“You all look the same to me”

This week I somehow found myself with a day free, so made the choice to go and see a triple bill of Whiplash, Birdman and Foxcatcher, which between them have accumulated an impressive selection of award nominations and wins, including nineteen Oscar nominations. So there was one thing about them that really surprised me, and I possibly only noticed it watching them back to back. Though they are set at different times, in different places, with vastly different plots, they are exceedingly similar.

The first and most obvious point is the theme of these films. All feature a male lead, trying desperately hard to be the best that they can be, to be someone who will be remembered. It’s the same fear that fills all three of these men, and the same hope. The hope that after they die, they will be the sort of person who is worth remembering, the sort of person to be discussed around the dinner table.

Which is pretty similar to what you find in The Theory of Everything. Stephen Hawking’s search for the eponymous theory is portrayed as not only wanting to find it for science, but as way to be remembered too.

It’s a well known fact in the film world that pretty much every film is the same. This was first made famous by Blake Snyder, who wrote a beat sheet in his book Save the Cat (if you’ve got a free moment, take a look. You will never look at films the same way). It’s a plot template that break films up into a nice three act structure. And it can be applied to almost every film, often down the page number on the script.

"Pretty much every film is the same."

The thing that surprised me about the three films is the not only how similar they are in reaching their climactic moments, but how similar they are too. You could literally switch the two scenes from Foxcatcher and Birdman over and the films would still make sense.

One of the big issues that plagues all three is the lack of strong females characters. It becomes harder and harder to make an acceptable film that doesn’t really feature any women. Look at the _Hobbit _trilogy. Yes, there were a lot of complaints about the addition of Tauriel, but there would have been even more complains about the lack of females.

Some of the Oscar nominees are fine, look at Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything for example, or Keira Knightly in_ The Imitation Game_. Both played strong female characters, and both received a Best Actress nomination for their efforts.

"They are well made, interesting and enjoyable"

I was less than impressed by the three I saw. Emma Stone in Birdman is wonderful as an actress (and a Best Supporting Acctress nomination to boot), but is not particularly well characterised. As for every other female, they barely exist other than for convenience.

In Whiplash there is one female character, and I still haven’t worked what she added to the film, if anything. The only thing worse than a bland character is a pointless one.

Foxcatcher manages to have a healthy two, but I’m fairly sure they were only there because this was based on a true story and they thought they couldn’t really get away with not adding the characters.

The soundtracks are oddly similar too. All are incredibly drum heavy. That makes sense in Whiplash, it’s a film about a drummer after all. But all three films? Solo drumming is something that you don’t normally find in a film score, after all you normally have access to an entire orchestra so why would bother only have one instrument. I was bemused by the fact that three films released at the same time had such similar music.

I feel that it wouldn’t be fair to pick apart these films without mention how wonderful they are. They are well made, interesting and enjoyable, fully deserving the recognition that have received.

Each takes a subject with a fairly limited fanbase (drumming, theatre and wrestling respectively), and make them interesting to much wider audience.

Perhaps it is only because I saw all three at the same time that the seem so similar or perhaps I am just being pedantic, but the more I think about it, the more similar they seem to me.