Post-Apocalyptic Obsession - Intentionally Blank Ep. 157
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- Опубликовано: 28 июн 2024
- Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells get together to talk about the many fascinating aspects of post apocalyptic worlds and why we are drawn to write about them and talk about them.
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Chapters
(0:00) - The Many Planets of the Apes
(1:51) - The Odd Success of the franchise
(4:07) - Overcoming a Legacy
(7:13) - A Miracle Movie
(9:40) - The New Story Telling
(13:45) - The Novella its all based on
(14:13) - Post Apocalyptic in General
(15:33) - Hard to Swallow Story Pills
(16:53) - Waterworld
(18:27) - Fallout Talk
(23:27) - Helldivers 2
(24:20) - Our Fascination With Post-Apocalypse
(28:17) - Brandon's Video Game Dream
(30:00) - Cyperpunk Being Trapped 
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"Marky Mark and the MONKEY bunch" it was right there lol
😂😂😂😂👍🏽
That was literally what they were called back in the day. Very racist, yes, but more than a few people said it out loud.
For writers, a post-apocalypse lets you clear the board and pick and choose which elements to carry forward from the real world. For readers, a post-apocalypse is essentially optimistic - even the end of the world isn't the end of the world: people not only survived the apocalypse, but have turned it around and are rebuilding.
Hello Oliver, keep up the great work
Yes! Waterworld was totally underrated and probably one of the best post-apocalyptic movies I've seen.
Hearing about it makes me want to watch it again. I am going to need to find the director cut he was talking about
Yeah I loved it a lot back in the days, also need to rewatch some time. Even though the premise is ridiculous. All ice on earth melting would raise sea levels maybe 20 meters at best.
Water world is so dumb that it caused me to retroactively flunk out of school.
In the Mad Max movies society still exists and they’re still making gasoline. Battling for control of the oil/gasoline refinery in the desert Outback (read: Middle East) is literally the plot of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
In Mad Max: Fury Road each enclave has something they specialize in making. One is bullets, for instance, while another is gasoline. (In the parlance of the Mad Max wasteland, “guzzle-een”.)
In Waterworld there’s none of that. They’re just running on oil from the Exxon Valdez (“The Deez”), while trading in several-hundred-year-old cigarettes.
Then there’s the mystic mumbo-jumbo that barely makes sense within the dumb, weird world of the movie, not to mention the nonsensical map tattoo.
On top of that, they try for a lame Planet of the Apes type of ending when it’s revealed that Dryland is actually the peak of Mount Everest, combining that with the end of Road Warrior. Badly ripping off two movies doesn’t make a film good.
Waterworld is like Event Horizon, just so dumb on every level. (Event Horizon is the only movie I’ve ever seen that manages to get both astrophysics and metaphysics wrong at the same time.)
I never understood the hate for it either, I was enthralled when I saw it.
@@KyleOfTheNorth I think it's like Brandon and Dan were saying. It was more a commentary on spending too much on The movie than on the content. Hollywood doesn't even bat an eye at spending that much now.
The Peripheral on Amazon was excellent; I was saddened when I heard season 2 was canceled.
Caesar is one of the most compelling characters I've seen in a film and imo far and away the best part of the new apes movies. The sci-fi stuff is good, and the human characters are all incredible, but Caesar is the heart and soul of the story. I liked Kingdom well enough but was really feeling his absence.
One post-apocalyptic story that had a bit of a renaissance recently is the Hunger Games trilogy. I’m in the middle of my first re-read as an adult and it’s surprisingly well done commentary and storytelling for YA!
There’s a new book and it’s Haymitch!!
It's called a "Willful suspension of disbelief" that's how we're able enjoy and feel along with the story.
Hi Oliver!
I love Waterworld! So many people who like the genre hate it and I've never understood why.
Probably because when it’s not relentlessly dumb it’s ridiculously silly. Lethal combo.
There is a RUclips channel dedicated to water world and it's production. It's call 'the atoll'.
I'm so glad that someone else appreciates these new Planet of the Apes movies. I haven't seen the 4th yet... 🤞
I didn't like it as much as 1 or 2, but I thought it was really great! Just as good as the third imo.
It's fantastic. I liked it better than 2 and 3. All 4 have been great, and I'm ready for a 5th.
Not as good as 2 or 3 but still great and made me really excited for what’s comes next, Noa is a worthy follow up to Caeser
To me, post-apocalyptic is all about redemption. See this bad thing happens and while there's always bad people Good people make good things happen.
The Stand by Stephen King is still the best post apocalyptic story I’ve come across, inclusive of books, tv shows and movies. It’s also heavily influenced the entire genre
Waterworld wasn't a huge success, but it actually turned a profit in the end. Way underrated.
Have Brandon and Dan ever talked about 'Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura'? I really wonder what their thoughts on that one would be. AMAZING world-building!
What a gem of a game. It lives rent free in my head all these years later.
Brandon is signing Mistborn books and they are talking Post-Apocalyptic * doing some napkin math* the Mistborn phase 3 is going to take place in a Post-Apocalyptic world after the fall of technology!!! I got you this time Sanderson! I got you....
*puts on tinfoil hat* Glad we have our resident genius here- I would never catch the Easter eggs otherwise!
Cyberpunk era
@@chrislayman538 I support this!
You know, Mistborn 2 is already technically post apocalyptic…
Yeah, it could be argued that both Eras 1 & 2 are post-apocalyptic in some way, I'm pretty sure society in Era 3 is going to look more like the society in Yumi, but less Asian.
I think one aspect of popular fascination with post- apocalyptic is that as future facing beings, we are constantly absorbing information about what may happen in the future so as to prepare in some way.
its most likely bioelectrical programming from the fallout of the finno korean hyper war
Best Part of New Vegas is the radio. I loved everything about that.
The first Ape film is solid and a well-done reboot for the series. But the second film takes the story to the next level and is a legitimately great film. I started the third film last night and it's a bit slow, but we'll see how the second half plays out tonight.
It's the best of the lot.
The first three ape movies are all about Caesar. For me it is pretty perfect trilogy telling his story.
I am happy to see Brandon finally commited to employing children, the kids yearn moving signed papers.
Can't wait for Earth's Mad Max phase!
Planet of the Apes is one of those franchises that I can acknowledge all the merits of, but it doesn’t particularly excite me. And when I read Children of Time it cracked the case wide open: I’m just not that into apes.
It speaks to the absolute brilliance of Tchaikovsky’s writing that I could do a complete 180 on my arachnophobia after the scene with the spider astronauts. But also because Planet of the Apes is kinda a downer if you’re rooting for humans and Children of Time isn’t as hopeless. (Haven’t read Children of Ruin yet).
Easy answer to that last bit. Don’t root for the humans in the new movies.
I love the Children books. Honestly, though, I 100% wanted the humans to die off. They are the least interesting parts of the books for me.
The new PotA series is flat-out amazing. I also like how they slipped in several moments of religious allegory and historical callbacks while decontextualizing them. It’s also scarily accurate how the ending credits paralleled the spread of Covid 9 years before it happened.
If you watch the first one (“Rise”) carefully (or several times, like I have), you’ll notice on a TV there’s a brief news report about the spaceship Icarus entering Mars orbit, then later there’s a newspaper with the headline “Lost In Space?” The Icarus, of course, is the spaceship from the 1968 film, captained by George “Bright Eyes” Taylor. The implication being we’ll see those astronauts return in a future installment.
The Blood of Heroes is a post-apocalyptic sports film from 1989 and a real treat. If you never hurt anyone for any reason other that sticking a dog's skull on a stake it might be for you. Watch the extended cut titled "Salute of the Jugger" for a better ending.
If Dan does try New Vegas I would recommend modding it to start with as it has trouble running on modern systems. The Viva New Vegas Project has done a good job of modding the game for modern compatibility.
And if I may recommend an apocalyptic / post apocalyptic game, Project Zomboid has been my favorite game for near on a decade and is still being updated today. One of if not the best zombie survival game ever made.
Hey, that chase in Thunderdome is excellent, it's awesome and funny
I hate apocalypse and post apocalypse, but I ADORE post post apocalypse. My first really big writing project was post post apocalypse and was generally speaking very positive with the focus on the very concerted effort of a small population to restore the planet and get things back in balance. It was good to have the balance between the struggle and limitations, but things trending good. Post apocalypse too often just feels pointless and I can't care.
While extremely (and meaningfully) gritty, Cyberpunk 2077 tells an incredibly impactful story, and while told completely through the eyes of the player character, extremely well-told. Big recommend if you can handle the intense thematic content.
Six-String Samurai is one of the best underrated post-apocalyptic films. Low budget, but still worth watching. Nice shoes!
When do we tell Brandon that Final Fantasy Tactics TO THIS DAY has the most comprehensive and cohesive narrative in the whole franchise? Bless this man's precious time that he'll never have the time to change his mind on it 😂
One aspect of post-apocalyptic media created after the 2000's is that people who were born in the 70's and 80's and 90's were constantly told that there is end of the world coming, be it nuclear or year 2000 or climate change and when none of this actually happened it created this subconscious thirst for it which is being slaked by the media. The corporate greed idea has become so much stronger because we are now very much aware just how much corporate greed has damaged everything.
I've only seen the Marky Mark one. You know, the good one.
I think another aspect of why we enjoy post apocalypse is a sense of hope. Yes, the world went to Crem, but we (as a species) are still holding on and surviving the best we can.
I just realized that Brandon just has a stack of the first sig that he's signing.
Max is the perfect stand in for the player character. He is helps those who help him and he is extremely cruel to those who cross him. Also Int was his dump stat because he is clearly doing an Idiot Savant build.
I thought I was the only one who watched The Peripheral! Thanks for mentioning it Dan!
Demolition Man has a post apocalyptic vision of a Utopia... with Taco Bell.
Pizza Hut in some regions!
Really cool of dragonsteel to create an actual apocalypse as the backdrop of this episode
Both you voices are really pleasant to listen to.
The original novel was also Earth in the future. The movie took advantage of the a/v medium and showed the iconic Statue of Liberty scene. In the end of the book they show it was Earth all along, but at the same time they showed the apes getting farther in their space age then we ever did.
Great video!
I wrote a while ago, this article about the Apocalypse Appeal :
What is so fascinating about apocalypses-maybe because they are more closely aligned with our own. Or the impossibility of constructing a fantasy world that was once real and complete...then taking a giant hammer and smashing it apart with wild abandon. then laughing manically as the setting tries to fix itself. Who knows.
Maybe it is destruction... There is something so cathartic about seeing worlds burn down. Perhaps our brains are just that: "Oh, look, there's fire on the tree, pretty." It's like how people will sit outside burning buildings and just watch. Whatever the consequences are be damned, we enjoy destruction instinctually. It is a very human want and need, to watch something be destroyed, and then question how it was destroyed. People don't care about an ancient civilization most times, they care about how they fell.
I don't know-maybe that's the appeal for an author. You worked for nearly a decade to set the world on fire by seeing everything around you. Smile as you sit in the center like the Pope during the Black Plague as the audience frantically tries to put it all back together. while you watch in amusement. I don't know; maybe I am just projecting. But it's a fascinating subject in fantasy writing. That, I feel, isn't really talked about at length.
I'm not sure about what the audience's perspective is on apocalyptic fantasy as well. It's kind of interesting from my perspective. I've not talked to many people who could vocalize or interpret their own thoughts on the setting and what they liked about it. It's always "it's cool" or some umming and awing. I am looking for a bit more introspection here.
Uncertainty? Uncertain.
So why make this thread? For one, I feel that something I find deeply interesting in my journey as a writer of fantasy is that in general, it needs to have stories about uncertainty. I've read dozens of stories; where is the mystery of how something happened?
only for it to turn out that the hidden thing was just not what I imagined. I feel cheated every single time. I believe that the audience is missing a key component of that world, and the prospect of having to learn about it is both intriguing and appealing. like putting puzzle pieces together. I've always advocated in my writers group, guilds, and general writing advice that it's sometimes better to leave it unanswered than to have it answered. Sometimes the most important questions in your life do not need to be answered.
I know when I went to the ruins of IRL cities, I went through ghost towns and visited dilapidated villages overgrown by vines and trees. My hometown, Chicago, was built on the ruins of itself; it was burned to the ground, and much of its foundations still stand.
It is a thriving city built on old ruins. I was so taken back by the sheer volume of knowledge we still don't have. How many lives have been lived and died without our knowledge? It's strangely gripping as a narrative. How many times have I wanted to know the history of a single town but never understood why it was like that?
When you finally get video game time Hades 2 has been phenomenal
Apocalyptic sci-fi I think is popular with writers because it gives a get out of jail free card to write (near) future stories without the pesky modern story limitations like every character can talk to anyone anywhere anytime and access almost all knowledge because mobile technology and internet or weird isolated communities that can't exist because of world trade etc.(even though we do have North Korea so its possible to some extend). Either that or you have to go far future and do something like Dune.
As long as I live, I will always maintain that there is no way that Fury Road did not come with at least one casualty during the making of that film.
With how many ACTUAL, PRACTICAL EFFECTS there were, the stunts involved, at the VERY LEAST, a serious injury has to have been incurred, somewhere, in at least one instance.
I'm sure someone has said it before but all of this discussion makes me think Brandon would love the Horizon games (Zero Dawn and Forbidden West). Big open world pseudo FPS game with a ton of cultural and scientific worldbuilding
Regarding the premise of stuff like the gasoline in Mad Max, I love a line from a 80s movie called Dead Heat. In it, the cops find a machine to resurrect criminals, and their scientist colleague explains to them. One of them says "but what about the soul?" and she says, very scientifically, "they found a way."
I think that line is great. And it can be repeated for stuff that doesn't matter. Surely, in the "future" of Mad Max, right before everything went to hell, gasoline doesn't go bad because "they found a way."
The Apes book actually has two back-to-back twists at the end and one is quite similar to what happens in the Burton film.
$100 million Sanderson Video Game Kickstarter let's gooooo
The modern apes trilogy is one great film followed by two masterpieces, War is phenomenal
As Dan brings up the games, I'm actively playing Fallout 76 on my main screen as i listen to the podcast!
I think post-apocalyptic stories about the breakdown of society, how people behave when the laws are no longer enforced, and supermarkets aren't restocked anymore. Or if happen long after the apocalypse, they are about how do you build a civilization from scratch.
In other words, trying to understand what civilization is, by observing it's absence. It's like trying to live without your smartphone for a week (for example), to understand how much you are addicted to it, and how much do you actually need it.
30:23 MAX DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE STORY! I’m with you, Dan.
Bladerunner is my favorite post-apocalyptic setting.
a16z and other game venture funds will most definitely be interested in funding a Sanderson IP
I can't believe they didn't bring up Tank Girl.
It was five original Apes movies and Hesston was only in the first two, although the second was more a flashback sequence. I really, really enjoy the original movies, even though they do away with Hesston and another character who's searching for Hesston in one of the later movies.
This is perfectly timed, I’m currently in the process of watching all the Apes movies. 🍿 😮
Brandon you should read into Degenesis. It's a really deep and complex Post-Apocalyptic setting (also gritty and brutal).
Look for Waterworld: The Ulysses Cut fan edit. It adds _every-available alternate scene that's cropped up in different editions and TV broadcast versions. it feels like such a bigger film!
In the third "old" movie, three of the apes of movie 1 and 2 literally travel back in time to 20th century earth, one of them then gives birth to baby ape Milo, later named Caesar. So the whole concept is a bit like a grandfather paradox/time loop situation. In that sense the new movies are not really a remake, since they tell the story without that time travel element and Caesar comes into his role in a different way.
POTA was the best sci-fi trilogy of the 2010s IMHO.
I read a really good post apocalyptic series called Partials, the name of the author escapes me. 😂
Now speaking of the original 'Planet of the Apes' 5 movie run... It is one of those series that you need to watch it all the way through because there is time jumping...? But in a way it fixes its self? Hard to explain without spoilers, but when Cesar's rise of power comes about, it is a modern (70's) take on slavery, and so forth and that leads into events that impact the final movie that leads to a different ending then how the series started.
Now if you love Planet of the Apes, or things like it, there is also 'Ruins of Ivy, Book 1 of the Aurora Project' that is a novel published by Amazon that touches on some of those ideas and some Gamma World inspired post-apocalyptic things that some have liked. I would recommend it but honestly I am biased. Either way, thanks for the talk.
Terry Brook's Shannara series is one huge post-apocalyptic plotline
Funny that Brandon doesn't like pausing and tactics in video games yet the game he wrote for (Moonbreaker) was heavily about the pausing and the tactics
From Armageddon and Ragnarok to Fallout Vegas, humans seem to be consistently fascinated with the idea of apocalypse. Perhaps it is a genetic predisposition to predict and prepare for disaster or maybe there is a deeper spiritual connection to some sort of inevitable " end". Whatever it is, it is fascinating that we as a species gravitate to those sorts of stories.
Big fan of Fallout, both the games and the series. One other post apocalyptic video game to a series is Twisted Metal. Hate me all you want, but I really liked Anthony Mackey in that series.
My favorite post apocalyptic book is a kids book by Caroline Stevermer called River Rats, where a group of orphans have swiped an old riverboat during/after the event and now go up and down the Mississippi playing post apocalyptic Rock and Roll. **Edit: probably obscure, but I really loved it, probably because it wasn't as depressing as some post apocalyptic stuff
Try “Earth Abides”. It’s a phenomenal novel from the late 1940s.
How about "dying earrh" books? Jack Vance inspired works usually have an earth with a dying sun and a population left behind after the majority fled to the stars. Usually there has been some sort of apocalypse that has ravaged the earth in the distant past as well.
Hello Oliver!!!
I’m curious if either of them have checked out the Horizon Zero Dawn games. I really enjoyed that world and its particular apocalypse.
I adore those games, and it's become my absolute favourite apocalypse due to how well thought-out everything was and how incredible the lore is. Slowly piecing together what happened and learning why the world is the way it is was my favourite part of the game.
I liked Thunderdome. The funniest guy was the man that had the mask sticking above his head.
Ngl, I read this as "Post-Apocalyptic Depression" 🤣😭😭😭
When you guys keep saying the Charleton Heston ones, he starred in the first film of that original series of films. May have had a flashback/cameo in the second. There were a total of five films in that original series of films.
Fury Road !!
I also liked most of "Waterworld." Not a fan of the gills. Not enough done to explain those.
Post apocalypse: I think people like those because they can think "If the absolute worst happens, how/can I survive?" That is also why they reflect the fears of their times.
As big of a fan of Elden Ring and Fromsoft in general that Brando Sando is I’m surprised he didn’t mention it as an example of post apocalyptic storytelling.
The fallout show does a good job at somewhat making the gore comedic I guess and not gore for the sake of gore and shock
at 16:42 Brandon says "That's not a plot-hole, that's a basic premise." and I've never heard that distinction before. How do you tell which details of a story are plotholes and which are just basic premises readers/viewers will need to accept?
I wrote an essay once about how the sci-fi genre (broadly speaking) fills in regions of time which mythology has always neglected. Traditional mythology and religion tend to occupy the past, anywhere from very recent history back to the beginning of the universe, but the entire future short of the "end times" is pretty sparse. Some have "imminent" prophecies, which are destined to be fulfilled in short order, but when those prophecies aren't fulfilled, they usually get pushed back to the end times as well. Modern science, archeology, and historiography have largely swept myth and legend out of our history and replaced it with fact where it can, which while more reliable than myth, also has much fewer unambiguous lessons or narratives for people to found their belief system on. Additionally the rapid advance in technology and society has upended the assumption of previous generations that the next era will be more or less the same as the previous, or if not, will at least have some precedent in history. If we, as modern people, can be certain of anything about the future it's that it is definitely not going to be the same as either the past or the present. The only certainty is uncertainty, so science fiction builds up a mythology of the future, optimistic or pessimistic, aspirational or cautionary, in order to help ease the anxiety of the unknown. Post-apocalyptic fiction insists that even in the wake of utter catastrophe the struggle for survival will go on and there is worthiness in that struggle. The total destruction of the current society still does not constitute an end to humanity, and whatever inevitably develops afterwards is still dependent on human choice.
Now I gotta go rewatch the apes movies
The planet of the apes movies have always greatly unsettled me so that's why I like to forget about them
I am amused that this video was posted the day before the announcement of the new Hunger Games prequel 😂
As far as post apocalyptic they should make the helldiver books into film
A cool misdirection for this series would be that far into the future, humans have devolved as the apes evolve and some ape scientist creates an Alzheimer's cure which accidentally gets into the primitive human population and the cycle repeats. Concerning interest in post apocalyptic worlds, it might be the fact evolution in general is all about the fight for survival and our real-life lives, for the most part, assumes survival as a right, so it is just scratching an evolutionary itch.
I heard Larian Studios wants to make a video game not set in the world of Baldur’s Gate and DND. Maybe they could team up with Brandon
I was thinking the same thing. Larian with Brandon would be heaven.
And I assumed this was discussing Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
What's that coming out of her nose?
Spaceballs.
There goes the planet.
George RR Martin wrote Elden Ring; I can see Brandon writing a whole video game easily. Major studios should be seeking him to write their games.
The best Mad Max movie is "Tank Girl".
post-apocalypsism is as old as homo-sapiens. the greek, american, and christian, chinese mythologies all described epocs of civilizations that get destroyed and start over anew. part of it may be historical, but the fascination itself maybe a macroscopic manifestation of our dna, which make us find the cycle of life-death, and the necessity of progress or adaptation asthetically beautiful? it also allow us to world build and let us full-throttle our creativity at the largest scale.
I am with Dan on his assessment of the Fallout TV series. I look forward to the actual discussion.
i get so much validation that they both also like Waterworld 😂 I never understood why ppl don't like it
Why was Dan so damn angry at the beginning lmao
Listening to the Apes part was agony. How do I tell them to reread the book? It had basically the twist from the Tim Burton movie, but it was what inspired the twist from the Charles Heston movie. The twist in the first movie was the best; but every one of the classic movies has a twist, as a defining brand characteristic. It's the only thing I miss in the new series. I like the old movies more than you guys seem to though. Maybe because I grew up watching them with my grandfather. Maybe because I like the semi-dated philosophical views on religion and prejudice and racism. I don't know, I just like getting that from science fiction.
I watched waterworld as an 8 year old, and led me to fear the idea of a water world for years to come lol. Fortunately I am older and know that even if all the water melted on earth, it would not rise to such a degree heh.
unpopular opinion the 2000s Time Machine movie is one of my favorite sci-fi movie
Cannot wait for your discussion on the Fallout TV series. Without spoilers, I think Brando Sando will take issues with some of the storytelling and lore issues, especially since he cited Lore as one of his draws into the series.
Hard disagree. The show expands on the lore and doesn't really contradict anything.
@Lawarot The show moves the location of Shady Sands like 100+ miles dude. Shady Sands was nowhere near LA; the boneyard was.
Minor change really @@siege1289