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by yepthatsreality
1782 days ago
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I remember when the first Avengers movie came out, a lot of my industry friends repeated some nonsense line about how we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas. 10 years later and the market is saturated with super hero films, the independent directors are all directing Disney blockbusters, and the riskier ideas only get a spotlight during Oscar season (unchanged). |
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The traditional roles of TV and film have been inverted. Film is now mindless entertainment aimed at the widest possible audience, while television has become a medium for plumbing the depths of artistic possibility.
I chalk this up to two things:
1) Film is increasingly internationalized in ways that television isn't. A movie has to appeal to a wide variety of cultures, all of whom have different mores. Ultimately, the only thing the whole world can agree on is that explosions are fun.
2) Television offers a more flexible format. You can only sit in a theater for so long without a break. Television lets you do sprawling, drawn-out epics with hours of content a year. Television lets you mix serialized and episodic storytelling as you please: your series can lean into one or the other, or it can offer a mixture of both with the showrunner using the balance of serialized and episodic content to carefully control the pacing, set up expectations, and then possibly subvert them. This has always been true, but television has historically been beholden to FCC regulations, network BS&P, advertisers who panic when faced with anything unconventional, rigid time slots, and linear programming. The rise of non-linear consumption (e.g. DVRs), premium cable, and direct-to-streaming series have completely blown the doors off what's allowed on television (or "television"), and showrunners are taking advantage of it in a huge way.