I don’t often do critical reviews of movies, but I have done them. I can’t, however, remember ever doing a review of contemporary episodic television.
Well, there’s always a first time. And this is it.
I’ve been a fan of Philip K. Dick ever since Ridley Scott transformed the author’s novel Do Androids Dream an Electric Sleep? into the cinematic classic Blade Runner. The movie combined stunning visuals with a deeply compelling drama. The sights, the score, the screenplay; they all melded together into an irresistible film.
So, when Scott decided to take on Dick’s The Man in the High Castle as an Amazon series, I simply couldn’t pass it up.
The Man in the High Castle falls under the “alternative history” genre. The concept revolves Continue Reading “Out of Moves: The Man in the High Castle Finale Rooks Fans”
The Terrible Reality of Story Arcs
Bob Denver Gilligan’s Island, 1966, CBS Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Think back to all the great stories you’ve heard, read while relaxing on a sunny beach, or watched in front of the big screen. What do they all have in common? Your first answer might be, “They kept me on the edge of my seat and their ending nailed it.”
OK, that might be true. But if you dig deeper, you’ll find they all stayed true to the narrative structure of the traditional story arc—Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution. In good stories, you don’t see this structure. The transition from one element to the next flows seamlessly.
The 1942 film Casablanca, often cited as one of the greatest movies ever made, offers a good example of this. You don’t even notice as the Exposition rolls through a series of Continue Reading “The Terrible Reality of Story Arcs”