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What is different about recent Fantasy movies in terms of story and entertainment Compared to previous movies and why doesn't the public like it as much?

-Isabelle Werts

The Jester: "Why most Modern movies suck"

Tim Brinkhof, 2022

"According to scriptwriting gurus, movies are bad if they disregard the basic rules of storytelling, which were developed by the ancient Greek playwrights. However, movies are also bad if they blindly obey these rules without showing personality or originality. Streaming services like Netflix briefly revitalized artful storytelling, but no longer." - Paragraph 1, Key takeaways.

Role in conversation

This article identifies many problems with modern cinema, the most common being unorigional writing and neglect or overuse of the basic rules of storytelling. This article emphasizes that there is a sweet spot between abiding by the rules and creativity, this article also talks about how the lack of middle budget movies is bad for cinema, because recently film companies have only focused on potential blockbusters, low budget movies and nothing else. This is important because all of these are reasons moderm movies havent been doing so well.

Overview

In a nutshell, The author(Tim Brinkhof, Big think author) is telling us that recent stories are either neglecting or way overusing the old stoytelling rules, and that film companies are making a mistake by only funding potential blockbusters and low budget films but not mid-budget films.

Key Ideas

The old storytelling rules are vital to quality cinema, however so is creativity, so as a result the best movies are the ones that balance the two elements to create a great story. So, the lack of creativity and well-structured storytelling are several reasons recent movies aren't as good.

The Fairy: Recycled Culture in contemporary art and film

Vera Dika, university of california, 2003

"... Jameson also notes a troubling sense of surface and a loss of meaning in contempory works. He descibes this as "schizophrenia," a quality that renders the signifiers of cultural products ... dense, material, and so not able to convey their full meaning... he writes "only bu means of violent formal and narrative dislocation could a narrative apparatus come into being capable of restoring life and feeling to... our capacity to organize and live time historically."" -Paragraph 4

Role in conversation

Overview

This article expands upon how and why film companies reuse new ideas, and what they have to gain from it. Most of the time it is for the nostalga, because people are usually more likely to go watch something if it has a fanchise or characters that they like. This is not good for the film industry because people will get bored of the same old thing and then stop watching the movies.

Vera Dika of Cambridge university says that the film industry loves to recycle old ideas, concepts and film styles, but they also recycle ideas from history, even time periods, for the feeling of nostalgia, in order to capitalize off of it. New ideas and art that is ahead of its time are still created, yet they are largely overshadowed by outdated ideas that filmmakers have brought back to life.

Key Ideas

Reusing old ideas in the film industry is smothering the creation of all-new stories and media, and the film industriesd rive for leeching views off of old ideas is hurting them in the long run.

The Dragon: "Parasitical stories, Narrative viruses,and hybrid storytelling in fantasy cinema and culture."

Ekphrasis, Doru pop, 2015

"The main argument of the paper is that recent cinema is abandoning the traditional linearity of narrations and the “classical” storytelling forms, and is cultivating new hybrid narrative structures, under the influence of games and online structures. Starting from the fact that narratives are forms of order making, by which humanity intends to make sense of the world, we have reached a moment in our cultural history when storytelling has become a machine of meaningless meanings. Using Game of Thrones as an example of storytelling transformations, the main aim of this study is to discuss how a combination of cartoonish characters, graphic novels and comic book strategies, soap opera and TV series drama structures has created a narrative of uncertainty." -Paragraph 1 Abstract.

Role in conversation

Overview

This article talks a lot about interlinking stories and ideas pulled from other stories. And how because of the overcomplicated nature of a universe, it can be off-putting, especially if there are too many re-usedconcepts in it. Recent movie-verses have a disorienting amount of information in them, enough that they no longer follow the old rules of storytelling closely enough to be accurate and make sense, and oftentimes when that happens people lose interest in the story.

Doru Pop, writer for Ekphrasis magazine, talks about hybrid storytelling, and how if authors use too many different concepts and ideas from other stories, it becomes a monstous hodgepodge and makes their story become confusing, fan- centered, shallow in nature and mindless, which is obviously no fun for the audience.

Key Ideas

Hybrid storytelling is more likely to ruin your story than anything, and following the basic rules of storytelling is important to keep your audience engaged. People should watch movies because they are good, not because they have elements of another story they like in it.

The Princess:The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies; Good Artists Copy, great Artists Steal

Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, xtine burrough, 2015,

"Any elements, no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations . . . The mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the juxtaposition of two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficacy. Anything can be used." -Part 3, Paragraph 15.

Overview

Role in conversation

In the Routlege companion to remix studies by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough, says that Remix practices is the art of taking something old and changing it enough that it can be considered new. This happens a lot in modern film, and there are pros and cons to using Remix practices. on one hand, old fans may come and see the movie, but on the other, if you milk it too much people will stop coming.

The role this article has in the conversation is that recently, film companies have not been creating origional content, instead, they are remixing old ideas in order to capitalize off of the old fanbase. This works in the beginning, but eventually people lose interest .

Key Ideas

Usually, remix culture is alright, however, too much of it is vey bad for the film industry. Movies become unorigional and repetitive, and as a result companies fail because people are unhappy with their movie watching experience.

The Knight: "Why are so many of today’s movies so bad?"

Cary O’Dell, 2013

"It’s rather quaint now to remember back to the runaway success of The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and how its low-budget creativity, along with its internet based ad campaign, was supposed to change film forevermore. Well, that didn’t happen. Disney’s infamous John Carter from last year showed that runaway budgets (and bad ideas) are still part-and-parcel of many Hollywood studios. In fact, more and more, films are flirting with budgets of $1 billion making not only their breakeven point riskier and riskier but audience expectations higher and more demanding." -Paragraph 16

Overview

Role in conversation

Cary O'Dell, writer for popmatters gives some reasons why modern movies have been flopping;

• Movies are trying harder to be more 'adult', in an attempt to grab people's attention.
• Big budgets are actually generally bad for movies. The way they explained it is that the higher the movie budget is, the higher peoples expectations, so if the movie's plot is actually bad, the companies lose a lot of money.

This article explains a few reasons that movies these days have been missing rather then hitting, such as attemots to be more 'adult' and oversized budgets for poor stories. People in general don't appreciate this as much as the movie industries assume, so the movies flop.

Key Ideas

The main takeaway here is that the tactics film companies are trying to use to become more sucessful is actually hurting the industry .