Captain Plum remembers watching movies with his father. Occasionally, halfway through a brand-new film, Dad would announce: “I’ve seen this before.” Plum would laugh. “Dad, this movie just came out!” His father would insist. “I’ve seen it.”
Decades later, Plum understands. His father really had seen it before. Not the exact film, perhaps, but the story underneath it. The hero, the villain, the betrayal, the redemption, the dramatic rescue at the last possible second. The costumes had changed. The machinery hadn’t.
Narrative Saturation
For thousands of years people have told stories. Then we industrialized storytelling. Cinema, television and streaming services filled our lives with an astonishing supply of fictional adventures.
People who seldom read books may nevertheless have absorbed hundreds or thousands of stories from screens. They know the vocabulary. The mysterious stranger is probably the villain. The quarrelling couple will fall in love. The hero’s apparent defeat will become a last-minute triumph. The retiree in the action film should perhaps not make long-term plans.
The audience isn’t necessarily getting smarter or the writers necessarily getting worse. We have simply seen too many movies. Our minds recognize the patterns before the filmmaker finishes arranging them.
The Human Prediction Engine
A story creates suspense when we do not know what comes next. But repeated exposure trains the brain to anticipate familiar sequences. An allegedly shocking twist becomes obvious. An emotional speech starts before the character even opens their mouth. We know the villain will return and the hero will survive because the franchise needs another sequel.
Hollywood sells surprise, yet so much of its business depends upon delivering exactly what audiences have already bought. For a younger viewer, that repetition can still feel magical. For an older viewer, it can feel like paying again for an experience already consumed.
A Message to Young Sparks
Young Sparks, enjoy your movies. Enjoy the romance, excitement, superheroes, monsters and explosions. Plum doesn’t propose confiscating anybody’s popcorn.
But here is his prediction: by the time you’re fifty, you may be bored stiff by Hollywood’s fairy tales. Another chosen one? Another world-ending machine? Another misunderstood villain? Another ending in which the music swells and everyone has apparently learned a valuable lesson?
Oh, plopstank. We’ve seen it.
Not every middle-aged person becomes bored of cinema, of course; some remain passionate movie lovers. Nor has original storytelling vanished. But Plum believes narrative saturation is real, and that a growing share of the audience may increasingly recognize how many films recycle the same handful of stories.
What Happens When the Screen Stops Surprising Us?
Perhaps boredom is an invitation to explore something more interesting: reality. Science, consciousness, music, history, philosophy, medicine, family and ordinary human life offer mysteries that refuse to resolve themselves in a tidy two-hour arc.
Fiction can still delight us when it is genuinely imaginative. But a life spent watching invented people repeat familiar conflicts may eventually feel less rewarding than participating in the world ourselves.
Dad Was Right
So here’s to Plum’s father. He recognized the repetition long before his son did. Plum laughed at him then. Now he sits before a new release and hears himself thinking exactly the same thing.
“I’ve seen this before.”
Congratulations, Plum. You’ve become your father.
And Mum? She Had Better Things to Do
Plum’s mother took an entirely different approach to popular entertainment. She wasn’t bored because she had watched too many movies. She simply had very little interest in them to begin with.
When young Plum watched The Hunt for Red October, his mother thought the submarine was a spaceship. She called Spock “Spark.” The vast mythology of popular entertainment could pass right by her without the slightest concern.
And how delightful is that? Hollywood could spend millions creating a cultural phenomenon, and Plum’s mother was under no obligation to notice. She had her own life, her own interests, and her own measure of what mattered.
Plum’s father had seen all the stories before. His mother had barely bothered with them. Two different forms of freedom from the screen.
A remarkable woman.
Order. Truth. Love. The Great Work continues.
Image credit: Eden, Janine and Jim, “Empty Movie Theater,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Unmodified.
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