Narrative formula through the geography of transformers: Age of extinction

In 2005 a screenwriting book was published showing what was already known: Most Hollywood movies are the same. What separated this book, Blake Snyder's Save the Cat, from its predecessors, was the absolute specificity of Snyder's formula, as well as its widespread adoption by the film industry. Rather than providing general advice on how to develop a unique and innovative three-act story, Snyder constructed a precise formula of 15 "beats, "or specific events, that not only must happen but that must happen on the same page of every script. This formula, known as "Save the Cat, "has now become synonymous with Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. Similar to the introduction of continuity editing to filmmaking at the beginning of cinema's history, this formula prefigures the scope of possibility within which filmmaking can operate, subconsciously training viewers with each subsequent movie what to expect and when. "Save the Cat" has become cinema's lingua franca, or common language, allowing Hollywood to transcend international cultural and linguistic differences. This lingua franca of the silver screen has never been more vital to Hollywood's success: With the turn of the new millennium, international ticket sales-especially in the everexpanding markets of China, Russia, and Brazil-dominate American box office revenues. Of note, these new foreign markets are not buying tickets for all types of American films, but are mainly focusing on spectacle-driven action and science fiction movies in 3D and IMAX formats. To understand the role of Hollywood's lingua franca on the industry's global expansion or, rather, the effect that global expansion is having on the types of narratives that Hollywood producers are interested in making, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, a recent blockbuster that peaked in China, is used here as a case study. Through the use of this case study, the application of the Save the Cat formula is demonstrated and the role that geography plays within its beats is noted. Through this analysis it is easy to see how Save the Cat works as an architecture through which Hollywood is able to construct a lingua franca that, in this case, reaches US, Chinese, and international filmgoers the world over.