(via whitebears)
That said: dramas tend to be more raved about in the post-Christmas frenzy for their focus on character and story over more generic elements in comedies or rom-coms whose impetus is usually financial and market-share accessible - that is, delivering expectations and not toying with them.
I think this is an easily thing to believe, but I don’t think it’s necessarily true. I bet if you listed every Oscar-bait drama released in a year, and went through them, you would be able to trace your way through the following:
1. Introduction to the hero, who is curious in some way: talks funny, is a washed-up _______, was once an awesome sports hero and is now reduced to ______, is a total loser in the eyes of society but is ridiculously talented at ______, ages backwards. This early part is often funny and light.
2. Some world-shattering event occurs to our hero.
3. Strife. If the hero is a man, which it is 95% of the time, the concerned but mostly irrelevant wife will worry and possibly throw something and leave (she comes back 95% of the time).
4. The hero, in a triumphal moment, wins the match/lawsuit/job/custody of the child/series of television interviews with Nixon. Then we fade to black and are told what happens after to the “real” people in the story, thus leaving us with a sense that we have received a nugget of truth even if all the movie before was totally made up.
It’s rather sweet that you think dramas are not as financially motivated - come on. Maybe independent filmmakers with a “story to tell” will more often reach to a serious mode than a comedic one (though this is also hardly a rule), but I think Hollywood treats dramas and comedies equally in terms of their money-making potential.
And I think the case of Benjamin Button on its own is enough to dispel the possibility that dramas in Hollywood are in any way about doing something new and not just “delivering expectations.” Here is a movie based almost scene for scene on a previous movie, and yet it was nominated for best picture!! Try imagining that happening with a comedy. It boggles.
