Strange Plotlines

This CCR issue includes three review essays about feature films viewed on Netflix this Spring with abnormal or anti-formulaic plotlines that deserve structural analyses. Faktorovich, the Editor, applies the rules she described in Formulas of Popular Fiction (McFarland, 2015) to Dan Mazeau's screenplay for Damsel, a fairytale where the standard happy-marriage conclusion instead serves as the introducing villain-revealing incident that forces the "Damsel" to begin a prolonged escape from a murderous dragon. Then, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods' 65 is considered as a rational placement of a space-journey on earth (to avoid entirely inventing new vegetation), in contrast with the irrational theological concept that humans have not evolved since our alien ancestors landed on earth 65 million years ago. And finally, Rumaan Alam and Sam Esmail's Leave the World Behind is contemplated as a more authentically inactive but terrified response humans are likely to take to an apocalypse that threatens their annihilation; in contrast with the unrealistic traditional formula, where the heroes keep attempting to fight enemies and situations to solve a disaster after the worst has occurred. It is important to ponder the interrelationships between plot structures and the moral messages cinema communicates because it has the power to be either the passive observer, or an active hero in the drama of humanity's ongoing disasters.