Delgo (2008) and World Building

As we near the end of October, we will be seeing more of the awards type movies released into theaters.  They will be endlessly talked about for no reason other than that they are up for the big awards at the end of the year.  The movies will win Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes, or at the very least be nominated for some of them.  Most of the movie Twitter people will be endlessly discussing which ones have the better chances of winning and which were simply steaming piles of poop.

There are of course the people that endlessly complain about the similarities between all of the award nominated films that come out in a year.  People will complain about anything, but this seems to be one of the major things that online movie circles will complain about at this time of the year.  The complaint stems from the fact that the vast majority of the movies being nominated have similarities in their concept.  Most of the movies are biopics about famous, respected people.  That’s how you get your Ray, A Beautiful Mind, The Theory of Everything, and Argo nominated for awards.  The movies are about real people and play out real stories (with some fictional liberties taken, of course).

I don’t want to take a look at a movie that is based in any sense of reality this week, though.  Instead, I want to look at a movie that is wholly original.  Delgo is a 2008 animated film set in another world inhabited with non-human characters.  It tells the story of the Nohrin and the Lokni, two species of humanoid creatures that have been fighting one another for fifteen years.  The movie takes a look at some very human things like racism and war without needing to be based in a real moment in time.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, which would make sense as I have written about completely different stuff for the entire post so far, I want to discuss world building and how Delgo did a decent job of it.  This is mostly going to be a ground up discussion, as Delgo is a wholly original world.  I will, however, quickly look at slight alterations to the world we live in because any discussion of world building must also incorporate that type of storytelling.  You know, the Planet of the Apes style of world where it is our world with slight differences that alter the course of history.

What is world building?

This whole post is probably going to make me sound dumb, but whatever.  If I come off as dumb, so be it.  At least I wrote something.  World building is when a writer or planner for a movie, book, game, or any other narrative form of art creates a world and expands it.  They can either make a new world for the sake of their story or take an existing world and twist it in a way that shows it differently.

An example of a world that is based upon our world is The Muppets.  These characters live in the same world as us.  But in this world, they are perceived as real, living beings.  Okay, I guess that’s also like our world.  Most of us understand that they’re really puppets though.  In the world in which their shows and movies are set, the characters are not puppets.  They’re called Muppets, yet that seems to simply be the name of their troupe.  Hell, in the 2011 film The Muppets, Jason Segel’s character has a brother who is a puppet, yet nobody seems to take notice of that.  The Muppets are treated like people.  The people behind the franchise created a world in which living puppets and people can coexist.

Delgo takes a slightly different approach and creates a world from scratch.  There is no basis within our world outside of the themes which the movie tackles during its runtime.  The land, the creatures, and the names are all fictitious.  Everything is a creation of the writers of the movie.  What makes this an easier approach to world building is that the writers don’t need to build a world within an already existing world.  What makes this a tougher approach is that there is nothing to build upon at the beginning since the writers are starting their work with a blank slate.  They must create every single thing within the world instead of working something into a world that exists.

Nomenclature

One of the most important parts of building a world is the naming of each and every part of it.  From the characters to the places, the names all need to feel like they are a part of that world.  When transposing your new world onto our real, existing world, it’s always best to find names that are rooted in some sort of lore that exists.  The show Supernatural does a good job of this.  The show depicts a darker side of our reality where monsters exist and people are trying to save other people from the monsters.  The people are known as hunters because they hunt monsters.  All of the monsters, or the vast majority of them, are based on monsters found in folklore and legends, so the names stay the same.  The one notable exception is a new monster that one of the main characters dubs “The Jefferson Starship,” which is a name based in the characters’ rock and roll background.  It all works because the show is set in a slightly different reality of Earth.

When creating a wholly new world, such as that in Delgo, the names just need to fit with each other.  There is no need to have them remain similar to the names in our reality.  The names of characters do not need to continue to be Robert or David or Carrie.  They can feel more exotic or made up, such as Delgo and Bogardus.  If the names are too weird, it might take a viewer out of the story, though.  The names of places can also have a more exotic tinge to them, such as Jhamora.  As long as the names are cohesive, it is fine.  Speaking of cohesiveness…

Cohesiveness

There are many ways in which a world can feel like a jumbled mess.  It all comes down to the different parts not fitting together in the right ways.  What a storyteller wants to do is find all the right parts that work together well enough to make everything gel.  A movie like Avatar is able to have an invented planet wholly realized with the different locations, the different creatures, and the different nomenclature.  Nearly everything fits together in a way that doesn’t feel forced, distracting, or out of place (Unobtainium aside, since that’s just a goofy name based on the element being unobtainable on Earth).  That’s the reason why so many people were depressed after how immersed they were in Pandora.

When you look at Delgo, they did a fairly good job of cohesion as well.  The different locations all feel as though they are a part of the same world, the names all fit together, and the character designs don’t feel out of place with one another.  The writers made sure that everything seemed appropriate within the confines of the world that they built.

History

No world is complete without a history behind the events that are unfolding.  This aspect helps to build up the lived-in feeling of the world.  A good use of world building creates a world that feels like it has existed for years.  A world cannot be formed based only on the current events.  There needs to be things that led up to it, relationships between the characters and their surroundings or one another.  Having a past to your world makes it seem more real, rather than a façade.

If I’m going to look at something recent to describe good world building, I need look no further than the show Game of Thrones.  Sure, it’s based on a book, but they have the same world, so just follow me here.  What we’re seeing on screen is a series of events unfolding as a bunch of different characters fight for the iron throne.  There is more to the world than that, though.  We know through stories and legends in the series that there was a war about fifteen or twenty years prior to the current events that put the Lannisters on top and left the land the way it is.  We also know that white walkers are a thing long before they become a major threat in the show.  There are backstories to every family, every land, and the throne itself.  The world is dense and feels more realistic because of each of the details.

The same can be said of Delgo, though not to the same extent.  The movie manages to build up these two species of living beings and gives a history to their conflict.  That at least gives some background to the war that we see play out through the movie.  However, there isn’t much more backstory than that.  The world still feels like a complete world, to an extent, but there was much more that could have been done to make it denser.

The Look

Finally, we come to how the world looks.  Between the people and the locations, everything needs to have a similar look.  If it is too similar, the world might seem small.  If there is too much difference between everything, the cohesiveness of the entire world will collapse.  There is a fine line that must be walked on without ever falling to one side or the other.  It is basically the fictional world equivalent to having different cultures and environments.

Let us look at Star Wars, or its bad movie knock-off Starcrash.  There are many planets in the universes of these movies and the different planets each have their own look and fee.  The people on the planets are different, the environments on the planets are different.  Hoth and Tatooine are very different, one being a desert and the other being snow covered.  The creatures on each planet also have a unique look.  It’s a good way to build the universe.

Delgo doesn’t go quite as deep into building their world.  There seem to only be two environments, the stable land of the Lokni and the floating islands of the Nohrin.  Neither location seems to be all that different other than where they are.  The land looks the same for both locations.  The character design is different, however.  The Nohrin resemble fairies while the Lokni resemble lizard men.  The two are humanoid enough that it is easy to believe they would be warring nations.  The world building was good on a character design level.

There are other elements that can make or break world building.  I won’t get into them right now since it’s 5pm on Sunday afternoon and this post has to go up today.  I only have so much time to get this post up for you guys to read with the blog name still being accurate.  So I’ll leave you with this.

Delgo isn’t as bad a movie as I was led to believe.  It is by no stretch of the imagination a great movie.  It is serviceable at best.  But it builds a decent world and tackles some important concepts.  I enjoyed parts of the movie and that made it worth the time I took to see it.

Now I have just a few notes before we’re done:

• I mentioned Starcrash in the post, so I’ll link to it.
• Louis Gossett Jr. was in Delgo, marking his fifth Sunday “Bad” Movie.  All four previous movies were in the Iron Eagle franchise, so he is now third in the most frequent actors list.
• Michael Clarke Duncan made his third appearance in the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Delgo.  The other two appearances were in A Crush on You and D.E.B.S.
• Val Kilmer’s second Sunday “Bad” Movie is Delgo.  His first was 7 Below.
• Chris Kattan also made an appearance in Delgo, after having been in Foodfight!
• Have you seen Delgo?  Have you heard of Delgo?  What do you think of Delgo?  Comments section.
• If you want to suggest a movie for me to watch in a future week of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can comment the movie too.  Or tell me on Twitter.
• Next week’s movie is Dead Before Dawn, a Canadian horror/comedy, made before Ryan Murphy invented the genre mash.  So, be here for that.  I’ll see you next week.