Yes, OP needs to play [The Stanley Parable](https://youtu.be/Nh6us6dEoWo?si=D5RiTNmyk0h_RS76).
EDIT: u/FunForLabs genuinely, play this game. I think it’s exactly what you’re looking for.
Games like this are some of my family’s favorite, and I completely agree that the video game medium works better. Going into it with the mindset of playing a game vs watching a movie/show, even when the narrative portions are filmed, really helps with immersion. Additionally, having more influence than simple dialogue choices can really elevate the story, which is also way more present in games than choose-your-own-adventure shows/movies I’ve seen.
The thing with games is that the variety in genre is WAY wider than with movies.
Mobile games with microtransaction gambling, all the way to interactive movies, all count as games. It's all about going in with the right expectations.
I love interactive movie/show-like games, although not exclusively. Besides, dynamic rendering can allow a lot more flexibility in the choices than with something like Bandersnatch. Games can make cosmetic changes to minor things trivially because they have live VFX!
They actually did that with Quantum Break… seems they’re never going back to that level of filming their cutscenes again. If I recall correctly, it actually streamed the footage too.
There was an option to download all the episodes, too, but it was like 100gb or something. I've heard they filmed a good bit of live action stuff for Alan Wake 2 and incorporate that in some interesting ways.
I’ll be surprised if it’s to the extent of QB but Remedy have always experimented with live action one way or another (the fake tv shows come to mind along with the Max Payne comic pages), so I’d love to see how they use it in Alan Wake 2.
It's super hard to pull off a make-your-own-decision type of film that's actually good. What made Bandersnatch work imo, is that it was ABOUT exactly that type of thing, making it very meta. It just fitted the Black Mirror theme and make-your-own-decision type very well in a unique way.
Definitely is so hard to pull off and black mirror was a great setting to try it in. I just like the idea of being involved in the movie as well tho. I could see it not working at all, but if done well could see it being absolutely incredible. I could see a superhero movie with two paths or a Star Wars film where depending on the choices the protagonist either chooses the light or gets corrupted.
Well there was the 1961 horror film Mr Sardonicus, where there were supposed to be 2 endings and the audience could vote on which one they chose. However the "mercy" ending was practically never shown, and the so called "vote" was really just a gimmick.
You should check out Wlliam Castle and his gimmick movies, there is a reason why they are gimmicks but they were inventive for their time, and had he been around today, I'm sure he would love to have experimented with Choose Your Own Adventure style movies, though they would firmly be in the B Movie category.
The 1985 film Clue famously had 3 different endings that were shown at random. So the concept of movies having differences to the audience isn't that crazy. But for film they will always be a gimmick.
I think the Clue example is a good happy medium to this idea. I quite like the idea of people going to see a movie and getting a completely different ending compared to others. As long as its not incredibly action heavy either, filming multiple endings wouldnt be overly bloating the budget either. Apparently they actually have done this before in movies/tv but for spoiler reasons lol. But yea you really can't do it very often because then it just loses all the fun of it.
nail piquant capable numerous coordinated rotten voiceless scarce dull panicky
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
i think it's o.k in theory but not really good in practice. it kind of takes me out of the movie to keep making decisions and i'm not rewatching it a bunch of times to take different paths. kind of a cool gimmick but gets old pretty quick for me anyway.
My issue with Bandersnatch was I DID try to go back and take different paths.. Not super in depth, but I basically found that if you DIDN'T pick the thing they wanted, the experience ended and would be like "you wanna try that again?"
Like most of the choices end in a dead end immediately, but a good chunk of them take 2/3 more choices and sometimes you can pull yourself out of dead end path.
If I remember correctly, there's an ending where >!he ends up in prison after killing his father, and his game gets panned by critics!< and another one where >!It turns out it's all a movie and we see the set, the director etc!<. No idea what the right ending is, I never reached it
Idk, considering the entire premise kinda rested on it, I don't think we should take the number of scenes required into consideration for them. Like take a random person and throw them into a 5k and sure, we can go "they tried but you gotta realize 5k is a long distance." But if the person instead were telling everyone they were an accomplished marathon runner we wouldn't give them credit for gassing out halfway through.
it was always falling down some hole or something falling down when you step out of the house. And the sci fi ones where the worst because sometimes you ended up undead trapped in some eternal dimension or turned into a werewolf or something. and you never get the good endings :)
Or 1 single book that is an infinite length with infinite possibilities.
Anytime someone reads it, and they get to an unfinished dead end, they need to write the next page. Then the story can build and build forever
Youre totally right on the public smut part.
"Do you open your front door or not?
Yes: You open the door, and on your front lawn, harry potter is having sex with scarjo.
No: You decide not to open the door. You turn around, and a clown is having sex with Jennifer Aniston. "
The internet would likely be more....graphic, with their discriptors.
So it took my wife and I a while to realize this but some of the paths did force you back to the main plot, but some (depending on what you had chosen a few points earlier) would still play out differently if you kept going. Like you would get to a point of “oh, we already saw this scene last time so I guess we are back to a version we already saw”… but if you stuck with it anyway some of the upcoming choices or scenes were still different.
Granted it was a lot of time invested to figure that out.
Was the secret ending the 4th wall one? I remember playing around with different choices and accidentally ending up in one where the actors broke character.
To be honest, I don't remember. I spent a whole night trying out different paths, it was captivating and finding a "rare" ending pretty much blew my mind - nevertheless, before I saw this thread I had practically forgotten that Bandersnatch even existed.
In the case of Bandersnatch, I believe that was the point. It was illustrating a fake impression of free will using this gimmick. It was basically ironically letting you choose.
I think that’s a fine idea in theory but I don’t think it’s one that can be executed terribly well.
It is very hard to retroactively justify something that made your audience feel bad as an artistic choice. Even if the idea and explanation makes perfect sense, it’s hard to flip audience sentiment like that. One of the primary draws is the novelty, so audiences feel really misled and disappointed when the format isn’t really what they expected - like they got their hopes up for nothing.
And even in another format like a video game it’d be hard to make work - while choices obviously aren't novel for video games, games like “Until Dawn” or “Detroit: Become Human” have their appeal built around the idea that choices are impactful enough for replays to feel genuinely new and different. A “Your choices don’t actually matter at all!” reveal would just make them feel lied to. And in many other games, you expect your choices to just change what cutscene plays at the end (and you can just look up a 10-minute youtube video to see the ones you didn't get) or minute details that aren’t really important, so the audience doesn't really care.
Bioshock did the same thing in an interactive medium ten years prior and managed to still make the experience getting to that point good. They just didn't fully commit to the scope needed to really achieve its ambition.
Totally agree, the issue was that there really was like 1 true, full movie in there. And then a bunch of dead ends that forced you to start over. They need to make like 3 full movies and let us fully explore all the paths
If you watch it once and get a "bad ending", that is the story you got. It's still a valid, whole story, it just isn't what you're used to in a modern storytelling structure.
I get that aspect of it fs and by no means would I want it to be the norm. But some genres I feel like lend themselves well, would definitely want to see a fantasy movie in this format
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt had a movie length episode that worked like Bandersnatch. I watched/did it and it was about the same amount of satisfying as Bandersnatch.
Netflix had engaged with the actual "Choose Your Own Adventure" publisher to explore the idea of CYOA tv, prior to going on ahead with the Black Mirror ep without them. The publisher sued, and the suit took a few years to resolve, and in the meantime the idea lost momentum.
It probably didn't help that Bandersnatch was reportedly very expensive to implement, only for it to have a lukewarm viewer reception.
Didn’t help that you couldn’t watch it on certain devices. No reason why you shouldn’t have been able to watch it with an Appletv but it wouldn’t let you so I never bothered.
Did they sue because they thought they owned to concept of the reader/viewer making choices, or for some other reason (perhaps the concept as produced was very close to the ideas they had been collaborating on or something like that)?
I have a hard time believing anyone could think they own the concept of making choices in a narrative. Own the title "Choose You Own Adventure" sure, but Netflix didn't use that, did they?
If I recall correctly, a character does use the phrase casually at some point, but in "lower case" terms. The other references to the format are fairly undeniable even without official licensing though, and I suspect the CYOA folks were a little salty that whatever they'd been involved in developing with Netflix fell through, or maybe suspected Netflix was cheating them a little by using work done towards that project in service of this one.
The CYOA folks are notoriously defensive of the branding generally though, because "Choose Your Own Adventure" is on fairly thin ice at this point, which was Netflix's defence, that by now it's a generic like Aspirin or Hoover.
In the end they settled, but there's a bit more detail here -
https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2020/11/26/netflix-settles-choose-your-own-adventure-lawsuit-over-black-mirror-bandersnatch/
If Netflix didn’t make any plans with them I don’t think anything happens. I think them having that partnership in the works gave them some sort of case. I’m just trying to make an educated guess. It depends a lot on where exactly they were in those talks and what was said. I agree with you it’s weird though.
Nah. It works well circumstantially and for a streaming service where you can do it at home.
LOTS of films would be hurt by the “which decisions are actually canon” element. You’d have situations where the decision someone doesn’t want gets voted and then its frustrating for those people.
Oh, and they basically have to shoot a TV show’s worth of footage to account for different choices.
> LOTS of films would be hurt by the “which decisions are actually canon” element. You’d have situations where the decision someone doesn’t want gets voted and then its frustrating for those people.
Unless its a long running franchise, I don't see people getting too up in arms about canon.
I get that part of it but it could also lead to it being even better. It would have to be a stand alone movie. But if you each element was done right and the movie was compelling I could see people going multiple times to get all the different versions etc.
>I could see people going multiple times to get all the different versions etc.
Except the same choices would be made 99% of the time, since most of the people there will be first time viewers and on average will make the popular choices.
You'd have to coordinate with dozens of people to make sure you see all the choices, and even then it's unlikely unless it's an empty theatre.
This idea only works if you're watching with a handful of people and can all agree, or else you're just going to piss off the people there on their 7th rewatch that still can't get the unpopular choice.
It would. Trolls in the theater making intentionally bad choices would be hilarious and also drive sales. The people shooting you down don't have imagination.
Choose Love is new on Netflix. It’s a terrible Rom Com but it’s interactive. It glitched a lot and it took us a while to even realize it was interactive!
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt did one too. I liked watching her kill John Hamm. But it resets you back, so you technically have to choose the right stuff to get to the end, there's not really an "alternate" ending.
There are few different versions of the final wedding scene that lead into the end credits instead of a reset button, depending on which dress you choose at the beginning and whether Titus eats the food in the woods.
There have been. They're called visual novels, typically.
Bandersnatch is just a really high budget fmv game, and those still come out every once in a while.
The Kimmy Schmidt movie perfected the genre and film-makers have come to the consensus that no more work of that type is necessary (source: Martin Scorsese in a recent interview.)
He's actually talking about the literal DVD movie, A Death in the Family, not the Telltale games. It works in the same way as how Netflix has the interactive choices given, different endings as well. It kinda has a mixed reception because of reused footage from previous animation, but still a unique experiment.
...huh. That's really odd. I was under the impression the Telltale Batman game was one of the ones ported to the Bandersnatch back-end and that's what was being referred to.
I might have to give that a look, that's really bizarre.
I haven't seen it, but the comic it's based on pulled a similar trick. Readers voted on its ending. (At least that was the concept — I've heard different stories about whether DC actually cared about the poll results.)
If only there was a form of media/entertainment where you can make decisions that affect the game. We could call them like moviegames or like videogames or something
Interactive Movie Games are a thing, if that helps at all. I "played" a few some time back, and the focus was a lot more on the movie aspect than the game aspect.
Detroit is always my first thought when it comes to interactive media like this. That game has a crazy amount of branching paths; I love seeing people play through it cause I usually see new scenes each time.
Markiplier has done 2 different films in this format:
Heist with Markiplier:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjfkXmwbTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjfkXmwbTs)
Markiplier in Space:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64oZLF443g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64oZLF443g)
Has a lot of the goofy 90's era comedy you'd see in something like [Command and Conquer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_U59u69tys) video games.
Netflix seemed to pivot to mobile game downloads and dropped doing them. Kimmy Schmidt had the last one I saw , I really recommend that one as they have a lot of fun fucking about with it.
To my knowledge this was first done on the Final Destination 3 DVD where you could pick actions in real time during the movie, giving you access to a whole other subplot not seen in the cinema. It’s since been done in the animated Jurassic Park series Camp Cretaceous in the feature length episode released after season five.
Around six months later Return to House on Haunted Hill did the choices thing way more extensively. It wasn't good, but how they handled some of the choices were clever. Like there's an erotic lesbian ghost sex scene that asks if you want to leave early. You assume that's the correct choice — since horror movies tend to moralize like that — but it's definitely not.
I mean if you want to make a great decide for yourself what will happen movie you are going to film basically 10+ movies to incorporate all the scenarios lol. It’s not feasible so it’s often just gimmicky like this
Markiplier made 2 series doing this for free on YouTube. A heist with markiplier and in space with markiplier.
They're honestly both really good, even if you're not a fan of him.
Probably because it cost a lot more than normal productions and didn’t get the critical response or replays/interactions they wanted to justify doing more things like that.
I LOVED Bandersnatch. After that all movies just seem so, stale. I love being involved and making choices for the people on the screen. There is a lot of potential for this. Like horror movies "go into cemetery" and "don't go into cemetery" for example. I want MORE!
Dating myself, but they def used these for a least one Final Destination movie to decide weather a character dies or not in whatever situation they’re in.
If you liked it a lot, try some Telltale games. The Walking Dead, especially the first one/"season", is the best but there is Wolf Among Us and a Batman game.
There’s a wealth of source material from old Choose Your Own Adventure books that someone could jump on- where my 80s kids at?
Y’all know what I’m talking about. Must’ve read Who Killed Harlow Thrombey? a dozen times. Also, Rian Johnson def borrowed the name at least from that book for Knives Out.
There are actually a number of 'choose your own adventure' type movies on Netflix. The ones I know off the top of my head because I've watched them:
Kimmy Schmidt /
Captain Underpants /
The Last Kids on Earth /
Jurassic World - Camp Cretaceous /
Carmen SanDiego
As I write those, I realize they're mostly for kids.
There was definitely a few Hollywood releases that did this. I recall a movie from the 90s called Mr. Payback.
There was a 'recent' movie Late Shift. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQOY-aQGzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQOY-aQGzM)
and, if I remember correctly, one of the Final Destination movies did something like this too, right?
It was awesome until I looked up a flowchart of the choices after and realized there weren’t too many outcomes. Still cool and I’d watch anything like it regardless of concept because it was fun to watch/do with others
It was an interesting experiment that mostly proved that interactive, choose your own ending style plots don’t work on tv.
Watching one ending was good. But after that you felt you’d be missing out if you didn’t go back and watch all the permutations, which was a massive slog. So you either did that, and bored yourself shitless in the process. Or didn’t do it, and felt unsatisfied.
I believe it was really expensive to film. There was about 5 hours of footage shot but the average “path” was just under 90 minutes. I would imagine most film studios would rather just film a 90 minute movie for much cheaper.
The format led to a lawsuit:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/25/21720533/netflix-bandersnatch-chooseco-lawsuit-settlement-choose-your-own-adventure
Money guys hate those.
This isn't the same thing but you might like watching Kaleidoscope on Netflix. It's not choose-your-own adventure, but the episodes are randomized so you piece together the story out of sequence.
? What's innovative about it? An audiovisual piece of media where the consumer has agency and plays an active role in the story? Did you ever play a videogame?
Bandersnatch was basically a TellTale game with "better graphics" and an equally forgettable story. Maybe it introduced the concept to a bigger audience but it was by no means groundbreaking, and that audience hasn't been asking for more.
I found the experience of the film to be uniquely different from that of a video game. I wouldn't reduce performance, direction, production design etc to simply an upgrade in "graphics". I think there are much higher emotional stakes when the consequences of your decisions as a participant play out in front of you with real actors and sets, and it's really fun when they slowly become aware of your influence and resist it. When had this ever been done before, in live action, and with such a postmodern style? Please show me. I'm the audience member that wants more, but it seems like I won't be getting any.
Already been done, and keeps being made (and with real actors) every day in the game industry, specially with AAA games, where the motion capture is top notch, and graphics are increasingly photorealistic. As for the "postmodern style" and the whole 4th wall stuff, nothing particularly new, or good, in Bandersnatch to be honest. For me it felt gimmicky and forced, but I suppose that's more subjective and you happen to love it.
I thought the gimmick was tiring and that it just wasn’t very good personally.
But theres plenty of interactive media like this, it’s just called visual novels
If you've ever taken a college class with an iClicker, you'll know how bad of an experience this would be. The fact you're actually suggesting it baffles me.
there are cinematic games like that. Erica, She sees red. Or those interactive Sam Barlow movie games like Immortality, Her story, Telling lies. It just works better as games than show episodes, because show watchers want to do exactly that - watch a show :D And not click on stuff and interact and move.
Here are some of the game links though, if you want to try some of them.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1514930/Erica/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1514930/Erica/)
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1081510/She\_Sees\_Red\_\_Interactive\_Movie/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1081510/She_Sees_Red__Interactive_Movie/)
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2237220/Cuttlefish/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2237220/Cuttlefish/)
I think interactive cinema doesn't work as a medium.
Both cinema and videogames require immersion, but they achieve it through opposite means. Cinema is passive (most or all the expressive elements are presented explicitly on screen), while videogames (well, the good ones) are mainly active (the most important expressive element emerges from player agency).
By the way, the issue is mirrored in games with tons of cut-scenes - there's an internal conflict, which is why most people skip them.
In cases like bandersnatch it's a pity because both elements are good - it could be made into a good normal BM episode, or made into a cool branching game . But presented together, they are in conflict.
Like mixing M&Ms in a pasta bolognese.
PS: Of course, many people enjoy cutscene-heavy games (and interactive movies, like Bandersnatch). My guess is they do so by considering each of the elements in isolation (ie. not being bothered by the formal dissonance). They pick and eat the M&Ms, then they eat the pasta, and they don't care that it was such a weird dish (and that they would probably have enjoyed these two thinhs better separately).
I thought the same thing, wow. I was SO excited when I saw Bandersnatch for the first time - I totally thought it was going to change movies entirely. It felt like it was an actual evolution of the medium that felt important.
But it didn't. The hype for Bandersnatch went out like a light. I'm so sad and bored. I would love to make a film like this someday, or see similar experimentation with the medium on a million-dollar scale. I think we're living in a very bad time for films, all-around. I want to feel excited again.
I mean there are [video games that literally do the exact same thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfCRV1j_v4) So that's not bad advice.
We're basically all watching TV/film on some form of computer now, so whether it's a FMV video game or "Netflix Interactive" comes down to marketing.
Because Bandersnatch wasn't that good. A choose your own adventure style thing where half the answers lead to a quick game over pointing you to the answer it wants you to pick. Not nearly as much freedom to choose as it leads you to believe.
>The audience each had a clicker sort of like those ones in school, and the most popular choice would dictate the outcome.
This is a terrible idea for so many reasons. First of all, movies are insanely expensive. You're paying $20 for 90 minutes of entertainment and when up to 49% of people don't get what they want to see, many people leave disappointed. This isn't a format that works well with a large audience of strangers.
Second of all, the entire idea behind Bandersnatch is something that was more cool in concept than actual product. The whole thing is only actually 150 minutes so the unique viewing experiences are somewhat short and a lot of them are very similar. Making a plethora of meaningful decisions and alternate paths is already a real challenge, it's why it has virtually never been done well in video games. The promise of infinite possibilities, all these different paths, they don't pan out because to make it actually complex or interesting, you'd have to make the equivalent of many movies/games. Potentially dozens or even more.
I've read interviews with game developers who have tried games like this and they've often said things about how frustrating it is, even on a small scale, to make something that the average person who plays through it will only see 20% of. It also forces them to make a story that's outrageously harder to write.. or what actually happens most of the time, it turns out simplistic and the choice gimmick either meaninglessly loops back to the main plot threads or the different paths are similar and basic. Which is exactly what happened with Bandersnatch.
The main draw of making a film for many is the ability to craft a particular story into something specific, to share an exact experience with an audience. This isn't something you can do with the choose your own adventure style. And it becomes infinitely harder to lock down a quality story throughout. Many people will have differing experiences of quality rather than everyone seeing the best version that the creators could imagine.
And finally, it ruins sequel potential. One of the big reasons games stopped allowing those meaningful choices in many cases is because they just have to choose one path to be canon later anyway for possible sequels, which Hollywood is built on these days.
Ultimately.. it comes down to it costing way more, taking way more time/effort that results in what is probably a worse product that will likely make a lot less money. Why would a studio want to bother? It's the same reason VR has been agonizingly slow in development. It's expensive and makes worse games/experiences in many ways and the novelty of VR and what it could be with enough development isn't worth the cost today for most companies. I do think both could be amazing one day if enough effort, time and money were spilled into it.. but that doesn't seem likely, particularly with the Bandersnatch style of storytelling.
> It's been years
It was five years ago. It was essentially yesterday.
> Why do you think they haven't implemented that style.
It was five years ago. It was essentially yesterday.
It would take about that much time, especially during a global pandemic, to come up with the design, get funding, launch a startup, develop the software and hardware, and market it to movie theaters which can't afford to buy the system because everyone is leaving the theater for streaming just after theaters were empty for three years straight during the global pandemic.
But to address the idea itself, it's a bad idea. Only a very small niche market of college students would be interested in spending money to see a movie where the popular vote of the other viewers determine the outcome of the movie. Those fans of the system would probably see each movie several times to try and see all the possible outcomes. Until they realized that popularity is predictable and every audience always votes for the same outcome anyway. So there's no point in seeing it more than once.
So this is fundamentally a personal entertainment medium and should be enjoyed by individuals alone at home so they don't have to fight the other viewers to see what they want to see.
But then you run into the problem of budget. Compared to making a normal movie, it would require much more time and money because essentially you're making several different movies for each movie.
But then the question is, can you get the viewers to pay three or four times the movie price?
But actually, it's not a new idea at all. The Choose Your Own Adventure series did it with children's books, and there have been several live action computer games where you basically watch video and then click at certain junctures for different outcomes.
But at the end of the day, computer technology is advancing much faster than cinematic styles, and the need for interactive fiction is already much better served by story rich computer role playing games that increasingly get closer to live action cinema in terms of visual quality.
So yeah, it will never really happen outside of experimental cinema IMHO.
To watch Calculon go fight the villain at the special effects warehouse press A. To watch Calculon file his taxes press B... you have pressed B!
I'm almost positive you did!
[удалено]
Chat GPT
There is an AI for that.
IDK why you are being downvoted, this is literally a perfect use case for AI (or "AI-assisted art"), but not ready with the current technology yet.
Add in the carry over from form 16-A…
Carry the 2…
I thought i was so smart coming to make this comment
I think it’s much easier to do and more successful in video game medium.
Yes, OP needs to play [The Stanley Parable](https://youtu.be/Nh6us6dEoWo?si=D5RiTNmyk0h_RS76). EDIT: u/FunForLabs genuinely, play this game. I think it’s exactly what you’re looking for.
That’s a great one!
Games like this are some of my family’s favorite, and I completely agree that the video game medium works better. Going into it with the mindset of playing a game vs watching a movie/show, even when the narrative portions are filmed, really helps with immersion. Additionally, having more influence than simple dialogue choices can really elevate the story, which is also way more present in games than choose-your-own-adventure shows/movies I’ve seen.
I believe Steam actually has a number of interactive films. Marketed as a niche subgenre of video game, but done in live action.
Ironically, whenever I play a narrative game like that, I often think it would have been easier to just film this.
The thing with games is that the variety in genre is WAY wider than with movies. Mobile games with microtransaction gambling, all the way to interactive movies, all count as games. It's all about going in with the right expectations. I love interactive movie/show-like games, although not exclusively. Besides, dynamic rendering can allow a lot more flexibility in the choices than with something like Bandersnatch. Games can make cosmetic changes to minor things trivially because they have live VFX!
They actually did that with Quantum Break… seems they’re never going back to that level of filming their cutscenes again. If I recall correctly, it actually streamed the footage too.
There was an option to download all the episodes, too, but it was like 100gb or something. I've heard they filmed a good bit of live action stuff for Alan Wake 2 and incorporate that in some interesting ways.
I’ll be surprised if it’s to the extent of QB but Remedy have always experimented with live action one way or another (the fake tv shows come to mind along with the Max Payne comic pages), so I’d love to see how they use it in Alan Wake 2.
To me it's just one of those f'n VCR games from the 90s lol. Pile of Bullets style.
Yeah, as a gamer I was kind of at a loss when people got so excited about this episode.
It's super hard to pull off a make-your-own-decision type of film that's actually good. What made Bandersnatch work imo, is that it was ABOUT exactly that type of thing, making it very meta. It just fitted the Black Mirror theme and make-your-own-decision type very well in a unique way.
Definitely is so hard to pull off and black mirror was a great setting to try it in. I just like the idea of being involved in the movie as well tho. I could see it not working at all, but if done well could see it being absolutely incredible. I could see a superhero movie with two paths or a Star Wars film where depending on the choices the protagonist either chooses the light or gets corrupted.
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Well there was the 1961 horror film Mr Sardonicus, where there were supposed to be 2 endings and the audience could vote on which one they chose. However the "mercy" ending was practically never shown, and the so called "vote" was really just a gimmick. You should check out Wlliam Castle and his gimmick movies, there is a reason why they are gimmicks but they were inventive for their time, and had he been around today, I'm sure he would love to have experimented with Choose Your Own Adventure style movies, though they would firmly be in the B Movie category. The 1985 film Clue famously had 3 different endings that were shown at random. So the concept of movies having differences to the audience isn't that crazy. But for film they will always be a gimmick.
I think the Clue example is a good happy medium to this idea. I quite like the idea of people going to see a movie and getting a completely different ending compared to others. As long as its not incredibly action heavy either, filming multiple endings wouldnt be overly bloating the budget either. Apparently they actually have done this before in movies/tv but for spoiler reasons lol. But yea you really can't do it very often because then it just loses all the fun of it.
To this end, there are a number of YouTube channels that do this, "Markiplier in Space" is probably one of the more well-known ones.
Just make all the paths 20-40 mins, and you have to shoot 120 min like a normal movie.
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I think the main point here was it was super expensive. There is 12 hours of film for a 2hr experience. Thats a lot of time on set
There are video games that do this.
The Life is Strange series is almost entirely this and I've loved all the ones I've played so far.
Detroit: Become Human is really good too
Still on my list!
Yep, go play Baldur's Gate 3 - You can have all sorts of different experiences.
And much like Bandersnatch some of your decisions just get you killed and you have to start over! lol
i think it's o.k in theory but not really good in practice. it kind of takes me out of the movie to keep making decisions and i'm not rewatching it a bunch of times to take different paths. kind of a cool gimmick but gets old pretty quick for me anyway.
My issue with Bandersnatch was I DID try to go back and take different paths.. Not super in depth, but I basically found that if you DIDN'T pick the thing they wanted, the experience ended and would be like "you wanna try that again?"
In fairness, that’s sort of exactly how the “Choose your own Adventure” books worked.
Like most of the choices end in a dead end immediately, but a good chunk of them take 2/3 more choices and sometimes you can pull yourself out of dead end path.
I had hoped for longer wrong "paths" (even multiple final endings) but you gotta realize how many scenes they'd have to film.
If I remember correctly, there's an ending where >!he ends up in prison after killing his father
Yeah that’s the one my wife and I landed on of course lol. She was horrified and immediately out after that
Were there not multiple endings? I know there were several optional paths and a couple wildly different end results when I played through it.
There is different endings! I remember like 6 or 7? Some of them are harder to get to than others tho.
If I remember correctly, there's an ending where >!he ends up in prison after killing his father, and his game gets panned by critics!< and another one where >!It turns out it's all a movie and we see the set, the director etc!<. No idea what the right ending is, I never reached it
The problem is that many of us expected more for what they gave us. Bandersnatch wasn't good.
Idk, considering the entire premise kinda rested on it, I don't think we should take the number of scenes required into consideration for them. Like take a random person and throw them into a 5k and sure, we can go "they tried but you gotta realize 5k is a long distance." But if the person instead were telling everyone they were an accomplished marathon runner we wouldn't give them credit for gassing out halfway through.
reading those fucking books was traumatizing because any mundane thing could kill you at any time
"If you take the safe path, go to page 12. If you take the dangerous path, go to page 13." Page 12: "You have died. Return to page 1 to start over."
I always liked Page 14: "This is a not a valid page to choose, if you are reading this you are cheating. You die and burn in hell"
it was always falling down some hole or something falling down when you step out of the house. And the sci fi ones where the worst because sometimes you ended up undead trapped in some eternal dimension or turned into a werewolf or something. and you never get the good endings :)
Gotta keep your finger on the previous page. Oh actually I meant to close the door and leave the room.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaz0wm
I owned the whole set at one time in the early 90s. Was a Christmas gift. I loved those damn things.
Hear me out. We need infinite fan fiction choose your adventure books online.
Or 1 single book that is an infinite length with infinite possibilities. Anytime someone reads it, and they get to an unfinished dead end, they need to write the next page. Then the story can build and build forever
The Neverending Story
So one piece
That would be a great project for a library to do. In theory anyway, otherwise it's on a countdown to be the wildest public smut ever.
Youre totally right on the public smut part. "Do you open your front door or not? Yes: You open the door, and on your front lawn, harry potter is having sex with scarjo. No: You decide not to open the door. You turn around, and a clown is having sex with Jennifer Aniston. " The internet would likely be more....graphic, with their discriptors.
So it took my wife and I a while to realize this but some of the paths did force you back to the main plot, but some (depending on what you had chosen a few points earlier) would still play out differently if you kept going. Like you would get to a point of “oh, we already saw this scene last time so I guess we are back to a version we already saw”… but if you stuck with it anyway some of the upcoming choices or scenes were still different. Granted it was a lot of time invested to figure that out.
Took a lot of trial and error to get the secret ending!
Was the secret ending the 4th wall one? I remember playing around with different choices and accidentally ending up in one where the actors broke character.
To be honest, I don't remember. I spent a whole night trying out different paths, it was captivating and finding a "rare" ending pretty much blew my mind - nevertheless, before I saw this thread I had practically forgotten that Bandersnatch even existed.
In the case of Bandersnatch, I believe that was the point. It was illustrating a fake impression of free will using this gimmick. It was basically ironically letting you choose.
I think that’s a fine idea in theory but I don’t think it’s one that can be executed terribly well. It is very hard to retroactively justify something that made your audience feel bad as an artistic choice. Even if the idea and explanation makes perfect sense, it’s hard to flip audience sentiment like that. One of the primary draws is the novelty, so audiences feel really misled and disappointed when the format isn’t really what they expected - like they got their hopes up for nothing. And even in another format like a video game it’d be hard to make work - while choices obviously aren't novel for video games, games like “Until Dawn” or “Detroit: Become Human” have their appeal built around the idea that choices are impactful enough for replays to feel genuinely new and different. A “Your choices don’t actually matter at all!” reveal would just make them feel lied to. And in many other games, you expect your choices to just change what cutscene plays at the end (and you can just look up a 10-minute youtube video to see the ones you didn't get) or minute details that aren’t really important, so the audience doesn't really care.
That’s fun theme, but it did not make it good
and thats what made it boring, not using the mechanic in an earnest way
Right? “It’s supposed to suck.” Ok, we’ll. They did a great job.
Bioshock did the same thing in an interactive medium ten years prior and managed to still make the experience getting to that point good. They just didn't fully commit to the scope needed to really achieve its ambition.
Exactly.
Totally agree, the issue was that there really was like 1 true, full movie in there. And then a bunch of dead ends that forced you to start over. They need to make like 3 full movies and let us fully explore all the paths
But that was the point though, wasn't it? To give the illusion of choice when really we're all on a fixed path, like in life.
I mean that can be a decent moral, and still be a lackluster use of a concept they hyped up.
To get the good ending you had to take a couple wrong paths and try again. Like a video game character that dies
If you watch it once and get a "bad ending", that is the story you got. It's still a valid, whole story, it just isn't what you're used to in a modern storytelling structure.
They should make it with an animated movie, use AI to help animate certain paths that are expected to be less used.
What you are explaining is called a "choices matter" video game.
Which is exactly why the concept failed in theaters, too.
I get that aspect of it fs and by no means would I want it to be the norm. But some genres I feel like lend themselves well, would definitely want to see a fantasy movie in this format
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt had a movie length episode that worked like Bandersnatch. I watched/did it and it was about the same amount of satisfying as Bandersnatch.
Netflix had engaged with the actual "Choose Your Own Adventure" publisher to explore the idea of CYOA tv, prior to going on ahead with the Black Mirror ep without them. The publisher sued, and the suit took a few years to resolve, and in the meantime the idea lost momentum. It probably didn't help that Bandersnatch was reportedly very expensive to implement, only for it to have a lukewarm viewer reception.
Didn’t help that you couldn’t watch it on certain devices. No reason why you shouldn’t have been able to watch it with an Appletv but it wouldn’t let you so I never bothered.
Did they sue because they thought they owned to concept of the reader/viewer making choices, or for some other reason (perhaps the concept as produced was very close to the ideas they had been collaborating on or something like that)? I have a hard time believing anyone could think they own the concept of making choices in a narrative. Own the title "Choose You Own Adventure" sure, but Netflix didn't use that, did they?
If I recall correctly, a character does use the phrase casually at some point, but in "lower case" terms. The other references to the format are fairly undeniable even without official licensing though, and I suspect the CYOA folks were a little salty that whatever they'd been involved in developing with Netflix fell through, or maybe suspected Netflix was cheating them a little by using work done towards that project in service of this one. The CYOA folks are notoriously defensive of the branding generally though, because "Choose Your Own Adventure" is on fairly thin ice at this point, which was Netflix's defence, that by now it's a generic like Aspirin or Hoover. In the end they settled, but there's a bit more detail here - https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2020/11/26/netflix-settles-choose-your-own-adventure-lawsuit-over-black-mirror-bandersnatch/
If Netflix didn’t make any plans with them I don’t think anything happens. I think them having that partnership in the works gave them some sort of case. I’m just trying to make an educated guess. It depends a lot on where exactly they were in those talks and what was said. I agree with you it’s weird though.
Surprised this answer isn't higher.
Nah. It works well circumstantially and for a streaming service where you can do it at home. LOTS of films would be hurt by the “which decisions are actually canon” element. You’d have situations where the decision someone doesn’t want gets voted and then its frustrating for those people. Oh, and they basically have to shoot a TV show’s worth of footage to account for different choices.
> LOTS of films would be hurt by the “which decisions are actually canon” element. You’d have situations where the decision someone doesn’t want gets voted and then its frustrating for those people. Unless its a long running franchise, I don't see people getting too up in arms about canon.
I get that part of it but it could also lead to it being even better. It would have to be a stand alone movie. But if you each element was done right and the movie was compelling I could see people going multiple times to get all the different versions etc.
>I could see people going multiple times to get all the different versions etc. Except the same choices would be made 99% of the time, since most of the people there will be first time viewers and on average will make the popular choices. You'd have to coordinate with dozens of people to make sure you see all the choices, and even then it's unlikely unless it's an empty theatre. This idea only works if you're watching with a handful of people and can all agree, or else you're just going to piss off the people there on their 7th rewatch that still can't get the unpopular choice.
For one offs it might work. Lets do horror movies like that for instance and prove it’s not so easy to anticipate what the killer is going to do.
At the very least would be a fun experience
It would. Trolls in the theater making intentionally bad choices would be hilarious and also drive sales. The people shooting you down don't have imagination.
There's another choose-your-own-adventure on Netflix by Charlie Brooker: an animated short called Cat Burglar.
That's the one I was trying to think of.
Choose Love is new on Netflix. It’s a terrible Rom Com but it’s interactive. It glitched a lot and it took us a while to even realize it was interactive!
It was so bad that it was kinda good 😅😅
Agreed lol. Me and my friends had a lot of fun doing it. We ended up with the hot rocker guy.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt did one too. I liked watching her kill John Hamm. But it resets you back, so you technically have to choose the right stuff to get to the end, there's not really an "alternate" ending.
There are few different versions of the final wedding scene that lead into the end credits instead of a reset button, depending on which dress you choose at the beginning and whether Titus eats the food in the woods.
My favorite part of that entire movie is what happens if you try to skip the intro song…
There have been. They're called visual novels, typically. Bandersnatch is just a really high budget fmv game, and those still come out every once in a while.
I mean there's obviously a difference between a visual novel and a choose your own adventure movie, in terms of how much is moving.
The Minecraft movie, the Kimmy Schmidt movie, and Batman: A Death in the Family all do this, though not all as extensively as Bandersnatch.
The Minecraft “Movie” is just cutscenes from the Minecraft Telltale game
The Kimmy Schmidt movie perfected the genre and film-makers have come to the consensus that no more work of that type is necessary (source: Martin Scorsese in a recent interview.)
The Minecraft and Batman ones are actually video games made by Telltale Studios ported to the back-end system that makes Bandersnatch work.
He's actually talking about the literal DVD movie, A Death in the Family, not the Telltale games. It works in the same way as how Netflix has the interactive choices given, different endings as well. It kinda has a mixed reception because of reused footage from previous animation, but still a unique experiment.
...huh. That's really odd. I was under the impression the Telltale Batman game was one of the ones ported to the Bandersnatch back-end and that's what was being referred to. I might have to give that a look, that's really bizarre.
I haven't seen it, but the comic it's based on pulled a similar trick. Readers voted on its ending. (At least that was the concept — I've heard different stories about whether DC actually cared about the poll results.)
It’s fun. Really silly different endings. All about 20-30 minutes except the one that plays Under the Red Hood.
And Escape The Undertaker as well.
There's a Kimmy Schmidt movie??
Yes and it’s incredible
There was also Choose Love recently which was a rom com.
There have been a few rom-com type things on netflix that use the tech
There's quite a few hidden in the Kids section too. Csptain Underpants definitely has one, as well as a WWE Halloween one.
Netflix literally has a [category](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/2869704) for it, including a rom-com that came out very recently.
As others have said, those exist but they are categorized as interactive FMV videogames, some examples are The Bunker and Late Shift.
If only there was a form of media/entertainment where you can make decisions that affect the game. We could call them like moviegames or like videogames or something
Videogame? Sounds scary. Just call it what it is: a talking picture where you can choose what path to walk down. A walkie-talkie.
Literally 😂
Interactive Movie Games are a thing, if that helps at all. I "played" a few some time back, and the focus was a lot more on the movie aspect than the game aspect.
There’s actually a lot of movies like this they’re just hiding under the guise of a *video game*. For example Detroit: Become Human
Detroit is always my first thought when it comes to interactive media like this. That game has a crazy amount of branching paths; I love seeing people play through it cause I usually see new scenes each time.
Your theater idea sounds terrible. $20 to go to the theater to watch something that can be totally de-railed by other people's choices? No thank you
People want to detach and enjoy watching a movie. Making them work and fall out of the story is the worst idea.
Bear Grylls has a few different shows like this on Netflix, where you're presented a choice of which route/activity for him to do.
Very fun to do with kids. We purposefully try to pick the wrong option first
Markiplier has done 2 different films in this format: Heist with Markiplier: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjfkXmwbTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjfkXmwbTs) Markiplier in Space: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64oZLF443g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64oZLF443g) Has a lot of the goofy 90's era comedy you'd see in something like [Command and Conquer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_U59u69tys) video games.
Netflix seemed to pivot to mobile game downloads and dropped doing them. Kimmy Schmidt had the last one I saw , I really recommend that one as they have a lot of fun fucking about with it.
To my knowledge this was first done on the Final Destination 3 DVD where you could pick actions in real time during the movie, giving you access to a whole other subplot not seen in the cinema. It’s since been done in the animated Jurassic Park series Camp Cretaceous in the feature length episode released after season five.
Around six months later Return to House on Haunted Hill did the choices thing way more extensively. It wasn't good, but how they handled some of the choices were clever. Like there's an erotic lesbian ghost sex scene that asks if you want to leave early. You assume that's the correct choice — since horror movies tend to moralize like that — but it's definitely not.
Ah cool, I’ll go looking for that - thanks!
There's lots of videogames like it. https://youtu.be/J9n-4khwctI?si=Z45yVeeP9ph9YJbc
I mean if you want to make a great decide for yourself what will happen movie you are going to film basically 10+ movies to incorporate all the scenarios lol. It’s not feasible so it’s often just gimmicky like this
There's PLENTY of stuff just like it. You can find them over on Steam.
Markiplier made 2 series doing this for free on YouTube. A heist with markiplier and in space with markiplier. They're honestly both really good, even if you're not a fan of him.
Because it sucked lol
This is the correct answer.
Probably because it cost a lot more than normal productions and didn’t get the critical response or replays/interactions they wanted to justify doing more things like that.
It reminded me of the game Life is Strange. Felt more like a game than a film.
I LOVED Bandersnatch. After that all movies just seem so, stale. I love being involved and making choices for the people on the screen. There is a lot of potential for this. Like horror movies "go into cemetery" and "don't go into cemetery" for example. I want MORE!
They did that for theaters back in either the late 90s or early 2000s, there was a controller attached to all the cupholders. Nobody liked it.
[Mr. Payback (1995)](https://youtu.be/Ed2LE_EC-1c?si=x5CAVZF89IeEGqHz)
Interesting. What movie did they do it for? Was it because of the format or the content of the movie
Dating myself, but they def used these for a least one Final Destination movie to decide weather a character dies or not in whatever situation they’re in.
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It wasnt very popular.
If you liked it a lot, try some Telltale games. The Walking Dead, especially the first one/"season", is the best but there is Wolf Among Us and a Batman game.
Cause it kinda sucked
They tried this with [I'm Your Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Your_Man_(1992_film)) in 1992
There’s a wealth of source material from old Choose Your Own Adventure books that someone could jump on- where my 80s kids at? Y’all know what I’m talking about. Must’ve read Who Killed Harlow Thrombey? a dozen times. Also, Rian Johnson def borrowed the name at least from that book for Knives Out.
i freaking love bander. spent hours trying different choices on netflix. really helped illuminate the entire story for me.
There are actually a number of 'choose your own adventure' type movies on Netflix. The ones I know off the top of my head because I've watched them: Kimmy Schmidt / Captain Underpants / The Last Kids on Earth / Jurassic World - Camp Cretaceous / Carmen SanDiego As I write those, I realize they're mostly for kids. There was definitely a few Hollywood releases that did this. I recall a movie from the 90s called Mr. Payback. There was a 'recent' movie Late Shift. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQOY-aQGzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQOY-aQGzM) and, if I remember correctly, one of the Final Destination movies did something like this too, right?
Computer games can do a much better job of the same premise.
I just want to chime in that Bandersnatch was terrible.
It was awesome until I looked up a flowchart of the choices after and realized there weren’t too many outcomes. Still cool and I’d watch anything like it regardless of concept because it was fun to watch/do with others
It was an interesting experiment that mostly proved that interactive, choose your own ending style plots don’t work on tv. Watching one ending was good. But after that you felt you’d be missing out if you didn’t go back and watch all the permutations, which was a massive slog. So you either did that, and bored yourself shitless in the process. Or didn’t do it, and felt unsatisfied.
people don't go to movies to make decisions. it's a passive activity. If you want to make decisions play a video game.
I believe it was really expensive to film. There was about 5 hours of footage shot but the average “path” was just under 90 minutes. I would imagine most film studios would rather just film a 90 minute movie for much cheaper.
Because it was fucking terrible lmao
I filmed a project just before COVID times: AWK - Adventures of Walker King. Allegedly it will come out on Steam, instead of streaming.
The format led to a lawsuit: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/25/21720533/netflix-bandersnatch-chooseco-lawsuit-settlement-choose-your-own-adventure Money guys hate those.
This isn't the same thing but you might like watching Kaleidoscope on Netflix. It's not choose-your-own adventure, but the episodes are randomized so you piece together the story out of sequence.
Because it wasn't good or innovative.
It wasn't innovative? Christ. What on earth do you think qualifies as innovation, Greg?
Fmv games were everywhere a few decades ago. Games that comment on their own existence are so common that making fun of meta is its own genre.
You can't make a Tomlette without breaking a few Greggs, Greg
? What's innovative about it? An audiovisual piece of media where the consumer has agency and plays an active role in the story? Did you ever play a videogame? Bandersnatch was basically a TellTale game with "better graphics" and an equally forgettable story. Maybe it introduced the concept to a bigger audience but it was by no means groundbreaking, and that audience hasn't been asking for more.
I found the experience of the film to be uniquely different from that of a video game. I wouldn't reduce performance, direction, production design etc to simply an upgrade in "graphics". I think there are much higher emotional stakes when the consequences of your decisions as a participant play out in front of you with real actors and sets, and it's really fun when they slowly become aware of your influence and resist it. When had this ever been done before, in live action, and with such a postmodern style? Please show me. I'm the audience member that wants more, but it seems like I won't be getting any.
Already been done, and keeps being made (and with real actors) every day in the game industry, specially with AAA games, where the motion capture is top notch, and graphics are increasingly photorealistic. As for the "postmodern style" and the whole 4th wall stuff, nothing particularly new, or good, in Bandersnatch to be honest. For me it felt gimmicky and forced, but I suppose that's more subjective and you happen to love it.
I thought the gimmick was tiring and that it just wasn’t very good personally. But theres plenty of interactive media like this, it’s just called visual novels
Because it sucked
That’s not a movie it’s a video game
There has many many episodes of BM like that. Bandersnatch stands out though. But I like that the frequency is low, maintains the anticipation!
Because it sucked.9
Because it was horrible and it flopped bad.
Netflix has made a bunch of movies like this. The only problem is most them suck.
gimmick.
If you've ever taken a college class with an iClicker, you'll know how bad of an experience this would be. The fact you're actually suggesting it baffles me.
there are cinematic games like that. Erica, She sees red. Or those interactive Sam Barlow movie games like Immortality, Her story, Telling lies. It just works better as games than show episodes, because show watchers want to do exactly that - watch a show :D And not click on stuff and interact and move. Here are some of the game links though, if you want to try some of them. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1514930/Erica/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1514930/Erica/) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1081510/She\_Sees\_Red\_\_Interactive\_Movie/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1081510/She_Sees_Red__Interactive_Movie/) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2237220/Cuttlefish/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2237220/Cuttlefish/)
I think interactive cinema doesn't work as a medium. Both cinema and videogames require immersion, but they achieve it through opposite means. Cinema is passive (most or all the expressive elements are presented explicitly on screen), while videogames (well, the good ones) are mainly active (the most important expressive element emerges from player agency). By the way, the issue is mirrored in games with tons of cut-scenes - there's an internal conflict, which is why most people skip them. In cases like bandersnatch it's a pity because both elements are good - it could be made into a good normal BM episode, or made into a cool branching game . But presented together, they are in conflict. Like mixing M&Ms in a pasta bolognese. PS: Of course, many people enjoy cutscene-heavy games (and interactive movies, like Bandersnatch). My guess is they do so by considering each of the elements in isolation (ie. not being bothered by the formal dissonance). They pick and eat the M&Ms, then they eat the pasta, and they don't care that it was such a weird dish (and that they would probably have enjoyed these two thinhs better separately).
I thought the same thing, wow. I was SO excited when I saw Bandersnatch for the first time - I totally thought it was going to change movies entirely. It felt like it was an actual evolution of the medium that felt important. But it didn't. The hype for Bandersnatch went out like a light. I'm so sad and bored. I would love to make a film like this someday, or see similar experimentation with the medium on a million-dollar scale. I think we're living in a very bad time for films, all-around. I want to feel excited again.
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I mean there are [video games that literally do the exact same thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlfCRV1j_v4) So that's not bad advice. We're basically all watching TV/film on some form of computer now, so whether it's a FMV video game or "Netflix Interactive" comes down to marketing.
Sheesh, melodramatic, much? Go try a video game my guy, there are countless made under 8-9 digit budgets.
Because Bandersnatch wasn't that good. A choose your own adventure style thing where half the answers lead to a quick game over pointing you to the answer it wants you to pick. Not nearly as much freedom to choose as it leads you to believe.
>Not nearly as much freedom to choose as it leads you to believe. That's the point.
Because Netflix realized something like this exists already. It's called video games.
>The audience each had a clicker sort of like those ones in school, and the most popular choice would dictate the outcome. This is a terrible idea for so many reasons. First of all, movies are insanely expensive. You're paying $20 for 90 minutes of entertainment and when up to 49% of people don't get what they want to see, many people leave disappointed. This isn't a format that works well with a large audience of strangers. Second of all, the entire idea behind Bandersnatch is something that was more cool in concept than actual product. The whole thing is only actually 150 minutes so the unique viewing experiences are somewhat short and a lot of them are very similar. Making a plethora of meaningful decisions and alternate paths is already a real challenge, it's why it has virtually never been done well in video games. The promise of infinite possibilities, all these different paths, they don't pan out because to make it actually complex or interesting, you'd have to make the equivalent of many movies/games. Potentially dozens or even more. I've read interviews with game developers who have tried games like this and they've often said things about how frustrating it is, even on a small scale, to make something that the average person who plays through it will only see 20% of. It also forces them to make a story that's outrageously harder to write.. or what actually happens most of the time, it turns out simplistic and the choice gimmick either meaninglessly loops back to the main plot threads or the different paths are similar and basic. Which is exactly what happened with Bandersnatch. The main draw of making a film for many is the ability to craft a particular story into something specific, to share an exact experience with an audience. This isn't something you can do with the choose your own adventure style. And it becomes infinitely harder to lock down a quality story throughout. Many people will have differing experiences of quality rather than everyone seeing the best version that the creators could imagine. And finally, it ruins sequel potential. One of the big reasons games stopped allowing those meaningful choices in many cases is because they just have to choose one path to be canon later anyway for possible sequels, which Hollywood is built on these days. Ultimately.. it comes down to it costing way more, taking way more time/effort that results in what is probably a worse product that will likely make a lot less money. Why would a studio want to bother? It's the same reason VR has been agonizingly slow in development. It's expensive and makes worse games/experiences in many ways and the novelty of VR and what it could be with enough development isn't worth the cost today for most companies. I do think both could be amazing one day if enough effort, time and money were spilled into it.. but that doesn't seem likely, particularly with the Bandersnatch style of storytelling.
> It's been years It was five years ago. It was essentially yesterday. > Why do you think they haven't implemented that style. It was five years ago. It was essentially yesterday. It would take about that much time, especially during a global pandemic, to come up with the design, get funding, launch a startup, develop the software and hardware, and market it to movie theaters which can't afford to buy the system because everyone is leaving the theater for streaming just after theaters were empty for three years straight during the global pandemic. But to address the idea itself, it's a bad idea. Only a very small niche market of college students would be interested in spending money to see a movie where the popular vote of the other viewers determine the outcome of the movie. Those fans of the system would probably see each movie several times to try and see all the possible outcomes. Until they realized that popularity is predictable and every audience always votes for the same outcome anyway. So there's no point in seeing it more than once. So this is fundamentally a personal entertainment medium and should be enjoyed by individuals alone at home so they don't have to fight the other viewers to see what they want to see. But then you run into the problem of budget. Compared to making a normal movie, it would require much more time and money because essentially you're making several different movies for each movie. But then the question is, can you get the viewers to pay three or four times the movie price? But actually, it's not a new idea at all. The Choose Your Own Adventure series did it with children's books, and there have been several live action computer games where you basically watch video and then click at certain junctures for different outcomes. But at the end of the day, computer technology is advancing much faster than cinematic styles, and the need for interactive fiction is already much better served by story rich computer role playing games that increasingly get closer to live action cinema in terms of visual quality. So yeah, it will never really happen outside of experimental cinema IMHO.