in the first half of the book and sets up the chain of actions that will lead the characters into the climax. In many ways, the midpoint is like a second inciting event. Like the first inciting event, it directly influences the plot. It changes the paradigm of the story. And it requires a definitive and story-altering response from the characters.

So, a good story probably wants to do something big at the midpoint, something that changes the stakes, changes the conflict, and forces the protagonist to act. Revelations! Betrayal! Explosions! The good stuff!

Tron Legacy, by comparison, sits down to have dinner.

What’s wrong, Quorra? You haven’t had any of your uncannily realistic roast pig.

The reunion scenes with Sam and (Kevin) Flynn stretch out for about 15 minutes… a full one-eighth of the movie. It’s all dialogue, much of it while seated. That’s already tough to make dramatic. What’s even harder to chew through is a staggering amount of info-dumping:

Sam insists they leave the Grid together, but Flynn says it’s impossible.

Awkwardly, Sam and Flynn try to catch up over the lost years, but it turns to why Flynn didn’t return. Flynn explains the discovery of the “Isos”, isomorphic algorithms, a spontaneously-generated digital life form that could change the world.

As Flynn's story turns to flashback, Clu sees the Isos as a corruption of the perfect system Flynn created him to build, and stages a coup against Flynn. Tron (apparently) dies defending Flynn, who flees into exile to escape. With no one left to stop him, Clu commits genocide against the Isos, wiping them out in one stroke.

The portal between The Grid and the real world closes, trapping Flynn within. It can only be opened from the outside, meaning Sam’s entry has opened it.

Flynn suspects that Clu is organizing something, and that he wants the power of Flynn’s identity disc. Flynn reveals that he didn’t send the page to Alan, meaning that Clu must have done so, as a means of laying a trap to lure out Flynn.

Yeah yeah, I was around in the 80s. I remember “War Games” too.

It’s kind of a chore to get through all of this material. It’s good for the story to breathe after the action of the game grid, but 15 minutes is probably too much. And to be fair, this does meet one of the requirements of the midpoint: it changes the protagonist’s goals and actions. Sam realizes he can’t convince Flynn to come with him to the portal. Instead, as he explains to Quorra, if he can just get to the portal himself, then out in the real world he can delete Clu with just a keystroke. Quorra thinks about it, then gives him the contact information for “Zuse”, a program who can get anyone to anywhere. Sam takes this information, steals Flynn’s old lightcycle, and heads back into the Grid.

We are now at one hour, five minutes into the movie, and believe it or not, this is the last time in the movie that our protagonist will take action entirely on his own. But more on that later.

Sam meets a female program who takes him to the End of the Line Club to meet Zuse, through an intermediary named Castor. Meanwhile, Clu's forces find the lightcycle and trace it back to Flynn’s hidden lair. Sam negotiates with Castor (who turns out to be Zuse himself) for transport to the portal, but is betrayed when it all turns out to have been a trap and Clu’s forces crash in from above. This kicks off a big bar fight sequence — the first action in nearly a half-hour at this point — with Quorra arriving to help protect Sam.

The Daft Punk cameo is a cute touch, since the soundtrack they created is quite likely the most enduring and best thing about the film. It’s a pity the Blu-Ray doesn’t have a music-only audio track, because then you could turn the entire movie into a two-hour Daft Punk music video.

The fight goes badly, with Sam overwhelmed and Quorra losing an arm to one of Clu’s goons before Flynn arrives to use his convenient god-like powers to turn the tide of the fight. He urges Sam to escape with the wounded Quorra to the elevator, but as they leave, one of Clu’s minions steals Flynn’s identity disc: exactly what Flynn has tried to prevent all these years.

Flynn and Sam steal a solar sailer and set off, Flynn reluctantly agreeing to Sam’s plan to make a rush to the portal. With the in-flight downtime, Flynn starts to use his magical user power to start healing Quorra. As Sam watches Flynn work, he realizes the truth: Quorra is an Iso, in fact, the last surviving Iso.

And this pause gives us an opportunity to bring up something about Tron Legacy: what is the point of this entire exercise? Ideally, a good story should have a theme that it expresses. The title gives us a hint: "legacy", things left behind by previous generations.

There's a really interesting idea when you think about it: Flynn basically has three children in this story:

Sam, his biological human son.

Clu, the program he created literally in his own image.

Quorra, his adoptive Iso daughter.

…and it doesn’t really do anything with that idea. Clu is motivated not by his resentment of Sam (or Quorra, if he’s even aware of her), but by his political ambitions to create a perfect world. Sam arrives to see Quorra living with Flynn and doesn’t for a second consider the idea he’s been effectively replaced by her in his father’s concerns and affections. If anything, the movie wants us to see a spark of romantic interest between Sam and Quorra, and if years of watching anime on Crunchyroll has taught me anything, it’s to never fuck your sister, even if you’re not blood-related.

(Looks up suddenly, taps earpiece.) Uh, Wolf, I’m getting word that what anime actually says is to always fuck your sister. Back to you in Atlanta.

The scene of Flynn magically healing Quorra’s disintegrated arm also brings up what a missed opportunity this is. Between these three characters, they chose the least interesting option. To wit, could Sam heal Quorra? We’ve seen he’s got 1337 4ax0r 5k1llz back in Act I; does that give him magical abilities inside The Matrix The Grid? Do all users have that, or is it just Flynn?

Turn it around another way: what if it’s Flynn or Sam who gets injured. Can Quorra heal them? Flynn tells us that the Isos are these fascinating creatures who are going to reshape the real world, but we never see anything like that. Quorra is at best a quality Action Girl, but nothing she does in the story appears to have any relevance to her identity as an Iso. It’s another failure to “show, don’t tell”, in a movie that does an heck of a lot of telling to begin with.

Moreover, this sequence is taking us to the end of Act II. Citing Weiland again, this post-midpoint section is supposed to set up the protagonist for his or her final actions in Act III.

Because the second half of the second act will lead right into the slugfest of the climax, this is the author’s last chance to get all his playing pieces into position. We have to set up the line of dominoes that will knock into the final major plot point at the 75% mark, and we do that by creating a series of actions from the main character. Although he’s not likely to be in control of the situation, he’s at least moving forward and calling a few shots of his own, instead of taking it and taking it from the antagonistic force.

Tron Legacy has an even worse problem than the protagonist sitting back and taking it. Over the course of the last 10 minutes or so, Sam has been all but replaced as the protagonist by Flynn. Following the fiasco at the club, Flynn is the one driving the action (stopping the falling elevator in the escape from the club, healing Quorra) and providing all the information to drive us to the third act. Sam has been just going along with it, suddenly demoted to damn near sidekick status in the The Jeff Bridges Show Starring Jeff Bridges, with Special Guest Star Digitally De-Aged Jeff Bridges. Also appearing: Garret Hedlund and Olivia Wilde. And it's only going to get worse in Act III.

But before we get to Act III, there are two completely unnecessary scenes that drag even more momentum from a story that’s already at a virtual standstill:

Back at the End of Line Club, Castor/Zuse negotiates with Clu over Flynn’s identity disc. Clu coerces him into handing it over, then his minions bomb the club, killing Zuse inside. It’s now been almost 15 minutes since the breakout from the club, and the lead characters are long gone. Why should we care about Zuze? And if the point is to remind us that Clu is a cold-blooded murderer… um, I think we got that when he exterminated all the Isos.

On the solar sailer, Quorra tells Sam the story of how Flynn rescued her from The Purge that killed the Isos. She asks Sam what a sunrise is like, and he describes it in romantic terms as he briefly looks into her eyes. This could be a charming moment that lets the story breathe, if it weren’t for the fact that this whole second act has been largely sitting on its ass for nearly an hour.

No. Just no, OK? Don’t even think it, Sam Flynn.

At one hour, thirty two minutes into the film, we now head into Act III. The solar sailer arrives unexpectedly at an industrial facility, rather than the portal. The trio finds barges of kidnapped, zombified programs, who they realize are being amassed into an army by Clu. As they skulk about the facility, Quorra gives her disc to Flynn and makes a run for it. While she's easily captured by Rinzler, her distraction allows Flynn and Sam to further infiltrate the facility.

Plot point two, in screenplay theory, puts an end to the the conflict of Act II and forces the conclusion that will play out in Act III. Here, it comes in the form of Clu’s speech to his army, in which he reveals his plan: he will use the army he has created and take it through the portal, using Flynn’s identity disc, to conquer the real world.

Straight-up Triumph of the Will here, because Hitler Is Bad is the easiest point in the world to make.

The conflict of the second act was Sam trying to get back to the real world, preferably with Flynn in tow. Now that they know Clu’s plan, they can’t just run away. They have a new goal: Clu must be stopped here, on The Grid. That’s what takes us into Act III.

Well, for what it’s worth of course. We burned an hour in Act II not doing very much action-wise, not doing anything thematically, and spending just a staggering amount of time in flashback info-dumps. The momentum has fizzled, and this movie wouldn't be saved by Act III even if it were great.

As it is, Sam and Flynn split up, with Flynn getting an escape ship ready while Sam makes an all-too-easy trip up to the throne room to recover Quorra and the disc. Seriously, Flynn’s disc is the most important thing in the world and you’ve got like three guards? It’s a pretty rote action scene that takes less than three minutes of screen time, and that’s with intercutting to Clu finishing his speech and reacting to an alarm when the disc goes missing.

As the trio take off in a stolen lightplane — with Quorra driving, Sam shooting, and Flynn calling the shots (because he’s all but the protagonist at this point) — they get chased by Clu, Rinzler, and their goons, basically replaying the lightcycle sequence, but now it’s flying.

And the thing about this is, the action doesn’t really lean on anything specific to Sam or Quorra that’s been established earlier in the movie. There’s one line about how Sam’s glider-assisted escape from the throne ship tower is a trick he learned a few nights prior at ENCOM Tower. But there’s nothing really thematically about Sam, who he is, what he values, how he solves problems — no “use the Force, Luke” moment — because the prior two acts never really set any of that up. So what’s left now is pew-pew CGI light show.

At least they should have gotten a good PS4 game out of this, right?

Dispatching the pursuers — including Rinzler, who turns out to be the corrupted Tron in a subplot that feels like it just barely escaped being left on the cutting room floor — the trio reaches the portal, only to find Clu waiting to confront them. So now, with Clu standing between them and their goal, does Sam take the role of the protagonist and vanquish the antagonist once and for all? Does he deliver the thematic truth, proving the righteousness of his world-view, and putting a bow on the whole point of the story?

What, are you kidding? No, of course not. Because this is Tron Legacy. Flynn does it instead.

If you squint, you can just barely see the putative protagonist, out of focus in the background.

Flynn offers a reconciliation; Clu rejects it Because Evil. After a brief fight, Clu retakes Flynn's disc, only to discover he's been tricked by a switcheroo and is holding Quorra's disc, while Sam and Quorra make their escape with the real disc. Clu attempts to stop them, forcing Flynn to use his Magical User Power to merge with Clu, seemingly killing them both, or at least reducing them to a little glowing light, which match-dissolves to Sam back in the real world, saving something (possibly Flynn’s data) to a USB stick.

After this climax, there’s just wrap-up bits of falling action in the real world to whip through before the credits. Sam finds Alan at the arcade, telling him to meet tomorrow morning at ENCOM Tower to retake the company. And we end with a cute shot — even if so much of the film doesn’t work, it is a lovely note to end on — of Sam on his motorcycle giving a now-human Quorra a ride and showing her the sunrise.

For the last time, Sam, do not bang your de facto stepsister.

So, what have we learned? I’d argue that the problems of the second act that doom the film aren’t just that not enough happens. That kind of audience-gets-bored-easily thinking is what gets us more dumb, loud movies. I think the problem of the second act is that it loses track of what the story was supposed to be about, if it ever had a point at all. The story raises a question of what would happen if the son ever finds his long-lost father inside the computer, but never settled on a good answer before they started banging out pages. And with no point to the whole exercise, there’s no natural pull of where the story should go. Perhaps it’s inevitable that Flynn ends up stealing the movie from Sam, because there’s no answer, no conclusion, that Sam’s story is working towards.

Still, the movie got one thing right: ORIGINAL MUSIC BY DAFT PUNK.

It’s a widely acknowledged truth that the Tron Legacy soundtrack is the best coding music ever created. As a software engineer, I can confirm.

[lemonandtheart]

Donnie got a little too carried away with his experiment...

[chrollohearttags]

everything that could go wrong today has and I’m just ready to call it quits for this year while I’m ahead. Not even going to try anymore.

[talentforlying]

@thicketville: meta: did john ever want to go to college? what would he have studied if he did? if not, did he ever want any sort of higher education, like a vocational degree or apprenticeship? — META TOPICS.

i think college was always a very distant concept for him growing up: more 'something that happens to posh people in the big cities' than a potential career path. john's father was a dock worker before losing his arm and most of their relatives did labor-intensive jobs in and around either the coal mines or the docks, so for anyone who actually thought john had a future — which was very few people, if anyone — it was sort of expected that he'd wind up in the same realm of work. they could never hope to afford college, so cheryl wouldn't have brought it up to him as a possibility, because john was a dreamer of a kid and would've gotten himself in trouble with their father if he insisted on pursuing it.

honestly, john's childhood was lived one day at a time, and nobody really thought he was going to survive past the teenage years (least of all john), so he really never considered a future for himself at all, other than "one day i'll get out of here". and even that felt like a pipe dream before he discovered magic. these days, i don't think he spends time considering what might have been anymore, because the past is the past and it eats him alive already without him helping it along, but in a perfect, perfect world, i think he would've loved college, and maybe gone into creative writing.

[bliphany]

The way Aziraphale kept behaving around Crowley, and those glances he was having, throughout the whole season 2… I believe, and I’ll hold this belief with my whole life, that he was building up to make a similar confession to Crowley but hadn’t the courage nor opportunity. He thought Matatron’s “good news” was the perfect chance, their happily ever after. But no… I remembered Michael Sheen talked about how Aziraphale and Crowley both started the same journey but ended up to two very different places in one interview.

[alittleemo]

please god how hard is it to not say snarky things as soon as I’m in the apartment. i am going to walk 500 million miles back to my home if that gets me out of here sooner

[vampacidic]

anzu + leo are the two opposite ends of the autism spectrum. silent girl who stares at you blankly vs guy who literally yells and bites and screams at every possible occasion. they are best friends btw

[zeynatura]

.

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

Honestly the writing surrounding April wasn’t great in 2012 (okay it was at times a goddamn mess and they had too much going on there, streamline things people) but I don’t trust people who really (obsessively even), seem to hate her and yet apparently love and adore that shows versions of Donatello and Casey.

Please.

[binnie]

you guys.... i'm going down a spiral and I need advice

[mrfoox]

The fact I refuse to confront/inform the people who have basically ruined my mental state and my ability to function bc that would make them feel bad is honestly bonkers

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Woo I did some writing!!

[tiredsadpeach]

Did not need that lmao

[bugsbenefit]

wait are people seriously worried over Noah saying he doesn't think Mike likes Will back??? guys, no! that's literally a good thing what

actors LIE during promos, they need to they have NDAs. especially leading up to show's finale where you usually get the biggest reveals, actors tend to say more things that are Untrue than true. if an actor announces a major plottwist before it happens, even if it comes across jokingly, that is going to look BAD on their general credibility to other directors later on, especially after the season airs and everyone realises that the actor just gave the plot away in advance

sometimes actors genuinely make educated guesses that end up being right but those are usually about things that don't concern their character. minor plot beats. will there be a happy ending. who do they want to see interact. etc. all things the audience is aware they don't really know themselves

but as soon as it comes to the actors' own characters they lie almost all the time. because everyone in the room realises they must at least know Something about that. so anything they say usually gets taken at face value and treated seriously, if they spoil something here they're in Trouble

i would actually be really weirded out here if Noah just came out and said Mike definitely liked Will back. he'd be giving a massive spoiler. that would be what'd make me question what's going on with byler. but him saying he doesn't think it will happen? perfect, he saved himself from the NDA basement prison, plot twist left intact

[lionblaze03-2]

I keep hearing people saying that nobody cared that to break in a glove was cut from the deh movie alongside other way more important songs but they’re wrong. I care. I’ve always cared. Larry my boy what did they do to you

[voidthewanderer]

Welp, guess it’s time to escape into a video game, I’m the bad guy again.