tclaytor

Every year, Hallmark makes a hefty profit on their Hallmark movies, particularly the Christmas ones. What makes them so popular? They are obviously predictable with recurring actors and events (interrupted kiss, small town preference, fall in love within days,etc) yet people flock to them with enthusiasm.

This time of year is filled with the macabre–from movies to haunted houses. Why do people enjoy this kind of entertainment? Is it because it makes us value our humanity as we know we are safe? I would love to see an exploration of this topic perhaps through a few specific popular horror films (slasher, demonic, etc).

Many modern movies that are marketed to kids like Pirates of the Caribbean and Maleficent try to portray the villain in a more positive light. I think an interesting article would talk about the genre of kids' films and how villains have changed over the years. For example, Goonies and Disney's Little Mermaid have clear, evil villains.

As soon as technology introduced the idea, movies have been wrestling with what to do with artificial intelligence. Once they are thinking on their own, do they have rights as a sentient being? This is seen very clearly with Data in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Series. It is also seen in animated films such as Astro Boy when the audience comes to see the robot more as a real child. The list goes on: AI, even Terminator 2 as the audience mourns the first Terminator's demise, iRobot, Dark Matter (a Netflix series) etc. Since this is a very real part of our future, the varying views on this would be interesting to consider.

I think it would be interesting to consider the movies of different decades and how they define the different generations. As a child of the 80s, I grew up watching Goonies, Space Camp, and Red Dawn which all impacted the way I viewed life. They presented a picture of adventure (with danger), enemies to fight, and things to hope for. What about the movies of the 90s or the early 2000's?

I love the scene in The Matrix when Agent Smith is interrogating Morpheus, and he explains why the world they created was so unpleasant. He said initially that they created a good world but that people rejected it. In fact, they lost whole crops of humans who couldn’t accept the utopia. People rejected what wasn’t believable to them.

This is true of good stories also, particularly in how they end. If the ending is too happy, the story loses its impact. On the flip side, many modern stories end without a real conclusion or with the protagonist still struggling. I’m curious about how to find that perfect balance of satisfying resolution and believable pain that reflects the real difficulties of this world and a hope of redemption.