The Screenplay Formula and Why Movies are so Homogenized

You might hear a lot of people question why so many movies have such a similar tone; as if they're all of the same genre, or made by a few filmmakers with exactly the same tastes.  You may have noticed this yourself and added your voice to the plethora of bloggers, vloggers, and other fans who have expressed their frustrations at how all movies seem alike now.

This might seem a bit like the old man going, "it' ain't like the good ol' days," but there's a strong truth to it, and a reason for it.  As an example, when Star Wars and Star Trek movies came out in the late '70s and early '80s, there was a strong distinction between them.  You went to Star Wars and got an action packed adventure.  You went to Star Trek and got an intriguing mystery.  Even the action scenes were completely different.  In Star Wars you got fast cuts with small ships or individuals shooting rapid fire shots at one another.  In Star Trek you had longer wide shots of large ships laboriously turning on one another while their crews discussed the best way to win.

Neither style was better.  It was like going to a restaurant.  No one wants the same food every day.  If you want Mexican food, you go to a Mexican restaurant.  If you want Italian food, you go to an Italian restaurant.  You switch it up to have a variety.  Hell, even films made by the same director had very different feels.  Take for instance Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark versus Jaws.  Their tone and style was so different that they seem like they're made by completely different filmmakers.

But now you could replace the title of one film with another and hardly anyone would notice.  In computer gaming terms, it's like changing the skins.  So what caused this?  Well, there are numerous theories, and I'm sure many of them have truth as any subject of this magnitude will naturally have a lot of answers.  But I've come to believe there's one overall reason.

Screenplay formulas.

For decades, filmmakers and theorists have been trying to narrow down what makes a film "work."  Understanding this will cause filmmaking to be less risky, and solve psychological mysteries of taste.  So people set about writing books on screenwriting, observing what has been respected and loved in movies, and trying to capture the reason for the magic in them.  The result of all this research was a multitude of formulas.  Books from Adventures in the Screen Trade to The Foundations of Screenwriting to Story to the Writer's Journey all try to identify the genie in the bottle.

These books do provide a basis for good practices in screenwriting.  For instance, they remind a writer to not linger too long in their introduction of the characters and the situation.  They provide guidance on moving the plot forward, and ideas for creating dynamic story beats.  These are positive guidelines to follow.

However, somewhere along the way people started taking these books as rules rather than guidelines.  Rather than suggesting that the screenwriter shift into the second act before the audience gets bored, the screenwriter is now required to move onto the inciting incident by page 15, no exceptions!  Rather than the third act being a point at which the characters focus on their goals, it MUST follow the lowest point of their lives, where they were worse off than when they began the story, and the antagonists must now move in on them.  NO EXCEPTIONS!

Let's put 2001, A Space Odyssey to this test.  The opening of this movie, which is widely considered a classic, even by those who swear by the formulas, follows a group of apes, none of whom are main characters in the rest of the movie.  We get an entire story about them, and how they discover the monolith, which takes us into the main part of the story.  This story does involve the character getting into a worse and worse situation until things are really bad for him.  But he's still reaching his goal, and no conscious villain is closing in on him.  Ultimately, he doesn't have a dramatic ending where his heroic action saves or destroys the day.  He experiences something that speaks to the existence of humanity.

This movie fails the formula test in every way possible.  Hell, even Star Wars would fail as it doesn't introduce its main character until nearly 20 minutes into the film; a major taboo in screenwriting formulas.

But somewhere along the way, I believe in the mid to late '80s, the industry became populated by people who saw these formulas as indispensable.  This belief has permeated every nook and cranny of the industry.  Not only do producers believe in the formula, but so do their assistants, (who must if they want to keep a job,) and executives and agents and people who run film festivals, and people who decide what gets accepted into festivals.  In short, the gatekeepers to the industry all worship the formula, and anyone who does not conform is kept out.

And thus, films have become very homogenized because filmmakers are not allowed to do anything different if they want careers.