As decadence becomes synonymous with truism, and realism becomes the defining rationale for accepting social aberrations as normal, we are penalized by a lack of empathy for most screen characters. Even charm is rooted in social neurosis. The characters in Armageddon and Three Kings fail to engage because they are too blandly familiar. Happened One Night . They do not capture the delightful craziness of human nature.
Most fantasy films fall into certain boxes.
Fantasy offers a smokescreen for our boredom with many contemporary art forms, but a spate of recent death-obsessed films presuppose a pessimism that seems at odds with itself and contradicts our guiltless pleasure in enjoying films that are only gratuitously realistic but couched in the optimism of technology. Films such as The Mummy and Matrix have the greatest leverage of all, since the limitless boundaries of space and technology have helped us accept such absurdities as an inevitable step toward a futuristic unknown. Even American Beauty narrates from the finality of the beyond. Since we have become tolerant of sloppy writing and bad editing, perhaps we are now preconditioned to accept the bizarre and the ugly as the identifying characteristic of realism. Cynicism is its handmaiden.