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Last Unicorn Part 4
🕑 Added 2025-03-01 07:59:45 +0000 UTCA strange thing happens at the ending of an RPG story. To some degree the whole beginning and middle can serve as set dressing, or as a stage for improv, or as a platform to build gameplay or narrative structures. But an ending is different. At a certain point you have to decide what the story was about. Sure an ending can just be the place where you finally grow tired and put away your toys. But more often than not for an improvised story, the ending is the place where the story finds its narrative arc.
So often in fiction the predestination of the narrative arc can be intuited by any mindful viewer. We all know how stories work, and the marketing alone is enough to tell us what kind of experience to brace ourselves for. Comedies are built a certain way, spy thrillers a different way. If you're in the kind of indie darling that can allow itself a properly dark ending, the cinematography alone is probably hint enough to not be shocked by the melancholy ending you find yourself dropped into.
And I love the improv format, the complex RPG, silly serious dark light heavy sarcastic earnest superposition of the storytelling we do. I mean, let's be honest, light and floofy is the epicenter of our tone, but the fact is we can't arrange our tone around the narrative. The narrative writes itself around our best intentions, and all we can do is find a frame to fit the odd constructions we've devised and try to make them satisfying in retrospect. But in that sense the ending is a point of true suspense, it can no longer be a stage or a devise. It is the place where the narrative comes to rest its weary head. And I can only hope that we find a way to make it satisfying.
Next time: Cabin in the woods.
EDIT: So apparently the episode we posted is sounding glitchy for some people. Took it down and trying to figure out what's going on. Will have a new version back up soon.
Comments
Leo Hojnowski
Possibly a Film Reroll all-timer and definitely a strong start to the year! To be a bit pretentious for a moment, The Film Reroll's The Last Unicorn ends up a poignant commentary on the unfulfilling pursuit of power: the power to restore a forest or save a city. Our heroes encounter magic with the power to rend battlefields, vast hordes of marauding barbarians, and wondrous artifacts with seemingly omnipotent power but time and again great prophecies of destruction are averted, armies are turned away off-screen without conflict, and acts of magical fury are robbed of their gravitas. Engagement with these things robs one's humanity, whether it's Edgar leaving Lillian behind, Mage-Commander Lyissa sending Renard to his death and imperiling Team Unicorn, or the final confrontation with the Fire Elemental resulting in the death of an innocent creature driven to create but cursed to destroy. Everyone on this quest has attained the power they sought. The Unicorn has the heart of her forest. Ida is re-equipped with herbalist supplies and empowered to defy the spectres of her past. Renard (the Canard) has earned the respect of his superiors and discovered a powerful magical tool for the city. But they all walk away unsatisfied and melancholy to some extent. Only Edgar, who went on this quest not for power but for companionship, is satisfied with what he found (so satisfied as to part ways with Ida), perhaps having learned a valuable lesson from his fleeting time with The Last Unicorn.
