My Viral Video

http://mentalfloss.com/article/58771/27-offbeat-college-essay-topics
Essay #9 of 27

You've just reached your one millionth hit on your YouTube video--what is the video about?

Thanks to the success of Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm and their reboot of the Star Wars franchise, they decide, after the conclusion of the Skywalker saga with "Star Wars: Episode XII, The Balance of the Force," to completely re-do George Lucas's misbegotten prequel trilogy, a.k.a. Episodes I-III. In order to find the best story, they invite aspiring writers and filmmakers to post 15-minute videos showing a completely rebooted opening sequence to Episode I.

Working with filmmaking wizard Sean Warren and a cast of aspiring young actors from the college theater department, I finally put my vision for how Episode I should have started all those years ago. The million-plus hits are the votes that my version gets from public votes selecting my story treatment as the winner for the initiative to forever erase the travesty of Jar-Jar Binks.

Here's how my video opens: We see Obi-Wan Kenobi flying his starfighter through the crowded skies of Coruscant. He's tracking reports of dark side activity in one of the dangerous neighborhoods surrounding the capitol. He lands his spacecraft and secures it with his built-in droid. He fails to notice the young teen boy lurking in the shadows of a nearby alley.

After Kenobi leaves, the boy emerges from the shadows and removes a small electronic device from his cloak. He plugs the device into an access panel on Kenobi's ship and overrides the droid's security measures, ordering the droid to open the cockpit and start the ship's engines. Kenobi, now several blocks away, looks up to see his ship flying off without him.

We see the teenager flying into a high-security area by using the ship's computer to transmit the Jedi Knight's security code. Once he lands the ship, he breaks into a series of vaults to steal Republic currency. He leaves the area without attracting any attention, then flies the ship to an illicit dealer who pays him for the ship and promises him no one will be able to find it. "Don't worry about it, Skywalker," the dealer says. "This ship will be harder to trace than you are."

"No chance of that," Anakin tells him, holding his hand up to the dealer. "I was never here. You and I have never met. You have no memory of me."

"You and I have never met," the dealer says, in a far-away voice, as Anakin once again fades into the shadows.

The last thing we see in the video is Republic security officers entering the Jedi Temple with a warrant for Obi-Wan Kenobi's arrest, since security records show that his ship accessed a secure area where vaults were robbed the night before. Obi-Wan is forced to admit to the Jedi Council that his ship had been stolen the night before, news that is met with laughter from the Council. Our final shot is a red-faced, embarrassed Obi-Wan...

Maybe we don't want a second season after all...

One of the really joyful surprises of the summer was watching Netflix's superb eight-episode love letter to 1980s movies, "Stranger Things." The praise for the show has been effusive and well-deserved, and its success has led to the (network? It's not a network...what do we call these things now? Content providers? Ugh...) to Netflix thrilling fans with the announcement of a second season. Great news, right?

We're all richer than our parents!

Well, not so fast. We might want to consider a couple of cautionary tales first. Last summer's sensation was USA Network's "Mr. Robot," another mishmash of TV, movie, and cultural influences that made for absolutely addictive viewing. The brainchild of writer/director Sam Esmail, he originally envisioned his story as a feature film, but he created some of the most compelling television since the heyday of AMC's "Breaking Bad."

Jeff South? Never heard of him.

I was excited for the start of this summer's second season of "Mr. Robot." However, I'm six episodes into the new season and still waiting for the excitement to start. All of the same elements are there, but the magic is missing. To be honest, most of the episodes are just boring. The dynamic between the characters has shifted in the worst way possible, and now we are left without a protagonist to relate to or root for. I'm committed to finishing out the season out of respect for the greatness of season one, but it's a significant disappointment so far.

Why is season two so damn boring?

We all know about the pure genius of season one of HBO's "True Detective." The collaboration between writer Nic Pizzolatto and director Cary Fukunaga brought us two of the most memorable characters in recent television, played with award-caliber brilliance by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Yes, you read that correctly—Woody from "Cheers" and that stoner guy from "Dazed and Confused." Every moment of every episode was filled with dread and anticipation; you couldn't take your eyes off the screen for even a moment.

It's complicated...

Then we had season two of "True Detective," which I watched from beginning to end, hoping that the brilliance of season one would repeat itself. It did not. I think that Colin Ferrell and Vince Vaughn are just as capable as actors as Woody and Matthew, but Pizzolatto was pressured into delivering a script of the same quality as season one in a short amount of time, and Fukunaga bailed as the director. The flaws were obvious from the beginning.

It's terrible...

I once asked college bud Mike Tucker why so many bands had great debut albums but disappointing second efforts. What he told me was so obvious: bands spend years working on a dozen great songs that go on that first record; when they hit it big, the record company expects the next album right away, and it's almost never as good as the first. I think the shows we see that have magnificent first seasons—especially the two I singled out here—suffer from the same phenomenon. Both "Mr. Robot" and "True Detective" seemed to come out of nowhere, but they were culminations of years of work by their creators.

Now we have the Duffer brothers, creators of "Stranger Things," facing the same challenge. Their success was a wonderful surprise. Now, can they come through again on short notice? Consider these points: a) Can he get another great performance out of Winona Ryder? Can she do something else besides distraught mother, because we won't want to see that again. b) The kids, who were the heart of the show, are going to be a year (or two) older the next time around, and kids change A LOT between 11 and 13. How will that affect the dynamic? c) We've already seen the Upside Down; where will the story take us next? d) How will the elements that we loved in season one be kept intact while still telling us a new, fresh story?

50 percent of the girls in my 1983 high school yearbook looked like this.

Speaking as a writer, I spent years working on my first novel, and years more crafting a sequel. If all my dreams came true, and both books were published nationally to great success, could I crank out a third in less than a year? J.K. Rowling has admitted that the pressures of publishing deadlines took some of the polish off her work. I think the pressure must have simply paralyzed George R. R. Martin; we may never actually see a final "Song of Ice and Fire" book.

Dream on, suckers!

Sometimes, maybe we should just be happy with one perfect season. The disappointment we experience when we expect lighting to strike twice just isn't worth it.