Let me tell you something that isn’t a secret: people like good stories.
Somehow, people that create entertainment media tend to forget that. Sometimes the reviewers do too. A couple of years ago I wrote up a post about what you should be watching. The show in question is called “Love, Death & Robots”. It burst onto the scene with stunning visuals and garnered a massive response. New, short animations with crazy good stories from a list of authors known for their stories. I watched them all, then I re-watched them all, then I spent some writing time reacting to them and telling others about it. There are fantastic stories and mind blowing art in there. I still recommend watching them.
Last month Amazon dropped a series called “Secret Level”. It seems to me that this series is a direct reaction to, or perhaps decedent of Love, Death and Robots. I watched them all, despite Amazon being the terrible corporation that it is (I despise that we paid for no commercials and then they basically said, yes but pay more of live with them). As I watched them I could clearly and easily see how this series followed (mimicked?) the other. Thing is, it felt hollow. There was something missing. OH, that’s right. Story. All the episodes were meant to showcase a video game and the star studded voice actor line up. The episodes did that with gusto. The artwork and animation were amazing… but honestly, I expect that from companies that literally create the computer renders for the games they’re using as the basis for the episodes. OF COURSE they’re going to look good. I’d actually bet the people behind the scenes were able to save some amount of work by getting already created computer models from the game companies and/or using the same model software to create the shots for the series. Genuinely screen capture worthy shots. Fantastic looking, mesmerizing color. Very shiny… and kind of boring. If you’re not completely invested in the video games already, there’s almost nothing there beyond that.
To be entirely fair, I haven’t played video games in a very long time. I started in 8-bit land and never really progressed much further. Perhaps there are gamers out there who think this series is the quintessential embodiment of their favorite intellectual property. I don’t know. I clearly don’t get it. Some of the voices were recognizable. Some of the shows moved faster than others, some had more pull than others, but they all felt incomplete. The story just lacked. One in particular – the one with Arnold as the main voice actor – was absolutely unwatchable. I shut that one off and skipped to the next one.
I was going back through the site I use to track websites I want to read but can’t keep up with every day and found two old posts about this show. One touted the A-list cast and moving imagery. The other was about the series getting green lit for a second season before the entire first season was finished airing. Both of those short articles said the very same thing. Great voice talent. Great video game franchises that you will recognize. Neither one said anything about story. Not a word about it.
Before anyone tries to say I’m just a video game hater, that is not true. I understand there is, in fact, a great deal of story built into these game franchises. Stories in these games have fascinating ideas and can have massive, ever changing worlds involved with them. It’s a constantly changing field that offers up an immersive form of entertainment for all sorts of folks. It’s also a massive industry. I understand why show runners would try to take a video game property and create a show or movie from that.
Not every show can be a hit. Not every story moves you on a deep and meaningful level. A show really does need a story! There’s no two ways about it, this secret level can remain locked in my opinion. If you want to make it better, get an actual story to fit into these short episodes.
