I should keep a running list of the "new and different" directions that are re-hashes of some Star Trek script! Remember this one? All the "grumps" that were kids who entered puberty, came down with some awful disease, and went bonkers? Is a neat trick though, to take a 45-minute script and turn it into a trilogy of 90-minute movies. I remember Sid Field's assertion that films were films because they had a "bigger" idea that "needed more scope than the small screen." Is it my imagination, or is TV getting bigger while film gets smaller all the time? 90-page film scripts aren't much of a leap from Game of Thrones. Just thinking.

NEGenge, this is a subject of debate on many fronts: TV becoming more cinematic, which seems natural enough considering the number of writers who come from movie backgrounds and/or TV writers who want to make TV a more filmic experience. As to whether movies are getting "smaller"? In the summer of 2013 where we seemed to have reached new heights in terms of budgets, largely spent on CGI effects that portray mass destruction, not sure how that fits. But if you are talking about STORY ELEMENTS somehow shrinking, whatever that may mean, perhaps. One thing that is demonstrably downsizing: the number of working screenwriters in Hollywood, the subject of an upcoming post.

Hullo Scott! When I think of how "big" a movie is, it has precious little to do with budget. My scale is the internal one - do I remember it? Care about it? Want to see it again? Do I tell my friends about it? Budget and effects can affect that, certainly - but not always in a positive way! Remember the "fight on a transport truck" scene from one of the Matrix movies? I do. Pretty effects, but I was done with it looooong before it was done with me! I went, read some movie posters, got popcorn, and came back before it was done! And, what, exactly, did it accomplish? Nothing that could possibly account for it's massive percentage in screen time. Listening to the 18-24 year olds leaving "Man of Steel" this weekend, I didn't hear even one of them focusing on the effects. Once they got past the debate on whether it fit the mythos or not, they were done and it was on to where to have pizza. The "White House Down" crowd were at the pizza discussion before they even got to the lobby! When I describe modern movies as "smaller," I'm really talking about capturing the emotions. People will continue to talk about Avatar's effects, but, it's story? It's characters? It's emotional impact? Juno, The King's Speech, the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel all left a big emotional impression - an impression that was enhanced by the colour, or claustrophia, or period created on screen. It's not that I don't like a good action film - I do! But, comparing action apples to action apples, there is a reason why people talk about, say, "True Lies," or even "Independence Day" differently than they will about either "Man of Steel" or "White House Down." All of them blow up lots of stuff - even some of the same stuff :) - but, between that stuff, there still needs to be the *other* stuff that makes films memorable. I'm not saying there aren't good modern movies being made, or that great effects can't contribute to the emotional impact, simply that there seems to be less and less talk *about* the film over the pizza. Is it a function of shorter and shorter scripts that perhaps don't have room for the other stuff? A more jaded audience? A different interpretation of what audiences want? Some of all that? I'm not sure... I do know that I currently feel much more surprised and entertained by television than by film, and it isn't about how pretty it is, if we can have a dragon or two, or what new thing we can stage a fight on top of. I think writers go where they can be creative, and that creativity attracts viewers, and that's why I'm satisfied when I watch surprising television, and talking about pizza when I leave more of the same-old-same-old behind me at the theater. It's been a while since I've walked out, gotten another ticket, and gone right back in.

NEGenge, believe me, I HEAR you. When I was working up my lectures for a class I teach on Theme as it relates to screenwriting, such a slippery subject I find where no one really has a clear take on it, at least one that's helpful, I landed on this principle: Theme = Meaning. But more specifically, EMOTIONAL meaning. That is how much importance I put on the emotional experience of a movie. At the end of the day, I want to emerge from a movie theater having FELT something. If it is a comedy, I want to come away feeling GOOD and having LAUGHED. If it's a horror movie, I want to come away feeling SCARED. If it's a drama, I want to come away feeling MOVED. This is not to deny the intellectual aspect of the film or the special effects, but in this noisy, hyperactive world we live in where everyone is busy in social media, yet scant actual COMMUNICATION is going on, I put a premium on the emotional experience of story. And that is what I get from your thoughtful comment here. With many contemporary movies, there's all this STUFF going on... but at the end of the day, what does it mean? If there's no engagement with characters, where it means something authentic and genuine to THEM, why should it mean anything to US? So yes, off to the pizza stand and the next thing, rather than buying another ticket and heading back in to screen the same movie again because we were so moved by it. Big movie that work almost invariably have small stories featuring real characters with real identifiable issues at work. The default mode of so many of these blockbuster spectacles is to make the story about survival: Will they live or die? I mean LITERAL life or death. Okay, that is important, I'll grant you. But what if we know going in the Good Guy/Gal is NOT going to die? What is the real sense of jeopardy in that case? These stories are much better served if they examine other aspects of the human experience beyond merely survival in this broadest sense. Sticking with the theme of survival, I read a great interview with David O. Russell, one I'll feature in the near future, in which he talked precisely about this subject. There is economic survival, the question of whether a couple's marriage can survive, where a worker's job will survive, if someone's dream for a better life can survive. All of those are identifiable, all of them offering lots of potential for emotional engagement, and in some ways more relatable than whether the Good Guy/Gal will live [of course they will] or die [of course they won't] vs. the Bad Guy/Gal. This is definitely worth a larger discussion, so I'm already thinking of a way to do this as a blog series. Thanks much for your observations. Again I think I can safely say I HEAR you.

Great discussion in replies. Blog series please.