Most Exhausted Genres
Submitted by lukeprog on Mon, 09/27/2004 - 11:17
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- Western - There's a good reason there haven't been many Westerns in the past three decades - the genre is exhausted. Nearly every story permutation has been done - and, more importantly, done well - that any Western released today seems completely unnecessary. Suggestions: Audiences' conceptions of what a Western should be are so strong and narrow that it may be financailly risky to construct an unconventional Western. For example, why not set a small, personal murder mystery in the Old West? A screwball comedy? A supernatural thriller? It may sound strange, but if done well, approaches like these could revitalize a dead genre.
- War - War is an obvious choice for dramatic storytelling. It takes the highest form of drama - life and death - multiplies it by the thousands, and still keeps the story very personal. So it's no surprise that so many great war films have been made. While excellent war stories continue to be told, there has been anything new in the genre for quite a while. Suggestions: While the Western can be revitalized by switching story types in a constant setting, the war movie can be revitalized by switching settings for a constant story type. Troy and the upcoming Alexander take place in unexhausted eras, but how about a war story set in pre-Roman Africa? Pre-Columbus Central America? Besides Star Wars, how many good epic wars have been set in space? And certainly there is room for a few more war-comedy films.
- Buddy Flick - The problem here isn't really that the genre is exhausted, just that the central relationship in every buddy flick is a clone of the one in Lethal Weapon. There's plenty of opportunity for buddy flicks with different relationship types, tones, and angles. Suggestions: How about two 'buddies' that hate each other but find they can only succeed when working together? Silent, slow, irritable, unsympathetic buddies? You get the idea.
- Courtroom Drama - While there will always be another legal area to explore (why not show a legal battle for a victim of the RIAA, hehe), it will always be just another series of courtroom scenes with hardball villains, amateur heroes, victimized defendants, and legal loopholes. Suggestions: Of course, I've just supplied the solution for revitalizing the genre, above. Explore unexplored legal subjects (not murder). Make the villains more sympathetic and the protagonist's legal team more devious. Make the defendent... guilty? Unsympathetic? Evil? Make it a story about finangling a judge and jury rather than legal maneuverings.
I agree with you on the first three, but I actually love a good courtroom drama (perhaps I inherited some gene from my dad, who's a lawyer). But you're right, I'd like to see an exploration of other character types as well.
As for war, I think the problem is that every war movie has more or less the same message: war is hell. Besides the problem that this message is overused, the message, while very often true, is just such a black and white examination of war. Indeed, while war always results in deaths, which is horrible, sometimes war is justified. Other times...
It's true that courtroom drama hasn't been done nearly as many times as war or western, but narrower subjects like 'buddy flick' and 'courtroom drama' exhaust more quickly. Also, I'm not saying I don't enjoy a good courtroom drama. And at least one war film that I really enjoy seems to come out every couple of years, still.
And, BTW, if the war in Iraq was for a move to control oil, it was a terribly unsuccessful one. I just don't buy into that at all - it's too obvious and it didn't come out that way.
I think the war in Iraq had more to do with a number of other factors:
1. Bush couldn't find Osama or, really, the Taliban, and he needed a locatable target (such as a nation) to attack and blame some of the terror on. Enter Sadaam Hussein and Iraq.
2. Hussein, after all, tried to kill Bush's father.
3. Hussein has proven himself to be quite the madman, and I'm not sure Bush or his top leaders were directly involved with 'making up' the stuff about the possibility of WMD. A madman with WMD in during the height of terrorist activity in recent history makes a good target for someone as strong-willed as Bush.
4. With the domestic front lost completely, Bush needed something huge like war with a definable entity (a nation: Iraq) to distract the populace from his failings everywhere else.
I think it's the combination of those factors and a few smaller ones that led to the war, not oil.
But that's just my interpretation of the circumstances - I certainly wasn't in the oval office during the planning of the war.
Actually, I wasn't really trying to say that the war was based on oil. I pretty much just Googled war on Iraq to find some link about it. Honestly, I think the scapegoating you describe in #1 is far more likely. My guess is the desire for oil just became an added bonus.
ok, cool