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The Book That Is Making All Movies the Same
Bruce66423 writes "This Slate story explains how a 2005 book has led to all Hollywood movies following the same structure — to a depressing extent. From the article: '...Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula—one that lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay. It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster. The formula didn’t come from a mad scientist. Instead it came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.' I've always known we could be manipulated — but this provides a segment by segment, almost minute by minute, guide how to do it."
Good luck getting funding for a unique motion picture when the studios not only know what makes a profitable film, they can prove it. And because the average moviegoer could not care less, this is not going to change until the sun burns out. What makes matters worse is that each successive generation grows up watching these movies and will never know that there used to be something better -- which makes this approach even more profitable.
'Cause movies weren't formulaic before 2005.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ideas aren't actually that important when it comes to movies IMO.. it's the way the story is told, the atmosphere of the thing, that makes a movie good or bad. Good ideas might make you go "whoah, I didn't see that coming" the first time you see the movie - but it's the atmosphere they create that will keep you coming back to them.
which is totally what she said
Cop Show: follow the wrong lead - commercial - follow the wrong lead - commercial - follow the wrong lead - commercial - arrest the bad guy.
Doctor Show: wrong diagnosis - commercial - wrong diagnosis - commercial - wrong diagnosis - commercial - save the patient.
Home Improvement Show: find problem that changes the project - commercial - find problem that changes the project - commercial - find problem that changes the project - commercial - finish the project.
Home Buying Show: show perfect home that's over budget - commercial - show crappy home that's in budget - commercial - show good-enough home that's in budget - commercial - completely random decision by homebuyer.
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You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I mean, you can complain all you want about formulaic content but the reality is society has regressed into an idiotic stupor that allows this type of movie making to succeed.
Look at CSI and all its derivatives. Its the SAME EXACT SHOW week after week. Then look at ALL the crime investigation shows and realize, its the SAME PLOT over and over again. Yet these shows consistently rank in the top 10 because viewers do not want to be challenged with new plot devices. Its why any even remotely unique show is usually cancelled because the idiot masses don't like watching it because its not like CSI or some other derivative tripe.
All movies are coming out the same? Realize that the major demographic for movies are teenagers and early 20 somethings and you understand that this demographic has not yet developed the maturity or patience for investing any thinking power into changing their derivative lifestyles. Eat, sleep, party, fuck, get a tattoo, is about all they can handle so taking 90 minutes out of their "busy" schedule can't be over-complicated by something that challenges or inspires an actual original thought.
So you can blame Hollywood all you want but the reality is that Hollywood makes a product, and the product only sells if consumers want the product, and consumers want this derivative bullshit, period.
We are firmly in the era of the Stupocalypse. Mankind has entered a zombie state where originality, rational thought and common sense are thrown out the window and replaced with a need for immediate entitled gratification with a minimum investment of effort.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Wow, are you always such an ass?
Let me explain 'derivative', because you can come up with easy examples.
When a movie studio announces a new project, another movie studio will almost immediately come out with a movie based on almost exactly the same premise -- so when "A Bugs Life" was announced, a few months later we got "Antz".
Movies tend to come in groups, where someone says "hey, we're doing a movies based on X", and someone will immediately rush to get some turd out the door based on X.
Dreamworks is terrible for this, but I'm sure they all do. If one studio announced they'd have a story about a wise cracking orphan who chews tobacco and wears a funny hat, at least one other one will immediately rush out and try to not miss the new trend of movies about wise cracking orphans who chew tobacco and wear funny hats.
Disney has always been horrible for this, cranking out an endless stream of sequels which are crap, intended to go straight to video, and just more of the continuing adventures of characters which have already ran their course. And, more recently, turning the girl from Brave into yet another formulaic Disney princess.
Some days it seems like they don't ever try any more -- and with a lot of movies about a week or so after you hear about it, you also start hearing about something which is based on almost exactly the same premise which will also be out soon.
By the time you see it long enough, it's hard not to class most of it as derivative, because they just steal the high points of the plot and make a very similar movie -- and usually the copy cat doesn't do nearly as well because it's a hastily written script intended to get into theaters before the competition does.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No wonder most movies seem like derivative things you can predict what will happen ... because they apparently are.
Still, keep making the superhero movies, and I'll keep going. =)
it's just not this book though.
...
If you think about it, it is inevitable that it can't just be this book. Because if it were, then it would mean that this author was someone of striking originality, almost a contradiction in terms. Instead this must be a careful codification of formulas already commonly known.
If this book is indeed very influential it is only because it was produced and marketed well, and so reached a wide audience.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
On the other hand it's good for TV.
So true. Much of the best adventure and drama of the past decade has been made for cable.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
And really, how many movies are there that you can't guess the ending by 30% of the way through? It isn't usually because of the surprise story that we like movies, it's the skill of the telling.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Or, perhaps it didn't need a plot beyond the basic because people went to see it for other reasons?
There are many reasons to see a movie. One of them is enjoyment - the movie makes you feel good in some way. Another is escapism - for a couple of hours, you leave the real world behind. Other reasons include education, trying to make the world a better place, story, etc.
Transformers did well because it delivered escapism - people went out to see humanoid robots that change into cars. That's it. Especially since many people who saw Transformers had the toys back in the 80s, so there's a bit of retro-nostalgia going on as well.
People don't all go out to see and read literature. A lot of material is pulp, pure unadulterated pulp. And it always has been - people produced more plays than Shakespeare and read more than Jane Eyre or the Grapes of Wrath or other books. Just like they saw more films than Gone With the Wind or somesuch. It's because that stuff sells and people watch it.
Of course, most of the pulp gets recycled in the end, which is fine - and why we think "times were better" - but they weren't. Tastes may have changed, but for every "literary" work that we know today, there were probably hundreds of others that we'd regard as pulp and end up forgetting about in a few decades. I'm fairly certain they all had the "summer blockbuster" that's rapidly forgotten about.
the writing schools have been teaching this same classic shit for decades...it's actually at the point that if you're going to do something new that's going to be classic you might be better off on purpose veering off from it.
Well, there's a reason the school teaches it: it works. It's optimized storytelling to maximize the emotional effect on the reader / viewer. You absolutely can do better by purposefully veering off from it, but you shouldn't even attempt it before you've completely and absolutely mastered the formula. If you're a beginner, stick to the formula. If you're a master of the writing craft, by all means try something new to challenge yourself. The reason for it being that if you don't understand exactly the reason why each part of the formula is there, you can't possibly know when it's appropriate to change it.
.. but a lot of stuff done like that is shit, too.
And my explanation above is why that's true. You can be guaranteed that most things that veer off the formula will be crap, but also that just about everything that is the cream of the crop will also veer off the formula. If you're good enough to write the classics that will be studied 500 years after you are gone, you'll veer off the formula. If you're not that good, but want to write something people will still enjoy reading / viewing, then stick to the formula.
The problem with action movies of late is actually that they've changed the action movie formula on us. It used to be you'd get the action beats at very specific parts of the movie to punctuate the plot with. Something about 1/3rd of the way through after the exposition, then something bigger to get the audience excited about half way through, then a huge climax toward the end. Everything else was story, because they couldn't afford to blow up things for the duration of a 90 minute movie. These days, CGI is cheap. So if you watch Man of Steel, for example, you get a ton of action scenes punctuated by the plot. You see the huge battle on Krypton, then you completely skip the period he's growing up in Smallville because there can't be much action there. Instead, all of that is shown through flashbacks after action sequences in the present.
I like action movies, people. But the most important part of any movie is the plot. If you don't have that down, the action is irrelevant. Let's go back to the original formula.