I've watched thousands of movies. While they are not identical, and a very few rise above the usual, they are fungible. Action movies are interchangeable, murder mysteries are interchangeable, romcoms are interchangeable, and on and on. Once you've seen a few, they follow predictable paths.

There's even a formula for them:

https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...

Definitely interchangeable.

Similarly with genre books. As a kid, I decided to read all of Ian Fleming's James Bond books. But after 5 or 6, I noticed that they all followed a formula, and got bored with them and never continued. with the series.

Yes, all houses are different, but the differences are largely superficial. You'd be happy living in any of thousands of homes in your locality.

So the problem with media conglomerates (including big studios) is they want predictable returns. More specifically, they want a formula. Let me introduce you to Save the Cat [1]. This book has become so influential that you can read this book and then watch pretty much any movie and you'll be able to tick off everything in the movie to this structure.

It's why studios love sequels and franchises. They have a built-in audience ie predictable returns.

The biggest innovation we've had in this industry is the advent of highly serialized TV shows, made possibly in large part due to (at first) DVRs and then streaming. 30 years ago it just wasn't possible or practical to do somethin glike this when people had to tune in at a set time. The audience drop off would've been too severe.

For me this has been the true Golden Age of TV. But movies? It's all superhero films now and dull, dull, dull for the most part.

So the lesson Netflix is learning here is you can't just scale up a content business by throwing money at it. Studios would love if it this were true. Netflix has thrown many billions at this problem and not spent it wisely. You can't just write a check for $10 billion and become HBO.

Movies in particularly just don't make economic sense without theater releases. We've seen this durin gthe pandemic with movies that have skipped theaters out of necessity. It just doesn't work.

I agree Netflix needed to create original content given the inevitable "me too" streaming platforms from all the studios would otherwise rob Netflix of their catalog. But they may have just saddled themselves with so much debt that they're forced into ever-increasing sub prices because of decreasing subscriber numbers, which just accelerates the need for more price hikes and so on.

Ironically this is exactly what is killing cable TV.

[1]:https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...

> End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible elements and everything feels samey.

This is basically what is referred to in the industry as "high concept." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept

Bob Iger, Ex-CEO of Disney, was a big proponent of high concept movies. You can read more about it in the screenwriting book, Save the Cat. https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...

Allow me to ruin all Hollywood movies for you: "Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need". https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...

Once you read this, you'll start seeing that every popular movie today follows this guide, almost precisely to-the-minute. Book says "by page X of screenplay, Y should happen" and you'll see that it does.

Hollywood is mostly a system of aggregating tropes into stories. The minority sidekick, token minorities, the plucky Southern Women (Steel Magnolias? Really?), the imminint danger down to the second, etc. There is a book on movie plot writing called, "Save The Cat" that is the most insightful book I've read on that subject.

The plot of "Avatar" was depressingly cliche; a standard retelling of the standard action movie plot, done once again. The special effects made it worth seeing, twice for me. Rarely does a movie rise above such things.

http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/...