10 TYPES OF MOVIE GENRES ACCORDING TO BLAKE SNYDER

“Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need” by Blake Snyder is a formula book focused on the structure and elements of a screenplay.

After reading it, I have found it to be useful in writing. But the thing I like most is the ten “genres”.

With names like “Monster in the House”, “Golden Fleece”, “Out of the Bottle”, they have given me a new perspective as to how I can look at the types of movies and stories. I can figure out the type of story the movie is trying to tell and which narrative it is fitting in. this is in contrast to the standard generic terms such as “comedy,” “drama” and “thriller etc.

In chapter 2, of his landmark book, “Give me the same thing… only different!”, Snyder mentioned that a screenwriter’s daily conundrum is how to avoid cliché. The screenwriter can be near and almost embrace the cliché, and at the last moment does not do so. In other words, the screenwriter must give it a twist.

A movie falls into a category which has rules. To avoid clichés, the movie must give us the same thing… only different. Snyder also introduced 10 genres that distinguished how stories are structured. According to Snyder, standard genre types such as Romantic Comedy, Epic or Biography did not say much about the story, only the type of movie it is.

Snyder’s system explored genre more fully and can help you figure out how movies work within these genres.

The ten genres Snyder uses are:

1. Monster in the House

Examples:

Jaws, Exorcist, Panic Room, Jurassic Park, the Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Scream series, Tremors and its sequels, and every haunted house and ghost story ever told. Films without supernatural elements, like Fatal Attraction (starring Glenn Close as the “Monster”) also fall into this category.

How it works:

A confined space, a “sin” is committed, a “monster” to avenge the sin. Then it is “run and hide”, and “Do not get eaten”. It has two working parts: a monster and a house. Add when you add people into that house, desperate to kill the monster, you have got a very primal movie type. “Do not get eaten!” is very primal.

2. Golden Fleece

Examples:

Wizard Of Oz, Planes, Train and Automobiles, Star Wars, Road Trip, Back to the Future, The Dirty Dozen, and The Magnificent Seven and road movies and heist movies.

How it works:

The name comes from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. The hero goes on a quest or journey in search of one thing. He or she discovers himself or herself along the way. The hero learns and grows from the incidents or experiences at each stage of the quest or journey.

The hero and his “team” are chasing a clear and definable “prize” that seems super difficult. The is over when they have achieved the prize or have failed in their quest.

3. Out of the Bottle

Examples:

Bruce Almighty, The Mask, The Love Bug, Love Potion #9, Flubber, Big, Aladdin, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, Field of Dreams, Blank check, Freaky Friday, All of Me, Groundhog Day.

How it works:

The name Out of the Bottle should evoke the image of a genie who is summoned out of the bottle to grant his master’s wish, but it doesn’t have to be magic to be part of this wish-fulfillment genre.

Something appears to grant a wish to a Cinderella character. They will eventually realise magic is not everything. It could be a comeuppance tale; that someone needs to be taught a lesson, but their character must appear redeemable.

4. Dude with a Problem

Examples:

Die Hard, Titanic, Schindler’s List, Terminator, Bourne Identity, Misery, 2012, or Apollo 13

How it works:

Every story, is about a “dude with a problem.” This is a certain type of problem which is life-or-death and immediate, and which must be solved by the hero through some physical battle, right now. Big primal problem or problems. The whole movie is essentially a narrative of that battle which may also consist of a series of mini battles.

This is about an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances. The bad guy should be as bad as possible and exceedingly difficult for the hero to overcome. And no matter how hard the problem, who the bad guy is, the hero will triumph from his willingness to use his individuality to outsmart the far more powerful forces aligned against him.

5. Rites of Passage

Examples:

Lost Weekend, Days of Wine and Roses, 28 Days starring Sandra Bullock, and When A Man Loves A Woman, Ordinary People, That’s Life!, 10, and Days of Wine and Roses.

How it works:

Rites of Passage stories are tales of pain and torment, but usually from Life. It may be about the choices we have made, but the “monster” attacking us is often unseen, vague, or one which we cannot get a handle on simply because we cannot name it.

The key criteria for this genre is that it is a relatable life problem like adolescence, growing pains, divorce, mid-life crisis, aging, loss of a loved one, drug or alcohol addiction, which the main character is avoiding by chasing something else. They are clearly on a wrong road, as they spend most of the movie pursuing a challenging goal that will ultimately not work out well.

People, in a good Rites of Passage tale, are in on “the joke” except the person who is going through it — the story’s hero. And only the experience can offer a solution. Finally, they are left having to face life after all, hopefully having learned something in the process.

6. Buddy Love

Examples:

Laurel and Hardy, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Wayne’s World (both 1 & 2),  Bringing Up Baby, Pat and Mike, Woman of the Year, Two Weeks’ Notice, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days Thelma & Louise, 48 hours, Dumb & Dumber, Rain Man, E.T., Lethal Weapon, buddy cop movies and love stories.

How it works:

A screenwriter who realized that his hero had no one to react to, invented the buddy movie. And the screenwriter suddenly thought “what if” his hero had someone to debate important story issues with? Thus, the classic “buddy movie” was born.

Two guys talking to each other like 48 Hours; two girls talking to each other like Thelma & Louise work because “me and my best friend” always resonate.

The secret of a good buddy movie is that it is a love story in disguise. Love stories are buddy movies where one of the buddies is of the opposite sex.

At first the buddies dislike each other, but the story makes it clear they need each other. This leads to more conflict. An “All Is Lost moment” near the end which may be a separation, a fight, a goodbye-and-good-riddance breaks them up, but they realise they need each other. Often one character is the hero and will do most of the changing.

7. Whydunit

Examples:

Chinatown, Citizen Kane, China Syndrome, All the President’s Men, JFK, Mystic River.

How it works:

Unlike the Golden Fleece, a good Whydunit is not about the hero changing, it is about the audience discovering something about human nature they did not think was possible before the “crime” was committed, and the “case” began.

We in the audience are the detectives, ultimately. While we have a surrogate or surrogates onscreen doing the work for us, it is we who must ultimately sift through the information, and we who must be shocked by what we find. We will ask ourselves. “are we this evil?”

8. The Fool Triumphant

Examples:

Dave, Being There, Amadeus, Forrest Gump, and many of the movies of Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and Ben Stiller and going back to Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

How it works:

The operating principal of “The Fool Triumphant” is to set the underdog Fool against a bigger, more powerful, and often “establishment” bad guy. Watching a so-called “idiot” get the goat of those society deems to be the winners in life gives us all hope, and pokes fun at the structures we take so seriously in our day-to-day lives. On the outside, he is just the Village Idiot, but further examination reveals him to be the wisest among us. Everyone underestimates his ability, allowing him or her the chance to ultimately shine

The Fool often has an accomplice who cannot believe fool is getting away with it and will be brunt of the slapstick.

9. Institutionalised

Examples:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, American Beauty, M*A*S*H, The Godfather, Godfather 2, 9 to 5, Animal House

How it works:

When we band together as a group with a common cause, we reveal the ups and downs of sacrificing the goals of the few for those of the many. “Institutionalized” tells stories about groups, institutions, and “families.” These stories are special because they both honour the institution and expose the problems of losing one’s identity to it. Each story has a breakout character whose role is to expose the group goal as a fraud. the group dynamic these tales tell is often crazy and even self-destructive.

Ultimately, all the stories in this category come down to a question: Who is crazier, me or them?

10. Superhero

Examples:

Batman, Dracula, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind.

How it works:

The “Superhero” genre is the exact opposite of “Dude with a Problem”. Its opposite definition best defines it as: An extraordinary person finds himself in an ordinary world.

A Superhero tale asks us to lend human qualities, and our sympathy, to a super being, and identify with what it must be like to have to deal with the likes of us little people. This genre is not just about superheroes like the characters in the Marvel or the DC Comics universes. It is much more than that.

The difficulty is how to make the hero sympathetic.

Superhero movies stresses sympathy for the Superhero’s plight and draw us into the human side of the Superhero. We will never understand the Superhero. Truly, our identification with him must come from sympathy for his dilemma of being misunderstood.

Summary

I am sure after reviewing this list of genres you are will notice that many movies are structurally identical to others. This happens because those story templates work. Each of these movies is an example of successful storytelling.

Reference

Snyder, Blake. Save the Cat (pp. 21-43). Michael Wiese Productions. Kindle Edition.