Giant Monsters, Tiny People

The presence of giants has long been a staple of speculative fiction. Dragons, trolls, literal giants, etc. have all provided an engaging sense of discovery, danger and awe throughout human history. A whole genre has been created by distilling this idea down to its bare essentials, in the form of the kaiju^[1]. These monsters and enemies can represent diverse ideas from something as simple as one more obstacle in the protagonist’s journey to a complex meditation on the dangers of progress and technology, like we see in Godzilla.

In each case, these giants fundamentally provide a stark contrast to the people around them. The presence of monsters makes heroic human beings into itty-bitty bugs by comparison. The protagonists’ struggle to survive then becomes a means to highlight their cleverness, their strength or just the futility of their actions.

But as with all mechanics, the use of giant antagonists can also make a work disjointed, silly or even cruel.

The Mechanic

Giant entities, at their core, represent our powerlessness, the idea that we live in a world we cannot always control and that our lives and fates are not entirely ours to decide. In this way, confrontation with monsters is a means to face a chaotic world and attempt to assert control over our lives. Such struggles can be successful or fundamentally futile.

This act of confrontation often fills the audience with a powerful sense of heroism. A David and Goliath^[2] scenario lends nobility to a confrontation because of the inherent sacrifice and danger. Today, as humanity has asserted its dominance over nature, challenging monsters is both a nostalgic and speculative contemplation about powerlessness and our own sense of nobility.

Of course, these massive creatures are far different than any animal we’ve encountered in the real world so they also provide a sense of fantasy and exploration. I’d like to think that, at least a little bit somewhere in our hearts, we’re all Hagrid and the possibility of huge, wild creatures fills each of us with a sense of joy and wonder. The world has not been mapped down to its smallest inch and adventure lies just out the door and over the next hill.

While the overwhelming monster exists in books and movies, this mechanic seems to reach its zenith in games. The active experience of games makes the danger and power dynamics more engaging than ever. Games even use the size of monsters as part of the user interface. We know the dragon is more dangerous than the troll because it is physically bigger. The size imbalance between the player and the enemy also gives a more visceral reality to combat and greater satisfaction to victory. And as representatives of the exotic and the fantastic, the creatures and enemies we fight add to the ambiance of the game’s world.

So What’s the Problem?

But there is a problem lying right in the goal of the mechanic. By trying to create something otherworldly with such a simple mechanism as "make it freaking huge”, what makes the creature otherworldly also makes it unrealistic. First and foremost, it betrays our sense of physics. As animals that have evolved over millions of years, humans have a deeply ingrained sense of what is normal in terms of physics. We are well aware that a 3 ton moving object is unlikely to be greatly affected by a 200 pound man punching back. We feel an instinctual sense of ridiculousness, regardless of how much we want to suspend our disbelief. Humans have been dealing with elephants, tigers, gorillas, bears, etc. for millions of years; we know what happens when humans battle bigger animals.

These types of situations also call to mind a certain ‘He-Man’ style of masculinity. Modern culture has long moved past such simplistic depictions of manhood and its appearance in today’s narratives renders a story silly and juvenile. Thus, the mechanic hurts the story’s psychological realism as well as the physical.

Inherent to the testosterone driven view of masculinity is the science of power. By this I mean the rules behind how various powers and those who wield them interact. In a purely physical world, tiny people fighting giant monsters is laughably unbelievable so many of these fictional universes include magic (or an analog) to justify the balance of power. But if a tiny magical man can take on a large non-magical beast, what happens when a large magical beast shows up? Or why do all large beasts conveniently not have magic? The world-building acrobatics necessary to give the universe some logic become overwhelming. Almost always, some rudimentary rules are set up to say “I tried” and then the majority of the situation must be shouldered by the audience’s suspension of disbelief. The world’s science of power is often merely set dressing rather than a dependable understanding of what can or is happening.

The result is a world that is initially very fun but ultimately disappointing. In games, the player’s first time fighting a massive creature can be exhilarating. But then we watch tiny Grom Hellscream lob a hail mary axe throw and watch Magtheridon, who is literally as big as a mountain, get cut down by a weapon which is about the size of one of his fingernails. Magic!

Risk and danger are destroyed in these worlds because there is no strong sense of what can or cannot defeat a protagonist. The story’s excitement evaporates if the audience loses its grasp on the risks and dangers present in the world.

And once the audience has realized that the protagonist was never in any danger, the constant conflict and fighting suddenly seem...cruel. A protagonist who was unstoppable all along[or once they got the right weapon], who visits their enemies and obstacles with unremitting violence, who uses their power to dominate those who have no chance of stopping them is merely the world’s tyrant.

If this change were an intentional message, it would be a brilliant use of the story mechanic. But the vast majority of the time, this sense of cruelty is an inescapable conclusion of narratives hellbent on providing a certain type of “fun” or wish fulfillment without burdening itself with the complexities of context. Even if the audience agrees to suspend their disbelief or to assume that “it’s just a game/book/etc.,” the realization of the protagonist’s power makes the world grow colder, darker, emptier. The audience will be left wondering why it’s no fun anymore and why they themselves feel emptier.

Stories are powerful communicators; they can inject into us their meaning as much as their hollowness.

Greater Consequences

These narratives, when not constructed with the utmost finesse and care, are destructive not only to their own quality as a story but a broader sense of who we, the audience, are. They often promote a deluded definition of what constitutes strength, valor and sacrifice, which are the very virtues this type of story claims to represent. We engage with these stories often because allows us to play-act a distilled sense of these virtues and the righteousness that comes with them.

But so often, they are false in what they provide. We, the audience, mistake name for substance. Stories are never “just stories.” The narratives we promote have a huge impact on our society. How we talk about courage and sacrifice in seemingly “trivial” entertainment proliferates to how we interact and treat one another. If we continuously promote a sense of valor based on inflicting violence on the defenseless and/or the innocent, even when it’s “just a game”, we begin to act with that same definition of valor in the real world.

Genre

To make these stories digestible, the audience is required to have a less sophisticated suspension of disbelief, a willingness to allow obvious flaws pass for the sake of some other attribute of the storytelling. This agreement between the storyteller and the audience is neither good nor bad; it says nothing about their actual level of sophistication. Many genres require the audience not to analyze things too closely. Fables, many allegories and existing stories adapted for new settings are all such examples that enjoy a relative level of artistic and/or philosophical esteem.

But when combined with the often illogical science of power in speculative fiction, the audience feels like they must trade ethics and meaning for fun, entertainment or ‘coolness.’ Who cares if the protagonist should actually be considered the villain; the story has dragons and dragons are cool. This trade off can feel empty and immature. I have often wondered why so many people look down on speculative fiction but I now believe this trade off is a major factor. Trading a basic amount of believability for ‘fun’ seems like an immature decision. It is can be seen as trading long term quality for a short term flash of enjoyment, or basic ethics for entertainment, or realistic characters for a power fantasy, or reality for a self-serving escapist fantasy.

In short, the liberal suspension of disbelief doesn’t yield any benefits of meaning or true satisfaction.

In the End

We often turn to fiction for fun, entertainment or escape. In small doses, that escape can be an important part of a healthy life. But we always run the risk of becoming dependent on this diversion. It can encourage us to ignore realities we need to face or it can even begin to shape our worldview in unhealthy ways. The tiny people / giant monsters mechanic is almost a purified, high grade version of this escapism.

Does that mean I’ve never enjoyed this mechanic or that I think it’s inherently bad? No. No mechanic is good or bad; it is how they are used by people that give these tools their meaning and weight. And as humans often do, we’ve taking this mechanic to excess in the name of getting a hit of our favorite escape and power fantasies.

There is one major use of this trope that works very well. Games like Dungeons and Dragons and books like the Lord of the Rings all depend on the giant monster/villain being confronted by a team. The team brings the mechanic back to reality. It speaks to the inescapable truth that big problems don’t require big humans. No such thing exists^[3]. Big problems require a big team, for us to work together for a common cause.

When there is a team, courage and sacrifice return to their definition of giving up something of ourselves for the good of others. Where there is a team, the fantasy of power is tempered by the humility of our weakness and the realization of our combined strength. Where there is a team, our favorite escape becomes something we can implement in our own lives.

Tiny people can defeat giant monsters, it happens everyday.

Footnotes:

• ^[1] Kaiju films were spawned by King Kong and Godzilla
• ^[2] Classic tale of seemingly weak but good character overcoming the strong but cruel enemy.
• ^[3] Except for Fezzik