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Characters can only be as smart as the people writing them, and most of the writers in "Hollywood" are diversity hires. You're welcome.

Sage was just lazy writing

I was just about to say he was describing Aizen from Bleach, and then he mentioned him.

I had the same issue with the professor in the highly rated Netflix's Money Heist, couldn't finish the series because everything ends up being "all according to his plan".

I disagree with your assessment of Sage. I did see her plan take shape, encounter difficulties, adjust, and overcome to position Homelander where she agreed to get him positioned. And as far as curing cancer, she said that she presented a cure for cancer because she had a family member dying from it. However, because she lacked the usual credentialing, her cure was dismissed as foolish and stupid - while her family member died. And that jaded her to society. So I do not think it is fair to suggest the show portrays that casually.

Such a great video. I think another good example of a smart character is Dr. House from House M.D. He's a perfect example of making observations and having a thought process that can be followed by the audience (although I doubt most viewers know and understand the diseases and medical problems discussed) yet still seems impressive. He also constantly makes mistakes, which he learns from and uses to diagnose the medical issue; but, his mistakes doesn't detract from his intelligence because House is always forced to work with very limited information and "everyone lies," so it seems natural that he would get stuff wrong. His failures also make it much more dramatic and satisfying when he figures out what the issue is.

You are the only person in 2024 who thinks he still should stay dead lol. If anything he wont stay dead imo

6:23 Well, one's real but not attainable and the other is a fantasy ( as popularly presented). So she falls flat right there.

A great example of a smart character that doesn’t seem pretentious or ‘in-your-face genius’ all the time is Thomas Shelby from Peaky Blinders. He can be arrogant, usually strategically as a show of control, but his plans are usually quiet, carefully planned/thought out, and cleverly executed. It’s similar to the ‘I knew all along’ trope, I think. Sometimes things we don’t realize are part of his plan end up being exactly that, though it doesn’t always work out for him. Tommy keeps others in the dark as much as he possibly can, only sharing bits and pieces of information necessary for the plan . Only he ever knows the full piece- not even the audience ever knows all of what he’s thinking and doing until it’s over, putting it together like a puzzle. The big plan usually occurs in the finale episode each season, with parts of the plan being built up through the season. We also get hints towards secret things that will be a part of Tommy’s plan later, and it’s so satisfying when you get to that later episode and realize there were so many small, seemingly unimportant details to tell you about it before you knew what it meant. I think Tommy keeps so much secret and to himself in order to keep the plan as tight as possible and prevent any loose ends. He doesn’t want to put his family in danger any more than he must, and as we see throughout the show he is also convinced that he’s the only person capable of doing most of it and he’s afraid of letting others in. This is both a flaw of his and one of his more sympathetic qualities. The show does a great job with not getting too repetitive about it, and developing Tommy’s character in a way that feels realistic. It doesn’t erase his qualities, but we see how his plans change as his life and business evolves. Excellent show that really trusts the audience, never treating you like you’re stupid while also never being pretentious or obnoxious about its cleverness.

it's Sam Vimes with an M XD ... just sayin doesn't really matter he's just my fave discworld character

Zemo’s plan in Captain America Civil War is a dumb smart character

Sherlock is not deducing, he's inducing - going from the detail to the general, and it is popular among screenwriters, sadly, screenwriters are seldom skilled at inductive reasoning, and therefore they make the "smart" characters look like lucky idiots that are full of themselves.

The Sherlock show attempted to have the meeting between the two true to the story. In the original story the details presented would’ve been significantly stronger for inferring Watsons past compared to today.

The characters in “The Diplomat” television series feel like well-written intelligent characters.

Breaking bad, Batman, and Death Note has fantastic intellectual characters

It's wild that Sherlock was written moe cleverly in 1954.

great rewrite!

Both characters in the preview use magic. Although I don't know from which movie this black woman. This Sherlock is not "smart", his mind far exceeds any humanly conceivable boundaries, it is a magical mind.

An unfortunate realisation I am having is that Nolan's Joker falls under the retroactive genius trope. His super power was controlling coincidence and chance themselves haha.

I had a coworker. He said he was going to (town with the state prison) for the weekend. I asked "visiting someone in prison?", which caught him off guard. "Yeah." So then I asked "wife or girlfriend?" "Huh?" The object of his DV, wife or gf?" "Oh, gf/baby momma." and he looked at me like I was flipping insane. A real smart person is able to decision tree down to a few possibilities, and from there ask "impossible" questions to prove they know the answer while filling in the last 1% of information. Bob wouldn't be visiting a friend in prison who was a [bad crime here], so it had to be common and bad enough to go to prison, but not bad enough nobody would want to visit. The most likely answer to that is domestic violence. So, whether it's gf or wife is a simple guess, so I followed up with the question to avoid another guess, and to validate all the guesses which got me there. And I asked in a manner like he had given me the man's life story before. That's how a real smart person does it. The educated guesses, narrowed down to probabilities, then assumptions on the most likely answers, down to a single answer, then confirm the answer with a simple follow up question. Reacher did it well in Season 1 with "beantown bitch", but he failed to ask the obvious question about the ring. "dead or divorce". Assuming divorce from his age was an error, and could have been fixed with a question on the final piece, not a wrong guess. But for narrative effect, they left that story to later in the season. Another problem with smart people is making them dumb for one scene or in some context to move the plot along.8 The Mentalist does this by making Jane too dumb to realize there are multiple people acting for Red John until after it's revealed to the audience. Also, Red John is "met" in season one, and nobody notices anything. So clearly Jane is no more observant than you or me. Except he is supposed to be super-human. It's inconsistent. Lots of medical dramas have the same problem, where the smart guy screws it up when the plot demands it.

??? I don’t think you understood the films at all. Ren’s motivation in TFA was to complete what his grandfather started. Which was to unite the Galaxy. In TLJ he tells Rey to ‘let the past die’ (ie. Let go of old ways) and create a new government. He asks her to join him in creating this new government. Then in TROS, he plans to go along with Palpatine to get access to his ships and resources. Kill Palpatine (with the help of Rey) and rule the galaxy. How did you seriously miss or not all of this? It seems to be more of a case of not that the films were badly written. But you didn’t pay attention.

You should do Ron he got absolutely railed by the movie adaptation

Bro I’m watching this channel assuming it has millions of views wtf dude keep grinding you got it

I'm super late but I think you missed a major important point about Sage. For a super genius character, there are actually two rules. As you explained in your video, one rule is that when they win, it needs to be because of something they could have foreseen or planned and can't just be random nonsense. The other rule is that when they lose, the reason why they lost can't be "I didn't think of that". There has to be another valid reason why they lost, and if the reason is "I didn't think of that", there needs to be a valid in-story reason why they didn't think of that even though they are a super genius. Sage broke both of these rules. As you explained, she broke rule 1 when she showed up at the end and said "hahaha this was always my plan" even though she couldn't have possibly planned that. But she also broke rule 2 when The Boys showed up at the billionaire party. She knew the whole time that A Train was the mole. She knew that there was a chance The Boys knew about the party. She knew they might show up to the party, but when they did she was genuinely surprised and had no plan for if they showed up. She ended up getting got and did stuff she didn't plan due to the brain damage she suffered. Because she "didn't think of that" when it came to "what to do if the enemies who know about this gathering and have a reason to inflitrate this gathering show up".

To 8:30, I always assume the character is arrogant/ attempting to make themselves appear intelligent to improve their situation.

For Sherlock, Elementary is actually the best representation of what a modern day Sherlock would look like. The guy is shown as intelligent, but the other characters are shown as intelligent too, irene adler doesn't take her clothes off to be smart, and sherlock is also sexually active in a way that would be normal for a kind of weird smart guy who sees things through his own filter. Oh - and he goes for alcoholics anonymous meetings and his habits and his transgressions are shown as a separate part of his character, something that he needs to work on, not something that adds to his "quirkiness". Overall, the mysteries are actually beautifully written - the police do their job, Watson is actually pretty capable in her own right, and sets up her own practice when Sherlock is not practicing, and the mysteries are solved organically, and it is obvious that he's smarter than the rest of them - just not in the way that makes the investigation all about him. Also, irene adler doesn't make the ringtone on Sherlock's phone, "aaah" but is an actual love interest. Abd moriarty is also a more normal evil, and has a great character arc. The only place this misses out? It gets boring after the first few seasons.

The smartest people I’ve ever met were not characterised by always being immediately correct about stuff, but by their ability to seek and process information well enough and being willing and able to change their minds when needed.

In the defence of Sherlock, you can actually practice his memorization/observation techniques. There’s a really good book on it called Mastermind that I highly recommended

Read the book, I didn’t like the plot. Saw the play this weekend, my mind hasn’t changed, the plot was still crap and didn’t make sense to who the characters were in the original series. The effects were cool, and the seamless transfiguration of characters to who they are pretending to be from the polyjuice potion was awesome. But everything else, for the most, part was cringe. Even the transition dancing was just weird and overused. The constant cape flapping also started to become obnoxious to witness. The characters were written poorly, and some of the dialogue dragged on too much and became cringe. The actors gave it their best with a terrible script. I did like Myrtle though she was the highlight for me.

The boys girl actually has a benefit where you can see on her face what she actually planned for ans what was just getting lucky

I would posit that the inconsistencies in the behaviour of "smart people" on-screen is only going to annoy a small percentage of the audience because the rest won't spot them. Shows like "The Boys" (which I love btw) are written to appeal to the majority. I read yesterday that the top 2 search terms on Google last week were "what is a tariff" and "can I change my vote". This is what we have to work with..

When Hollywood wants to write a super smart genius character, they start by making everybody else in the story really really stupid.

Whilst you are undoubtedly correct in everything you say, the thing you are missing is that if all intelligent characters were written in this very realistic way that you outline, it would often be a much more boring result. People like characters like Sherlock Holmes, Monk, Will Hunting for the very fact that they have these seemingly superhuman powers of intelligence. It is too a level that can't be comprehended, which makes it attractive. This is exactly the same concept as the movie Equilibrium. The characters in that movie evade being killed because they have superhuman abilities to deduce the likely way a fight will play out, thus avoiding harm. It is preposterous to think they could get things exactly right any more than 10% of the time, but they do, and it's entertaining. Now, if you want to write a story that's firmly grounded in reality then sure, write No Country For Old Men. That is great too, but it is just different.

I think the comparison between the examples falls a bit flat, because those good examples show smart people, but Sherlock for example is supposedly the smartest person in the room and on another level. I fully agree with the issues pointed out, I just think Tyrion's plan would feel not smart enough in a Sherlock Holmes story. I would be curious if anyone can think of a good example of a genius-level character.

It's worth noting that a lot of Holmes' deductions when he meets Watson are straight from the book, albeit updated for the modern day. You might have to blame Conan Doyle for that one.

In my point of view, one way to write a smart plotter, is to not reveal the plan to the audience before the end, but showing the character doing the steps one by one, leaving everyone guessing before the reveal. It can be a way, I think to counter the "magic genius" thing. Making character actually do stuff. Need to assassinate someone ? Have the objective told but not the plan, then leave the character prepare the trap, scene by scene, manipulating, moving pawn until his target fall on the trap. Make the steps of the plan : the actual character arc and plot.

The problem with smart characters is that they're only as smart as the writers.

I think the problem is that on most occasions there is not enough time to tell. If I look at real life - the intelligent people were the ones that talked when everybody else ran out of ideas or wasn´t able to follow. E.g. during lecture there was one guy that could always follow the subject matter and ask questions on the matter. Another "problem" is that intelligence is a bit fuzzy. E.g. remembering numbers, having a large vocabulary, ... is part of an intelligence test. Tyrion showed cunning and deception. In his introduction he showed wisdom by telling the Bastard to be one - so others cannot weaponise it against him. He behaves obnoxious, because he knows he can. He won´t get anything important in the family, but he is family - so his scandals are annoyance, but no barrier to entry, as he does not expect to hold any higher office. Tyrion felt human, because it was explained how he became the bookworm. He is a dwarf. He cannot fight, he will not gain the family title, ... Sage has no real limitations and that makes her impossible to handle. She does not get the screen time required to how her abilities. We only get a small apartment full of books - which shall convey she red them. There is a video - I think it was Umberto Eco - in his library full of books and he is searching for one book and he knows where to look.

The problem is - a character can only be as smart as a writer is.

yo can anybody tell me what breed of pup that little dog is, bro looks very cute 1:52

You see her doing this as well in the Cormoran Strike novels as well

Well stated!

Dr House was a good example of a smart character. House would have an idea but then he would examine the idea. He was wrong all the time, but that's part of the work it takes to become right. He wasn't magically right every single time.

Great video. The only problem is that the level of intelligence expressed by the character is limited by the writer's own intelligence. What if they just don't know an intelligent way to solve a problem they created in the story?

Smart means you worked harder than everyone else at a specific thing. Chances are, it didn't feel like work because you have something driving you.

I love your RUclips channel, such a fount of knowledge, a real gem. You've just gained a new subscriber👍❗️

even you get it wrong. intelligence is one's capacity for thought, aka their thoughts per minute. smart characters think faster. its that simple. they figure things out faster, meaning clever moments come sooner and more often. intelligence is not one's deductive ability, nor is it their skill in figuring things out. those traits are entirely separate.smart people are still flawed and make mistakes. any flaw a normal character has, a smart one can have too. they are just more clever and realize things sooner. from what i have seen, the new holmes show gets intelligence right. the guy thinks at orders of magnitudes faster than others, and all of his deductions make sense. he still makes mistakes and plans fail, he still acts rashly, so on and so forth. it could still have the "oh i planned this conversation 6 months ago" problem, but that would probably be it.

In movies, you know which is the super smart character because all other characters keep saying what a super smart person, he/she is. Lazy yes, but most people in the audience have never met anyone who is super smart, so how else are they to know? Solve a Rubics cube instead?

The very essence of sherlock holmes (original book) doesn't make sense, it's just entertainment, have good character tho