RWRTTN: The Time I Rewrote the Pilot of a Popular Webseries - Part 2
Hey Alexa... Play "Mirror Mirror" by Jeff Williams & Casey Lee Williams.
For context, read the introduction of this series here before reading on.
What I Plan to Do with the Story
Where to begin, where to begin—something that I could ask myself for any of my posts thus far—with addressing RWBY and attempting to fix it. If money and time allowed me, I’d go ahead and lose my mind to twisted bliss by rewriting the entire series but I’ll settle with the pilot for now.
To get started, I’d need to identify some of the biggest issues that I have with RWBY’s accumulated narrative—the story so far across all volumes—as well as the pilot episode’s individual shortcomings as an attempt to characterize the main protagonist of the show, Ruby Rose (no relationship with the actress), and establishing the world of Remnant. That in mind, allow me to go ahead and elaborate on the former before magnifying my scope.
Paraphrasing the aforementioned video critique of RWBY from my introduction, there’s a lot of bad with its storytelling (check this quick summary video that touches on some of the points I’m about to get into briefly). Focusing on just the writing, here’s what we’re dealing with:
A lack of organization as indicated with story and character inconsistencies, contributing to a decaying sense of style.
An over-reliance of mimicry, basing certain aspects on better programs which it regularly takes inspiration from.
Not a single clue with narrative pacing whatsoever.
An inability to establish logic for worldbuilding and characterization.
Now with all that said, let’s jump into this.
Summary
A reminder before I begin: I gave this show four seasons to try and patch things up before I stopped watching. However, I am confident in saying that based on the show’s inability to improve their writing during the time that I did watch the program, I’m certain that the other last four seasons of the show were also fairly mediocre.
RWBY (pronounced “Ruby”) centers around four young girls—Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long—enrolling in Beacon Academy, a school for training warriors who defend the world from evil. Following in line with the tried and true formula of the Harry Potter series, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and a myriad of shonen anime, the four make many friends during their time at school and manage to whoop terrorist ass before dinner—until the writers decide that they need to raise the stakes of the narrative and choose to pit the girls against an eldritch being who just so happens to be the leader of this world’s illuminati.
Deadass, that is the plot of the series. “But how did it all start?” you might ask. Well, continue to maintain eye contact with the text of this webpage and I’ll tell you all about that.
So, episode one of season/volume one of the series, titled “Ruby Rose”, immediately begins with an exposition slideshow narrated by the voice actress of Cortana from the Halo franchise (not joking) poorly introducing and explaining the first key concept of this world: Dust. In a nutshell, Dust is source of elemental energy in this aetherpunk world of Remnant used for practical purposes, such as powering a vehicle, and for combative purposes because why wouldn’t you want to shoot your enemy down with a blue firework that freezes them upon impact?
But, yeah, after the Prezi presentation’s through, we cut to some Alex DeLarge, Clockwork Orange wannabe, in the form of—I shit you not—an organized crime kingpin named Roman Torchwick. Mr. Candelabra is strolling down an alley at night on their way to rob a dust munitions store which is designed like a candy store. Chilling in the background of the felony in progress, the audience meets the show’s protagonist, Ruby Rose, for the first time. She does not know what’s going on as she’s blasting music through her headphones and doing her best not to look too much like Spike Spiegel in the first scene of Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.
Ruby is eventually approached by one of Roman’s droogs who tells her that it’s a stick-up before Ruby checks that goon’s ass into the smackdown hotel and puts his candy ass through the munition store’s glass display. Now in the middle of the dim streets of Vale, Ruby takes down the armed grunts with ease while Roman attempts to flee the battle with a bunch of Dust via escape airship.
The episode reaches the closest thing to a climax when Ruby is almost blown to smithereens by Roman alongside his mysterious and powerful accomplice when out of nowhere, the good witch of the south—because the fucking writers thought they were cheeky when they decided to name their sexy teacher character (her fucking weapon is a riding crop that she uses as a magic wand) Glynda Goodwitch—saves Ruby before the baddies get away.
The next thing that we know, Glynda has taken Ruby to an interrogation room before some boomer sipping tea, wearing a scarf indoors, going by the name of Professor Ozpin asks Ruby two questions before offering her a scholarship to what is essentially an ivy league boarding school in this show’s universe. Am I losing mind as I’m writing this? Quite possibly, it is roughly around two in the morning when I’m writing this bit but I digress.
Star wipe to Ruby on an airship headed for the aforementioned Beacon Academy as she’s being smothered with compliments by her older step-sister, Yang Xiao Long. Despite no indication of anyone giving a fuck about Ruby’s existence and what she’s recently done (intervening in last night’s robbery), Ruby makes it clear to her sister that she simply wants to be a plain jane, simply a normal girl.
A live news stream airs on one of the airship’s monitors and cover’s Ruby’s heroics as well as something called the Faunus Civil Rights Protest, another poor attempt to plant a seed which could have been explored quicker and better as the show progressed. Following the news, Glynda interrupts the stream with a quick welcome message for all of the incoming students right before some jabroni gets motion sickness and yaks on Yang’s boots.
Side note: that “some jabroni” would later become a knock-off Sokka character and somehow have more screen time than some of the other members of Ruby’s squad.
Pre-Planning
Hey Alexa… Play “Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce.
Knowing that all I had to do was focus my frustrations on the pilot, that immediately brought me partial peace of mind. However, I still had to analyze the issues within the pilot itself. Of course, that would mean that I’d have to re-watch the episode and that wasn’t too bad—it wasn’t good by any means, it was basically the equivalent of eating cold leftovers.
For instance, you’re going to open up the show with exposition? Just because Avatar: the Last Airbender managed to pull it off doesn’t mean that it’s a great idea in general. If you want to introduce that sort of “worldbuilding” into your story, then show it—scrap the powerpoint and let the audience fuck around and find out what Dust does in this world. Let characters talk about it, let characters use it, but don’t just piss it down the drain with something as boring and as simple as voiceover narration in this sort of situation. Time is precious for both the creator and the consumer—and it is the creator’s responsibility to help the consumer enjoy their time spent on the creator’s work.
Pardon my rant. After refreshing my memory with the material I was able to identify quite a number of issues within the episode from a narrative standpoint. Some of them were grazed upon by the show’s writers but fell short and some of them were completely ignored. But, in summary, these were my issues upon review:
The show wants to establish Roman as an imposing threat but fails to do so by giving him a personality.
The show wants to establish a badass fighter with Ruby who still has a lot to learn but fails to establish and build any tension within fight scenes.
The show forgets to have the main protagonist and one of the main antagonists interact with each other.
The show leans into showrunner Monty Oum and his strengths by having the majority of the episode focused on high-octane action scenes but the writers fail to effectively piece together a fleshed out and coherent narrative in the quieter moments of the program.
The show wants to establish Professor Ozpin as a morally gray and mysterious individual but forget to give him more than three lines of dialogue.
Due to the finnicky nature of how Oum would slap new action scenes for the writers to implement out of the blue quite regularly, a lot of the seedlings of what would eventually try to become plotlines extending into later seasons.
Again, I asked that same question of what to do. Then, I got to thinking.
The biggest change that I would have to make to this pilot would be to first give it a full half-hour instead of working around the sub-15 minute format it had back in 2013. In my mind and in a perfect world, if I were to give this intellectual property the respect it deserved with a series reboot, I’d have to give this thing a normal-ass format. Because unlike before, I know that Rooster Teeth’s got that WarnerMedia money to put into the production team—and if not, WarnerMedia can cut their losses, incorporate RWBY into DC Elseworlds canon, and make a killing that way if RT’s not willing to put in the work into what is probably their most recognizable property now.
And while I’m on the topic of show logistics and hypothetical showrunning, I’d also push for something a little controversial: traditional animation over the show’s 3D animation style. Not only do I believe that the change in visual style for the hypothetical reboot of the program would stand out but I also think that it’s cooler. Many showrunners of RWBY have often considered it, at the very least, some sort of a spin on an anime so I doubt that anyone except money-handlers would have an issue in this scenario. And as the show progressed, the animation and aesthetics of the show did become better over time but not without issues of wooden facial movements (or lack thereof) and 3D models clipping into each other, but the show was always treated like a traditionally animated program. With that said, there have been plenty of odd and cringe-y style choices whenever the directors decided to go full anime (but that may just be me). But, yeah, this is just my wishful thinking. Anyway, back to the script itself (note: I’d want Studio Trigger to animate this project by the way).
Everything ties back to the change of length which I think might be the biggest contributor of problems aside from basic storytelling issues. Other than that, I’d just have to rewrite the thing, cut out the fluff, and pack the thing with quality (at least competent) writing.
Production
I spent roughly three weeks to write this script during the tail end of one of my grad school semesters and I’d like to think that I did a decent job. Of course, the audience can judge that for themselves. However, upon revisiting the pilot script for RWBY: RWRTTN, a thought occurred to me—how the hell am I going to share this script if I’m going to put it on Substack?
As the thought floated around in my head, a simple solution came to me.
Given the weird format of a screenplay, expect to see hybridized delivery of the script so that it reads a little bit more like instructional prose (which is what a screenplay typically is from my understanding of the medium). And as far as any sort of self-reflection during this entire process, I’m sad to say that there wasn’t much of a breakthrough unlike my time with Jim’s work. Instead, this is more along the lines of a desperate fishing line going out to sea just to see if I can reel a marlin before I drop dead. I ain’t wishing for luck, I’m only hoping to correct and to be exact with my decisions.
Care to wish me luck?
Bing-bong, what’s happening? It’s your boy, deciding that Saturdays are the new Fridays around these parts. And for the RWBY fans passing through, welcome to my chaos realm. I hope y’all enjoyed reading part two of this four-part series. Tune in next week for the juiciest part of the series—my [proposed] pilot for RWBY should it ever get a rebroadcast/reboot à la Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
In other news, I’d like to give a quick shoutout to Mahdis Marzooghian from Screen Fervor who let me write a couple of short film reviews. Just thought that I’d give thanks and shamelessly plug some published work (I am really grateful for those opportunities though, thank you so much Mahdis).
As always, thanks to everyone who made it through everything. Please don’t forget to treat this post like a YouTube video and like, share, and subscribe to get notified for the latest from The Morning Owl. Have a lovely weekend, wherever y’all are—I’m gonna go back to bed.
Interested in reading more? Click here for part three of this essay series.
Thank you for reading this edition of The Morning Owl. If you liked what you saw here, it would be please leave a like, subscribe, leave a comment, and share this degenerate’s blog to other sentient folk with internet access. Until we meet again, drink plenty of water and take care.
Good luck! Looking forward to reading it :D