The Literary Machine
The Literary Machine is a podcast that does deep dives into stories from pop culture, spanning the width of most mediums: books, movies, TV shows, and video games. The goal is to explore the art of storytelling and attempt to understand what makes a story good and what has the potential to break a story.
Episodes
Amidst all of the new hubbub about this AI generation stuff, a new film, The Creator, saw its release. In this movie, AI developed from mere algorithms spitting back facsimile of human intelligence to outright humanistic androids/robots. The premise of the story is that the 'West' (the US) decided AI had gone too far and swore it off. But 'New Asia' refused to get rid of their new android family members. Tensions escalated when LA ...
After more than twenty years, Twister finally got its first 'sequel' in the 2024 movie Twisters. Given the time between the two movies, is it even possible for Twisters to live up to the original? Let's take a dive on analyzing these two movies!
"Wholesome" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the greatest action flicks of all time! The release of a Director's Cut added new footage that expanded on the story in new, interesting, and sometimes detrimental ways - not the point of it being watchable. In this episode, we go through each scene of the Director's Cut and analyze its effectiveness in adding to an already phenomenal story.
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The alien series is an iconic franchise that has suffered a number of lackluster films and even worse video games. But in 2014, Creative Assembly and Sega published the hit game Alien: Isolation. This game took the franchise back to its roots and crafted an experience that provides an intensely horrific experience of predator vs. prey. This podcast does a deep dive into how the developers were able to recreate the tension and horro...
In this episode, we finish comparing the Shadow and Bones Netflix show with the last two books in the Alina Stark trilogy. The previous episode that compared Season 1 to Book 1, the showrunners made some changes that drastically elevated the source material. Do they continue that good work here? Be sure to listen and find out!
Incomptech Music credit:
“Wholesome” Kevin MacLeod (incompet...
Shadow and Bone is one of the latest books Fantasy book series to earn the adaptation treatment by Netflix. It features a female heroine and its own love triangle, but does it live up to the hype? And most importantly - does it live up to the adaptation? Let's find out!
Incomptech Music credit:
“Wholesome” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution...
One of the longest franchises in the game world, Final Fantasy has been on the original Nintendo all the way up to the Playstation 5. Today, I'm going to focus on Final Fantasy X, the first of the series to grace the Playstation 2 and feature voice-acting. Though it's a story that I find a tad flawed, I am also equally prepared to explain why the story is one of the best of the series and in video games as a whole.
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The Harry Potter series is a cultural touchstone. While the movies aren't perfect, they're still beloved. I toss my hat into the ring to debate the quality of the Prisoner of Azkaban adaptation where I argue that - to be honest - it's quite overrated as the most beloved of the adaptations. I explain in detail where I think the movie failed to live up to the promise of the book.
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Incomptech Music...
Encanto! Premiering in November 2020, this movie was an instant hit, garnering adoration worldwide! In this podcast, I analyze the things that went right with the story and where I thought the execution could've been improved.
Be sure to visit https://theliterarymachine.com/
Incomptech Music credi...
For more writing resources, visit www.theliterarymachine.com.
Avatar: The Last Airbender! It first premiered in 2005 on Nickelodeon, before getting a surprising rerun on Netflix in 2020. Now Netflix has released a live-action version of the show. How does it compare to the original classic? In this podcast, I explore the differences between the classic and the live-action.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a Nickelodeon Animation Stud...
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