We all know the movie cliches that happen and it’s almost predictable to tell what will happen within 10 minutes of watching a movie or TV show. We know that most likely in love story movies and TV shows that the guy that should end up with the girl will get the girl in the end. We can guess that in a superhero movie the superhero will win in the end most likely before we even start watching the movie. We can guess that the funny guy in the comedy will end up doing the right thing even though he’s a screw up in the beginning.
If we know all these cliches then why do we keep watching movies and TV shows even though they have been ending the same way for the past 80+ years? From the piece Popular Culture: A Reader, Guins and Cruz mention that “in principle a work of art has always been reproducible.” When something works and you can replicate it and reproduce it and people will still come and watch it, why not remake it? How many times has Superman, Batman, and 007 been recreated now? However many times they have been recreated they continue to work and people show up to buy tickets and watch it. A wise man I once worked for said something along the lines of “if something works and you can recreate it, recreate it till it stops working and profit off of it.”
So if movies don’t come up with something new for their storylines how long are people just going to continue watching them even though they know exactly what is coming? I suppose it’s been this long and we keep watching movies and setting box office records for movies even though we most likely know that the superhero comes out on top in the end or the guy gets the girl after their big fight.
Because of all this I want to know your personal opinion on how you feel about continuing to watch movies that are new even though you can most likely guess what is going to happen just from seeing the title and the cover photo. Do you think movies need to come up with new storylines in order to keep viewers coming back in the future or do you think if they stay the same people will continue to see new movies?
P.S. I thought Scary Movie was funny to add in here because it makes fun of scary movie cliches 😂
Your question made me immediately think of Hallmark movies. The most stereotypical and predictable movies of all time, yet they have a cult following (my mom being one of them). I personally cannot stand Hallmark movies because it's the same story every time. There's a big city character that has to go back to the cozy home town for something and the sweet, warm home towner shows them the true meaning of life and love. Yuck. But yet people can't get enough of them. It reminds me of something I read once that said people with anxiety a lot of times like to rewatch the same TV show because there's no anxiety in wondering what's going to happen because they already know. I wonder if that's the case with these predictable movies, people find comfort in knowing what's going to happen and they don't have to worry about getting invested and losing a character or being disappointed with the movie. Maybe that's why people like the predictability, it eliminates the anxiety.
ReplyDelete