I've been thinking a lot recently on the topic of ultimate somethings; that is the ultimate movie, book, song, video game, etc. How would one decide what parameters constituted the ultimate, how would you go about making one, and why aren't more people currently devoted to actually making any. As I devoted much of this thought into the first question, it became obvious that a clear definition of what made an ultimate anything was the first point that had to be addressed. After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that this concept is inextricable from what is known in many circled as the “Desert Island Dilemma”.
The “Desert Island Dilemma” is the age old hypothetical, “if you were trapped on a desert island and could only bring one _____ with you, what _____ would it be?” Now, typically the answer to this question reveals what of any ____ is the individual answerer's personal favorite, or at least the ____ they would never get sick of. But if the question is tweaked slightly, the answer becomes more revealing. If the question were changed to “if you were trapped on a desert island with 5 strangers, and could only bring one ____ for all of you, what ____ would it be?”
Now the meaning behind whatever answer is given is completely different. If it's only yourself that you are considering, then the answer could be anything. You might bring a guilty pleasure, or something that has great meaning to yourself but not to anyone else, or you might even go with a joke answer. But when taking into consideration 5 other people that you now have to live and deal with, presumably forever, your decision is going to change hugely. You have to weigh more carefully longevity, variety, and general quality in order to make the right choice, and keep that in mind, because in this situation there totally are right and wrong answers. You have to understand that if you are in charge of the single song to be played on the island iPod on repeat ad nauseum, and if you pick “Yellow Submarine” or “Who Let the Dogs Out” or just anything from the 90's, so help me God, you will be the first one we eat.
The point is, something can be considered an ultimate anything if you know in your heart that it's a safe bet to bring to the island you will be spending an eternity on with 5 other people. For instance, if you're bringing a video game, Mario Kart is a pretty safe bet, or maybe even Mario Party (and remember, if you bring Sonic Shuffle, we will eat you.) But this is only if there's multiple controllers. Say there's only one, what then? You might go with GoldenEye, but what if not everyone is into first person shooters? There's any of the Final Fantasy games, but not everyone will have the patience for an RPG. There's Ocarina of Time, but what if not everyone can make it through the Shadow Temple? The problem with trying to choose the ultimate for any group of people you don't know is the inherent variety of likes and dislikes that can't be avoided in any large enough group. This is why the ultimate can only apply within a certain level of specification.
I'll be fair with the desert island. You're still picking for yourself and 5 others, they're still strangers, but I will let you know the genre that best fits the group as a whole. Now we're in the realm where it's possible to have an ultimate of something that can truly please everyone. If we're still talking video games, say they all like 2d platformers: suddenly the choice becomes a whole lot easier. There's the Metroid games, Sonic 2, Crash Bandicoot. But stop to think here. Are any of these games really, truly, the ultimate 2d platformer? Does it take several hours to beat them, or only a few? Do the gameplay, music, and environments have very much variety, or is it the same thing over and over again? These are the kinds of questions that have to be asked, and when you go ahead and ask them, how many 2d sidescrolling platformers are there out there that qualify as ultimates? Looking at everything that has to qualify, all the variants we need to satisfy, I can really only think of Yoshi's Island, possibly the first true ultimate platformer.
What about movies? Say we boil it down to sci-fi (or don't, frankly this one covers enough territory to satisfy most people), there's the ever faithful Star Wars. Over the course of the first trilogy, it covers general tropes such as good vs. evil, love triangles, daddy issues, and redemption; on the sci-fi end, it covers aliens, robots, sci-fi machines, and interplanetary travel. Of the major science fiction areas, the only major one left untouched is time travel, but even Star Wars can't have it all. The reason it scores so well on the “ultimate test” is because it truly set out to be the greatest adventure tale ever told. They seriously studied the general genre of adventure throughout all of its forms, and across generations of storytelling, and they built a formula out of it that laid out the major events that take place within most stories and where they take place, and then it adhered to that formula in creating its own sequence of events. It set out to cover as much ground as it could, and it covered it, resulting in a cultural phenomenon that has defined multiple generations; it achieved the status of being an ultimate movie.
There are others out there, but I continue to ask, why aren't there more? Why don't more people take a look at the tropes of a genre and put them together to make the greatest example of that genre? Part of it is that it's just plain difficult, and part of it is that it's nearly impossible to cram as much is needed into one thing. With video games this isn't always a problem, but to a degree it's there. Yoshi's Island is cartoonish enough that you can have jungle levels, ice levels, and lava filled castles all within the same world. You couldn't necessarily do that within the same game if you wanted to also make it realistic. With movies, there's the length to take into consideration. Star Wars does well, but keep in mind it's three movies, not just one. On a desert island, that's inadmissable. You could have the Death Star Trench Run, the “I love you,” “I know” scene, or the ewok celebration, but not all three. Star Wars biggest flaw in being considered an ultimate movie is that none of the three movies alone are truly ultimates; they only are if taken as a whole.
This is not to say it can't be done, even if it isn't easy. Most things that are hard to do are distinctly worth it. This is why I beg, I implore all of you artists out there, please, make us some ultimates. If I get trapped on a desert island with 5 people who like time travel, the closest thing I have is Back to the Future, and that involves way more mom on son crushes than I am comfortable with watching over and over again forever. Eventually, we will all be stranded on these desert islands, and if we don't have anything good to bring with us and get stuck with watching Avatar forever because it was statistically speaking the most all pleasing movie we could think of, we'll be sorry. We'll all be sorry.
