One of my writer friends had a rule for having a smart character solve a problem. -introduce the problem -spend a week thinking about the solution -have your smart person think up the solution quickly
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt I've noticed the same thing about sitcom dialogue. Characters that are supposed to be witty come up with insanely quotable quips like they fell into the fortune cookie jar as a toddler and will just rapid-fire them at each other. The trick is to make it sound even remotely like normal people having a normal conversation. Gilmore Girls comes to mind as a prime example, but anything with a laugh track works, really.
She made a plan that can't fail because failure is also fine. A plan that needs to fail is bad, but a plan that will work either way is perfect. The only true failure would be something she didn't expect happening. However there weren't actually many options outside of what happened in the show. So it was easy to cover them.
Shoutout to a 4chan greentext that had this critique of sherlock. Something along the lines of : "sherlock is a show about a smart person written by a dumb person, as to dumb people, the inner workings of smart people is so out of reach of them that they are indistinguishable from magic"
Probably explains why smart people in so many shows and movies are depicted as being pretty heavily on the spectrum, the writers can't understand how they think so default to stereotyped autism
The main problem of Sherlock is the success of the show. In the first episode, after he discusses his "deductions" of Watson with Watson in the car, they leave the car nad Sherlock asks, if he did get anything wrong, and, after Watson says, he had everythin right, Sherlock says himself "I didn't expect to be right about everything", so even he himself recognizes, that he just guessed a lot of things, but was accidentaly right. In the third episode "The Great Game", he admits, that he finds the answers only because "M" wants him to find the answers, so the whole process is rigged. So he knows, he is nor perfect and guesses a lot in Season 1. But after Season 1, this changes completely and he is always right. Btw., the greatest example I know in movies for the smartest person in the world is Ozymandias in the Watchmen. He has a plan, he has a reason for the plan, and everything he does is part of the plan and brings the protagonists to act like he wants them to. And in the end, he achieves his goals.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Though for what it’s worth, being a fraud still requires a level of intelligence. After (spoilers) the Wizard of Oz is exposed as a humbug and explains how he faked all the magic the Ozites believe he’s done, he honestly comes across as significantly smarter for having been able to pull off those tricks
I somewhat agree... I think its possible shes lying to homelander about actually orchestrating the events... I think however she is indeed intelligent but the end was not really her plan but found an opportunity to further her influence on homelander by saying that it was her plan...
0:55 The biggest irony there? Intelligent people are less likely to make big leaps like that. Because they're aware of all the things that could be causing the effect, so they need more data to believe something. Not less.
I actually remember a scene in Black sails where the lead character sortof answers his own take on this that he knows he's certainly capable of being wrong on an assumption he's made that leads to his current course of action, but he's got to A: follow through on what he believes to be the most likely possibility, rather than all the alternative options he then goes on to list, and B: He needs to confidently assert to his crew that it is the only option because he needs them to believe it and not question his orders if there is any chance at all in accomplishing his ends.
There's a villain in know of that intentionally tries to make his intelligence come across as this "magical leap in logic". (He's a supernatural being that feeds on the hearts of people. He consumes your heart when you fear him too much.) (He basically spins a lot of plans and lies around his prey, and he takes great effort to hide how he came up with his plans, and how he gained the knowledge he needed to hatch those plans. (He also makes a lot of calculated gambles. When he wins the gamble, he pretends like he knew it was going to happen the whole time. When he loses the gamble, he pretends like his failure was just a distraction from something even bigger.) Basically, he tries to come across as some near omnicient genius who has everything figured out from the beginning. It instills more fear when his victims see him this way.
My favorite showcase of genius in media is the ending of Breaking Bad season 4, when it is revealed it was Walt who had poisoned Brock to get Jessie on his side to ultimately take down Gus. He didnt need to have the whole season planned ahead, this was just one simple premediate step he took to manipulate one important variable - Jessie in his favor because he knew he needed him to win. And the best thing about that reveal was that Walt didnt outright admit anything, the camera just cut to the poisonous plant in his garden. A plant they have introduced earlier to us, only didnt identify it until that big reveal. I felt so much respect for the writers at that point
Breaking Bad is SUCH a good show. Walt is such a good example of a smart character too, he's highly intelligent and manipulative, but he also has fatal flaws and is actually severely lacking in many areas. And as you said the plan with Brock is simple at face value but perfectly executed and targeted to manipulate Jesse. Love that show.
@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Best thing about Walt is that his genius isn't reflected through convoluted plans or by him just using big words. He takes precautions, keeps crucial information to himself and slowly improves his position like a real life genius would. He only reveals he has cancer to explain why he has been acting strange, he reveals Skyler cheated on him to get Marie of his back, he uses information like playing cards and you can see and appreciate what he is doing as a viewer. I was hoping we would get something practical like that for Sage in the boys but sadly nah. And I'm happy you pointed that out because when I said she was written lazily and simply stating this was your plan all along is just not satisfying I always just get shut down with "yeaaah bro but she is like, super smart. You are just a normal dude, ofc you cant understand her schemes"
I feel like Better Call Saul is a better example of _extremely_ well-written smart characters. Just because you're smart doesn't mean everything you do will work perfectly or that you won't have blind spots. or make mistakes, like when (warning! big spoilers follow) Jimmy needs a photocopier to doctor the Mesa Verde documents, Chuck is clearly out cold for the night so Jimmy has all the time in the world. He absolutely doesn't need to go to the nearest all-night copy-shop. He _could_ have picked a random one across town and gone there instead, but he doesn't consider it, because he doesn't think Chuck is ever going to suspect he was involved, so he just goes to the nearest place. Then later, Chuck suspects Jimmy was responsible and knows that the documents couldn't have been doctored without a photocopier. He sends his assistant to the nearest copy-shop and the clerk tells the assistant he saw Jimmy on the night in question. Jimmy then comes in and bribes the clerk to change his story and deny it later when Chuck arrives. When things don't go his way, Chuck freaks out and has a panic attack while trying to intimidate the clerk into saying he saw Jimmy. You can see that both brothers are brilliant, but flawed each in their own way. You can see exactly what their plans are and what works and what doesn't and how they adapt as they encounter curve-balls. Nothing feels magical or unrealistic.
The problem arises because supposedly very smart characters are created by not very smart writers/screenwriters. There is a rule: the smartest character in your story will not be smarter than you. And since high intelligence is unattainable for ordinary people, they simply make it something magical, and further exaggerate it, because otherwise their fragile ego will not stand comparison. In other words, many characters are magically super smart not only because the writer does not understand how the mind works, but also because he wants to make the character the same unattainable ideal for the reader/viewer as high intelligence is for himself.
There is some truth to that rule, *but* an author typically has much more time to think, plan, and consider options than the characters they create. It should be possible to write a character that *at least* thinks faster and more clearly than the writer would be able to in the character's situation.
Intelligence is not quantitative. The least intelligent person I have ever known literally taught _herself_ how to read. Which seems like you'd have to be pretty smart to manage. And the smartest person in the world could easily spend hours looking for glasses that are on the top of their head, like a fool.
I’ve heard people say that but it’s not really true. Victor Frankenstein was able to build a man out of dead limbs and reanimate him over the course of two years (though he couldn’t easily replicate it without further research). And the Monster was able to teach himself French and how to read. Mary Shelley created both characters but there’s no way she could have managed to do any of those. (She knew how to speak and read but she wasn’t an autodidact.)
@@matityaloran9157 Agreed. This is another point to keep in mind. Suppose you have a character who is a genius of chemistry. If their knowledge of chemistry is useful - let's say two or three times - across the length of a 400 page novel, the author does not need to dedicate their life to studying chemistry. They could read a few papers that seem relevant to those moments, or even reach out and ask someone who *has* dedicated their life to studying chemistry for advice or feedback. This could even apply to a "smart character" that doesn't have any kind of expert knowledge. Just bouncing ideas off of other people could lead to ideas the author would never have thought of themselves.
@@Riff.Wraith Definitely. In fact, when Victor Frankenstein agrees to create a female companion for the Monster (though he reneges), he tells the Monster that it’s necessary for him to go to England and conduct further research because the creation of a living being isn’t something you can easily replicate. And even the creation of the Monster took Victor two years. So you can tell that a lot of what makes Victor such a smart character is study, practice and experimentation rather than him magically being a savant.
The best way to write a smart charater is to 1. Do your homework: take your time to think of problems and solutions 2. Do your homework: research potential solutions and apply knowlege on things you know 3. Do your homework: observe what you already have written and find anything that you could expand on or use. 4. Do your homework: how are they smart and think of how they should get out of the senario not how you would. 5. Basically what i am saying is stop beong lazy and really think about your work and go over it. Time is basically frozen for the charaters until the writer comes up with something. Even if it takes like a week for the charater it was like 3 minutes
There's one glaring problem. Your most intelligent character can only be as smart as you (the writer) in this case. No problem since most writers are geniuses yep
@@matttamal8332 no that problem is solved, as the original poster stated, with time. You (the writer) have as much time as you need to research, bounce ideas off other actual people, attempt multiple different solutions until you find the best one etc. and then you can just insert that solution into the story as if the genius character came up with it on the spot
@@CrashSableI don’t know how much you’ve written, but this problem cannot simply be solved with time. The amount of effort you employ may help overcome some issues - but people with no expertise in a topic cannot simply read about it for a year and suddenly reproduce savant syndrome - which is usually what most “genius characters” on TV are displaying. Zack Snyder spent *years* on his Justice League movies. And yet, he still never figured out the glaringly obvious idiocy of the aspects of Darkseid, the Anti-Matter Formula, the Boxes, etc.
@@matttamal8332There are a lot of people arguing otherwise, but it’s a psychological impossibility for a less intelligent person to convincingly portray a *more* intelligent one… It can work in the *opposite* direction, though. The issue is that the flaw is usually only apparent to other highly intelligent people… So, you see a lot of people saying otherwise. But no amount of time or effort will make an average person’s depiction of a “genius” seem authentic without basically giving full control of that character to someone else. Merely observing brilliance doesn’t make it absorb into the observer. This is one of the most common misconceptions about how truly exceptional people (like savants) work.
I think the real tricks to writing smart character (who are smarter than you) is to take full advantage of the fact that you are creating the world around them, and you have more time to think about clever solutions than the characters. So you take all the time you need to engineer a difficult puzzle for which you know the solution, then show your character figure out the solution more quickly than an average person.
I think the "it was my plan all along" trope for showcasing intelligent characters can work when writers provide enough details and sufficient contextual information for the audience to eventually reach the same conclusion as the smart characters themselves. The problem is that procedure takes a lot of effort to plan and careful attention to predications to draft out, and a lot of bad writers seem to have this implicit association that the smarter a person is, the less work they need to do.
@@faruquekhan3353 Fantastic example. What also makes Ozymandias a compelling example of a well-written smart character is that on top of the amount of thought and effort he demonstrates in pulling off his grand scheme, his very motivations for doing so are cogent enough for the average reader to follow and for the more astute readers to recognize what kind of dysfunctional sociopath would choose to be a superhero but then also completely disregard the value of human lives.
Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul is a great example of this. We see our main characters planning something without knowing what their plan is, building up to the reveal of something ingenious that makes all the previous clues make sense.
It’s like L and near from death note. Although L was one of those “natural geniuses” he literally explained all his steps and processes while trying to find Kira. And also the very first smart thing he did with the fake broadcast was something everyone understands and gets as a very smart move
L makes it extremely large mistake at the very beginning With that fake broadcast He assumes that the person watching the broadcast who then used to the death note to kill lives in that area and is not simply on Vacation the killing is also done with a supernatural power So how can he know That the person does not have a psychic ability to know about this broadcast without having to watch it in the area it's broadcaster and the broadcast trick can never be a perfect people have to be broadcasting it filming it elle had to go through some channels to get his hands on a death row inmate So how does he know that information about this impending broadcast was not weak Or that the trick itself was not leak how does he know the killer wasn't the cameraman Or any one of the good hundred people would have to be involved in this even he did as much of the work by himself and with his butler That is still at the absolute bare minimum quite a few people who have to know what he's doing
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt I once watched a joke video on death note where Kira gets wrapped with guilt and decides to confess all of his crimes to L explaining absolutely all of the details only for L to conclude that the explanation is absolutely insanity and retarded so he concludes that light must be mentally retarded and not actually a genius for coming up with such a dumb confession so hell completely dropped his suspicions of light apologizes and leaves only for a confused light to realize that somehow he just won the game by confessing it was actually a really good video and pointed out the absurdity of the entire show to have so many supernatural aspects in what is supposed to be a non magical rational world
@yami122 you got a point, but Kira's reaction to this made it obvious that he was right. He did make an assumption there, but the following mistakes Kira has done proved that his assumption was right.
@@yami122 1. If no one would have done anything (as they are not Japanese or are away), then this itself would have been one of the possible conclusions (other than that they chose not to respond). In which case, in the Death Note verse, there would be another plan. 2. They were probing for data. They had to make some assumptions initially to start their experiments. They already had data which indicated a single human at the beginning: the incidents occuring only after school hours, and only to those whose data was shared publically, and in order of data reveal. 3. Logistics are a major problem, and finally that is what made them fail as Light embedded himself into the investigation. Yes. This is a valid point. However, specifically the cameraman may not be the cuprit, as they would be randomly arranged.
What writers don't realize that everything a "smart" person does is put KNOWN information together to give him a larger view point of a situation. There's no way a genius could just pull information out of thin air. He could extrapolate it from the information that he already has but he cannot predict something that hasn't happened to the smallest detail.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt This makes me think about a book I read. I think it's classified as a thriller or something like that. The lead character is a detective, trying to solve a case involving a serial murderer. Usually, one can always spot the guilty one in this kind of story. Almost always. In this case, I scratched my head alongside the characters. When they found out who it was, I was as chocked as the detectives. But looking back at the story, one could see all the signs. They were there - I just missed them the first go around. Loved that story. Only one that managed to surprise me.
@@JavaScript-er101 Sadly, I cannot remember the name of it (I read way too many books!). Pretty sure it's not among the books I have on my shelves right now, so it's in some box somewhere. :( So I can't go doublecheck it, either. Sorry.
I would love to see a version of this where the "smart" character in a story pulls a whole Sherlock-esque explanation, but is proven to be dramatically wrong and it turns out that they are just crazy and do this sort of rambling all the time.
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.
I feel like azula from avatar the last airbender was a good example of a smart character. For one 'smart' is a broad and often vague sentiment, so its important to define how a character is smart before saying that they are. Her intelligence was in military strategy and combat. This defined its limitations, which gave it narrative tension. Often how it went, was that she would spend an episode or two observing a character, their behavior, and the way they fought, before turning the tables with a strategy that exploited a s.p.e.c.i.f.i.c attribute of that character. Like baiting her brother into a trap, knowing that he'd be straightforward and hotheaded to see it coming or doing a direct assault on the avatar knowing he was timid and easy to overwhelm. Cool video, thanks for opening up the discussion
And then in the end she didn't lose because the writer pulled something out of their ass at the last second (that's how Ozai lost), she lost due to previously established flaws: she's a sociopath and not as much of a people person as she thought.
That's like actually something I'm using in a fantasy story. A character everyone else thinks is super smart, but he's actually just some kind of reality bender, so even the stupidest plan works.
Lol interesting idea for a character. I can see that working well but it'd be tricky to pull off (reality bending is always difficult to write around).
Ooo that's sounds so fun! It kinda makes me think of Domino from Deadpool, and how her superpower basically does the same - warps reality so that she can do really cool stuff or that her plans always seem to work because 'luck' In order for it to be fair you limit the character's control over the ability - like they're either a novice at controlling it or it's something completely beyond their control. You can also build tension by having it only work occasionally - like, sometimes their plans fail and they have to fall back on a plan b or c. They can be so used to this that they seem to have a contingency plan for everything, which ends up being part of their superpower because eventually they know their luck will kick in and something will work (as long as they and they're allies don't die first). Good luck, and have fun 😃!
@@tokujinsicura2190 The Marvel comics character "Longshot" had luck power, but it only worked if his motives were pure, and it didn't warp reality so much, it only influenced the outcome of some action that he was taking (e.g. "I have to throw this dagger at the huge complicated machine, to save the orphanage" => it hits the one vulnerable spot)
Not exactly the same but remind me of King from One Punch Man. He's a top tier hero from a world that desparetly needs them yet in reality lucked out from one chance encounter where another hero beat a larger threat and he just happened to be there to take credit. From then on, the gag is that everything he does to get away from conflict is seen by other characters as a next level 3D chess move and him being afraid is also used as a gag. He's so frightened that he has a stone cold face and shivers but for other characters, combined with hi reputation, is contrasted as a a powerful man capable of such danger that his very core is rattling and barely keeping his power in check, but in fact is just figety
Awesome video ❤ This is the reason why I always preferred the Sherlock Holmes in Elementary rather than the one in Sherlock. Elementary sherlock portrayed a better form of intelligence. He did experiment to prove his deductions. He reached out to experts to help solve his case. He was wrong at times, too. Best of all, he was able to teach Watson his thought process, which enabled her to be a detective like him. This showed how his intelligence has a process that can be observed and learnt rather than it being an unknown force.
The best way not to 'cheat' is to make the intelligent person fail rapidly through all their attempts before finally succeeding. Starting with the most obvious solutions that don't work because x and y reason and then moving on to increasingly more convoluted solutions until one of them finally works. That way you take the reader through their thought process while providing them with the evidence for why the final brilliant solution is the one that is also necessary.
Yeah agreed, I think a lot of writers are for some reason afraid to show this? Or maybe they want their characters to be so brilliant and perfect they could never possibly fail.
Heck, even tech support personnel first ask the customer if their cable is connected. Can come off as condescending and too Captain Obvious, but people forget stuff like that all the time. It's good practice to rule out the simplest solutions first and then move on to more complex ones.
@@Trazynn The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode King of Omashu did that when Aang starts with the most obvious solution each time and when it doesn’t work he starts to think outside of the box and figure out how to solve the problems
The "retroactive genius" is probably part of a greater problem: Modern writers often want to "subvert expectations" and surprise the audience. I guess, it makes them feel smart. To them that is so important that they rather risk confusing us, to the point of breaking immersion. I'm getting tired of this.
The problem with the retroactive genius is their plans are really stupid if you think about. You need about 30 different things to go right just for your plan to succeed. A real smart person wouldn't bet their house on so many variables. A smart person would recognize that it's a stupid bet, and try to make a plan with as little variable as possible.
Storywriters recently I've had a problem where they now view twists more than actual good story they believe that as long as the movie has some unexpected mind blowing twist at the end people will remember that mind blowing twist and forgive or forget the lazy writing of 95% of the story The retroactive genius the assumed dead character returning the surprise villain A hero becomes a villain A villain becomes a hero All of those twists were once Done very well and genuinely surprised audiences and left a lasting impact on audiences but now they're done to death Which leads to them not really catching audiences off guard anymore Kate Disney where the first few times they get a surprise it was genuinely surprising at least to me I didn't see it coming but then they kept doing it over and over and over again In the same way so instead of it being a surprise the audience just notices that the story doesn't have a obvious villain for the hero to bounce off of so they know the surprise villain is coming and usually figured it out by the end And oftentimes these twists come at great expense to the story For example the twist villain more often than not requires the story to lack In obvious level so there is no antagonist opposing the hero for two thirds of the story which leads to drastically decreased And a twist villain can never be as well developed as a bill in whose been in the story for most of it The twist bailing will inherently have no time to develop as a villain but there are only defining trait will be that they were a twist villain
I think Jimmy/Saul in “Better Call Saul” is written extremely intelligently and doesn’t just rely on magic tricks, even though there have been several fun “gotcha” moments in the series, on the whole he just had some great ideas ( on how to get himself out of his terrible ideas ). Kim Wexler as well.
@@ThePowat That's weaselly worded. What do you mean by "a lot" of his victories? I'd say of the scams and schemes we see Saul run in the show, at least half or more of them show him putting in work early on that pays off later, demonstrating his intelligence during the scheme. Certainly all the biggest ones, whether it's in the "chicanery" scene (he planted the phone), or their massive scheme against Howard show definite planning and coordination in advance. Even in some sequences where Jimmy doesn't have time to plan out a scheme they usually end up demonstrating his ability to convince and cajole others to his desired ends by playing to their ego or personality, like in the 2nd episode when he manages to prevent the deaths of those other scammers. That's not convenience, but the character using their ability to read other people and manipulate them. What are some examples that show unnecessary convenience in Saul/Jimmy's benefit that are used to get the plot going that you're thinking of?
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Not that guy but Jimmy definitely has some plot magic on his side sometimes. One of the examples I'd give is Jimmy almost getting caught by Howard during his scheme against him on multiple occasions, like when he planted the drugs in Howard's locker but then Howard came in so he had to hide. Howard conveniently didn't notice Jimmy was the only other person in the room with them and most likely the person who planted the drugs because Jimmy put a rag over his face and sat in the corner. Another example is when Jimmy stole Howard's car and went to return it, but notices someone else took the spot. It took Howard straight up forgetting where his car was parked and Jimmy moving a sign for him to get away with that one. I'd like to add that convenient scenes like this are merely meant to add tension and show off Jimmy's quick thinking because it wouldn't be fun to watch if his schemes went off without a hitch.
@@Plum1300 OK I can kind of see what you mean there, but in the grand scheme, those very trivial complicating moments are incredibly minor. To the point that I wouldn't say that his schemes ever really rely on convenience. Really, a lot of those little moments seem to be about adding bits of tension and drama that if anything, make the scheme working come off as more believable to me, not less. Because if there weren't any complications it'd feel like he was a super lucky super genius. Or like you said, it wouldn't be any fun to watch is his schemes went off without a hitch. Sort of feels like there's a bit of an unfair standard here with certain people maybe? You and myself maybe see those little tension points as adding realism and drama, but other people seem to think a plan never needs to encounter an error or problem and if it does and the problem is resolved then it's "convenient" to them?
Exploring the difference between being hyper-observant and having supernatural intuition? They made a funny series about that premise. It's called PSYCH. Shawn (and his partner Gus) were well aware that he was only pretending to be psychic, and they always followed up his observations with actual investigation. Unlike Sherlock, Shawn's observations were correct, but his deductions were frequently wrong. That's why he needed help from others. It made his character more likable, and less insufferable (like Sherlock could be, in the BBC series).
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.
Shikamaru is another good example for the smart character trope. We actually got to see his plan/strategy in motion when he was fighting Temari and Hidan.
Yeah, it's just a shame that he kind of peaked there. Kishimoto really forgot about the rest of the cast in Shippuden (I know he gets a brief moment against Hidan as well).
Shikamaru? That guy chased Sasuke into the woods to convince him to get back to the Leaf. Then the team was stalked by the bad guys who started defeating them one by one Then genius Shikamaru sat down and deduced they needed to create a diversion in order to survive. He sits down and thinks really hard for a moment and finally looks a f-ing NARUTO and tells him dead serious "ok. It has to be me. There's just no other safe way to make a false trail" And Naruto "master of shadow clone jutsu" Uzumaki is all like "wow. Yeah. So brave Shikamaru. Give them hell"
@@androkguz You're talking about story writing, while I'm talking about character writing. Naruto has to catch up to Sasuke for us to see a battle showdown between two of the major character of the series. It was a conscious choice from the author, said by Shikamaru.
@@KPD_KPD "it was a conscious choice by the author, said by Shikamaru" What? That sentence makes it seem as if Shikamaru was the author How are you differentiating character writing from story writing here? Shikamaru could have been snagged by the bad guy to achieve the same 1v1 scenario or Naruto could have ran ahead without waiting for his friends. But they decided to make it a moment of character agency to be stupid. And it's not at all the first time or the last time Shikamaru is a drooling idiot while the music and scene for "Gigachad with 10k IQ" is playing The moron couldn't even think of simple ways to break the symetry of his own shadow jutsu by wearing his Kunai pack in a different place or wearing an extra one on a place most ninja don't so you can throw a knife at your opponent without them throwing one back Even without tools he could strangle any trapped enemy whose arms are shorter
@@androkguz The same way why Tsunade chooses to send some weak genin instead of the killing machine Anbu. Does that mean Tsunade is stupid? Or the author wanted to show us some spectacle by sending characters that we know? Also yes you can always create the most logical scenarios out of everything, but can you make it interesting? Because at the end of the day, it's the only thing that matter.
In the Sherlock meets Watson scene, I can't help but think that a truly intelligent person would have made the same observations and kept the information to themselves, filed away for future use.
If Holmes was smart, he would ask Watson about himself, thus acquiring the information AND encouraging Watson to think favorably of Holmes. But Holmes would rather be an arrogant jerk by asserting superiority, which is itself a stupid thing to do. He's just fortunate that's Watson's peculiar quirk is his willingness to be treated like a half-wit sidekick.
@@stevenscott2136 he does it for practice. If he asks, he doesn't practice properly. Also, he's not amazing with people. Granted, in the books he deducts AND listen to the people
5:09 This reminds me of the fact that a version of Sherlock Holmes appears in the Great Ace Attorney games, and there's a gameplay mechanic where he accidentally deduces the wrong things and you have to correct him.
Curse of the Black Pearl was the peak of his characterisation. I'd call him more cunning than smart but I'm just quibbling over words, I know what you're saying.
@@maryrose2676 Yeah because that is what really suspends our belief. One man stealing a big ship = belief suspended. However, people who turn into skeletons in the moonlight, totally believable. It's fantasy man, part of our duty is to suspend belief and not get hung up on the impossibilities, otherwise the movie itself is pointless because cursed treasure isn't real.
@@aaryanairy756 It was very brazen too. Even as a kid, when I first watched it, I thought it was brilliant. The only thing that bothered me about the scene, even back then, was the HMS Dauntless’ crew complement. Specifically, why did a first rate ship-of-the-line like the Dauntless have no one aboard except a few officers and a dozen seamen? Though she was docked in Port Royal, a ship of that size, even in the early 18th century, requires a minimum crew of 350 to operate it. Optimally, it was most efficient with a maximum crew of 800 - a number that gradually increased to 850 by the advent of the Napoleonic Era. Regardless, she was completely unguarded, and almost effectively unoccupied. No marines aboard, no maintenance crew aboard, and nothing is locked up (except the captain and officers’ quarters, the powder keg, and gun ports). I guess the only reason why I didn’t think much of it until now was because of Sid Meier’s Pirates, specifically gameplay experience. It turns out, the smart pirates prefer small ships, or tiny ships (even as small as a war canoe). The reason: They were fast, cheap, and ubiquitous. You would never use a large ship as a pirate, unless you were a smuggler or a slaver.
I think it would've been ok if the guy who got to be president was a backup plan. So it's not that everything was exactly the one way she designed it, but there were many ways she could've won
I'm giving the writers the benefit of the doubt here. Remember. These characters are subversions of their Marvel and DC counterparts. If Sister Sage is a subversion of Iron Heart then we can assume she isn't intelligent the same way as Iron Heart. I believe she is a con artist. She is the smartest person in the room but that means she can outsmart Homelander when something happens and do the mental gymnastics to explain to him why she is correct. It's Sophistry. Remember. Sages are con artists who pretend to do magic.
I'm hoping she's actually trying to take down Voight and Homelander by showing the US what total rule by supes would be like. BTW: We're assuming Sage did all of this on purpose. Who's to say that she isn't lying and had to scramble on the backend to get plan C or D to work even though she's claiming her one and only plan is working perfectly?
@@SomeUniqueHandle i think you are mistaken in what we are assuming. I am assuming she never had a plan, curve balls or not. The only thing we see her clearly set up is getting Starlight to beat up Firecracker and even that seems petty and not thought out completely. She lit a fuse there but couldn't have predicted the fallout, especially Butcher ripping apart dude in the trailer. Now, the writers can still fix it. They can reveal that she saw what happens via cameras or whatever after Butcher did that she started taking and bugging him. Maybe she even had access to a telepath with persuasive abilities. All of these are maybes that I'm giving the writers for free. They've got some 'splaining to do and I can't do all the heavy lifting for them while they mash their toys together.
Smart Tony Stark: can successfully create nanomachines, after decades of building his book smarts at prestigious schools, working on tech for years, making mistake after mistake and learning from them “Smart” Riri williams: is introduced making machines for the CIA nobody else can make, as a student. Makes a mech suit flawlessly from the start. Attacks government workers and has no consequences, is handed infinite material and makes a mech suit more advanced than Tony’s first 30 on her second try
My favorite "smart character" is Patrick Jane from The Mentalist. At first he seems like just a badly written intelligent character, making the same kind of supernatural insights as the Cumberbatch Sherlock would. But over time you see that he has some legitimate skills. By midway through season 2, anyone can spot & list his repertoire of tactics, including cold reads, false guesses, bluffs, false accusations, and playing cause & effect mindgames. His cold read skills were a bit overpowered, but it was more believable since he had been training to master it since he was a child in he carnival, and later as a TV psychic. The way he conned the suspects was fun to watch in action. It was fun to try to make predictions as to what he was doing in certain scenes. He even manages to teach his friends some of his techniques.
One of my favourite aspects of Jane is his being an asshole not because he is one but in part of his investigating. Such as people thinking he’s being rude not looking at them when he talks but is actually observing things in the room. Or when he actively insults or annoys somebody not because he wants to, but because he’s trying to get them to reveal something about themselves which would show by making them angry or upset.
I saw an analysis of Sherlock Holmes, where people constantly paint him as the “smartest” ever and the author himself actually began to grow tired of the character, but of course kept writing him. One time, he wrote a story called “How Watson Learned the Trick” and it has Watson thinking that Holmes’ methods are simple deduction that anyone can pick up on, and goes into listing a series of Holmes-esque theories and deductions about the people around them, that could very well be true. The twist however, being Holmes still gets Watson with counters and still says “no actually, the reason for this is because of this reason, and the reason for the other is because of this one you didn’t realize” The idea is kinda meta though, that your character is A. Only as smart as your author and B. The smarts can be shown simply by giving the smart characters more of the correct answers in your story than anyone else
Wow, that's actually an awesome insight. At the end of the day, writing a smart character is for narrative excellence, not to have a smart character and have everyone say, wow, that writer made really smart decisions with that character. Characters are characters, they're are contrived for purpose and point. You're not supposed to actually view their decisions through realistic lenses but to make their decisions fit with the story.
I mean, not really, Doyle just like writing historical novels more, not that he is tired of Holmes bc of smartness or anything. And on the front, Holmes did compliment Watson got smt almost right, and then Holmes himself is proven wrong at smt when the Doctor Mortimer be like "nah that cane ain't parting gift, it is wedding gift" and Holmes be like "Lol, we are close but still wrong" so not like Holmes is always right.
@@12arkich28 that was literally the point of my description. Maybe it was inaccurate about Doyle, but the whole “not like holmes is always right” was literally the point of why he’s right frequently in stories
did they do this during the tv movies in the 70's. Sherlock would challenge watson about something and then watson will toss his theory and then sherlock would correct him. or agreed but add something to his observation that watson had miss.
The problem with Sherlock's deduction of Watson is that it's basically a directbadaptation of the first meeting they have in the book, when Sherlock deduces that Watson was a military doctor in Africa. Now, at that time that deduction made more sense, but now, as you said, there are a lot more options, so the deduction falls flat. Also Watson is based in Conan Doyle himself, so he is a bit jokingly inserting himself in the character.
I mean there really are people like that, the difference being that the real life encyclopedias just spew random facts rather than ones relevant to the story.
The great Sir Terry was right, as far as the judgments of the character went. He himself was a scarily intelligent individual. However, Sherlock was written in Victorian times and was a character of his time. They had very definite beliefs and made definite judgments, including phrenology which has now been thoroughly debunked. I think people's greatest astonishment with Sherlock is that he simply notices things which they generally do not. Read the books and you will find that he also makes good investigations, is a master of disguise and deception and actually does make plans which turn out to be correct. This may or may not translate well to the screen, depending upon the screen writers’ own ability.
This is extremely interesting thank you for sharing. I find it really fascinating how stories can reflect the cultural beliefs and norms of the time period, but I'm sadly not as well read on history as I'd like to be. I do agree that Sherlock's main ability should be / seems to be his hyper observance, but I'll have to find some time to read the original books.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt started reading them recently, at one point I had a "wait, what the hell? Are there any clues to that?" Yes, there were, maybe if I read it in one sitting I'd notice, but I did not, even tho they were quite in my face on the second read through.
@@minedantaken1684this multi layered nature is the sign of truly well written storytelling. you see it in most of the best fiction, and even more so in the best scifi and fantasy. just a few examples of stories with this property include the hobbit snd the lord of the rings by j.r.r. tolkien, the belgarion and sparhawk novels of david eddings, most of the adult novels of robert a heinlein, and many others. it is why doing multiple drafts matters. i remember heinlein saying that one of his novels was not published until he finished the 17th draft.
There are two fundamental problems with smart characters. 1) to write a believable smart character, one must actually be smart 2) for a character to be likeable, it needs to be relatable in some way . Society is full of idiots. So good luck finding a writer capable of writing a smart character. And good luck finding a consumer base intelligent enough to relate to a truly intelligent character... . This is why most protagonists are overly emotional and dumb. Because that's what most writers are. And that's what most consumers relate to. And this is why most of the greatest geniuses in human history spent most of their lives alone...
This is not true because you assumed every one include billions of people from other continents and cultures as well. The IQ average score for asian vs western are very different, and I havent even taking into account literacy rates, college gruates, grades, STEM, technological advancement and culture of learning and innovating. Sad for africa though they are late but hopefully they get there eventually
@@Dragor33-rg7xj Where did I say I included people from other continents? And why are you assuming what I'm assuming? How about just ask me instead... . Not going to respond to the rest until we figure out if you are capable of having a discussion without making assumptions...
The way to showcase a character's intelligence isn't to have them making a grand plan, predicting the future and "considering all possibilities" predictions. You showcase intelligence by having a character put in a position where they have to make lots of decisions really regularly in an environment of ambiguity and responding to change by regularly making the right decisions. They shouldn't be omniscient and get everything right but when they make an incorrect decision they are able to be reflective, critique their process and learn from it.
@bobbyharrop8817 This. It's like setting yourself up for failure to have a character come up with a third act catch-all. 1)You're much more likely to fail. Making sure all the details line up from beginning to end is a pitfall. 2) You rob the whole story of agency, or, as it's said, you hand the characters the script. 3) There is no such thing as a catch-all. Only a catch-most. It leaves room for further improvement and imagination, both during and after the show or movie or book.
So here is what Sherlock is like but as a programmer. If there is a bug in his code, he instantly always know what the bug is, even if there is multiple possible explanations for the bug. Most times it is ambiguous, so you must do further testing of your hypothesis to narrow it down to only one possibility. The only time Sherlock's ability is plausible is if he has seen it before and in the same context. Other than that it is just lucky guesses.
Love this metaphor! I'm actually a software developer myself so I really should have thought of this, but I think the analog of bug fixing works perfectly here.
It’s funny because the book/magazine version is much more prone towards trial and error,and a lot of his leaps of logic end up being wrong because exactly that, it could be a lot of problems causing a bug
It’s funny because the book/magazine version is much more prone towards trial and error,and a lot of his leaps of logic end up being wrong because exactly that, it could be a lot of problems causing a bug
But that's the thing, I stepped in to help a group of experienced people who had spent two weeks and were failing. I gathered two pieces of data and then I just *knew* what the problem was. Couldn't explain it. I've always been this way. Some part of my brain is smarter than my surface personality. And it's just presents answers to me. It is a real problem when they want me to prove how I got the answer. And I can usually work the answer out but it might take me a few days or even a week.
@@macmcleod1188 Intuition is a real thing based on prior experiences and hunches, however, it is not always correct. It is still just educated guesses.
Great essay. A couple of things reminds me of the old quote: Smart people can play dumb, but dumb people can’t play smart. Second another good example of not necessarily smart characters, but smart writing…its a bit of an over reaching Internet “meme” at this point but one of the reasons why The Simpsons/Futurama writers have developed this mythology of predicting real world events is the sheer volume of people PHDs on their writing staff multiplied by the massive amount of seasons and peoples confirmation bias.
@@suezcontours6653 Sage is realistically smart? The person that can predict how every single person that is directly or indirectly attached to her plan will act over the course of months is realistically smart? No. It's not possible. It's literally future telling at that point. Iron Man, on the other hand, just applies science to things. He's exaggeratedly smart. But not to the point of impossibility. His technology is more than likely less than 100 years ahead of our current tech.
@@suezcontours6653 She is not, and it's not even close. Creating and improving upon technology is something humans have been doing since the beginning. That's what Tony does. Sage knows exactly who's going to kill who, what people are going to say and when they're going to say it. She even had to know that she would be shot in the head at the party ahead of time and that Victoria would step up and say she'll be the one to take care of things. And, again, she would have had to know all of this months before any of it had happened. Because she didn't change her plan at all. It was all "according to plan."
In a review praising the Knives Out film, I remember the reviewer saying that the best mystery films contain hints throughout them which the average viewer would not be able to piece together watching it the first time, but the second time be able to see the clues and put it together before the ending. I think Arthur Conan Doyle does this well in his novels, which have many hints and red herrings, and are very tough to piece together until Sherlock Holmes tells everybody how he solved it. But if you read it a second time, you can put together who committed the crime before it is revealed.
Glass Onion's great gimmick was that they literally show you everything happening on the screen in the first half, but you just don't notice until the second half. Hell, Blanc literally calls Helen by her name in the first half, but you don't necessarily notice@@Goblinhandler
@@andrewdunn8778 Glass Onion had huge parts of protagonist's world hidden from the view. After seeing the first movie it felt like we've been cheated. It's like "he had an evil twin all along" trope all over again.
One scene similar to the Sherlock Watson introduction scene that handles an intelligent character better is the first meeting between Tony and Peter in Captain America: Civil War. In that scene Tony, not only does Tony utilize his specific type of intelligence (him being a master engineer) as opposed to "I'm smart so I know everything", but he also makes deductions that are completely reasonable given the limited information he has (even when he's wrong). The first show of Tony's intelligence is when he shows the video of Spiderman stopping a car. He comments that the car was weighed 3,000 pounds and was travelling at 40 miles an hour. While this seems like he pulled those numbers out of nowhere, it makes perfect sense given the context. He's an engineer with access to extremely advanced computer systems, AND he prepared that video ahead of time. He could've very easily had Friday crunch the numbers on that video long before even entering Aunt May's house. The same goes for the his comment on the web fluid. He says he's impressed at the tensile strength of the substance, saying it was "off the charts". This confirms that Tony was running some form of test on it beforehand, whether that was directly though a sample, or calculating the strength from video footage (which he has computers to do). When asking Peter who made the webbing, Peter answers that he made it himself. This confirms to him that Peter Parker is an incredibly smart individual. The final show of intelligence is actually he gets WRONG! After asking about the webs, he asks about the mechanism by which he sticks to walls. Given that he already knows that Peter is intellectually gifted (from the webbing before), he deduces that it had to be some sort of technological explanation. This leads him theorize that the gloves are adhesive. While this assumption is wrong, it was a perfectly smart thing to assume given the information he had. If he had suddenly deduced out of nowhere that he could stick to walls due to radioactive spider powers, I would find that to be an utterly nonsensical leap. But given what he was able to find out about Peter (mainly his intelligence), it seems perfectly logical to assume that his wall crawling was just another piece of tech he made. Anyways that's all I had to say. Great video mate! You've given me a lot to think about when it comes to writing!
Really great example and walk through of it! I think you're 100% right and it shows how well written Tony is compared to some of the characters I spoke about in this. Thank you! Best of luck with your writing.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt there the time tony and the hulk hung out in avengers. they are compare notes and the entire time tony is testing him. A sign of how tony is always looking for answers to question in his mind even in the middle of a conversation. his mind is always active.
Erwin from AoT is another example, the entire fake plan to "retake wall Maria" from season 1, gave way to finding out about another shifter and helped sniff out the Colossal and the Armoured, in season 2. And that is only one example.
another example would be the fact that he came up with the scout formation for expeditions. we don’t actively see him come up with it exactly because it happens before the show begins but we do see the details of the formation and it being used in multiple scenes of the show. also showcases him not placing his entire faith/relying in the brute strength of the corps since the entire formation strat is to avoid the titans and change course as they go
I always loved AoT's plans. The plans are smart but believable. I hate shows that have characters make long winded plans that can be derailed at any time if literally anything goes even slightly differently. In AoT Season 3 part 2 there were multiple cool displays of realistic intelligence. Zeke's opening move to seal the wall with the boulder to cut off the horse's movements. Zeke's plan was to restrict the enemy movement while showering them with rocks from an untouchable distance. That's literally the entire plan. There was no 4d mind chess mind games or dramatic twists and turns. Erwin's first observation was that if the horses were blocked off then they could be starved out. Erwin decided the battle needed to be won today and that a siege would be a losing proposition. However, Erwin failed to account for the unknown. He lost nearly all of his veteran troops when he underestimated/didn't consider the Beast Titan's throwing power. However despite his initial failure Erwin came up with a plan to make a sacrifice to distract the Beast Titan. And now it's Zeke's turn to make a mistake. He got too confident in his position. He realized he could kill nearly all of the scouts, but failed to even consider that just 1 scout (Levi) could be meaningful. Which ties into Zeke's larger story. Zeke's whole character was about how Zeke overlooked the little things. He thought it was all a sad and meaningless blur that needed to put out of it's misery. He never considered that life of a single person could mean something. It never occurred to him to notice how nice the weather was. And that's why he lost to Levi. Both Zeke and Erwin were strategists known for their analytical skills. But both of them were written to make mistakes and suffer consequences because of it. They were allowed to be smart while not superhumanly anticipating all possible outcomes. The story really benefited from that.
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.
You write intelligence the same way you write a good plot twist, it needs to work and be effective in the moment but also has to hold up on rewatch and under scrutiny. Perfect example is Fight Club, once you know what's actually going on and watch the movie again it's like watching a different movie. Not only does the movie make more sense but you start noticing things you didn't notice the first time which further adds to how well seeded and foreshadowed the twist was. This is how intelligent characters should be written, characters like Sherlock Holmes, Dr House, Reed Richards, or Tony Stark.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Same, it's a perfect example of why I try to avoid spoilers. Knowing the twist basically turns your first viewing into a second.
Same for "Memento". Once you know the plot you immediately want to watch it again with the knowledge you gained through the movie. In literature, "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov is a good example. Once you know the master plan of some of the protagonists (no spoilers which), you instantly want to read the story again and see the connections that you missed.
The way Eric Cartman bests Scott Tenerman would surely be an example of writing a smart character well. The Boys's writers should have studied that episode.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt You have to immediately watch Scott Tenerman Must Die! It's Primal Fear level impressive, even as a stand-alone episode with no previous context for the characters.
Well Matt Stone and Trey Parker are actually smart and humble enough to admit when they’re wrong (which they’ve done on political topics). You’ll never see someone like Kripke resorting to that level of humility. All he really does is make sure the show blasts one side of the political spectrum like a furnace, throw in a random sexual assault scene when things get monotonous, and ensure that the women are allowed to be shitty because they’re traumatized while the men should be on their knees begging for forgiveness. Rinse and repeat.
I appreciate your explanation. Because I have noticed many times very strange conclusions of so-called "brilliant" intellectual characters. And their representation in films. Finally, someone sort things out. I really liked this proposed concept of magical intelligence. It all looks especially funny in the age of information technology. It's amazing how easily you can verify something with a couple of clicks and come to much better solutions than those presented. Or even by just thinking a bit, given the same information the characters have. Unfortunately, most films and series are made in a hurry to fill streaming services with content (or at least it seems so). It's not surprising that many of them are generally lacking in depth. If the work itself cannot claim intellectual depth, then its characters certainly cannot either. Most likely, the general consumer doesn't need it, and the niche audience has its own more sophisticated sources of entertainment.
Thanks glad you enjoyed the video! It's an interesting point but I do think you're right that the age of digital streaming has contributed to lower quality movies and shows just being pumped out to fill content.
The challenge is, people want to write savants to be unquestionably smarter than the "normals" in the audience. If the audience is brought along for the reasoning, and is capable of understanding that reasoning, they end up feeling just as smart as the character, or at least close enough that it no longer feels like a savant, just a normal clever person. That's the paradox, if the writing itself is smart, it elevates the reader and the character no longer seems as special.
And I think the story SHOULD elevate the audience instead of the characters. Its much more enjoyable to the readers when they are the ones being elevated. And when a character is prioritized instead, the only thing being elevated is the author's ego.
Good point! I do think that characters can be written intelligently while still showing all their cards though. The one I was thinking of when first starting this video was Smiley from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. That character showed intelligence through realizing his mistakes and stating complex plans that he would draw out for other characters.
Mark Whatney in The Martian is really smart, especially in the book, but we're all brought along for the ride. A name for that type of story is "competency porn", and I enjoy those a lot.
Plus the whole "I was using A-Train to leak information that was useful to us" angle falls flat when A-Train spends most of the time actually helping the Boys out and nearly derailing their entire dinner at Tec-Knights mansion.
I wasn’t sure if it was lazy writing or speaks to the Boys theme, which is that supes are horrible people, and showing up afterwards claiming credit is right in tune with what a supe would do.
One character that really annoys me is the villain from the SAW movies, for the first two movies it could work that he is that smart, but then there were 8 more movies which tried to make him so ridiculously smart that even when he has already passed away his plans still goes on.
I haven't properly watched Saw, but the thing that always bugged me based off the trap videos is how some traps are much easier than others lol. It feels unfair.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptit’s understandable that you have that opinion since you haven’t properly seen the film series but that’s actually intentional. There are various characters aside from the original creator John Kramer who make the traps. Some of them agree with Kramer’s moral philosophy and therefore make the traps easier than others. But one of the characters doesn’t agree with Kramer’s moral philosophy. So the traps they design are significantly harder than the others. The victims of those traps aren’t meant to survive
One of the best videos and informative. I wrote a central Tritagonist in my first book and though smart it did explain unforeseen events by other antagonist's. It has taken 4years to work in the sequel and loads of further education. Again, thank you.
The biggest problem with smart/intelligent/genius characters is that, it also requires some degree of intelligence from the writer. So they can't be created by just anyone.
I like how a good intelligent character also overlaps with a good heist film. Whenever I think of how to write a heist, usually for my dnd games, I always think about in the way of breaking it down from the recon phase, planning stage, prep stage, execution stage, and escape stage. With intelligent characters it has a similar overlap in that you want to be able to see how they think and give the audience an opportunity to see the solution alongside the character. Making the audience feel smart. To have someone supersmart all they need to capable of doing is breaking down things in stages to show how one thing lead to another. Instead of just jumping to the conclusion like you showed.
I agree with everything you said. Heist movies are a lot of fun for playing around with audience expectations and getting a chance to show off some smart writing. Sadly they seem to have somewhat fallen out of fashion, I can't think of many recent heist movies.
I think the best way to write "intelligence" is to stop making it an innate ability and relating it to several conditions/mental illnesses, and treat it like a skill. It's not a magical way of thinking, it should just be a different, more effortful way of thinking that still gels with reality. The difference between the characters should be like someone who hasn't learned _how_ to solve a mathematics equation vs. someone who can solve difficult equations in their head, the latter should still take time and be able to explain how they got there to the former. Sherlock Holmes in the book would have chastised Sherlock Holmes in the show for his constant leaps of logic. This version of Sherlock felt more like when book Watson was trying to think like Sherlock, making huge assumptions to answer the wrong question instead of considering evidence based smaller and more likely options. The magic of Sherlock Holmes came from him teaching Watson his method, that when followed made the answer so clear anyone could understand how he came to the correct conclusion. Not some innate specialness related to OCD or savant syndrome or sociopathy or overexaggerated visualizations. Funny you should mention psychic powers because Psych is based on the premise of a genius detective pretending to be magical, yet his actual detective work is much closer to book Sherlock Holmes than any adaptation. It's a method that he learned from his father, that his immaturity and laziness can be detrimental towards. When the protagonist does make large assumptions and leaps to conclusions he's often called out on it from his father or his partner and he ends up being wrong. He then has to gather more evidence or reconsider his logic and objectivity explicitly, so when he does get the correct answer we as the audience understands why.
I think to write a "smart" character, all they have to do is to write a "well-written" character. Nothing more than that. Sherlock by Arthur Conan Doyle was a well-written character, Sherlock acted by Cumberbatch was a terribly written one. Well-written often meant "flesh-out" or just "believable". In many detective/mystery stories, the detectives are just side-characters or background character. Like "Dial M for Murder", the two smartest characters have the same observations as their screentime allowed. Or, like a lot of noir detectives or a Christie character or Colombo, they only solved the case when they got the right clues. Solving the mystery was not suppose to be a showcase of their intelligence. It is just part of their character. Or in the case, of the L Lawliet from Death Note or Tyrion Lannister or Littlefinger or SimaYi/ Kongming / ZhouYu/ ZhangZhifang or Odysseus, these guys are subject to the changes from the plot like any normal character. Lawliet was genuinely surprised that his decoy died, that the supernatural is involved. His character used probability thinking and narrow it down to Light Yagami, but he had no proof, and he needs the police and barely-legal methods to stay in the game. Littlefinger, the smartest character in Asoiaf, was gambling all the time. Odysseus kept making mistakes. Even god-mode Kongming, lost in the game of wits from factors he can't control. These characters are remembered because they are excellent characters. They are not smart because the writers kept hammering about how smart they are.
Great observations and I completely agree. I think weak writers are afraid to give their characters any "losses", but ironically it just makes their characters more shallow and less grounded.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt That because they don't understand or develop the characters and their limitation to begin with. One of my favorite Sherlock Holmes is played by Ian Richardson. (Available on Amazon Prime), In The Hound of Baskerville, Holmes deduced that Stapleton sister is actually his wife. When she asked how do he know? Holmes stated that there's a white mark on her finger, which suggest a ring. And he spot their behaviors and suspect they are not sibling. And also, he said that marriage, like death, are recorded, so he was able to find that out during the investigation. That's the way the character work. His observations on little details, are just small clues to lead up to big clue. The watch scene that BBC Sherlock adapted, had extra etchings of pawn shops. That's how he was sure the owner is often in poverty. Peter Falk who played Colombo said that the main reason (not counting meta aspect of the writer) why Colombo keep triumph over the villain is due to the fact villains only need to make one mistake while Colombo can afford to make more. There is always a reason to the madness and good writers will find that reason. Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lamb is a stellar example of this. In the book, one of my all time favorite section, is how Crawford, the old FBI agent, figured Lector mind game with ease. He knew how Lector was lying, how Lector was guessing and demystifying the doctor intelligence. It did not make it to the movie, for dramatic reasons, but Crawford equal understanding of Lector ability was there in the background. The sequels are terrible and never reach back the heights that Silence set, because Lector was no longer portrayed as a human, but was hyped up as this supergenius monster who can get away with anything.
Tyrion is such a great character, in large part, because his intelligence is limited to certain areas. When it comes to intrigue and politics, he is among the best in Westeros, but where he falls down is assuming his abilities in this area would automatically transfer to making war, where he fails utterly
Hahahaha 1000%, those scenes where Tyrion is doing military planning made him look like an absolute fool, because he ignored the first rule of any game: stop thinking about your plan, and think about what your opponent is planning.
One thing I love in shows that portray intelligence correctly is the planning stage without the audience understanding why something is happening. This is best shown in Better Call Saul when Saul is planning a grift and we see all the moving parts but don't understand why they're happening. He's also great at adapting. Best way to describe this is "I love it when a plan comes together!"
8:46, there are ways to make that work though. In the Season One Finale of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Loki monologues about how he was “responsible for everything” and connects every major conflict of the show up to that point to his evil plan and since we’ve seen Loki here and there in the background of those previous episodes and we knew the villains were working for Loki that ended up making a lot of sense.
I haven't seen it but I agree, it can be done well so long as you show exactly that, the villain actively present throughout and taking action. Unfortunately most of the time I've seen it, it hasn't been done well.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt True. Most of the time, it’s like Humpty Alexander Dumpty in the first Puss in Boots movie where he says “I was always there” and there’s a flashback to him at every major point in the movie influencing events from behind the scenes but after you start thinking about it you realize that doesn’t really make sense
This was a fantastic video essay! You eloquently presented my issues with Sage in The Boys, particularly her appearance in the last episode. Your positive examples for intelligent characters were both spot-on as well. You earned a sub and I look forward to what you cover next
First time watcher here. I remembered back when Sherlock first came out like 10 years ago when my friends were all hyping about it and I couldn't bear to watch it because of Sherlock's pseudo intelligence. It was so long ago, that when I saw your thumbnail I thought I could either be wrong or that you're just going to give a lousy example of why he is intelligent. I was so relieved when you gave your first bad example and instantly liked your video 😅
It’s in part why I like the first Tremors a lot. People discovering a threat, figuring out more and more information about this creature and how it operates and coming up with plans to deal with their situation. But also the creatures learn and adapt so the problem sort of evolves and a solution that’s worked before might not be so fruitful again.
The first Tremors movie definitely holds up as a light horror comedy. All practical effects IIRC, and it showcases multiple good decisions by the average intelligence human characters. The sequels are skippable as they get progressively campier, and start using bad CGI.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt The script is tight, the scares are well made, the characters are relatable, and it is a very fun experience overall. It is also a low budget monster movie, so take this factor into consideration. There aren't tremendous displays of intelligence, but the characters aren't dumb (except one kid, but he's written intentionally that way), and they have their moments of brilliance. Funnily enough, the most intelligent character is a geologist, to whom, and to her frustration, the rest of the characters constantly ask questions about the monsters that she cannot answer, because, well, she is a geologist.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Tremors absolutely holds up. The plot never relies on characters doing something stupid to advance the plot. They don't do the right thing every time (because who does?) But you never feel like they aren't trying their best to figure out how to solve problems they face.
And he does it more swiftly in books. In the show they exaggerate it for attempting cheap comedy. But if we are talking about Game of Thrones then there will be many many examples of smart characters actually being smart.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Even if it was "successfully used" in the GOT universe, it is still smart to use the correct "tried and true" strategy for the situation. "Smart" doesn't have to be original or creative.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt- Tyrion's slide into stupidity is one of the main tells that the writers were no longer using Martin's books to plot the show. His idea to send John Snow with a dragon to go get a zombie to prove to his sister they exist is so incredibly stupid. He also must have known that stingers have been used to try and kill dragons for hundreds of years and warned Dani about them. Or just made a plan to fly all three dragons super high to come straight down on King's landing behind the weapons and take our Cersi instead of trying to convince her of anything. It was all so obvious that dragons are way overpowered and the writers needed to nerf them to keep any semblance of stakes. I love House of Dragons and think the writing is in general smarter than the last GoT seasons but they still face the same issues with dragons being OP. I hope that some character in the show tries another method to kill the dragons other than shooting toothpicks or using a bigger dragon. Poisoning their food or throwing acid on them or building a trap to bury them would all be better than what they've done so far. Sorry for rambling, I still get mad whenever somebody talks about Tyrion being so smart.
I love this video - it completely encompasses the disappointment of when I watched Sherlock and the reason I couldn't get on with the books. God knows how it got so popular.
I’m not sure whether you realize that scene of Holmes susing out Watson’s entire life is actually a very faithful adaptation of the scene from the original Arthur Conan Doyle story where Holmes first meets Watson. The details are all updated for the current day, Watson’s phone was originally a pocket watch with similar scratches indicating someone trying to use it while impaired, and the war he was a veteran of was I think the Boer war, or whatever Imperial misadventure England had been dabbling in at the time of the story’s publication, but all of the little clues and bits with the limp & everything are exactly as in the original story. This doesn’t invalidate your criticism, of course, it merely reveals the true guilty party to be A. C. Doyle himself and not the writers of the TV show, who prove to have done a brilliant job (at least for the first couple of stories) for setting the Sherlock Holmes character in the modern day while preserving the essence of his character, for better and for worse.
It's certainly interesting to hear, a lot of you guys have been sharing information about the original books in the comments and I feel like I'm building up a decent picture of them now. Hopefully one day I'll get round to reading them myself.
I reread The Watch subseries every year or so. Just read the pulled quote yesterday. That one always sticks with me. I was essentially raised by Vimes, and being an artist, it always makes me happy to see artists preaching Pratchett's Vimesian wisdom
The TV show 'House' had a lead character that was basically Sherlock Holmes as well. And there would be a lot of the same things where House's keen observation and guesses were supposed to be a sign of his intelligence. However the show also did a good job of make him wrong more often the right when doing this, forcing the character to adapt and find new information until he has that "ah ha" moment when he's connecting the dots. But at least they show this process and don't present it like it is magic or a super power, which as you point out is how a lot of smart characters are presented. Maybe Sherlock did this too? I never watched that show.
I haven't seen House but that sounds like a good way to do it. In the BBC Sherlock at least, you don't really see him being "wrong" and figuring things out.
House isn't unwatchable bad like Sherlock imo, but it has the problem more often that not. With House though it felt like the writers were trying but had to fall back on it to keep up with the content chern, whereas Sherlock learnt all the wrong lessons from it.
Smart characters do Smart things like: Light Yagami and Walter White Not always, they fail. But story knows if its a failure. And to actually overcome equally smart obstacle, they have to give it all. And even outsmart the audience. However in Shows like Boys S04 and Code Geass, they have to say it constantly and smart things being done is nothing sort of outlandish without base which magically works because sth spawned there r.n or everyone is stupid
Yeah very true - Code Geass is definitely an example of another "smart" character not written very well. I actually forgot about that since it's been a while since I watched it.
I think Xanatos fro. gargoyles is one of the best examples of a smart character. He had ridiculous plans, but they were always ridiculous because he'd always come out on top. The best anyone else could hope for was to minimise his victory, which he accounted for once he knew people realised he always wins to set up situations where the outcome he really wanted seemed less advantageous(but really set up another plan or gave him much more than they thought). His plans weren't perfect, but you can see how every outcome always plays to his advantage, which is what made him such a good villain. The only time other people got an advantage over him was when they did something he couldn't plan for, and that only worked until he could predict it.
Death note is not a very good example of really smart characters. Light made so many mistakes, so his hubris allowed L to target him very quickly. Revealed his abilities at first confrontation, revealed he has ties to police limiting the suspects to a couple of hundreds from literal millions etc. L is even worse, his gamble with TV trick was assuming that Light can kill instantly without preparation, is arrogant enough to follow the bait and kill not a criminal right away etc. He could not know that. So, if Light had not done a stupid thing L would fail publicly and that is it, the end. There is no way to prove Kira is even real. And by the way it is impossible to prepare death row criminal sentenced to be executed on that day secretly as death row inmates wait several years for the execution. How many laws were needed to be broken for that trick to happen? Author pulled the solutions out of their arse. So, both L and Light have no patience, are prone to prefer instant gratification even if it is going to be very risky to them. Typical teenagers, not real geniuses.
@@dmitriy9053 Yes But there are Rules to the Universe laid out, even fanstastical. But Light is smart character. His complex is the downfall but he bested L and ruled for 5 years, working within Police circle as one of them. Tricked God of Death to do hia bidding, manipulated and used people a lot of times. He was a cold hearted bitch, without compassion like even Walt has for his family and Jesse over anything. Gus lost that way too, being emotional. Light only lost because Mikami slipped and made Light lose as well.
It really needs to be said that intelligence, like physical strength and ability, has more to do with what someone *does* than who someone *is*. An intelligent person is someone who spends a lot of time asking questions, using their mind in a variety of different ways, and enjoys doing so. The smartest person in the room is usually the person more interested in asking questions than giving answers, but the person most interested in giving answers is the one who wants you to think they're smart.
@@dirantosdelgado4749 Other than the 2 I mentioned in this video; Norm from Fallout, Darrow from Red Rising; Ender from Ender's Game; the 2 investigators from I-Robot (I forgot their names); L from Death Note (borderline, it's been a while since I watched the anime). Those are the ones who come to mind off the top of my head.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Del Spooner and Dr. Susan Calvin. They were the characters from the I’Robot movie. That said, in the book I’Robot by Isaac Asimov, almost every major character at some point comes across as intelligent due to coming up with an explanation for how the Three Laws of Robotics caused the specific strange behaviour currently being observed. And that makes sense since, in the book, they’re scientists trying to make sure the Robots don’t go wrong and as such it wouldn’t work if they couldn’t analyze robot behaviour in relation to the Three Laws
I’m glad you made this video and somehow the algorithm brought it forth. I’ve been struggling with this idea irl. I come from a working class family and since i was a child been labeled smart. And my family often tells me things like why aren’t you this or that (rich, powerful, famous, etc) or refuse to help me. They’ll often respond in contempt, “Aren’t you smart?” Partly it’s because they don’t have experience in the intellectual life, their own experience, their surroundings, media, but also because of magical thinking. I am also guilty of magical thinking because i would proceed to over explain myself as they casually pretended to listen. I figured eventually it’s hard to change someone’s world view. It strikes at the core of their very being. I often think that they imagine if they were smarter than others thats what they would do with this gift. Instead of questioning whether these goals are attainable or, more grossly put, desirable. I think being able to develop this trait is a lot like being an athlete. You need a lot of resources to bring about its fruits. You need to have access to good food, quality sleep, time to train, encouragement, a coach, facilities, etc. And often it’s out of the control of an individual. So, also luck. The fool is twin to the wiseman. I often think this is the difference. A fool believes himself wise and a wiseman knows he is the fool. Its probably the one healthy appetite, to discover that you don’t know and then want to find out. What is most important to me is my character. And a healthy character grows. As far as Sister Sage is concerned, i had the same rxn. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but I think in context of the show that’s what the writers were going for. It’s a deliberate poke at the trope. Remember we’re making fun of super heroes, modern day myths. Hero worship. Hubris.
Hey man really appreciate your view and comment. I think there's a very common misconception of intelligence where people perceive it as a binary - you're either smart or not, you're either successful or not. But the reality is that intelligence is not only a scale, it's multi faceted across different types of intelligence. And intelligence alone is not a predictor of one's success - it's a combination of their personality, connections, background and even luck as well.
Regarding Sage: You could be right, but I'm not entirely convinced. The Boys's satire is almost always extremely on the nose, while Sage's "master plan" reveal last episode really just felt like lazy writing. Like if another character had made a snarky comment of how BS her smarts were or something I might've considered it a part of The Boys's satire - or at least it would show some self-awareness of it, which is better than what we got - but it didn't really come off that way imo. And yeah agreed on intelligence. I'm a bit over average intelligent myself (maybe top 10 %) while my brother is more like top 0.01 or maybe even 0.001 % (I know intelligence isn't as arbitrary as that, but it's still a *mostly* honest demonstrative way of putting it), and what you're saying resonates from what I've seen of my brother, and, to some lesser degree, myself. I stopped nurturing my intelligence for over a decade when I suffered from depression, so I'm literally a living proof that smart people can easily turn into fools given the wrong circumstances.
Another clear contrast is Scofield from Prison Break and Professor from Money Heist (Casa de Papel). Scofield makes a clear elaborate plan to infiltrate prison and get his brother out. He has a concrete map of the prison, he is constantly analyzing the situation and taking advantage of the police's shortcomings, and is constantly facing challenges which he deescalates just as smartly. Meanwhile, Professor sends his gang crew into the bank where they take it hostage for days. The unbelievable part is that he deduces the police's exact decisions, like he also has a map of their psyche, predicts their decisions, predicts their plots and plans, plots their tactics, predicts their attack patterns, predicts each and every shortcomings which had like millions of alternative ways to unfold, and even whenever the plan goes sideways, he makes another plan that also disregards rebuttals in case of unplanned shortcomings. The whole season can simply be deciphered as how he pictures the whole heist will go in his head, instead of it being the actual heist.
I agree that Scofield in season 1 (possibly 2) of Prison Break is a relatively well-written smart guy, but the less said about seasons 3, 4 - and beyond - the better. The way his magical problem-solving abilities seem to have equally magically rubbed off on people who are supposed to be much less intelligent than him, like Lincoln, Sucre and even Bellick, is simply ridiculous.
In fairness to Sage, I saw it as her only true plan was to truly ultimately earn Homelander's trust. Yes, Sage could be lasered by him anytime, but it was established that she was dissatisfied with life -- So, she was like "Fuck it, let's go." But not to do as Homelander wants. His agenda was secondary, Neuman was secondary. Succeed and get Homelander to believe in her, or almost-fail but have contingencies in place to succeed and get Homelander to believe in her -- That adaptability was the true smarest move. And I think her "tell instead of show" is forgivable because she is shown nudging conflicts, recruiting Firecracker, and negotiating with Neuman. The contingencies she set up were much easier moves that didn't need screentime because there was no challenge. Now, where Sage points, Homelander will punch or laser. Hella smart.
This. Sage seemed more like an opportunist than anything else, which is its own form of intelligence. Also consider she wanted to be out of the spotlight, so it didn't benefit her to always be "seen" as the smart one, especially knowing how jealous homelander gets.
A bit late here, but this is definitely worthy commenting on. Very well done essay on the topic, it often does feel like a lot of media - this isn't exactly a new thing - makes a bad habit of portraying intelligent characters poorly. There's a long history of the "smart" character being secondary to the core cast and mostly serving as a convenient plot device to provide the solution to whatever un-punch-able threat there is on demand. That often works for secondary characters, but very quickly falls apart when they're moved into the spotlight. Anyhow, if I were to summarize how to portray smart characters... it comes down to the *Scientific Method*, summarized below: 1. Ask a question. 2. Collect the relevant information. 3. Form a hypothesis. 4. Build an experiment and test the hypothesis. 5. Analyze the data collected from the experiment. 6. Draw conclusions from the data analysis. 7. Form new hypothesis and/or questions based on what you learned. 8. Repeat. Those steps are the core of science as a whole - it's a process of testing ideas and seeing what holds. Many seem to confuse the knowledge collected from all those questions, experiments and hypotheses are the science itself... but really, it's just the sum total of the knowledge. The information collected in step #2. In theory, anyone can have that information (especially in a modern setting with the internet on hand); those can recite it on demand just have a good memory recall. However, smart characters (and smart people) are often compulsive researchers, ever seeking out new information because they like learning new things. To make a character feel "smart", you have to expose the audience to as much of the above process, expose them to the thought process. However, the challenge is making it compelling storytelling without drowning your audience with too much information and analysis; you'll only entertain the nerdiest of nerds who like the challenge of solving a good puzzle at that stage. So you have to hold back the information and sprinkle it out throughout the narrative - and yes, it is much like building a good plot twist or writing a mystery. Even if the audience didn't see it coming the first time, all the foreshadowing and hints need to add up in the end. But for some fun, you could have the metaphorical "red herring" (the false lead) be explored, discussed, and maybe even dismissed for logical reasons rather than just forgotten about. ------------------------------------ As a bit of a tangent, I've often seen it be said that it's tough (if not impossible) to write a character smarter than yourself... and there is a grain of truth to that. Because you, as the writer, need to figure out the same things the characters do. The good news is that the author can do research and run their own experiments (or even just thought experiments), and become smarter themselves. The problem is that takes time and effort on their part, so easier said than done. And of course, the other challenge is presenting the information in a way that's comprehensible to the audience... and damn, that's a WHOLE other question by itself. Some audiences are frighteningly attentive and clever... while others, to put it politely, are not. Being willing (or allowed) to write for the actually smart audience can be a potential hurdle. But I guess this is the good time for a quote from Einstein himself: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
This is going to be one of my favourite videos from your channel!! My favourite part is Sherlock Holmes, also i think your subject is very unique, well done 👍
The most intelligent people consistently ask questions you never thought to ask but which are obviously interesting or important as soon as you hear them. They also are good at understanding what a good answer would look like, and deducing within that framework. The problem, as others have pointed out, is the writers of these characters are typically not smart enough to write a smart character. The current "smartest person in the world" on The Boys is a great example of the problem. She just comes across as arrogant and magically knowledgeable. Nothing about her comes across as very intelligent.
Well put I completely agree. And I also dislike the modern trend of making supposedly intelligent characters also very arrogant and edgy. Sage's motivation in S4 for not doing "good" felt immature and unconvincing.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptYeah, exactly! I hate the tropes of making smart characters assholes for no reason. Yeah some smart people can get a bit arrogant but a lot of the smartest people I've ever met are the kindest, most empathetic people I know. If anything I'd almost say on average smarter people have more of a capacity to understand things from other people's points of view and be considerate of others
I think one example where “it was part of my plan” works is in Better Call Saul, and I think the reason was because it put a lot of effort in convincing you (the viewer) of the scams they were pulling so I constantly felt outsmarted by the show. It also did the stuff you mentioned at the end :)
I will say, with Sage, we know she didn’t actually plan on Neuman dying. The plan the whole time was for Singer to go to jail and for Neuman to be their puppet in office. Once Neuman died she quickly pivoted to a new guy to be their puppet, because the specific person didn’t actually matter, they just needed to be able to control them. She simply risked the fact that Homelander wouldn’t kill her, but it wouldn’t have made sense if he did, because she deliberately fed A-Train false information, and Homelander is a little more rational than we give him credit for. Also the incriminating footage on Singer as a pivot as well. The plan originally was to have him assassinated, and pin it on Starlight, then when that fell through they pivoted to the video. Every point you brought up proves the opposite of what you’re trying to prove.
Yeah, this video acknowleges that Sage lies to Homelander, but completely fails to consider that she's lying to Homelander in the final scene. It didn't go perfectly according to plan, but it went close enough, and she's taking credit because why wouldn't you?
Thank you! I felt like I was going crazy because I don't remember Sage ever making it seem as though she literally planned every action. She took advantage of situations and knew how to adapt lightning fast based on pivotal information or her understanding of the human psyche. She's not written as an omniscient hero and its clear some of her plans fall through. She just made sure the overarching goal was reached and in the end that's all that matters.
Yeah, nobody seemed as if they were able to kill her, an Butcher only could because he took advantage of a completely undocumented effect of an experimental drug. Considering Sage seemed to get her intelligence from reading, there is no way she could have forseen somebody in opposition of her being able to kill Neumann.
Tyrion is my fav character from GoT for being the real smart person. You can't feel empathy for characters that don't reveal their experience or thought process in any way.
I think The Professor from "Money Heist" or 'La Casa De Papel' is a good example of a smart character who doesn't just have everything go right. He's presented with seemingly unescapable situations in which he eventually finds a very logical way out. He's truly the best part of the show
Man, storytelling IS way more important than information. The examples stay with me, the bullet points got lost… THATS why you don’t say it, you show it
Honestly great video. I've always had a problem with "smart" written characters. You're fully right about show don't tell. Having a character use the available information and using it in the best way possible given the situation will always be more believable and impressive than them claiming to have done so. I believe that's why anime and manga work so well. Instead of saying how something happend, they'll show the entire backstory to a character or situation. This also increases the stakes and emotional attachment to a character. You get to see their struggles, making them more believable characters. A big problem with smart people is them not feeling human, they feel supernatural, unreal.
Thanks glad you liked the video! I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment, especially your last sentence around how these characters end up feeling unreal and superficial.
The silliest "smart" character trope I see all the time is a smart character who knows tons of random arbitrary literature so intimately they can quote it at will, and identify any random quote instantly. Of course it makes sense a lazy writer would think a smart character should automatically be smarter than the writer themselves in all areas, and a writer knows literature best.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt What do you enjoy about it? I hated the pilot since the first scene. The game of wits between Sherlock and the culprit, are enraging with how stupid it is. I skip one episode I think, to see what they did with Irene Adler, and rage-quit in the final scene. All I remember from it is how stupid it is and how angry it make me feel.
Man Tyrian was such a good character. He always had an answer or plan, even when one plan didn’t work out. He always pivoted to something else, some other line of thinking.
Well, he still makes some assumptions that fall into the "magical" intelligence trope, but by making him constantly get things wrong and adapting, he feels like a very intelligent character and not a magical guy
The only time I have seen the "I am smart therefore rude" work is in Doc Martin, his persona is shown as a failing and a condition he would like to sometimes change rather than just the, I'm cool because I pretend not to care. It is also shown in a positive light in other scenarios too and the main thing being it is very funny.
Very nice video, Baku Madarame from Usogui+Battler and Beatrice from Umineko are great characters that have very well explained feats of "smartness" and logic.
8:00 also, thats just a massive plot hole because she *_shouldn't_* have gotten that footage. The shifter was killed, meaning any local footage would have not been recovered. They were also in a secure underground bunker specifically designed to be safe and isolated, so remote communication shouldn't have worked either. That footage could not have made it out of that bunker.
Hmm good catch! I actually missed this but you're right, more evidence the writers didn't put much thought into her character and thought the final episode dialogue would somehow be enough!
The trope I'm the most fed up with is : "character proceeds to quote ancient Roman generals and Greek philosophers". General knowledge doesn't equate to intelligence. Quoting Marcus Aurelius to appear badass isn't different from quoting the Joker on Reddit to achieve the same goal. A real intelligent person doesn't need to sound smart, they are smart. Not to mention that demeaning your interlocutor is a very dumb move, it only leads to mistrust and possibly anger, you will get nothing valuable out of people that you made feel inferior. Walter White is a great example of that. When is he ever shown to quote things to sound smart ? Anyone remembers the scene where Saul Goodman is trying to make a point about Skyler, he says "gangsters don't need wives, have you ever seen White Heat ?". Walter answers "I've seen White Heat, what's your point ?". This is a perfect example of someone trying to sound smart in front of someone who is actually smart. The smart person goes to the essential : what's the point ? They don't need to embellish their train of thoughts, they keep it simple. The "broken plate" scene is one of the best example of on-the-spot intelligence I've seen displayed on media. Walter never goes for tirades about light and darkness, good and evil, he finds specific clues and crafts unique solutions to difficult problems. An episode in the show Monk (s4e1) perfectly illustrates your entire video. It's an episode where Monk is challenged by another detective who seems to outsmart him at every step, through superhuman deductive abilities and impossible foresight. Normal people are suspicious of him, but are still led to believe him because the foresights become true, while Monk thinks he's cheating, although he does not know how. It turns out that the other detective was in fact cheating, his mother overhead the perps and their plans on the phone. It's the way we feel with these magical deductions, like when Sage first meets Homelander and tells him that Soldier Boy is his father, although she has no way of knowing that. We don't feel impressed, we feel cheated.
I loved watching reed thompson/teddy macdonald from snowfall, the way he was an extremely intelligent control freak in a world where everything was unpredictable and nothing went according to plan, it felt like he never had any plot armor, always survived and got shit done because of his experience, intellect and improvisation skills when things went wrong
To be fair to the writers of Sherlock, a lot of his deductions in the scene where he meets Watson are deductions he made in the first two books. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes sees Watson is tanned and has a rigid posture and short haircut so he deduces that Watson has military training (hence the posture and cut) and figures the reason someone with a military background would be in a hot place would be if he were a soldier in a war so he reckons Watson would have been a veteran of the Second Anglo-Afghan War due to it being recent enough to make sense. And since a mutual friend introduced him as Dr. Watson, Holmes (correctly) deduces Watson’s an army doctor. In the second book, Holmes sees that Watson’s watch has several scratches on it and is labeled H. Watson so he deduces that Watson had an alcoholic brother who died of his excesses and whose first name began with H.
That's pretty interesting the show more closely adapted the original books than I realised. I'll have to find some time to read the books to compare, I'm mostly curious if the deductions are more grounded in the books.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Some of the deductions are far more grounded. For instance, in the short story Five Orange Pips, Holmes deduces that a murder was committed by the KuKlux Klan from the killer having engraved the letters KKK into the ground (at the time, the Klan wasn’t widely known outside of America). And in the short story a Case of Mistaken Identity, Holmes suspects (but doesn’t say) that his clients disappeared boyfriend is actually her (very young) stepfather in disguise so he asks her to give him some of her boyfriend’s typewritten letters and then he writes to the stepfather asking him to come to 221B Baker Street to discuss the case and then confronts the stepfather with the fact that every typewriter has its own unique signature and the stepfather wrote his letters with the same typewriter with which the “boyfriend” wrote his. (The stepfather wanted to keep her from marrying since he was worried that he would lose the money he married into so he thought that this would scare her out of romantic relationships.) In the first book, A Study in Scarlet, Lestrade thinks the killer was trying to write Rachel but Holmes says it’s actually Rache (German for revenge) to make them suspect a political conspiracy but Holmes is only half-right since while it was written in German to make them suspect a political conspiracy the killer actually specifically wanted revenge.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Yeah, his deductions are often less about observations and more about making connections based on things he remembers. Like how in The Hound of the Baskervilles he recognizes the words from a ransom note to know what newspaper they are from, and recognizes the smell of a certain perfume on the paper.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Aizen's plan with the Soul King was pretty uncomplicated, Hell according to Ichibei it was doomed to fail anyways. With Ichigo, I find it funny how Everything But The Rain actually showed the context for Aizen's plan with him, specifically that it's pretty much a side hobby if anything. He was accidentially responsible for how Ichigo turned out, and decided to basically just monitor him from there. I find it funny that the very beginning of Aizen's 'big plan with Ichigo' was a setback to his main plan. Then of course there's no way he got Grimmjow to do what he did unless it was all psychological manipulation, though I could believe that he planned Ulquiorra's battles since Ulquiorra is basically a non-mechanica robot in how he acted for most of the series he was in.
My favorite demonstration of intelligence in writing is to have the individual be curious. They are observant, but never jump to conclusions. They may have a disturbing intensity sometimes, but it's only because they are deeply invested in learning more. They may be able to solve problems later, but they may also not realize it until nearly too late, because they were genuinely moving on to other problems in their own heads, and they have to be reminded to revisit older issues.
I can appreciate criticisms of an authors thought process and motives, even their life decisions. Simply out and out insulting people because of a story is scummy. No offense.
One of my writer friends had a rule for having a smart character solve a problem.
-introduce the problem
-spend a week thinking about the solution
-have your smart person think up the solution quickly
Very good way to do it! That's the biggest advantage writers have to "cheat", by basically using prep time their characters won't have.
this is the way to address the "the character cannot be smarter than the writer", people forget the element of time also plays a role
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt I've noticed the same thing about sitcom dialogue. Characters that are supposed to be witty come up with insanely quotable quips like they fell into the fortune cookie jar as a toddler and will just rapid-fire them at each other. The trick is to make it sound even remotely like normal people having a normal conversation. Gilmore Girls comes to mind as a prime example, but anything with a laugh track works, really.
To be fair, Sherlock Holmes might be using some magic. Afterall, what he does in his spare time is rather Strange.
That’s a great rule ima use that
Sage's plan was to always say "That's the plan" when things go well and "This is all part of the plan, relax" when things go bad.............
Win-win scenario lol, funnily enough I can completely see that.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt she is a well written character, then?
Basically Xanatos from Gargoyles.
"Trust the plan, guys. Trust the plan."
She made a plan that can't fail because failure is also fine. A plan that needs to fail is bad, but a plan that will work either way is perfect. The only true failure would be something she didn't expect happening. However there weren't actually many options outside of what happened in the show. So it was easy to cover them.
Shoutout to a 4chan greentext that had this critique of sherlock.
Something along the lines of : "sherlock is a show about a smart person written by a dumb person, as to dumb people, the inner workings of smart people is so out of reach of them that they are indistinguishable from magic"
Completely agree with whoever wrote it, it's nice to see so many other people calling out Sherlock (and others) for this.
Probably explains why smart people in so many shows and movies are depicted as being pretty heavily on the spectrum, the writers can't understand how they think so default to stereotyped autism
The main problem of Sherlock is the success of the show. In the first episode, after he discusses his "deductions" of Watson with Watson in the car, they leave the car nad Sherlock asks, if he did get anything wrong, and, after Watson says, he had everythin right, Sherlock says himself "I didn't expect to be right about everything", so even he himself recognizes, that he just guessed a lot of things, but was accidentaly right. In the third episode "The Great Game", he admits, that he finds the answers only because "M" wants him to find the answers, so the whole process is rigged. So he knows, he is nor perfect and guesses a lot in Season 1. But after Season 1, this changes completely and he is always right. Btw., the greatest example I know in movies for the smartest person in the world is Ozymandias in the Watchmen. He has a plan, he has a reason for the plan, and everything he does is part of the plan and brings the protagonists to act like he wants them to. And in the end, he achieves his goals.
@@Charon10-kb1bs "In the end? Nothing ends Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
irc it specifically mentioned Anton Chigurh as an example of a smart person written by smart people, and that always stuck with me.
Sister Sage was very realistic. Leave half way through, if things go well come back and claim responsibility. Smart move.
If they make sage out to be a charlatan that would be a great twist and make up for it all
Lol I like it. I should use this at work.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Though for what it’s worth, being a fraud still requires a level of intelligence. After (spoilers) the Wizard of Oz is exposed as a humbug and explains how he faked all the magic the Ozites believe he’s done, he honestly comes across as significantly smarter for having been able to pull off those tricks
@@matityaloran9157 Yeah very true. Catch Me If You Can comes to mind for that as well.
I somewhat agree... I think its possible shes lying to homelander about actually orchestrating the events... I think however she is indeed intelligent but the end was not really her plan but found an opportunity to further her influence on homelander by saying that it was her plan...
0:55 The biggest irony there? Intelligent people are less likely to make big leaps like that. Because they're aware of all the things that could be causing the effect, so they need more data to believe something. Not less.
Very good point! Reminds me a little of Dunning Kruger effect.
😂Believing collecting more data that can smooth things
That's true. Superintelligence usually ends being portrayed as a combination of superconfidence plus superluck.
I actually remember a scene in Black sails where the lead character sortof answers his own take on this that he knows he's certainly capable of being wrong on an assumption he's made that leads to his current course of action, but he's got to A: follow through on what he believes to be the most likely possibility, rather than all the alternative options he then goes on to list, and B: He needs to confidently assert to his crew that it is the only option because he needs them to believe it and not question his orders if there is any chance at all in accomplishing his ends.
There's a villain in know of that intentionally tries to make his intelligence come across as this "magical leap in logic".
(He's a supernatural being that feeds on the hearts of people. He consumes your heart when you fear him too much.)
(He basically spins a lot of plans and lies around his prey, and he takes great effort to hide how he came up with his plans, and how he gained the knowledge he needed to hatch those plans.
(He also makes a lot of calculated gambles. When he wins the gamble, he pretends like he knew it was going to happen the whole time. When he loses the gamble, he pretends like his failure was just a distraction from something even bigger.)
Basically, he tries to come across as some near omnicient genius who has everything figured out from the beginning. It instills more fear when his victims see him this way.
My favorite showcase of genius in media is the ending of Breaking Bad season 4, when it is revealed it was Walt who had poisoned Brock to get Jessie on his side to ultimately take down Gus. He didnt need to have the whole season planned ahead, this was just one simple premediate step he took to manipulate one important variable - Jessie in his favor because he knew he needed him to win. And the best thing about that reveal was that Walt didnt outright admit anything, the camera just cut to the poisonous plant in his garden. A plant they have introduced earlier to us, only didnt identify it until that big reveal. I felt so much respect for the writers at that point
Breaking Bad is SUCH a good show. Walt is such a good example of a smart character too, he's highly intelligent and manipulative, but he also has fatal flaws and is actually severely lacking in many areas. And as you said the plan with Brock is simple at face value but perfectly executed and targeted to manipulate Jesse. Love that show.
@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Best thing about Walt is that his genius isn't reflected through convoluted plans or by him just using big words. He takes precautions, keeps crucial information to himself and slowly improves his position like a real life genius would. He only reveals he has cancer to explain why he has been acting strange, he reveals Skyler cheated on him to get Marie of his back, he uses information like playing cards and you can see and appreciate what he is doing as a viewer. I was hoping we would get something practical like that for Sage in the boys but sadly nah. And I'm happy you pointed that out because when I said she was written lazily and simply stating this was your plan all along is just not satisfying I always just get shut down with "yeaaah bro but she is like, super smart. You are just a normal dude, ofc you cant understand her schemes"
@@marekb1556 Walt was a problem solver who had a skill for manipulating people
The skillset of a physicist or engineer is very different.
@@ralalbatross Also supposedly a genius chemist. Don't forget he was a scientist as well
I feel like Better Call Saul is a better example of _extremely_ well-written smart characters. Just because you're smart doesn't mean everything you do will work perfectly or that you won't have blind spots. or make mistakes, like when (warning! big spoilers follow) Jimmy needs a photocopier to doctor the Mesa Verde documents, Chuck is clearly out cold for the night so Jimmy has all the time in the world. He absolutely doesn't need to go to the nearest all-night copy-shop. He _could_ have picked a random one across town and gone there instead, but he doesn't consider it, because he doesn't think Chuck is ever going to suspect he was involved, so he just goes to the nearest place. Then later, Chuck suspects Jimmy was responsible and knows that the documents couldn't have been doctored without a photocopier. He sends his assistant to the nearest copy-shop and the clerk tells the assistant he saw Jimmy on the night in question. Jimmy then comes in and bribes the clerk to change his story and deny it later when Chuck arrives. When things don't go his way, Chuck freaks out and has a panic attack while trying to intimidate the clerk into saying he saw Jimmy. You can see that both brothers are brilliant, but flawed each in their own way. You can see exactly what their plans are and what works and what doesn't and how they adapt as they encounter curve-balls. Nothing feels magical or unrealistic.
The problem arises because supposedly very smart characters are created by not very smart writers/screenwriters. There is a rule: the smartest character in your story will not be smarter than you. And since high intelligence is unattainable for ordinary people, they simply make it something magical, and further exaggerate it, because otherwise their fragile ego will not stand comparison. In other words, many characters are magically super smart not only because the writer does not understand how the mind works, but also because he wants to make the character the same unattainable ideal for the reader/viewer as high intelligence is for himself.
There is some truth to that rule, *but* an author typically has much more time to think, plan, and consider options than the characters they create.
It should be possible to write a character that *at least* thinks faster and more clearly than the writer would be able to in the character's situation.
Intelligence is not quantitative. The least intelligent person I have ever known literally taught _herself_ how to read. Which seems like you'd have to be pretty smart to manage. And the smartest person in the world could easily spend hours looking for glasses that are on the top of their head, like a fool.
I’ve heard people say that but it’s not really true. Victor Frankenstein was able to build a man out of dead limbs and reanimate him over the course of two years (though he couldn’t easily replicate it without further research). And the Monster was able to teach himself French and how to read. Mary Shelley created both characters but there’s no way she could have managed to do any of those. (She knew how to speak and read but she wasn’t an autodidact.)
@@matityaloran9157 Agreed. This is another point to keep in mind.
Suppose you have a character who is a genius of chemistry. If their knowledge of chemistry is useful - let's say two or three times - across the length of a 400 page novel, the author does not need to dedicate their life to studying chemistry. They could read a few papers that seem relevant to those moments, or even reach out and ask someone who *has* dedicated their life to studying chemistry for advice or feedback.
This could even apply to a "smart character" that doesn't have any kind of expert knowledge. Just bouncing ideas off of other people could lead to ideas the author would never have thought of themselves.
@@Riff.Wraith Definitely. In fact, when Victor Frankenstein agrees to create a female companion for the Monster (though he reneges), he tells the Monster that it’s necessary for him to go to England and conduct further research because the creation of a living being isn’t something you can easily replicate. And even the creation of the Monster took Victor two years. So you can tell that a lot of what makes Victor such a smart character is study, practice and experimentation rather than him magically being a savant.
The best way to write a smart charater is to
1. Do your homework: take your time to think of problems and solutions
2. Do your homework: research potential solutions and apply knowlege on things you know
3. Do your homework: observe what you already have written and find anything that you could expand on or use.
4. Do your homework: how are they smart and think of how they should get out of the senario not how you would.
5. Basically what i am saying is stop beong lazy and really think about your work and go over it. Time is basically frozen for the charaters until the writer comes up with something. Even if it takes like a week for the charater it was like 3 minutes
Nice, I think you 100% nailed it.
There's one glaring problem. Your most intelligent character can only be as smart as you (the writer) in this case. No problem since most writers are geniuses yep
@@matttamal8332 no that problem is solved, as the original poster stated, with time. You (the writer) have as much time as you need to research, bounce ideas off other actual people, attempt multiple different solutions until you find the best one etc. and then you can just insert that solution into the story as if the genius character came up with it on the spot
@@CrashSableI don’t know how much you’ve written, but this problem cannot simply be solved with time.
The amount of effort you employ may help overcome some issues - but people with no expertise in a topic cannot simply read about it for a year and suddenly reproduce savant syndrome - which is usually what most “genius characters” on TV are displaying.
Zack Snyder spent *years* on his Justice League movies. And yet, he still never figured out the glaringly obvious idiocy of the aspects of Darkseid, the Anti-Matter Formula, the Boxes, etc.
@@matttamal8332There are a lot of people arguing otherwise, but it’s a psychological impossibility for a less intelligent person to convincingly portray a *more* intelligent one… It can work in the *opposite* direction, though.
The issue is that the flaw is usually only apparent to other highly intelligent people… So, you see a lot of people saying otherwise.
But no amount of time or effort will make an average person’s depiction of a “genius” seem authentic without basically giving full control of that character to someone else.
Merely observing brilliance doesn’t make it absorb into the observer. This is one of the most common misconceptions about how truly exceptional people (like savants) work.
I think the real tricks to writing smart character (who are smarter than you) is to take full advantage of the fact that you are creating the world around them, and you have more time to think about clever solutions than the characters. So you take all the time you need to engineer a difficult puzzle for which you know the solution, then show your character figure out the solution more quickly than an average person.
Yeah 100%, it's the advantage you have as a writer vs your characters.
I think the "it was my plan all along" trope for showcasing intelligent characters can work when writers provide enough details and sufficient contextual information for the audience to eventually reach the same conclusion as the smart characters themselves. The problem is that procedure takes a lot of effort to plan and careful attention to predications to draft out, and a lot of bad writers seem to have this implicit association that the smarter a person is, the less work they need to do.
Yeah I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Well it needs to be sprinkled in within the story not just “literally everything that happened up to this point was my plan muahaha”
One of the best series that does this is usogui. It's really good you should read it if you haven't
I think Watchman did it really well, where he tells the plan at the end and the line I did it 35 minutes ago.
@@faruquekhan3353 Fantastic example.
What also makes Ozymandias a compelling example of a well-written smart character is that on top of the amount of thought and effort he demonstrates in pulling off his grand scheme, his very motivations for doing so are cogent enough for the average reader to follow and for the more astute readers to recognize what kind of dysfunctional sociopath would choose to be a superhero but then also completely disregard the value of human lives.
Man do i hate when a writer wants you to think the character is some kind of 4d chess super genius... so they give them a copy of the script.
Haha yeah it's extremely frustrating.
Deadpool is a super genius. Confirmed.
Hey, that's an interesti- terrible idea! **Scribbles some notes**
'True smart character won't play 4d chess.. they play 6d checkers instead' -some smart character, probably
Unless your Joseph Joestar, his entire gimmick is literally a joke reading manga the wrong way lol
Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul is a great example of this. We see our main characters planning something without knowing what their plan is, building up to the reveal of something ingenious that makes all the previous clues make sense.
It’s like L and near from death note. Although L was one of those “natural geniuses” he literally explained all his steps and processes while trying to find Kira. And also the very first smart thing he did with the fake broadcast was something everyone understands and gets as a very smart move
I really like death note, and L is a great character.
L makes it extremely large mistake at the very beginning With that fake broadcast
He assumes that the person watching the broadcast who then used to the death note to kill lives in that area and is not simply on Vacation
the killing is also done with a supernatural power So how can he know That the person does not have a psychic ability to know about this broadcast without having to watch it in the area it's broadcaster
and the broadcast trick can never be a perfect people have to be broadcasting it filming it elle had to go through some channels to get his hands on a death row inmate
So how does he know that information about this impending broadcast was not weak Or that the trick itself was not leak
how does he know the killer wasn't the cameraman Or any one of the good hundred people would have to be involved in this
even he did as much of the work by himself and with his butler That is still at the absolute bare minimum quite a few people who have to know what he's doing
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt I once watched a joke video on death note where Kira gets wrapped with guilt and decides to confess all of his crimes to L explaining absolutely all of the details
only for L to conclude that the explanation is absolutely insanity and retarded so he concludes that light must be mentally retarded and not actually a genius for coming up with such a dumb confession so hell completely dropped his suspicions of light apologizes and leaves
only for a confused light to realize that somehow he just won the game by confessing
it was actually a really good video and pointed out the absurdity of the entire show to have so many supernatural aspects in what is supposed to be a non magical rational world
@yami122 you got a point, but Kira's reaction to this made it obvious that he was right. He did make an assumption there, but the following mistakes Kira has done proved that his assumption was right.
@@yami122
1. If no one would have done anything (as they are not Japanese or are away), then this itself would have been one of the possible conclusions (other than that they chose not to respond). In which case, in the Death Note verse, there would be another plan.
2. They were probing for data. They had to make some assumptions initially to start their experiments. They already had data which indicated a single human at the beginning: the incidents occuring only after school hours, and only to those whose data was shared publically, and in order of data reveal.
3. Logistics are a major problem, and finally that is what made them fail as Light embedded himself into the investigation. Yes. This is a valid point. However, specifically the cameraman may not be the cuprit, as they would be randomly arranged.
What writers don't realize that everything a "smart" person does is put KNOWN information together to give him a larger view point of a situation. There's no way a genius could just pull information out of thin air. He could extrapolate it from the information that he already has but he cannot predict something that hasn't happened to the smallest detail.
Well said - it should always be based on prior, established knowledge. It becomes magic when the information is pulled "out of a hat", so to speak.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt
This makes me think about a book I read. I think it's classified as a thriller or something like that. The lead character is a detective, trying to solve a case involving a serial murderer. Usually, one can always spot the guilty one in this kind of story. Almost always. In this case, I scratched my head alongside the characters. When they found out who it was, I was as chocked as the detectives. But looking back at the story, one could see all the signs. They were there - I just missed them the first go around. Loved that story. Only one that managed to surprise me.
@@Elora445 what’s the name of the story?
@@JavaScript-er101
Sadly, I cannot remember the name of it (I read way too many books!). Pretty sure it's not among the books I have on my shelves right now, so it's in some box somewhere. :( So I can't go doublecheck it, either. Sorry.
I would love to see a version of this where the "smart" character in a story pulls a whole Sherlock-esque explanation, but is proven to be dramatically wrong and it turns out that they are just crazy and do this sort of rambling all the time.
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.
Was just Coming here to make this point! I think all the doctor’s intelligence in House MD are represented really well.
I feel like azula from avatar the last airbender was a good example of a smart character. For one 'smart' is a broad and often vague sentiment, so its important to define how a character is smart before saying that they are. Her intelligence was in military strategy and combat. This defined its limitations, which gave it narrative tension.
Often how it went, was that she would spend an episode or two observing a character, their behavior, and the way they fought, before turning the tables with a strategy that exploited a s.p.e.c.i.f.i.c attribute of that character. Like baiting her brother into a trap, knowing that he'd be straightforward and hotheaded to see it coming or doing a direct assault on the avatar knowing he was timid and easy to overwhelm.
Cool video, thanks for opening up the discussion
Indeed
Azula still has to confront the real world, but she brings her dark intelligence along with her, manipulating people around them
She was manipulative, knows how to trick her Friends, brother and even Toph
yeah even in the final agni Kai she was still plotting which is cool
How interesting!
And then in the end she didn't lose because the writer pulled something out of their ass at the last second (that's how Ozai lost), she lost due to previously established flaws: she's a sociopath and not as much of a people person as she thought.
That's like actually something I'm using in a fantasy story. A character everyone else thinks is super smart, but he's actually just some kind of reality bender, so even the stupidest plan works.
Lol interesting idea for a character. I can see that working well but it'd be tricky to pull off (reality bending is always difficult to write around).
Ooo that's sounds so fun! It kinda makes me think of Domino from Deadpool, and how her superpower basically does the same - warps reality so that she can do really cool stuff or that her plans always seem to work because 'luck'
In order for it to be fair you limit the character's control over the ability - like they're either a novice at controlling it or it's something completely beyond their control. You can also build tension by having it only work occasionally - like, sometimes their plans fail and they have to fall back on a plan b or c. They can be so used to this that they seem to have a contingency plan for everything, which ends up being part of their superpower because eventually they know their luck will kick in and something will work (as long as they and they're allies don't die first). Good luck, and have fun 😃!
@@tokujinsicura2190 The Marvel comics character "Longshot" had luck power, but it only worked if his motives were pure, and it didn't warp reality so much, it only influenced the outcome of some action that he was taking (e.g. "I have to throw this dagger at the huge complicated machine, to save the orphanage" => it hits the one vulnerable spot)
Ooh also I almost forgot: his luck power had repercussions - it would cause bad luck to him or someone he loved at a later date or time
Not exactly the same but remind me of King from One Punch Man. He's a top tier hero from a world that desparetly needs them yet in reality lucked out from one chance encounter where another hero beat a larger threat and he just happened to be there to take credit. From then on, the gag is that everything he does to get away from conflict is seen by other characters as a next level 3D chess move and him being afraid is also used as a gag. He's so frightened that he has a stone cold face and shivers but for other characters, combined with hi reputation, is contrasted as a a powerful man capable of such danger that his very core is rattling and barely keeping his power in check, but in fact is just figety
Awesome video ❤ This is the reason why I always preferred the Sherlock Holmes in Elementary rather than the one in Sherlock. Elementary sherlock portrayed a better form of intelligence. He did experiment to prove his deductions. He reached out to experts to help solve his case. He was wrong at times, too.
Best of all, he was able to teach Watson his thought process, which enabled her to be a detective like him. This showed how his intelligence has a process that can be observed and learnt rather than it being an unknown force.
Thanks very much! A few people have been saying Elementary is really good but I haven't watched it myself.
I totally agree❤ I love elementary
The best way not to 'cheat' is to make the intelligent person fail rapidly through all their attempts before finally succeeding. Starting with the most obvious solutions that don't work because x and y reason and then moving on to increasingly more convoluted solutions until one of them finally works. That way you take the reader through their thought process while providing them with the evidence for why the final brilliant solution is the one that is also necessary.
Yeah agreed, I think a lot of writers are for some reason afraid to show this? Or maybe they want their characters to be so brilliant and perfect they could never possibly fail.
Isn't that how the average episode of House MD plays out?
Heck, even tech support personnel first ask the customer if their cable is connected. Can come off as condescending and too Captain Obvious, but people forget stuff like that all the time. It's good practice to rule out the simplest solutions first and then move on to more complex ones.
@@Trazynn The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode King of Omashu did that when Aang starts with the most obvious solution each time and when it doesn’t work he starts to think outside of the box and figure out how to solve the problems
@@handanyldzhan9232 In the show The IT Crowd, one of the characters’ catchphrases is “have you tried turning it off then on?”
The "retroactive genius" is probably part of a greater problem: Modern writers often want to "subvert expectations" and surprise the audience. I guess, it makes them feel smart. To them that is so important that they rather risk confusing us, to the point of breaking immersion. I'm getting tired of this.
Yeah agreed. It's a shame to see some of the tropes in modern media, I feel like the general quality of movies and TV shows has declined.
Subverting expectations is probably the worst trope that exists as if a gotcha is all the story should be about it ruins tension and payoffs
The problem with the retroactive genius is their plans are really stupid if you think about. You need about 30 different things to go right just for your plan to succeed. A real smart person wouldn't bet their house on so many variables. A smart person would recognize that it's a stupid bet, and try to make a plan with as little variable as possible.
Storywriters recently I've had a problem where they now view twists more than actual good story
they believe that as long as the movie has some unexpected mind blowing twist at the end people will remember that mind blowing twist and forgive or forget the lazy writing of 95% of the story
The retroactive genius the assumed dead character returning the surprise villain A hero becomes a villain A villain becomes a hero
All of those twists were once Done very well and genuinely surprised audiences and left a lasting impact on audiences
but now they're done to death Which leads to them not really catching audiences off guard anymore
Kate Disney where the first few times they get a surprise it was genuinely surprising at least to me I didn't see it coming
but then they kept doing it over and over and over again In the same way
so instead of it being a surprise the audience just notices that the story doesn't have a obvious villain for the hero to bounce off of so they know the surprise villain is coming and usually figured it out by the end
And oftentimes these twists come at great expense to the story For example the twist villain more often than not requires the story to lack In obvious level so there is no antagonist opposing the hero for two thirds of the story which leads to drastically decreased
And a twist villain can never be as well developed as a bill in whose been in the story for most of it The twist bailing will inherently have no time to develop as a villain but there are only defining trait will be that they were a twist villain
Exactly ! Thanks for putting it in words.
Conclusion: to write intelligent characters, the writers must be somewhat intelligent themselves
I think Jimmy/Saul in “Better Call Saul” is written extremely intelligently and doesn’t just rely on magic tricks, even though there have been several fun “gotcha” moments in the series, on the whole he just had some great ideas ( on how to get himself out of his terrible ideas ). Kim Wexler as well.
I haven't seen Better Call Saul, but Breaking Bad is such a brilliant show that I'm not surprised at all.
With Saul a lot of his victories are based on convenience to just keep the plot going, which is understandable but still unrealistic
@@ThePowat That's weaselly worded. What do you mean by "a lot" of his victories? I'd say of the scams and schemes we see Saul run in the show, at least half or more of them show him putting in work early on that pays off later, demonstrating his intelligence during the scheme. Certainly all the biggest ones, whether it's in the "chicanery" scene (he planted the phone), or their massive scheme against Howard show definite planning and coordination in advance.
Even in some sequences where Jimmy doesn't have time to plan out a scheme they usually end up demonstrating his ability to convince and cajole others to his desired ends by playing to their ego or personality, like in the 2nd episode when he manages to prevent the deaths of those other scammers. That's not convenience, but the character using their ability to read other people and manipulate them.
What are some examples that show unnecessary convenience in Saul/Jimmy's benefit that are used to get the plot going that you're thinking of?
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Not that guy but Jimmy definitely has some plot magic on his side sometimes.
One of the examples I'd give is Jimmy almost getting caught by Howard during his scheme against him on multiple occasions, like when he planted the drugs in Howard's locker but then Howard came in so he had to hide. Howard conveniently didn't notice Jimmy was the only other person in the room with them and most likely the person who planted the drugs because Jimmy put a rag over his face and sat in the corner.
Another example is when Jimmy stole Howard's car and went to return it, but notices someone else took the spot. It took Howard straight up forgetting where his car was parked and Jimmy moving a sign for him to get away with that one.
I'd like to add that convenient scenes like this are merely meant to add tension and show off Jimmy's quick thinking because it wouldn't be fun to watch if his schemes went off without a hitch.
@@Plum1300 OK I can kind of see what you mean there, but in the grand scheme, those very trivial complicating moments are incredibly minor. To the point that I wouldn't say that his schemes ever really rely on convenience.
Really, a lot of those little moments seem to be about adding bits of tension and drama that if anything, make the scheme working come off as more believable to me, not less. Because if there weren't any complications it'd feel like he was a super lucky super genius. Or like you said, it wouldn't be any fun to watch is his schemes went off without a hitch.
Sort of feels like there's a bit of an unfair standard here with certain people maybe? You and myself maybe see those little tension points as adding realism and drama, but other people seem to think a plan never needs to encounter an error or problem and if it does and the problem is resolved then it's "convenient" to them?
Exploring the difference between being hyper-observant and having supernatural intuition? They made a funny series about that premise. It's called PSYCH.
Shawn (and his partner Gus) were well aware that he was only pretending to be psychic, and they always followed up his observations with actual investigation. Unlike Sherlock, Shawn's observations were correct, but his deductions were frequently wrong. That's why he needed help from others. It made his character more likable, and less insufferable (like Sherlock could be, in the BBC series).
This sounds great! I've never heard of it before but I'll have to look it up.
That is the best detective show was amazing
It's also a show that tests audience deductive ability/observational skills by sneaking in pineapples or imagery thereof in nearly every episode.
@@Bonovasitch"Almost every"? Are you telling me there were episodes where you couldn't find the pineapple?
yep Psych is unironically a better detective show that BBC Sherlock
my favourite episode will be that haunted solority girl house episode
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.
Shikamaru is another good example for the smart character trope. We actually got to see his plan/strategy in motion when he was fighting Temari and Hidan.
Yeah, it's just a shame that he kind of peaked there. Kishimoto really forgot about the rest of the cast in Shippuden (I know he gets a brief moment against Hidan as well).
Shikamaru?
That guy chased Sasuke into the woods to convince him to get back to the Leaf.
Then the team was stalked by the bad guys who started defeating them one by one
Then genius Shikamaru sat down and deduced they needed to create a diversion in order to survive. He sits down and thinks really hard for a moment and finally looks a f-ing NARUTO and tells him dead serious "ok. It has to be me. There's just no other safe way to make a false trail"
And Naruto "master of shadow clone jutsu" Uzumaki is all like "wow. Yeah. So brave Shikamaru. Give them hell"
@@androkguz You're talking about story writing, while I'm talking about character writing. Naruto has to catch up to Sasuke for us to see a battle showdown between two of the major character of the series. It was a conscious choice from the author, said by Shikamaru.
@@KPD_KPD "it was a conscious choice by the author, said by Shikamaru"
What? That sentence makes it seem as if Shikamaru was the author
How are you differentiating character writing from story writing here? Shikamaru could have been snagged by the bad guy to achieve the same 1v1 scenario or Naruto could have ran ahead without waiting for his friends.
But they decided to make it a moment of character agency to be stupid.
And it's not at all the first time or the last time Shikamaru is a drooling idiot while the music and scene for "Gigachad with 10k IQ" is playing
The moron couldn't even think of simple ways to break the symetry of his own shadow jutsu by wearing his Kunai pack in a different place or wearing an extra one on a place most ninja don't so you can throw a knife at your opponent without them throwing one back
Even without tools he could strangle any trapped enemy whose arms are shorter
@@androkguz The same way why Tsunade chooses to send some weak genin instead of the killing machine Anbu. Does that mean Tsunade is stupid? Or the author wanted to show us some spectacle by sending characters that we know?
Also yes you can always create the most logical scenarios out of everything, but can you make it interesting? Because at the end of the day, it's the only thing that matter.
In the Sherlock meets Watson scene, I can't help but think that a truly intelligent person would have made the same observations and kept the information to themselves, filed away for future use.
If Holmes was smart, he would ask Watson about himself, thus acquiring the information AND encouraging Watson to think favorably of Holmes.
But Holmes would rather be an arrogant jerk by asserting superiority, which is itself a stupid thing to do. He's just fortunate that's Watson's peculiar quirk is his willingness to be treated like a half-wit sidekick.
But intelligence doesn't mean you're not a jerk. Why should he care what watson thinks of him. We all can be victims of our ego. @@stevenscott2136
People don't learn to become better thinkers after they watch shows like the Boys season 4 or Sherlock. They learn to become bigger a**holes.
@@stevenscott2136 he does it for practice.
If he asks, he doesn't practice properly.
Also, he's not amazing with people.
Granted, in the books he deducts AND listen to the people
@user-gb7ji6xy5d honestly, I couldn't even finish The Boys Season 1 and I thought Sherlock was good until I realized just how stupid it was.
5:09 This reminds me of the fact that a version of Sherlock Holmes appears in the Great Ace Attorney games, and there's a gameplay mechanic where he accidentally deduces the wrong things and you have to correct him.
That's pretty cool, I've never played those games but I have a friend who's into the Phoenix Wright games - possibly the same series?
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt yeah. The series as a whole is called Ace Attorney, since Phoenix doesn’t star in all of them
I saw this old series in NatGeo of Sherlock Holmes, i fid it to be the best of all Sherlock
Jack Sparrow is a good example of well-written smart character: he plans before he acts, but he also improvises when needed.
Curse of the Black Pearl was the peak of his characterisation. I'd call him more cunning than smart but I'm just quibbling over words, I know what you're saying.
The scene where he steals a ship, making everybody leave the Interceptor to steal the Interceptor itself was f'ing brilliant.
@@aaryanairy756How many people did he sneak aboard?
@@maryrose2676 Yeah because that is what really suspends our belief. One man stealing a big ship = belief suspended. However, people who turn into skeletons in the moonlight, totally believable. It's fantasy man, part of our duty is to suspend belief and not get hung up on the impossibilities, otherwise the movie itself is pointless because cursed treasure isn't real.
@@aaryanairy756 It was very brazen too. Even as a kid, when I first watched it, I thought it was brilliant. The only thing that bothered me about the scene, even back then, was the HMS Dauntless’ crew complement.
Specifically, why did a first rate ship-of-the-line like the Dauntless have no one aboard except a few officers and a dozen seamen? Though she was docked in Port Royal, a ship of that size, even in the early 18th century, requires a minimum crew of 350 to operate it. Optimally, it was most efficient with a maximum crew of 800 - a number that gradually increased to 850 by the advent of the Napoleonic Era.
Regardless, she was completely unguarded, and almost effectively unoccupied. No marines aboard, no maintenance crew aboard, and nothing is locked up (except the captain and officers’ quarters, the powder keg, and gun ports). I guess the only reason why I didn’t think much of it until now was because of Sid Meier’s Pirates, specifically gameplay experience.
It turns out, the smart pirates prefer small ships, or tiny ships (even as small as a war canoe). The reason: They were fast, cheap, and ubiquitous. You would never use a large ship as a pirate, unless you were a smuggler or a slaver.
The handling of Sage was by far my biggest grievance of Season 4 so I thank you for making this video.
No problem! Yeah it really bugged me as well lol.
I think it would've been ok if the guy who got to be president was a backup plan. So it's not that everything was exactly the one way she designed it, but there were many ways she could've won
I'm giving the writers the benefit of the doubt here.
Remember. These characters are subversions of their Marvel and DC counterparts.
If Sister Sage is a subversion of Iron Heart then we can assume she isn't intelligent the same way as Iron Heart.
I believe she is a con artist. She is the smartest person in the room but that means she can outsmart Homelander when something happens and do the mental gymnastics to explain to him why she is correct.
It's Sophistry.
Remember. Sages are con artists who pretend to do magic.
I'm hoping she's actually trying to take down Voight and Homelander by showing the US what total rule by supes would be like.
BTW: We're assuming Sage did all of this on purpose. Who's to say that she isn't lying and had to scramble on the backend to get plan C or D to work even though she's claiming her one and only plan is working perfectly?
@@SomeUniqueHandle i think you are mistaken in what we are assuming.
I am assuming she never had a plan, curve balls or not.
The only thing we see her clearly set up is getting Starlight to beat up Firecracker and even that seems petty and not thought out completely.
She lit a fuse there but couldn't have predicted the fallout, especially Butcher ripping apart dude in the trailer.
Now, the writers can still fix it. They can reveal that she saw what happens via cameras or whatever after Butcher did that she started taking and bugging him.
Maybe she even had access to a telepath with persuasive abilities.
All of these are maybes that I'm giving the writers for free. They've got some 'splaining to do and I can't do all the heavy lifting for them while they mash their toys together.
Smart Tony Stark: can successfully create nanomachines, after decades of building his book smarts at prestigious schools, working on tech for years, making mistake after mistake and learning from them
“Smart” Riri williams: is introduced making machines for the CIA nobody else can make, as a student. Makes a mech suit flawlessly from the start. Attacks government workers and has no consequences, is handed infinite material and makes a mech suit more advanced than Tony’s first 30 on her second try
Ooft don't even get me started on Riri, a truly awful forced character. I hope they don't bring her back, it's an insult to Tony Stark if you ask me.
My favorite "smart character" is Patrick Jane from The Mentalist.
At first he seems like just a badly written intelligent character, making the same kind of supernatural insights as the Cumberbatch Sherlock would. But over time you see that he has some legitimate skills.
By midway through season 2, anyone can spot & list his repertoire of tactics, including cold reads, false guesses, bluffs, false accusations, and playing cause & effect mindgames. His cold read skills were a bit overpowered, but it was more believable since he had been training to master it since he was a child in he carnival, and later as a TV psychic. The way he conned the suspects was fun to watch in action. It was fun to try to make predictions as to what he was doing in certain scenes. He even manages to teach his friends some of his techniques.
I know the show is very popular but I've never got round to watching it.
Tbf, on early episodes, it's evident the writers and the actor haven't found the way to portray the character.
@@hafirenggayuda That's fair enough, that's quite common with a lot of shows.
@@hafirenggayuda it definitely found its footing the more time went on
One of my favourite aspects of Jane is his being an asshole not because he is one but in part of his investigating. Such as people thinking he’s being rude not looking at them when he talks but is actually observing things in the room. Or when he actively insults or annoys somebody not because he wants to, but because he’s trying to get them to reveal something about themselves which would show by making them angry or upset.
I saw an analysis of Sherlock Holmes, where people constantly paint him as the “smartest” ever and the author himself actually began to grow tired of the character, but of course kept writing him.
One time, he wrote a story called “How Watson Learned the Trick” and it has Watson thinking that Holmes’ methods are simple deduction that anyone can pick up on, and goes into listing a series of Holmes-esque theories and deductions about the people around them, that could very well be true.
The twist however, being Holmes still gets Watson with counters and still says “no actually, the reason for this is because of this reason, and the reason for the other is because of this one you didn’t realize”
The idea is kinda meta though, that your character is A. Only as smart as your author and B. The smarts can be shown simply by giving the smart characters more of the correct answers in your story than anyone else
Wow, that's actually an awesome insight. At the end of the day, writing a smart character is for narrative excellence, not to have a smart character and have everyone say, wow, that writer made really smart decisions with that character. Characters are characters, they're are contrived for purpose and point. You're not supposed to actually view their decisions through realistic lenses but to make their decisions fit with the story.
I mean, not really, Doyle just like writing historical novels more, not that he is tired of Holmes bc of smartness or anything. And on the front, Holmes did compliment Watson got smt almost right, and then Holmes himself is proven wrong at smt when the Doctor Mortimer be like "nah that cane ain't parting gift, it is wedding gift" and Holmes be like "Lol, we are close but still wrong" so not like Holmes is always right.
@@12arkich28 that was literally the point of my description.
Maybe it was inaccurate about Doyle, but the whole “not like holmes is always right” was literally the point of why he’s right frequently in stories
did they do this during the tv movies in the 70's. Sherlock would challenge watson about something and then watson will toss his theory and then sherlock would correct him. or agreed but add something to his observation that watson had miss.
The problem with Sherlock's deduction of Watson is that it's basically a directbadaptation of the first meeting they have in the book, when Sherlock deduces that Watson was a military doctor in Africa. Now, at that time that deduction made more sense, but now, as you said, there are a lot more options, so the deduction falls flat. Also Watson is based in Conan Doyle himself, so he is a bit jokingly inserting himself in the character.
My most hated "smart character" trope is the walking encyclopedia. The misconceptions produced by that trope caused me so many headaches growing up.
I think those are the exposition people right?
@motor4X4kombat They show up a lot in sitcoms, like "Big Bang Theory" and kids' shows (hence why it caused me headaches when I was a kid)
I mean there really are people like that, the difference being that the real life encyclopedias just spew random facts rather than ones relevant to the story.
@@saawysorenson4585 hey....!!! that's me...!
@@lastmanstanding5423 :))
The great Sir Terry was right, as far as the judgments of the character went. He himself was a scarily intelligent individual. However, Sherlock was written in Victorian times and was a character of his time. They had very definite beliefs and made definite judgments, including phrenology which has now been thoroughly debunked. I think people's greatest astonishment with Sherlock is that he simply notices things which they generally do not. Read the books and you will find that he also makes good investigations, is a master of disguise and deception and actually does make plans which turn out to be correct. This may or may not translate well to the screen, depending upon the screen writers’ own ability.
This is extremely interesting thank you for sharing. I find it really fascinating how stories can reflect the cultural beliefs and norms of the time period, but I'm sadly not as well read on history as I'd like to be. I do agree that Sherlock's main ability should be / seems to be his hyper observance, but I'll have to find some time to read the original books.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt started reading them recently, at one point I had a "wait, what the hell? Are there any clues to that?" Yes, there were, maybe if I read it in one sitting I'd notice, but I did not, even tho they were quite in my face on the second read through.
@@minedantaken1684this multi layered nature is the sign of truly well written storytelling. you see it in most of the best fiction, and even more so in the best scifi and fantasy.
just a few examples of stories with this property include the hobbit snd the lord of the rings by j.r.r. tolkien, the belgarion and sparhawk novels of david eddings, most of the adult novels of robert a heinlein, and many others. it is why doing multiple drafts matters. i remember heinlein saying that one of his novels was not published until he finished the 17th draft.
Phrenology hasn't actually been debunked.
His power is ADHD
There are two fundamental problems with smart characters.
1) to write a believable smart character, one must actually be smart
2) for a character to be likeable, it needs to be relatable in some way
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Society is full of idiots. So good luck finding a writer capable of writing a smart character. And good luck finding a consumer base intelligent enough to relate to a truly intelligent character...
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This is why most protagonists are overly emotional and dumb. Because that's what most writers are. And that's what most consumers relate to. And this is why most of the greatest geniuses in human history spent most of their lives alone...
This is not true because you assumed every one include billions of people from other continents and cultures as well. The IQ average score for asian vs western are very different, and I havent even taking into account literacy rates, college gruates, grades, STEM, technological advancement and culture of learning and innovating. Sad for africa though they are late but hopefully they get there eventually
@@Dragor33-rg7xj Where did I say I included people from other continents? And why are you assuming what I'm assuming? How about just ask me instead...
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Not going to respond to the rest until we figure out if you are capable of having a discussion without making assumptions...
The way to showcase a character's intelligence isn't to have them making a grand plan, predicting the future and "considering all possibilities" predictions.
You showcase intelligence by having a character put in a position where they have to make lots of decisions really regularly in an environment of ambiguity and responding to change by regularly making the right decisions. They shouldn't be omniscient and get everything right but when they make an incorrect decision they are able to be reflective, critique their process and learn from it.
Good take, I completely agree.
@bobbyharrop8817 This. It's like setting yourself up for failure to have a character come up with a third act catch-all. 1)You're much more likely to fail. Making sure all the details line up from beginning to end is a pitfall. 2) You rob the whole story of agency, or, as it's said, you hand the characters the script. 3) There is no such thing as a catch-all. Only a catch-most. It leaves room for further improvement and imagination, both during and after the show or movie or book.
So here is what Sherlock is like but as a programmer.
If there is a bug in his code, he instantly always know what the bug is, even if there is multiple possible explanations for the bug.
Most times it is ambiguous, so you must do further testing of your hypothesis to narrow it down to only one possibility.
The only time Sherlock's ability is plausible is if he has seen it before and in the same context. Other than that it is just lucky guesses.
Love this metaphor! I'm actually a software developer myself so I really should have thought of this, but I think the analog of bug fixing works perfectly here.
It’s funny because the book/magazine version is much more prone towards trial and error,and a lot of his leaps of logic end up being wrong because exactly that, it could be a lot of problems causing a bug
It’s funny because the book/magazine version is much more prone towards trial and error,and a lot of his leaps of logic end up being wrong because exactly that, it could be a lot of problems causing a bug
But that's the thing, I stepped in to help a group of experienced people who had spent two weeks and were failing.
I gathered two pieces of data and then I just *knew* what the problem was. Couldn't explain it.
I've always been this way. Some part of my brain is smarter than my surface personality. And it's just presents answers to me.
It is a real problem when they want me to prove how I got the answer. And I can usually work the answer out but it might take me a few days or even a week.
@@macmcleod1188 Intuition is a real thing based on prior experiences and hunches, however, it is not always correct. It is still just educated guesses.
About 5 seconds after i had the thought “i wonder what he would think of Aizen” he brought it up. Awesome.
Haha we think alike. I actual have a separate video on just Aizen if you're interested.
Great essay. A couple of things reminds me of the old quote:
Smart people can play dumb, but dumb people can’t play smart.
Second another good example of not necessarily smart characters, but smart writing…its a bit of an over reaching Internet “meme” at this point but one of the reasons why The Simpsons/Futurama writers have developed this mythology of predicting real world events is the sheer volume of people PHDs on their writing staff multiplied by the massive amount of seasons and peoples confirmation bias.
Thanks! That's a great quote lol I'll remember that.
The latter is called cynicism, actually.
@@suezcontours6653 Sage is realistically smart? The person that can predict how every single person that is directly or indirectly attached to her plan will act over the course of months is realistically smart? No. It's not possible. It's literally future telling at that point.
Iron Man, on the other hand, just applies science to things. He's exaggeratedly smart. But not to the point of impossibility. His technology is more than likely less than 100 years ahead of our current tech.
@@darkdudironaji She's more realistic than Tony Stark
@@suezcontours6653 She is not, and it's not even close. Creating and improving upon technology is something humans have been doing since the beginning. That's what Tony does. Sage knows exactly who's going to kill who, what people are going to say and when they're going to say it. She even had to know that she would be shot in the head at the party ahead of time and that Victoria would step up and say she'll be the one to take care of things. And, again, she would have had to know all of this months before any of it had happened. Because she didn't change her plan at all. It was all "according to plan."
In a review praising the Knives Out film, I remember the reviewer saying that the best mystery films contain hints throughout them which the average viewer would not be able to piece together watching it the first time, but the second time be able to see the clues and put it together before the ending.
I think Arthur Conan Doyle does this well in his novels, which have many hints and red herrings, and are very tough to piece together until Sherlock Holmes tells everybody how he solved it. But if you read it a second time, you can put together who committed the crime before it is revealed.
And then the sequel came out and dropped the smart writing
@@Goblinhandler But it is still a decent movie :-)
that's the closer look's "how to write a plot twist" video iirc
Glass Onion's great gimmick was that they literally show you everything happening on the screen in the first half, but you just don't notice until the second half. Hell, Blanc literally calls Helen by her name in the first half, but you don't necessarily notice@@Goblinhandler
@@andrewdunn8778 Glass Onion had huge parts of protagonist's world hidden from the view. After seeing the first movie it felt like we've been cheated. It's like "he had an evil twin all along" trope all over again.
I could watch videos like this for hours! Really well done
Thanks so much!
One scene similar to the Sherlock Watson introduction scene that handles an intelligent character better is the first meeting between Tony and Peter in Captain America: Civil War.
In that scene Tony, not only does Tony utilize his specific type of intelligence (him being a master engineer) as opposed to "I'm smart so I know everything", but he also makes deductions that are completely reasonable given the limited information he has (even when he's wrong).
The first show of Tony's intelligence is when he shows the video of Spiderman stopping a car. He comments that the car was weighed 3,000 pounds and was travelling at 40 miles an hour. While this seems like he pulled those numbers out of nowhere, it makes perfect sense given the context. He's an engineer with access to extremely advanced computer systems, AND he prepared that video ahead of time. He could've very easily had Friday crunch the numbers on that video long before even entering Aunt May's house.
The same goes for the his comment on the web fluid. He says he's impressed at the tensile strength of the substance, saying it was "off the charts". This confirms that Tony was running some form of test on it beforehand, whether that was directly though a sample, or calculating the strength from video footage (which he has computers to do). When asking Peter who made the webbing, Peter answers that he made it himself. This confirms to him that Peter Parker is an incredibly smart individual.
The final show of intelligence is actually he gets WRONG! After asking about the webs, he asks about the mechanism by which he sticks to walls. Given that he already knows that Peter is intellectually gifted (from the webbing before), he deduces that it had to be some sort of technological explanation. This leads him theorize that the gloves are adhesive.
While this assumption is wrong, it was a perfectly smart thing to assume given the information he had. If he had suddenly deduced out of nowhere that he could stick to walls due to radioactive spider powers, I would find that to be an utterly nonsensical leap. But given what he was able to find out about Peter (mainly his intelligence), it seems perfectly logical to assume that his wall crawling was just another piece of tech he made.
Anyways that's all I had to say. Great video mate! You've given me a lot to think about when it comes to writing!
Really great example and walk through of it! I think you're 100% right and it shows how well written Tony is compared to some of the characters I spoke about in this.
Thank you! Best of luck with your writing.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt there the time tony and the hulk hung out in avengers. they are compare notes and the entire time tony is testing him. A sign of how tony is always looking for answers to question in his mind even in the middle of a conversation. his mind is always active.
Erwin from AoT is another example, the entire fake plan to "retake wall Maria" from season 1, gave way to finding out about another shifter and helped sniff out the Colossal and the Armoured, in season 2. And that is only one example.
another example would be the fact that he came up with the scout formation for expeditions. we don’t actively see him come up with it exactly because it happens before the show begins but we do see the details of the formation and it being used in multiple scenes of the show. also showcases him not placing his entire faith/relying in the brute strength of the corps since the entire formation strat is to avoid the titans and change course as they go
🎉🎉🎉🎉
I always loved AoT's plans. The plans are smart but believable. I hate shows that have characters make long winded plans that can be derailed at any time if literally anything goes even slightly differently.
In AoT Season 3 part 2 there were multiple cool displays of realistic intelligence. Zeke's opening move to seal the wall with the boulder to cut off the horse's movements. Zeke's plan was to restrict the enemy movement while showering them with rocks from an untouchable distance. That's literally the entire plan. There was no 4d mind chess mind games or dramatic twists and turns.
Erwin's first observation was that if the horses were blocked off then they could be starved out. Erwin decided the battle needed to be won today and that a siege would be a losing proposition. However, Erwin failed to account for the unknown. He lost nearly all of his veteran troops when he underestimated/didn't consider the Beast Titan's throwing power.
However despite his initial failure Erwin came up with a plan to make a sacrifice to distract the Beast Titan. And now it's Zeke's turn to make a mistake. He got too confident in his position. He realized he could kill nearly all of the scouts, but failed to even consider that just 1 scout (Levi) could be meaningful. Which ties into Zeke's larger story. Zeke's whole character was about how Zeke overlooked the little things. He thought it was all a sad and meaningless blur that needed to put out of it's misery. He never considered that life of a single person could mean something. It never occurred to him to notice how nice the weather was. And that's why he lost to Levi.
Both Zeke and Erwin were strategists known for their analytical skills. But both of them were written to make mistakes and suffer consequences because of it. They were allowed to be smart while not superhumanly anticipating all possible outcomes. The story really benefited from that.
Armin is smarter
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.
You write intelligence the same way you write a good plot twist, it needs to work and be effective in the moment but also has to hold up on rewatch and under scrutiny.
Perfect example is Fight Club, once you know what's actually going on and watch the movie again it's like watching a different movie. Not only does the movie make more sense but you start noticing things you didn't notice the first time which further adds to how well seeded and foreshadowed the twist was.
This is how intelligent characters should be written, characters like Sherlock Holmes, Dr House, Reed Richards, or Tony Stark.
Well said. And I LOVE fight club, I could rewatch it endlessly.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Same, it's a perfect example of why I try to avoid spoilers. Knowing the twist basically turns your first viewing into a second.
Same for "Memento". Once you know the plot you immediately want to watch it again with the knowledge you gained through the movie. In literature, "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov is a good example. Once you know the master plan of some of the protagonists (no spoilers which), you instantly want to read the story again and see the connections that you missed.
@@berlineczka interesting, I've never heard of that story before. Is an audiobook available for it?
@@MrEffectfilms I don't know. But you can for sure google that. It is a classic novel, well known in several countries.
The way Eric Cartman bests Scott Tenerman would surely be an example of writing a smart character well. The Boys's writers should have studied that episode.
I sadly haven't seen any southpark, other than the episode about world of warcraft.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt
You have to immediately watch Scott Tenerman Must Die!
It's Primal Fear level impressive, even as a stand-alone episode with no previous context for the characters.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt series 5-9 is well worth watching. As good as anything.
Well Matt Stone and Trey Parker are actually smart and humble enough to admit when they’re wrong (which they’ve done on political topics). You’ll never see someone like Kripke resorting to that level of humility. All he really does is make sure the show blasts one side of the political spectrum like a furnace, throw in a random sexual assault scene when things get monotonous, and ensure that the women are allowed to be shitty because they’re traumatized while the men should be on their knees begging for forgiveness. Rinse and repeat.
Only the third act of that episode though... I wouldn't say buying someone's pubes is a particularly good example of intelligence...
I appreciate your explanation. Because I have noticed many times very strange conclusions of so-called "brilliant" intellectual characters. And their representation in films.
Finally, someone sort things out.
I really liked this proposed concept of magical intelligence. It all looks especially funny in the age of information technology. It's amazing how easily you can verify something with a couple of clicks and come to much better solutions than those presented. Or even by just thinking a bit, given the same information the characters have.
Unfortunately, most films and series are made in a hurry to fill streaming services with content (or at least it seems so). It's not surprising that many of them are generally lacking in depth.
If the work itself cannot claim intellectual depth, then its characters certainly cannot either.
Most likely, the general consumer doesn't need it, and the niche audience has its own more sophisticated sources of entertainment.
Thanks glad you enjoyed the video! It's an interesting point but I do think you're right that the age of digital streaming has contributed to lower quality movies and shows just being pumped out to fill content.
The challenge is, people want to write savants to be unquestionably smarter than the "normals" in the audience. If the audience is brought along for the reasoning, and is capable of understanding that reasoning, they end up feeling just as smart as the character, or at least close enough that it no longer feels like a savant, just a normal clever person. That's the paradox, if the writing itself is smart, it elevates the reader and the character no longer seems as special.
And I think the story SHOULD elevate the audience instead of the characters. Its much more enjoyable to the readers when they are the ones being elevated. And when a character is prioritized instead, the only thing being elevated is the author's ego.
Good point! I do think that characters can be written intelligently while still showing all their cards though. The one I was thinking of when first starting this video was Smiley from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. That character showed intelligence through realizing his mistakes and stating complex plans that he would draw out for other characters.
Mark Whatney in The Martian is really smart, especially in the book, but we're all brought along for the ride. A name for that type of story is "competency porn", and I enjoy those a lot.
@@galfisk Terrible name.
Pete Holmes' parody of Holmes and Watson meeting is hilarious. Worth the watch.
Somebody else commented about the one where he fails at deductions for the same scene I discussed, I watched it and it was great!
Oh my God 😂 I went and watched that and it slayyeddd me! That was perfect, thanks for the tip.
This was actually my plan all along for this video to be made.
I’m sorry but to just let the entire plot happen just for Sister Saige to show up at the end and say “I pLaNnEd tHiS” is such lazy writing…
It was a massive eye roll moment for me.
Plus the whole "I was using A-Train to leak information that was useful to us" angle falls flat when A-Train spends most of the time actually helping the Boys out and nearly derailing their entire dinner at Tec-Knights mansion.
I wasn’t sure if it was lazy writing or speaks to the Boys theme, which is that supes are horrible people, and showing up afterwards claiming credit is right in tune with what a supe would do.
@@BaronnaxHow did the Boys learn about the assassination plot against Singer?
@@scy3591 Didn't they just kinda assume it was gonna happen from the first episode of the season?
One character that really annoys me is the villain from the SAW movies, for the first two movies it could work that he is that smart, but then there were 8 more movies which tried to make him so ridiculously smart that even when he has already passed away his plans still goes on.
I haven't properly watched Saw, but the thing that always bugged me based off the trap videos is how some traps are much easier than others lol. It feels unfair.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptto be fair, I don't think the game designers are set on making an enjoyable experience for the players
@@NonJohns Lol fair point.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptit’s understandable that you have that opinion since you haven’t properly seen the film series but that’s actually intentional. There are various characters aside from the original creator John Kramer who make the traps. Some of them agree with Kramer’s moral philosophy and therefore make the traps easier than others. But one of the characters doesn’t agree with Kramer’s moral philosophy. So the traps they design are significantly harder than the others. The victims of those traps aren’t meant to survive
@@CoOlKyUbI96 Aah I see that's interesting thanks - that does explain a lot then.
One of the best videos and informative. I wrote a central Tritagonist in my first book and though smart it did explain unforeseen events by other antagonist's. It has taken 4years to work in the sequel and loads of further education. Again, thank you.
No problem at all, glad you found the video useful and enjoyed it! Good luck with your writing.
The biggest problem with smart/intelligent/genius characters is that, it also requires some degree of intelligence from the writer. So they can't be created by just anyone.
I like how a good intelligent character also overlaps with a good heist film. Whenever I think of how to write a heist, usually for my dnd games, I always think about in the way of breaking it down from the recon phase, planning stage, prep stage, execution stage, and escape stage. With intelligent characters it has a similar overlap in that you want to be able to see how they think and give the audience an opportunity to see the solution alongside the character. Making the audience feel smart. To have someone supersmart all they need to capable of doing is breaking down things in stages to show how one thing lead to another. Instead of just jumping to the conclusion like you showed.
I agree with everything you said. Heist movies are a lot of fun for playing around with audience expectations and getting a chance to show off some smart writing. Sadly they seem to have somewhat fallen out of fashion, I can't think of many recent heist movies.
I think the best way to write "intelligence" is to stop making it an innate ability and relating it to several conditions/mental illnesses, and treat it like a skill. It's not a magical way of thinking, it should just be a different, more effortful way of thinking that still gels with reality. The difference between the characters should be like someone who hasn't learned _how_ to solve a mathematics equation vs. someone who can solve difficult equations in their head, the latter should still take time and be able to explain how they got there to the former.
Sherlock Holmes in the book would have chastised Sherlock Holmes in the show for his constant leaps of logic. This version of Sherlock felt more like when book Watson was trying to think like Sherlock, making huge assumptions to answer the wrong question instead of considering evidence based smaller and more likely options. The magic of Sherlock Holmes came from him teaching Watson his method, that when followed made the answer so clear anyone could understand how he came to the correct conclusion. Not some innate specialness related to OCD or savant syndrome or sociopathy or overexaggerated visualizations.
Funny you should mention psychic powers because Psych is based on the premise of a genius detective pretending to be magical, yet his actual detective work is much closer to book Sherlock Holmes than any adaptation. It's a method that he learned from his father, that his immaturity and laziness can be detrimental towards. When the protagonist does make large assumptions and leaps to conclusions he's often called out on it from his father or his partner and he ends up being wrong. He then has to gather more evidence or reconsider his logic and objectivity explicitly, so when he does get the correct answer we as the audience understands why.
I think to write a "smart" character, all they have to do is to write a "well-written" character. Nothing more than that. Sherlock by Arthur Conan Doyle was a well-written character, Sherlock acted by Cumberbatch was a terribly written one. Well-written often meant "flesh-out" or just "believable".
In many detective/mystery stories, the detectives are just side-characters or background character. Like "Dial M for Murder", the two smartest characters have the same observations as their screentime allowed. Or, like a lot of noir detectives or a Christie character or Colombo, they only solved the case when they got the right clues. Solving the mystery was not suppose to be a showcase of their intelligence. It is just part of their character.
Or in the case, of the L Lawliet from Death Note or Tyrion Lannister or Littlefinger or SimaYi/ Kongming / ZhouYu/ ZhangZhifang or Odysseus, these guys are subject to the changes from the plot like any normal character. Lawliet was genuinely surprised that his decoy died, that the supernatural is involved. His character used probability thinking and narrow it down to Light Yagami, but he had no proof, and he needs the police and barely-legal methods to stay in the game. Littlefinger, the smartest character in Asoiaf, was gambling all the time. Odysseus kept making mistakes. Even god-mode Kongming, lost in the game of wits from factors he can't control. These characters are remembered because they are excellent characters.
They are not smart because the writers kept hammering about how smart they are.
Great observations and I completely agree. I think weak writers are afraid to give their characters any "losses", but ironically it just makes their characters more shallow and less grounded.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt That because they don't understand or develop the characters and their limitation to begin with.
One of my favorite Sherlock Holmes is played by Ian Richardson. (Available on Amazon Prime), In The Hound of Baskerville, Holmes deduced that Stapleton sister is actually his wife. When she asked how do he know? Holmes stated that there's a white mark on her finger, which suggest a ring. And he spot their behaviors and suspect they are not sibling. And also, he said that marriage, like death, are recorded, so he was able to find that out during the investigation. That's the way the character work. His observations on little details, are just small clues to lead up to big clue. The watch scene that BBC Sherlock adapted, had extra etchings of pawn shops. That's how he was sure the owner is often in poverty.
Peter Falk who played Colombo said that the main reason (not counting meta aspect of the writer) why Colombo keep triumph over the villain is due to the fact villains only need to make one mistake while Colombo can afford to make more.
There is always a reason to the madness and good writers will find that reason.
Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lamb is a stellar example of this. In the book, one of my all time favorite section, is how Crawford, the old FBI agent, figured Lector mind game with ease. He knew how Lector was lying, how Lector was guessing and demystifying the doctor intelligence. It did not make it to the movie, for dramatic reasons, but Crawford equal understanding of Lector ability was there in the background. The sequels are terrible and never reach back the heights that Silence set, because Lector was no longer portrayed as a human, but was hyped up as this supergenius monster who can get away with anything.
Tyrion is such a great character, in large part, because his intelligence is limited to certain areas.
When it comes to intrigue and politics, he is among the best in Westeros, but where he falls down is assuming his abilities in this area would automatically transfer to making war, where he fails utterly
Tyrion stopped being intelligent when the writers ran out of source material.
Hahahaha 1000%, those scenes where Tyrion is doing military planning made him look like an absolute fool, because he ignored the first rule of any game: stop thinking about your plan, and think about what your opponent is planning.
One thing I love in shows that portray intelligence correctly is the planning stage without the audience understanding why something is happening. This is best shown in Better Call Saul when Saul is planning a grift and we see all the moving parts but don't understand why they're happening. He's also great at adapting. Best way to describe this is "I love it when a plan comes together!"
8:46, there are ways to make that work though. In the Season One Finale of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Loki monologues about how he was “responsible for everything” and connects every major conflict of the show up to that point to his evil plan and since we’ve seen Loki here and there in the background of those previous episodes and we knew the villains were working for Loki that ended up making a lot of sense.
I haven't seen it but I agree, it can be done well so long as you show exactly that, the villain actively present throughout and taking action. Unfortunately most of the time I've seen it, it hasn't been done well.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt True. Most of the time, it’s like Humpty Alexander Dumpty in the first Puss in Boots movie where he says “I was always there” and there’s a flashback to him at every major point in the movie influencing events from behind the scenes but after you start thinking about it you realize that doesn’t really make sense
@@matityaloran9157Except in Humptys case, I think that was intended as a gag.
@@DoomguyIsGrinningAtYou. Fair
This was a fantastic video essay! You eloquently presented my issues with Sage in The Boys, particularly her appearance in the last episode. Your positive examples for intelligent characters were both spot-on as well. You earned a sub and I look forward to what you cover next
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it and I'll do my best to keep going!
First time watcher here. I remembered back when Sherlock first came out like 10 years ago when my friends were all hyping about it and I couldn't bear to watch it because of Sherlock's pseudo intelligence. It was so long ago, that when I saw your thumbnail I thought I could either be wrong or that you're just going to give a lousy example of why he is intelligent. I was so relieved when you gave your first bad example and instantly liked your video 😅
It’s in part why I like the first Tremors a lot. People discovering a threat, figuring out more and more information about this creature and how it operates and coming up with plans to deal with their situation. But also the creatures learn and adapt so the problem sort of evolves and a solution that’s worked before might not be so fruitful again.
I looked it up because it sounded good from your comment, but it looks like it's a little old now - do you think it'd hold up still?
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt I’d say if you’re okay with watching something like Jaws or Alien, it should be fine.
The first Tremors movie definitely holds up as a light horror comedy. All practical effects IIRC, and it showcases multiple good decisions by the average intelligence human characters. The sequels are skippable as they get progressively campier, and start using bad CGI.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt The script is tight, the scares are well made, the characters are relatable, and it is a very fun experience overall. It is also a low budget monster movie, so take this factor into consideration.
There aren't tremendous displays of intelligence, but the characters aren't dumb (except one kid, but he's written intentionally that way), and they have their moments of brilliance. Funnily enough, the most intelligent character is a geologist, to whom, and to her frustration, the rest of the characters constantly ask questions about the monsters that she cannot answer, because, well, she is a geologist.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Tremors absolutely holds up. The plot never relies on characters doing something stupid to advance the plot. They don't do the right thing every time (because who does?) But you never feel like they aren't trying their best to figure out how to solve problems they face.
The multiple stories being leaked by Tyrion is an old espionage technique, successfully used many times.
I'd still say it's clever in the context of the story, since the GOT world is different to our own.
And he does it more swiftly in books. In the show they exaggerate it for attempting cheap comedy. But if we are talking about Game of Thrones then there will be many many examples of smart characters actually being smart.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt
Even if it was "successfully used" in the GOT universe, it is still smart to use the correct "tried and true" strategy for the situation. "Smart" doesn't have to be original or creative.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt- Tyrion's slide into stupidity is one of the main tells that the writers were no longer using Martin's books to plot the show. His idea to send John Snow with a dragon to go get a zombie to prove to his sister they exist is so incredibly stupid. He also must have known that stingers have been used to try and kill dragons for hundreds of years and warned Dani about them. Or just made a plan to fly all three dragons super high to come straight down on King's landing behind the weapons and take our Cersi instead of trying to convince her of anything. It was all so obvious that dragons are way overpowered and the writers needed to nerf them to keep any semblance of stakes.
I love House of Dragons and think the writing is in general smarter than the last GoT seasons but they still face the same issues with dragons being OP. I hope that some character in the show tries another method to kill the dragons other than shooting toothpicks or using a bigger dragon. Poisoning their food or throwing acid on them or building a trap to bury them would all be better than what they've done so far.
Sorry for rambling, I still get mad whenever somebody talks about Tyrion being so smart.
I love this video - it completely encompasses the disappointment of when I watched Sherlock and the reason I couldn't get on with the books. God knows how it got so popular.
Thanks very much! Glad you liked it.
I’m not sure whether you realize that scene of Holmes susing out Watson’s entire life is actually a very faithful adaptation of the scene from the original Arthur Conan Doyle story where Holmes first meets Watson. The details are all updated for the current day, Watson’s phone was originally a pocket watch with similar scratches indicating someone trying to use it while impaired, and the war he was a veteran of was I think the Boer war, or whatever Imperial misadventure England had been dabbling in at the time of the story’s publication, but all of the little clues and bits with the limp & everything are exactly as in the original story. This doesn’t invalidate your criticism, of course, it merely reveals the true guilty party to be A. C. Doyle himself and not the writers of the TV show, who prove to have done a brilliant job (at least for the first couple of stories) for setting the Sherlock Holmes character in the modern day while preserving the essence of his character, for better and for worse.
It's certainly interesting to hear, a lot of you guys have been sharing information about the original books in the comments and I feel like I'm building up a decent picture of them now. Hopefully one day I'll get round to reading them myself.
The War was Afghanistan too, some things do not change.
@@yugytommWar, war never changes but people do
@ondururagittandeska2004 as an old saying goes, the stage stays the same, it's only the actors that change. Still the same old story
0:31 I know it's stock footage but why are the dice made from Jello?
Just for fun haha
I reread The Watch subseries every year or so. Just read the pulled quote yesterday. That one always sticks with me. I was essentially raised by Vimes, and being an artist, it always makes me happy to see artists preaching Pratchett's Vimesian wisdom
The TV show 'House' had a lead character that was basically Sherlock Holmes as well. And there would be a lot of the same things where House's keen observation and guesses were supposed to be a sign of his intelligence. However the show also did a good job of make him wrong more often the right when doing this, forcing the character to adapt and find new information until he has that "ah ha" moment when he's connecting the dots. But at least they show this process and don't present it like it is magic or a super power, which as you point out is how a lot of smart characters are presented. Maybe Sherlock did this too? I never watched that show.
I haven't seen House but that sounds like a good way to do it. In the BBC Sherlock at least, you don't really see him being "wrong" and figuring things out.
I highly suggest house up to season 5. It's much better at using the scientific process. @MediaRetrospective-sb2pt
@@TiberiusX Thanks, added to the to watch list!
House isn't unwatchable bad like Sherlock imo, but it has the problem more often that not. With House though it felt like the writers were trying but had to fall back on it to keep up with the content chern, whereas Sherlock learnt all the wrong lessons from it.
Smart characters do Smart things like: Light Yagami and Walter White
Not always, they fail. But story knows if its a failure. And to actually overcome equally smart obstacle, they have to give it all. And even outsmart the audience. However in Shows like Boys S04 and Code Geass, they have to say it constantly and smart things being done is nothing sort of outlandish without base which magically works because sth spawned there r.n or everyone is stupid
Yeah very true - Code Geass is definitely an example of another "smart" character not written very well. I actually forgot about that since it's been a while since I watched it.
I think Xanatos fro. gargoyles is one of the best examples of a smart character.
He had ridiculous plans, but they were always ridiculous because he'd always come out on top.
The best anyone else could hope for was to minimise his victory, which he accounted for once he knew people realised he always wins to set up situations where the outcome he really wanted seemed less advantageous(but really set up another plan or gave him much more than they thought).
His plans weren't perfect, but you can see how every outcome always plays to his advantage, which is what made him such a good villain. The only time other people got an advantage over him was when they did something he couldn't plan for, and that only worked until he could predict it.
Lelouch is way better than Light, Light literally survives off plot armor.
Death note is not a very good example of really smart characters. Light made so many mistakes, so his hubris allowed L to target him very quickly. Revealed his abilities at first confrontation, revealed he has ties to police limiting the suspects to a couple of hundreds from literal millions etc. L is even worse, his gamble with TV trick was assuming that Light can kill instantly without preparation, is arrogant enough to follow the bait and kill not a criminal right away etc. He could not know that. So, if Light had not done a stupid thing L would fail publicly and that is it, the end. There is no way to prove Kira is even real. And by the way it is impossible to prepare death row criminal sentenced to be executed on that day secretly as death row inmates wait several years for the execution. How many laws were needed to be broken for that trick to happen? Author pulled the solutions out of their arse.
So, both L and Light have no patience, are prone to prefer instant gratification even if it is going to be very risky to them. Typical teenagers, not real geniuses.
@@dmitriy9053
Yes
But there are Rules to the Universe laid out, even fanstastical. But Light is smart character. His complex is the downfall but he bested L and ruled for 5 years, working within Police circle as one of them. Tricked God of Death to do hia bidding, manipulated and used people a lot of times. He was a cold hearted bitch, without compassion like even Walt has for his family and Jesse over anything. Gus lost that way too, being emotional.
Light only lost because Mikami slipped and made Light lose as well.
It really needs to be said that intelligence, like physical strength and ability, has more to do with what someone *does* than who someone *is*.
An intelligent person is someone who spends a lot of time asking questions, using their mind in a variety of different ways, and enjoys doing so.
The smartest person in the room is usually the person more interested in asking questions than giving answers, but the person most interested in giving answers is the one who wants you to think they're smart.
I completely agree with what you said here.
I like smartly written characters. I wish more series writers would take this to heart.
When done well they're an absolute pleasure to read / watch. But they usually aren't sadly.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptDo u have any examples for well written characters?
@@dirantosdelgado4749 most of the characters from kaiji ultimate survivor
@@dirantosdelgado4749 Other than the 2 I mentioned in this video; Norm from Fallout, Darrow from Red Rising; Ender from Ender's Game; the 2 investigators from I-Robot (I forgot their names); L from Death Note (borderline, it's been a while since I watched the anime). Those are the ones who come to mind off the top of my head.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Del Spooner and Dr. Susan Calvin. They were the characters from the I’Robot movie. That said, in the book I’Robot by Isaac Asimov, almost every major character at some point comes across as intelligent due to coming up with an explanation for how the Three Laws of Robotics caused the specific strange behaviour currently being observed. And that makes sense since, in the book, they’re scientists trying to make sure the Robots don’t go wrong and as such it wouldn’t work if they couldn’t analyze robot behaviour in relation to the Three Laws
I’m glad you made this video and somehow the algorithm brought it forth. I’ve been struggling with this idea irl. I come from a working class family and since i was a child been labeled smart. And my family often tells me things like why aren’t you this or that (rich, powerful, famous, etc) or refuse to help me. They’ll often respond in contempt, “Aren’t you smart?”
Partly it’s because they don’t have experience in the intellectual life, their own experience, their surroundings, media, but also because of magical thinking. I am also guilty of magical thinking because i would proceed to over explain myself as they casually pretended to listen. I figured eventually it’s hard to change someone’s world view. It strikes at the core of their very being.
I often think that they imagine if they were smarter than others thats what they would do with this gift. Instead of questioning whether these goals are attainable or, more grossly put, desirable.
I think being able to develop this trait is a lot like being an athlete. You need a lot of resources to bring about its fruits. You need to have access to good food, quality sleep, time to train, encouragement, a coach, facilities, etc. And often it’s out of the control of an individual. So, also luck.
The fool is twin to the wiseman. I often think this is the difference. A fool believes himself wise and a wiseman knows he is the fool. Its probably the one healthy appetite, to discover that you don’t know and then want to find out. What is most important to me is my character. And a healthy character grows.
As far as Sister Sage is concerned, i had the same rxn. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but I think in context of the show that’s what the writers were going for. It’s a deliberate poke at the trope. Remember we’re making fun of super heroes, modern day myths. Hero worship. Hubris.
Hey man really appreciate your view and comment. I think there's a very common misconception of intelligence where people perceive it as a binary - you're either smart or not, you're either successful or not. But the reality is that intelligence is not only a scale, it's multi faceted across different types of intelligence. And intelligence alone is not a predictor of one's success - it's a combination of their personality, connections, background and even luck as well.
Regarding Sage: You could be right, but I'm not entirely convinced. The Boys's satire is almost always extremely on the nose, while Sage's "master plan" reveal last episode really just felt like lazy writing. Like if another character had made a snarky comment of how BS her smarts were or something I might've considered it a part of The Boys's satire - or at least it would show some self-awareness of it, which is better than what we got - but it didn't really come off that way imo.
And yeah agreed on intelligence. I'm a bit over average intelligent myself (maybe top 10 %) while my brother is more like top 0.01 or maybe even 0.001 % (I know intelligence isn't as arbitrary as that, but it's still a *mostly* honest demonstrative way of putting it), and what you're saying resonates from what I've seen of my brother, and, to some lesser degree, myself. I stopped nurturing my intelligence for over a decade when I suffered from depression, so I'm literally a living proof that smart people can easily turn into fools given the wrong circumstances.
Thanks, bro. I’m glad I found this video first
Another clear contrast is Scofield from Prison Break and Professor from Money Heist (Casa de Papel). Scofield makes a clear elaborate plan to infiltrate prison and get his brother out. He has a concrete map of the prison, he is constantly analyzing the situation and taking advantage of the police's shortcomings, and is constantly facing challenges which he deescalates just as smartly. Meanwhile, Professor sends his gang crew into the bank where they take it hostage for days. The unbelievable part is that he deduces the police's exact decisions, like he also has a map of their psyche, predicts their decisions, predicts their plots and plans, plots their tactics, predicts their attack patterns, predicts each and every shortcomings which had like millions of alternative ways to unfold, and even whenever the plan goes sideways, he makes another plan that also disregards rebuttals in case of unplanned shortcomings. The whole season can simply be deciphered as how he pictures the whole heist will go in his head, instead of it being the actual heist.
I agree that Scofield in season 1 (possibly 2) of Prison Break is a relatively well-written smart guy, but the less said about seasons 3, 4 - and beyond - the better.
The way his magical problem-solving abilities seem to have equally magically rubbed off on people who are supposed to be much less intelligent than him, like Lincoln, Sucre and even Bellick, is simply ridiculous.
In fairness to Sage, I saw it as her only true plan was to truly ultimately earn Homelander's trust.
Yes, Sage could be lasered by him anytime, but it was established that she was dissatisfied with life -- So, she was like "Fuck it, let's go." But not to do as Homelander wants. His agenda was secondary, Neuman was secondary. Succeed and get Homelander to believe in her, or almost-fail but have contingencies in place to succeed and get Homelander to believe in her -- That adaptability was the true smarest move.
And I think her "tell instead of show" is forgivable because she is shown nudging conflicts, recruiting Firecracker, and negotiating with Neuman. The contingencies she set up were much easier moves that didn't need screentime because there was no challenge.
Now, where Sage points, Homelander will punch or laser. Hella smart.
This. Sage seemed more like an opportunist than anything else, which is its own form of intelligence. Also consider she wanted to be out of the spotlight, so it didn't benefit her to always be "seen" as the smart one, especially knowing how jealous homelander gets.
A bit late here, but this is definitely worthy commenting on. Very well done essay on the topic, it often does feel like a lot of media - this isn't exactly a new thing - makes a bad habit of portraying intelligent characters poorly. There's a long history of the "smart" character being secondary to the core cast and mostly serving as a convenient plot device to provide the solution to whatever un-punch-able threat there is on demand. That often works for secondary characters, but very quickly falls apart when they're moved into the spotlight.
Anyhow, if I were to summarize how to portray smart characters... it comes down to the *Scientific Method*, summarized below:
1. Ask a question.
2. Collect the relevant information.
3. Form a hypothesis.
4. Build an experiment and test the hypothesis.
5. Analyze the data collected from the experiment.
6. Draw conclusions from the data analysis.
7. Form new hypothesis and/or questions based on what you learned.
8. Repeat.
Those steps are the core of science as a whole - it's a process of testing ideas and seeing what holds. Many seem to confuse the knowledge collected from all those questions, experiments and hypotheses are the science itself... but really, it's just the sum total of the knowledge. The information collected in step #2. In theory, anyone can have that information (especially in a modern setting with the internet on hand); those can recite it on demand just have a good memory recall. However, smart characters (and smart people) are often compulsive researchers, ever seeking out new information because they like learning new things.
To make a character feel "smart", you have to expose the audience to as much of the above process, expose them to the thought process. However, the challenge is making it compelling storytelling without drowning your audience with too much information and analysis; you'll only entertain the nerdiest of nerds who like the challenge of solving a good puzzle at that stage. So you have to hold back the information and sprinkle it out throughout the narrative - and yes, it is much like building a good plot twist or writing a mystery. Even if the audience didn't see it coming the first time, all the foreshadowing and hints need to add up in the end.
But for some fun, you could have the metaphorical "red herring" (the false lead) be explored, discussed, and maybe even dismissed for logical reasons rather than just forgotten about.
------------------------------------
As a bit of a tangent, I've often seen it be said that it's tough (if not impossible) to write a character smarter than yourself... and there is a grain of truth to that. Because you, as the writer, need to figure out the same things the characters do. The good news is that the author can do research and run their own experiments (or even just thought experiments), and become smarter themselves. The problem is that takes time and effort on their part, so easier said than done.
And of course, the other challenge is presenting the information in a way that's comprehensible to the audience... and damn, that's a WHOLE other question by itself. Some audiences are frighteningly attentive and clever... while others, to put it politely, are not. Being willing (or allowed) to write for the actually smart audience can be a potential hurdle.
But I guess this is the good time for a quote from Einstein himself:
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
This is going to be one of my favourite videos from your channel!! My favourite part is Sherlock Holmes, also i think your subject is very unique, well done 👍
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it, I do like branching out with the topics to cover different things.
The most intelligent people consistently ask questions you never thought to ask but which are obviously interesting or important as soon as you hear them. They also are good at understanding what a good answer would look like, and deducing within that framework. The problem, as others have pointed out, is the writers of these characters are typically not smart enough to write a smart character. The current "smartest person in the world" on The Boys is a great example of the problem. She just comes across as arrogant and magically knowledgeable. Nothing about her comes across as very intelligent.
Well put I completely agree. And I also dislike the modern trend of making supposedly intelligent characters also very arrogant and edgy. Sage's motivation in S4 for not doing "good" felt immature and unconvincing.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2ptYeah, exactly! I hate the tropes of making smart characters assholes for no reason. Yeah some smart people can get a bit arrogant but a lot of the smartest people I've ever met are the kindest, most empathetic people I know. If anything I'd almost say on average smarter people have more of a capacity to understand things from other people's points of view and be considerate of others
Like Patrick from spongebob??
I think one example where “it was part of my plan” works is in Better Call Saul, and I think the reason was because it put a lot of effort in convincing you (the viewer) of the scams they were pulling so I constantly felt outsmarted by the show. It also did the stuff you mentioned at the end :)
I will say, with Sage, we know she didn’t actually plan on Neuman dying. The plan the whole time was for Singer to go to jail and for Neuman to be their puppet in office. Once Neuman died she quickly pivoted to a new guy to be their puppet, because the specific person didn’t actually matter, they just needed to be able to control them. She simply risked the fact that Homelander wouldn’t kill her, but it wouldn’t have made sense if he did, because she deliberately fed A-Train false information, and Homelander is a little more rational than we give him credit for. Also the incriminating footage on Singer as a pivot as well. The plan originally was to have him assassinated, and pin it on Starlight, then when that fell through they pivoted to the video. Every point you brought up proves the opposite of what you’re trying to prove.
Yeah, this video acknowleges that Sage lies to Homelander, but completely fails to consider that she's lying to Homelander in the final scene.
It didn't go perfectly according to plan, but it went close enough, and she's taking credit because why wouldn't you?
Thank you! I felt like I was going crazy because I don't remember Sage ever making it seem as though she literally planned every action. She took advantage of situations and knew how to adapt lightning fast based on pivotal information or her understanding of the human psyche. She's not written as an omniscient hero and its clear some of her plans fall through. She just made sure the overarching goal was reached and in the end that's all that matters.
Yeah, nobody seemed as if they were able to kill her, an Butcher only could because he took advantage of a completely undocumented effect of an experimental drug. Considering Sage seemed to get her intelligence from reading, there is no way she could have forseen somebody in opposition of her being able to kill Neumann.
Something I fail to understand is where the footage of Singer comes from. Why does she have it, how did anyone film it
@@HeyLoiss The Shapeshifter, apparently. Although, they died before being able to leave the bunker...
Tyrion is my fav character from GoT for being the real smart person. You can't feel empathy for characters that don't reveal their experience or thought process in any way.
Agreed, because they don't feel like real people then.
I think The Professor from "Money Heist" or 'La Casa De Papel' is a good example of a smart character who doesn't just have everything go right. He's presented with seemingly unescapable situations in which he eventually finds a very logical way out. He's truly the best part of the show
Man, storytelling IS way more important than information. The examples stay with me, the bullet points got lost… THATS why you don’t say it, you show it
The Sherlock scene was an update of the author’s original story (you can read it almost word-for-word in the original)
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt sorry, I’m moving my original comment in real time. I suggest you delete this comment because it won’t make sense. Sorry
Honestly great video. I've always had a problem with "smart" written characters. You're fully right about show don't tell. Having a character use the available information and using it in the best way possible given the situation will always be more believable and impressive than them claiming to have done so. I believe that's why anime and manga work so well. Instead of saying how something happend, they'll show the entire backstory to a character or situation. This also increases the stakes and emotional attachment to a character. You get to see their struggles, making them more believable characters. A big problem with smart people is them not feeling human, they feel supernatural, unreal.
Thanks glad you liked the video! I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment, especially your last sentence around how these characters end up feeling unreal and superficial.
The silliest "smart" character trope I see all the time is a smart character who knows tons of random arbitrary literature so intimately they can quote it at will, and identify any random quote instantly. Of course it makes sense a lazy writer would think a smart character should automatically be smarter than the writer themselves in all areas, and a writer knows literature best.
Lol yeah it's a bit of a cheap way to try and show intelligence, or I guess to try and show that someone is cultured?
Great video. You put into words exactly what always bugged me about Sherlock-every clever 'deduction' feels like a lucky guess.
Thank you! The first time I watched it ages ago I really enjoyed it, but rewatching it now I find it a bit... Hollow? Convenient?
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt What do you enjoy about it? I hated the pilot since the first scene. The game of wits between Sherlock and the culprit, are enraging with how stupid it is. I skip one episode I think, to see what they did with Irene Adler, and rage-quit in the final scene. All I remember from it is how stupid it is and how angry it make me feel.
Man Tyrian was such a good character. He always had an answer or plan, even when one plan didn’t work out. He always pivoted to something else, some other line of thinking.
Yeah he's awesome. I think he's so much more interesting in the books as well.
You forgot about the professor from Money heist. He’s an extremely intelligent and very human. He messes up, but very capable.
Well, he still makes some assumptions that fall into the "magical" intelligence trope, but by making him constantly get things wrong and adapting, he feels like a very intelligent character and not a magical guy
The only time I have seen the "I am smart therefore rude" work is in Doc Martin, his persona is shown as a failing and a condition he would like to sometimes change rather than just the, I'm cool because I pretend not to care. It is also shown in a positive light in other scenarios too and the main thing being it is very funny.
Very nice video, Baku Madarame from Usogui+Battler and Beatrice from Umineko are great characters that have very well explained feats of "smartness" and logic.
8:00 also, thats just a massive plot hole because she *_shouldn't_* have gotten that footage. The shifter was killed, meaning any local footage would have not been recovered. They were also in a secure underground bunker specifically designed to be safe and isolated, so remote communication shouldn't have worked either. That footage could not have made it out of that bunker.
Hmm good catch! I actually missed this but you're right, more evidence the writers didn't put much thought into her character and thought the final episode dialogue would somehow be enough!
The trope I'm the most fed up with is : "character proceeds to quote ancient Roman generals and Greek philosophers". General knowledge doesn't equate to intelligence. Quoting Marcus Aurelius to appear badass isn't different from quoting the Joker on Reddit to achieve the same goal. A real intelligent person doesn't need to sound smart, they are smart. Not to mention that demeaning your interlocutor is a very dumb move, it only leads to mistrust and possibly anger, you will get nothing valuable out of people that you made feel inferior.
Walter White is a great example of that. When is he ever shown to quote things to sound smart ? Anyone remembers the scene where Saul Goodman is trying to make a point about Skyler, he says "gangsters don't need wives, have you ever seen White Heat ?". Walter answers "I've seen White Heat, what's your point ?". This is a perfect example of someone trying to sound smart in front of someone who is actually smart. The smart person goes to the essential : what's the point ? They don't need to embellish their train of thoughts, they keep it simple.
The "broken plate" scene is one of the best example of on-the-spot intelligence I've seen displayed on media. Walter never goes for tirades about light and darkness, good and evil, he finds specific clues and crafts unique solutions to difficult problems.
An episode in the show Monk (s4e1) perfectly illustrates your entire video. It's an episode where Monk is challenged by another detective who seems to outsmart him at every step, through superhuman deductive abilities and impossible foresight. Normal people are suspicious of him, but are still led to believe him because the foresights become true, while Monk thinks he's cheating, although he does not know how. It turns out that the other detective was in fact cheating, his mother overhead the perps and their plans on the phone. It's the way we feel with these magical deductions, like when Sage first meets Homelander and tells him that Soldier Boy is his father, although she has no way of knowing that. We don't feel impressed, we feel cheated.
Lol I love how you morons who think you're smart, group intelligent people with your own viewed characteristics.
Project more dude holy shit.
I loved watching reed thompson/teddy macdonald from snowfall, the way he was an extremely intelligent control freak in a world where everything was unpredictable and nothing went according to plan, it felt like he never had any plot armor, always survived and got shit done because of his experience, intellect and improvisation skills when things went wrong
To be fair to the writers of Sherlock, a lot of his deductions in the scene where he meets Watson are deductions he made in the first two books.
In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes sees Watson is tanned and has a rigid posture and short haircut so he deduces that Watson has military training (hence the posture and cut) and figures the reason someone with a military background would be in a hot place would be if he were a soldier in a war so he reckons Watson would have been a veteran of the Second Anglo-Afghan War due to it being recent enough to make sense. And since a mutual friend introduced him as Dr. Watson, Holmes (correctly) deduces Watson’s an army doctor. In the second book, Holmes sees that Watson’s watch has several scratches on it and is labeled H. Watson so he deduces that Watson had an alcoholic brother who died of his excesses and whose first name began with H.
That's pretty interesting the show more closely adapted the original books than I realised. I'll have to find some time to read the books to compare, I'm mostly curious if the deductions are more grounded in the books.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Some of the deductions are far more grounded. For instance, in the short story Five Orange Pips, Holmes deduces that a murder was committed by the KuKlux Klan from the killer having engraved the letters KKK into the ground (at the time, the Klan wasn’t widely known outside of America). And in the short story a Case of Mistaken Identity, Holmes suspects (but doesn’t say) that his clients disappeared boyfriend is actually her (very young) stepfather in disguise so he asks her to give him some of her boyfriend’s typewritten letters and then he writes to the stepfather asking him to come to 221B Baker Street to discuss the case and then confronts the stepfather with the fact that every typewriter has its own unique signature and the stepfather wrote his letters with the same typewriter with which the “boyfriend” wrote his. (The stepfather wanted to keep her from marrying since he was worried that he would lose the money he married into so he thought that this would scare her out of romantic relationships.) In the first book, A Study in Scarlet, Lestrade thinks the killer was trying to write Rachel but Holmes says it’s actually Rache (German for revenge) to make them suspect a political conspiracy but Holmes is only half-right since while it was written in German to make them suspect a political conspiracy the killer actually specifically wanted revenge.
@@matityaloran9157 Very interesting! Yeah they sound much better - I'll definitely give them a go.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt You should. They’re really good books.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Yeah, his deductions are often less about observations and more about making connections based on things he remembers. Like how in The Hound of the Baskervilles he recognizes the words from a ransom note to know what newspaper they are from, and recognizes the smell of a certain perfume on the paper.
Calling out Aizen from bleach 9:05 earned you my upvote. Aizen is smart but a lot of twists just went too far to be believable that he contrived it.
Thanks! I'll probably do separate videos on Aizen and the TYBW arc in the future.
@@MediaRetrospective-sb2pt Aizen's plan with the Soul King was pretty uncomplicated, Hell according to Ichibei it was doomed to fail anyways.
With Ichigo, I find it funny how Everything But The Rain actually showed the context for Aizen's plan with him, specifically that it's pretty much a side hobby if anything. He was accidentially responsible for how Ichigo turned out, and decided to basically just monitor him from there. I find it funny that the very beginning of Aizen's 'big plan with Ichigo' was a setback to his main plan. Then of course there's no way he got Grimmjow to do what he did unless it was all psychological manipulation, though I could believe that he planned Ulquiorra's battles since Ulquiorra is basically a non-mechanica robot in how he acted for most of the series he was in.
@@HOLDENPOPE Funnily enough, I'm actually working on a video about Aizen specifically right now which you may find interesting when it comes out.
My favorite demonstration of intelligence in writing is to have the individual be curious. They are observant, but never jump to conclusions. They may have a disturbing intensity sometimes, but it's only because they are deeply invested in learning more. They may be able to solve problems later, but they may also not realize it until nearly too late, because they were genuinely moving on to other problems in their own heads, and they have to be reminded to revisit older issues.
Maybe the problem is that the writers themselves aren't smart.
Very likely in some cases lol.
I can appreciate criticisms of an authors thought process and motives, even their life decisions. Simply out and out insulting people because of a story is scummy. No offense.
Yes.