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."

Comments

Not just movies, books too

[Xaedalus]

I'm part of an award-winning writer's group, and several of the members swear by this book. They follow it meticulously--and it isn't even the first to do this. The Warrior's Journey describes how Disney and Pixar created all their big masterpieces, and then takes that technique and applies it to novel writing. And then there's the Nora Roberts/James Patterson formulaic ghost-writers, plus the Harlequin series, any of Dan Brown's books; heck 90% of the entire fiction market follows a formula similar to Save The Cat. Formulaic writing is nothing new. Authors and screenwriters follow this like it's a religion--they cling to to the formula because they fervently believe it's the best chance they have of getting their work published. Fortunately, there are two mitigating factors that I've found: 1) a good idea is a good idea and even a plot-writing formula won't ruin it; and 2) good writing is good writing.

Re:It's about the money, stupid

[tlhIngan]

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.

Depends on the motivation of the movie-goer.

Movies are just an entertainment medium - a way to escape life for a couple of hours. Depending on how you do it, you can see a standard summer blockbuster that'll give you visuals and effects that you won't see elsewhere outside of movies, or an artsy thought-provoking movie.

Fact is, most people go for shiny and don't want to think - the movie becomes a basic 2 hour vacation from the ills of life they don't want to think about (which is one reason we have entertainment).

That, and I'm sure a ton of people just hated English class when they read literature and had all the fun sucked out of books through critical thought and analysis, leaving people less willing to see "better" because it brings back days when they had to look for deeper meanings and such.

There will always be the classics - and then, like now, a bunch of crap was made. We're seeing the survivor effect - the ones we call classics today people remember. They just forgot that at the time, there was a ton of crap as well. The proportions of crap vs. good haven't changed, it's just the crap got forgotten and the good lasted. Movie theatres played more than Gone With the Wind in the past, after all.