Creating Meaningful Cinema: Why We Need to Move Beyond the Passable Movie Trend

The "Passable Movies" video from Nerdwriter poses an interesting argument regarding a film's tonality. Most mainstream Hollywood films appeal to a mass audience, so having an uneven tone works to target multiple demographics simultaneously. Films that "know what they are," as the Nerdwriter puts it, have a focused approach to every detail, from costumes to music to small narrative elements like dialogue and emotion.

He nails it perfectly with this culture of passable movies flooding the cinemas. It is an elegant way to discuss tonality without deriding most films as garbage meant to please boring audiences. These audiences are plunking down their hard-earned money for familiar efforts from otherwise good directors and actors. A film with a focused tone doesn't allow for flexibility and could present something unfamiliar or unknown to an audience. That could be dangerous. For example, let's say residents of Iowa City go see a film that doesn't relate to them 100% of the time, which in turn could affect all the other boring audiences, too. Keep it bland and familiar so they don't need a brain. I guess it calls into play the job of entertainment, right? Is it supposed to pacify us or make us work for it?

Check out the video below to see where I'm coming from on this issue.