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Comment by thenomad | Hacker News Reader

I may be somewhat odd for a professional filmmaker in this, but my reaction is less "aargh, no, my pure pure art!" and more "Hmm, interesting, I wonder if I have time to try that out?"

Frameworks work well for visual design, adverts, web design, music (to a certain extent), so I can't see a problem with them for films.

Of course, if one framework becomes the One Possible Framework, that's more of an issue. But there are enough filmmakers out there willing to try seriously wierd shit that I don't think that's a problem yet.

For example, David Lynch is working on a new feature film right now. Call me crazy, but I don't think he'll be sticking to Save The Cat's formula.

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Tangential, but you got me excited about a new feature film project from Lynch... I can't find anything about one though. Did you make it up for an example?

EDIT: seems to be just a script so far, http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/david-lynch-working-o...

Here's the source I have: http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/david-lynch-hints-at-n...

I'm also VERY excited about this one.

Fantastic! Thanks.

Lynch holds a place in my heart for getting me deeply into abstract film early on, and then greater cinema in general, though I haven't watched him in ages now and don't really feel drawn toward revisiting. I guess I could say he prepared me eventually for the likes of Tarkovsky, Bergman (easy to see parallels with Persona in his work, though there're echoes of that one all over), Hou Hsiao-Hsien, etc.

I've been meaning to watch Philippe Grandieux, who I've read compares well with Lynch.

Well, among the supposedly "Hollywood killing" samey movies mentioned in the article is "The Dark Knight", regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time.

Which goes to show that there's still plenty of creativity to be had while following classic structure, and proving once again that broad ideas are meaningless and execution is everything.

Yeah - if I only manage to make movies as good as "The Dark Knight" (one of my more favourite films), I'm reasonably OK with that.

Th best action movie as determined by whom? Obviously the generally movie-going populace likes the movies that Hollywood produces otherwise they wouldn't go see them.

The comment above just said that TDK was "regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time.", rather than making an absolute judgement.

I think that's a reasonably defensible statement - http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-dark-knight.

I'm questioning the validity of using the general population as an authoritative source of film critique. Although it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film at all.

Who said I was using the general population as an authoritative source of film critique?

"regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time" means just what it says. I never claimed nor even implied that the view was authoritative simply because it was widely held.

You stated explicitly that you thought it was a quality film due to its wide popularity.

(As an aside the article itself never criticizes Dark Knight for being poor only for being formulaic).

'regarded by many as' is pretty much the living, breathing definition of 'authority as implied by popularity'.

it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film

Far from it; action films are extremely interesting from an artistic POV because they are often so uncontrived that they offer an unusually direct insight into the society that made them. John McTiernan's Predator is a superb film, for example - it's 30 years old and still plays well on TV or the big screen.

Or predator is the greatest film ever written.

Determined by "many".

Granted, that's vague, but certainly among people I know, The Dark Knight is considered the high water mark of modern action films.

And while this still is just more anecdotal data and not scientific proof, the movie sits at #6 on imdb's list of top 250 movies of all time:

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top?ref_=nb_mv_3_chttp

Which suggests strongly that this view is shared more widely in the general movie-watching population.

The Dark Knight is good despite using a lot of Hollywood conventions, not because of them. What Nolan can shrug off might annihilate the remnants of creativity in a lesser director. I've seen similar things happen in writing.

TDK was mentioned for a having a villain that gets caught on purpose. I think TDK did it well, but doesn't change the fact that so many are applying it like a formula and failing.

It's not just the "getting caught on purpose" trope that annoys me, it's the whole omnipotent-(bad/good)-guy thing. The Ocean's Eleven sequels were particularly bad at this.

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