In a tutorial on Do the Right Thing a 1st year student compared Sal to Thanos because that was the closest example he had from movies of a complex antagonist. So yeah, I think Marty's right.

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson Not for nuthin, but isn’t basic history of cinema including screening & testing on important films part of your program’s required curriculum before a screenwriting class? In my day several history & critique classes were required before a single screenwriting class.

@walcraeb @danpgsimpson It wasn’t a film school program, it was a communication studies program so you had a class with people with diverse interests in that field, which would resemble general audiences better than a film school full of film buffs who would have probably seen all of the films mentioned

@HeyYou972 @danpgsimpson Its always mainstream movies that people consider “movies”. The last decade Marvel dominated the market with a repetitive, boring formula but its nothing new.

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson The Usual Suspects is an awful movie and has no place being considered amongst those. Awful characters, boring story, and a twist that renders the entire movie pointless because of frustrating ambiguity of what was real or not. One of the most overrated movies of all time IMO.

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson LOTR makes sense as a topic for screenwriting classes cause learning how to make a good adaptation is a difficult skill set.

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson Nobody in my film school class had seen Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Most film students are foreigners and they're only going into it for commercial work.

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson I guess the difference is that Star Wars (some of it at least) and LOTR had artistic value. Marvel movies are just slop. There’s some genuinely good stuff to be found in there but mostly it’s slop.

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson I haven’t seen any of those movies and frankly none look interesting

@CryptoGSF @danpgsimpson I dipped into the Star Wars prequel trilogy well too when I was teaching. It stopped working after a couple years bc none of these zoomers have seen them anymore. Like so few ppl knew who Jar Jar was that it was no longer worth using at all.