Nothing New Under The Sun

With the movies we've seen so far, it seems like everybody's first reaction is always that the movie was too predictable. "I knew the boy was going to get eaten in Jaws, I knew the girl had to die in Flying Daggers, and the love plot in Casablanca was cliche, etc." The thing is, there really wasn't anything that the directors could have done differently. If you think about it, they say that in literature, there are only seven possible plots (man v. nature, man vs. self, man v. society, etc.), so you already are very limited with what you can make a film about. So even with variations in plots, its only natural that films would develop formulas that are proven to deliver the right message to the audience, such as the Classic style utilized in Casablanca. Really, the only way to make a completely unpredictable movie, you would have to film real life, which for most people would end up looking like the shot you see below. It is a given that an intelligent viewer will be able to predict the outcome of most every movie with a little background knowledge, so instead we should focus on the excellent uses of the various film styles shown in these films.