How do screenwriters come up with captivating stories? They often hone in on trends.
Trends are an excellent place to come up with backgrounds for storylines because emerging trends in the consumer world shape our lives. With that in mind, here are three industry trends that have made their way into movies.
Big Business
Hollywood has many classic movies about big business. For instance, in 2015, it was The Big Short, a comedy about how the housing bubble in the United States triggered the 2007-2008 financial crisis. These stories engage audiences because screenwriters base them on true stories, adding a touch of Hollywood embellishment to spike a sense of urgency. Fast-paced storylines enhance the audience’s illusion that they are witnessing a dramatic moment in history unfolding in real-time.
Unfortunately, many big business movies only focus on Wall Street, real estate, high tech, or automakers. However, the juxtaposition of an uncontroversial industry could spin off all kinds of fascinating big business plots around real-life entrepreneurs who started from scratch and built a fortune.
Wall Street and the automotive industry aren’t the only environments for big business movies. For instance, screenwriters have never constructed any plots around shelter services in Mexico which have been around for about 50 years. Why? It’s because it’s an established process for foreign manufacturers to create a maquiladora, a manufacturing plant in Mexico with minimal regulatory meddling from the Mexican government. Although there isn’t any controversy inherent in this business framework, there are probably some great business stories here just waiting to be discovered by some curious screenwriter.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI has featured heavily in sci-fi movies. One of the most poignant ones may have been A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a 2001 Steven Spielberg movie. Set in the 22nd century, when global warming has devastated coastal cities and shrunk the world population, it’s the story of a discriminated-against minority of humanoid robots able to think but not feel.
In this grim scenario, Cybertronics of New Jersey inventor David Osment creates a prototype model of a non-sentient being that can feel. David is a child android capable of pure affection. The story contrasts the self-centered, neurotic, and cruel character of human beings against the unconditional love of David for his human mother and the innocence of his fellow humanoid robots. It also hints at the angst of immortality as David lives through eons and witnesses the collapse of civilization.
In real life, AI is not poignant but emerging as a dispassionate force multiplier, speeding up technological progress in our data-driven world. AI is capturing public attention through device ecosystems such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, and, even more remarkably, through the emergence of computer vision, a technology that has inspired researchers to create deep neural networks to improve image recognition technology, some of whose capabilities surpass human perception.
Cybercrimes
Movies like Snowden, Eagle Eye, War Games, Enemy of the State, and Skyfall make it abundantly clear how hacking and privacy violations are a real threat to individuals and nations. Cybercrime has stimulated the imagination of directors and screenplay writers because it highlights the shadow sideof technology and the destructive effects caused by unconscientious humans motivated by predatory greed.
Mainstream media outlets have highlighted the harmful fallout of data-theft in their detailed reporting of privacy violations by Facebook and Google. Such headline stories have alerted consumers to the alarming fact that their private information is not as safe as they believed. In response to the exploitation of individuals by corporations and hackers, privacy regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have now created a legal framework to regulate how companies may collect, store, and process their customer’s personal information.
In conclusion, many aspiring screenwriters are under the mistaken illusion that they must come up with a big, original idea to woo Hollywood’s moviemakers, but good ideas are readily available in industrial or cultural trends. A trend doesn’t have to be controversial to be part of the background of a movie script. What often piques an audience’s interest is originality. Imaginative screenwriters could turn unremarkable trends into something remarkable. They don’t have to wait for a trend to be controversial and sexy enough to start scheming a story.
I write like I think—fast, curious, and a little feral. I chase the weird, the witty, and the why-is-this-happening-now. From AI meltdowns to fashion glow-ups, if it makes you raise an eyebrow or rethink your algorithm, I’m probably writing about it. Expect sharp takes, occasional sarcasm, and zero tolerance for boring content.
