[stephengillie]

Books are someone's fanfic that someone else liked enough to publish. Scripts are similar.

Most stories are written around the same small groups:

- Single protagonist

- Duo or buddies

- 3 person team (heavy hitter, smart/tech/engineer, leader)

- 5 person team (usually a 3 person team core with 2 additional members)

It's like "madlibbing" a story - using characters named "heavy", "tech", "leader", any IP can slot in their characters. For these, Teal'c/Carter/O'Neill or Raphael/Donatello/Leonardo or Hulk/Stark/Rogers.

Some plots will naturally be more widely adaptable to multiple IPs than others. Any hero can be used to tell a sufficiently generic story, but not all heroes work in all stories. Imagine doing Man of Steel in the MCU, or Infinity War in the DCEU.

[FabHK]

You are complaining that movies are all similar, insofar as they tend to focus on 1, 2, 3 or 5 people?

[dwighttk]

you'd think they could make a fantastic 4 movie that was good then... if only for the novelty...

[DonHopkins]

That explains why they never made the "Two and a Half Men" movie!

[stephengillie]

Please do not give these bad ideas to Hollywood executives, or we might suffer such a production.

[stephengillie]

This is supposed to be a bland analysis. Please, try to be more objective.

These roles are well-defined in modern literature, and it logically follows that a market must exist, to buy and sell stories and IPs. This allows a video production company to license plots and characters, combine them (insert hero A into slot Tech), and sell edited videos of the production.