Filmmaking is a collaborative art form. Actors, directors, writers, editors, production designers, set decorators, costume designers, costume builders, composers, musicians... if you watch the credits to a modern film, especially any with a big budget, the credits list, like, thousands of people. But even on low-budget independent films, the work of a whole large team of people is required to get a movie from idea to the screen.
When Alan has his last confrontation with Mr. Door - indeed, the only interaction that truly comes off as a confrontation - the latter admonishes our writer, telling him that he has "armies" of people helping him, and that he needs to get his ass in gear.
Alan is a novelist. And writing fiction is typically seen as one of the more individual forms of art - though of course we can't ignore the influence of editors, there's still a sense that a book's primary artist is its writer - its author.
In the 1960s, a group of French film critics who wrote in Cahiers du Cinema wished to change the way that people thought about films. In America in particular, Hollywood films were very much made by the studios - a high-ranking film executive would approve projects for production, and only afterward would a writer and director be chosen. These writers, some of whom went on to become important directors of the French New Wave, wanted to see film ditch this "made by committee" approach and recognize instead the Director as the primary artist who could claim responsibility and ownership over a film. Consider, for example, the works of Alfred Hitchcock, whose stamp upon his films (along with usually a silent cameo passing by in the background) could be felt deeply in the style of his filmmaking: this new approach to film criticism would recognize Hitchcock as the author, or, in French, the "auteur" of the movie.
It is that 1960s period, when "New Waves" across many countries (weirdly not unlike the political revolutions a century and change earlier) sprang up, that our Tom Zane fits into.
I don't know if we're ever going to get a straight answer on what, exactly, Tom Zane is. After all, his reality is very different from the version we were introduced to in the first Alan Wake game. I could easily go in circles guessing at whether the old version of Zane was a lie to manipulate Alan or if the new version is some kind of identity-stealing parasite who "overwrote" the real Zane.
I'm also going to set aside any speculation that Zane might be a more "authentic" person than Alan given that he is portrayed entirely by Ilkka Villi rather than Alan's hybrid portrayal by Villi and Matthew Poretta.
So, we'll set these notions aside and talk about what he represents thematically.
Zane is, in his own words, a "celebrated auteur." However real the Cult of the Word actually is, the cult worships Zane like an utterly rabid group of fans. Remember, the word "fan" is short for "fanatic," but we tend to use the full word more when discussing religious zealotry. Still, there's a link: religion and art have always been intertwined. Western notions of drama largely stem from Ancient Greek theater, but that theatrical practice was not a regular form of entertainment. It was specifically a religious ritual to honor Dionysus, and happened only once a year.
Alan has, according to Zane, been collaborating with him to create two works of art as companion pieces - Alan's novel "Return" and Zane's "Yöton Yö." This is, to be fair, not precisely the form of collaboration that happens within the making of a film - the intent is for two separate pieces to be produced, but which go together.
Actually, there's an example here that I think could be particularly relevant, which is the creation of Poe's album "Haunted" with her brother Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves." Poe's musical contribution to Alan Wake II is the many variations of "This Road," which play after each of Alan's chapters (and is itself an adaptation of a previous musical project called "September 30, 1955") while House of Leaves served as a major inspiration for Control.
Still, there's something worrying about Zane - there's something about him that seems parasitic.
While the auteur theory did unleash a transformation upon the film industry and the kinds of movies that could be made (though in our current era the power has swung back toward the executive class) there is a downside to this way of looking at things as well: it downplays the value of collaboration and the contributions of other artists.
I realize that, as an elder millennial, my assumption of a universal disdain for the Star Wars prequels is not always backed up by the impression I get from social media - it seems as if there are a shocking number of people who look back on the prequels with nostalgia. My suspicion is that it's an age thing - I'm old enough to remember when the only Star Wars movies were the original trilogy, and that the prequels were these sort of new additions that needed to prove their value to be considered part of it all (and they failed to do that).
But if you'll come along with me and agree to the premise that something went deeply wrong with those prequels (I'll concede something went terribly wrong with the sequel trilogy as well, though that was almost the exact opposite problem) I think we can chalk it up largely to the fact that George Lucas was given full authorial control.
The original trilogy was, for certain, the brain child of George Lucas, mixing influences like old Buck Rogers serials with Kurosawa samurai films, but at the time, Lucas had only two other movies under his belt - a weird dystopian sci-fi movie called THX1138 and a sort of slice-of-life movie about teenagers growing up in the 50s called American Graffiti. With modest success and having worked with his friend Francis Ford Coppola, he was given some leeway to make his dream project, but there were still editors and producers who could say no to him, or force him to rewrite things.
By the time the prequels came out, Lucas was a legend and titan of the industry, and he was powerful enough that no one could tell him no on just about anything. And that's why we wound up with Darth Vader as a plucky little kid, and later as a mopey teen. And how a series known for its mythic, elemental storytelling got bogged down in convoluted plots about trade disputes.
The point is this: great art has always struggled between vision and humility. If you've ever had an urge to be an artist, it's probably motivated by the desire to get some vision of yours out and manifest it for the world to see. But in most cases, and especially in collaborative media like films... and also video games, you need to be able to have the humility to allow others to contribute to that work, and share in the ownership over it.
The character we haven't really talked about in this whole story is Sam Lake.
Sam Lake is the face of Remedy Entertainment - he's the creative director, but he's also literally the face of their breakout hit, Max Payne. The very fact that that is the case tells you something about the history of video games as a medium. Back in the late 90s, when Max Payne was in development (I think it came out in 2000,) game studios, even pretty big ones, were still kind of small companies that would simply use staff members as models for game assets. It was cheaper and quicker than paying a professional model or actor. This is part of the reason why some of the earlier games to have voice acting often have pretty flat, wooden performances - in a lot of cases, the voice actors are simply programmers and designers.
That era of game making was similar to the rise of independent filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s - beloved Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman and famed British director David Lean were said to have once had a conversation in which Bergman said "when I make a movie, I simply get together with twenty of my best friends," to which Lean replied "and when I make a movie, I get together with my two hundred worst enemies." In that small band of artists, it's simultaneously easier to point to a single person's vision and consider them the auteur but also easier for that person to share credit with the people who have worked on it.
While Alan is a writer and Sam Lake is a video game maker, there's clearly a lot of Sam in Alan (I even imagine that it's no coincidence that Wake rhymes with Lake). And I think Sam Lake, who presides over a project that might have even more names in its credits than a major film, is very conscious of the need to be the face of the project while recognizing that he's just one of many people contributing to its creation.
In the end of Alan Wake II, Alan is forced to confront what it would mean for the Dark Presence to take over the world. And the reality of that is shocking - it's not a dark world of brutal violence. Instead, it's a world of vapid, simple worship toward him - a world in which his genius as an author is venerated above all else. It's... it's kind of underwhelming and disappointing. But that very fact reinforces how dreadful it is - it's not even a cool apocalypse! But what I think it helps him realize - in a very real way he's having his confrontation with his shadow in the Jungian sense (the shadow simply being the part of ourselves that we don't know is there) - is that he can't treat this all as if it's his problem alone to solve.
Over the course of Alan Wake II, we see how Alan is constantly terrified that Mr. Scratch is going to ruin his writing, to rewrite it into something terrible. But as we discover, all these instances of "Scratch" coming in an shooting him or scratching out his work is actually just different versions of himself. Scratch kind of never really existed outside of himself. But it shows that he's been so singularly focused on what he should write that he's been unable to even collaborate with himself.
Alan is able to finally finish Return when he releases that need to be the sole author of the novel. Saga, whom he has dragged unwillingly into the plot to serve as his "hero" character, now gets to have a say in how the story ends. By relinquishing control, by allowing for collaboration, Alan finally escapes the loop that he's stuck in (we might need to explore what changes between the first playthrough and the Final Draft to fully unpack this).
But what of Zane?
Zane seems to represent the opposite. We can see that the subject of his film is of an innocent man being sacrificed to allow his version of Wake to escape the Dark Place. But even while this reflects the reality of Alex Casey becoming possessed by the Dark Presence in place of Alan, in the film, Zane literally plays Alan.
Zane is a filmmaker - someone who creates art that requires a large number of people to make - but he has fully embraced the auteur identity, claiming it for himself. And as such, he's willing to see anyone and everyone subordinated to his own will and goals. He wants to be Alan Wake if that means escaping or otherwise getting what he wants, and perhaps he has already done the same to the real Thomas Zane.
