“Less is more”, because the old saying goes, and nowhere is that this more apparently true than in modern TV and film culture.
It is comprehensible that when audiences see an ideal film or TV series, they need more of it. They need to see the characters they know and love and get to know them much more.
Similarly, when a cinematic work is an ideal financial success, it’s equally obvious that executives will need to mine that success for all it’s price.
It’s due to this fact no surprise that an unholy alliance has been formed between those that demand and people who supply, not art, but an limitless stream of “content”.
The most evident player of this game is Disney, which has relentlessly mined the Star Wars and Marvel franchises to the purpose of exhaustion.
Other less egregious examples may be the most recent Gladiator film. Gladiator was the proper example of a stand-alone film with a self-contained story. No sequel was needed. What next? Casablanca 2?
Another example may be the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, which have been spared the worst excesses of Disney, but still needed to suffer the indignity of Amazon’s Rings of Power series and a recent anime film.
It could be unfaithful to say that every one this extensive material is terrible. It is feasible to search out some gold among the many slop.
But the undeniable fact that modern culture has come so far suggests an limitless need for more, and a shallowness of thought.
The problem isn’t sequels, but the shortage of an overarching story. Both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the unique Star Wars trilogy (plus the prequels) told an overarching story that culminated with the ultimate defeat of evil.
In this respect, each stories end in the identical way that the Bible does. After the autumn of Sauron/the Emperor, there isn’t a need for anything more. Revelation ends the Bible with God and man finally reconciled.
Imagine if church leaders struggled to give you a sermon every week because no latest “content” has been added to the Bible for nearly 2,000 years. Instead, what they do is engage with what has been tried and tested over millennia.
To have the ability to read, watch or examine a bit for the hundredth time and to remove something latest is possibly what defines a bit as being a masterpiece.
This is considered one of the explanations the Bible has remained such a bedrock of our culture over the centuries and what allows man-made works to be added to the pantheon of the greats.
So, resist the urge to eat the subsequent portion of slop before moving onto the subsequent thing, and take a while to understand and re-examine the good movies, TV shows, books, plays and art. Perhaps if enough people achieve this, then eventually someone will make a movie price going to the cinema for.
