Video Essay: Building a Beautiful Future

A big piece of my novel's catalyst was to upend mystery genre expectations, but I'm hardly the only one to do such a thing. Subverting genres has been something storytellers have been playing with for almost as long as genres existed (hell, the sublime superhero parody Mystery Men came out about eight years before the launch of the MCU). So I'm going to keep it short and sweet this week with an excellent example of subverting genre expectations.

I'm talking,of course, about Her.

Yeah, that's that movie about the guy who falls in love with his computer. Two things if you haven't see Her: 1) that log line is not an exaggeration and 2) that shouldn't prevent you from checking out this lovely film. There aren't any spoilers for Her in the video below, so no worries there.

Instead of discussing plot, this video essay by the fantastic kaptain kristian takes a look at one of the ways Her upends expectations: by presenting a version of the future devoid of dystopias, apocalypses, mutants, zombies, or cyberpunk aesthetic. It's the type of thing I didn't really catch when I saw the film, but having it pointed out in this video... yeah, this is thoughtful, brilliant stuff.