What plots are obsolete?

[FaxModem1]

One of my favorite films, It Happened One Night, takes place in the time and place it was made, 1934 USA. In it, the plot hinges on the fact that a millionaire's daughter runs away from home and is travelling across the country by bus to meet her fiance. A reporter recognizes, and agrees to help her in exchange for the story.

Now, in 2015, things are quite different, and make the story quite impossible to tell today. For one, travelling from place to place only takes the span of a few hours if you have the money, and requires identification. Even if the rich society girl didn't want to take a plane, and instead took the bus to avoid her father's goons, she would still need ID, have to deal with everyone having smart phones, youtube, and people being able to text, take pictures, and call at the drop of a hat if they wanted to, making her hiding in plain sight rather hard to do.

This isn't unique to this film, but it is a case of stories having to deal with the ongoings of technology. A majority of horror films have to deal with the fact that any potential victim can call the police, which is why almost every modern horror film has the killer in some dead zone, a dead battery, or the phone destroyed in some way. TVTropes even has a few articles[/url= [url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... less]about it. Larry David commented that a lot of Seinfeld plots wouldn't have worked today because of the prevalence of cell phones.

Now, with technology making things even more conveinent, what plots are rendered useless? What can be preserved? What are good work arounds?

[Zixinus]

she would still need ID, have to deal with everyone having smart phones, youtube, and people being able to text, take pictures, and call at the drop of a hat if they wanted to, making her hiding in plain sight rather hard to do.

Only if she is famous. Even then she can put up a disguise and do measures that change her appearance.

A possible way to salvage the plot is for the girl to not use conventional buses, using off-the-grid routes and methods of travel.

I agree that then it would be a changed plot and cannot be the same film.

[Welf]

I don't think those "Rich Uncle from America" stories work today. I think in countries with a lot of emigration there are plots about a unknown or forgotten uncle who emigrated and suddenly contacts his family and looks for an heir. That doesn't work because today you can easily keep in contact and thanks to modern media and tourism America isn't a distant land that people project their wishes on.

[Purple]

I don't think those "Rich Uncle from America" stories work today. I think in countries with a lot of emigration there are plots about a unknown or forgotten uncle who emigrated and suddenly contacts his family and looks for an heir. That doesn't work because today you can easily keep in contact and thanks to modern media and tourism America isn't a distant land that people project their wishes on.

It can still be made to sort of work by outsourcing. Say instead of the rich uncle from america it's a rich ancestor from China or some other far eastern country. Or hell, maybe we can have a black lead who finds out his rich uncle is the actual Prince of Nigeria. The communication gap can easily be explained away by saying the person immigrated way before facebook and the family did not keep in touch.

[fgalkin]

Now, in 2015, things are quite different, and make the story quite impossible to tell today. For one, travelling from place to place only takes the span of a few hours if you have the money, and requires identification. Even if the rich society girl didn't want to take a plane, and instead took the bus to avoid her father's goons, she would still need ID, have to deal with everyone having smart phones, youtube, and people being able to text, take pictures, and call at the drop of a hat if they wanted to, making her hiding in plain sight rather hard to do.

As it happens, last weekend I was able to fly from Zurich to Budapest and back without ever being asked for, or presenting ID of any kind. Not every country restricts air travel the way Murica does.

Also, the rich heiress? Unlike 1934, women can actually drive cars now. So she could still make her journey, on her own, and unnoticed.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[biostem]

I think that you would need more handwaves or contrivances to get any plot to work, which would previously require someone be out of communication - for instance, things like not being able to find a phone when you need one...

[Ralin]

I think that you would need more handwaves or contrivances to get any plot to work, which would previously require someone be out of communication - for instance, things like not being able to find a phone when you need one...

Or establishing that wizards kill cell phones and other electronics just by being near them.

[biostem]

I think that you would need more handwaves or contrivances to get any plot to work, which would previously require someone be out of communication - for instance, things like not being able to find a phone when you need one...

Or establishing that wizards kill cell phones and other electronics just by being near them.

You mean like the "handwaves and contrivances" that I mentioned? How convenient that these "wizards" just so happen to passively block our ability to communicate long distances.


Another plot-type would be one where some non-magic means can defeat some creature in the past, but guns and what-not don't affect them.

[B5B7]

Or the girl could be riding a motorbike.
As for cellphones - they are not a magic ring or the like. They can be left in your motel room, or lost, stolen, broken, run out of battery power. The assailant as his first move could take the cellphone. A clever person could substitute a faulty replica for it. And that is not even going into the realm of the technically savvy.

[Ralin]

I think that you would need more handwaves or contrivances to get any plot to work, which would previously require someone be out of communication - for instance, things like not being able to find a phone when you need one...

Or establishing that wizards kill cell phones and other electronics just by being near them.

You mean like the "handwaves and contrivances" that I mentioned? How convenient that these "wizards" just so happen to passively block our ability to communicate long distances.


Another plot-type would be one where some non-magic means can defeat some creature in the past, but guns and what-not don't affect them.

I was referencing the Dresden Files, actually. An urban fantasy series where what I just said is literally how magic interacts with technology. Likely in large part because the author wanted a reason for the wizard protagonist to not be able to use a cell phone or computer.

[mr friendly guy]

Well for one, cold war type techno thrillers will take a pounding with the USSR gone. USSR mark II, aka China just doesn't quite do the same thing. For one thing we were at least wary of the Soviets technological capabilities given the Sputnik moment. Clint Eastwood had a 1982 movie called Firefox where the US steals a super dooper Soviet plane. China is making quite a few cool toys as well, but for some reason a lot of people still think they mainly produce cheap toys even though that hasn't been true for quite a while.

[Metahive]

I don't think you can talk about obsolete plots per se (plots after all are just how we get from the beginning of a story to the end), I think you mean what kind of stories are no longer appropriate to tell with a straight face today. As an example take invasion stories. Those old Invasion Literature type stories from the UK like the Battle of Dorking, which had a Third Republic France or Imperial Germany invade Great Britain are obsolete, but "foreign invasion" as a plot itself lives on, simply with an updated setting (War of the Worlds, Red Dawn, etc.).

Well for one, cold war type techno thrillers will take a pounding with the USSR gone.

Well, Napoleon and Hitler are gone as well, but that doesn't mean stories set in their times don't have any chance to be popular.

[Adam Reynolds]

Well for one, cold war type techno thrillers will take a pounding with the USSR gone. USSR mark II, aka China just doesn't quite do the same thing. For one thing we were at least wary of the Soviets technological capabilities given the Sputnik moment. Clint Eastwood had a 1982 movie called Firefox where the US steals a super dooper Soviet plane. China is making quite a few cool toys as well, but for some reason a lot of people still think they mainly produce cheap toys even though that hasn't been true for quite a while.

Largely agree here. Anything written in the era of the 1980s or 1990s is likely hard to tell again in the same fashion. The big thing that seems much more difficult to pull off successfully would be another Hunt for Red October or Top Gun, not to mention all of the Clancy style full scale war stories. They were popular in the 1980s/1990s, but after 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, they just aren't well received by audiences. As youstated, the Chinese just aren't considered a serious threat yet.

However it is still possible to tell stories that have largely the same plots, but with serious setting changes. A submarine thriller was done with the TV series Last Resort. While I haven't actually seen it and it lasted only one season, it did a reasonably good job updating that sort of story by making it something of a conspiracy thriller involving a possible coup attempt in Washington. And though it wasn't really a very good movie, The A Team film remake did air combat against drones to allow the heroes to kill the enemy without killing an enemy pilot. Of course the other option is telling those sort of plots in science fiction. As an obvious example Star Wars also had what were basically air combat sequences. And Wraith Squadron could have easily been done in modern times.

One interesting problem is created when one tells stories in the style of Clancy. While his books ostensibly take place in reality, they ended up becoming an alternative history due to the changing course of events. The biggest change was the nuke in Denver and the repercussions of a war with Japan and with a united Iran/Iraq. But after this 9/11 and the first Gulf War still happened normally and still had a similar impact. This feels rather odd anyway you look at it.

Well, Napoleon and Hitler are gone as well, but that doesn't mean stories set in their times don't have any chance to be popular.

Not to mention that the FX series The Americans was quite popular in 2015.

Cell phones and and the internet are another pair of insurmountable problems for many stories. There are ways around it, but it often feels less fulfilling than the original story that took place before they were developed.

One notable example comes to mind that illustrates this issue. Michael Connelly starting writing a series of detective novels in the 1990s featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch. In the third book in the series, The Concrete Blonde, it contains a flashback to a situation when Detective Bosch shot and killed a suspected serial killer. What had happened was that he received a tip from a possible witness and as his shift was ending, he left behind his radio so that the next shift would have it. He thus went in alone, without backup, and shot the man when he reached for his hairpiece. The novel is then about the lawsuit against Bosch over this shooting, made more interesting when another potential victim is discovered, especially when she was killed after Bosch shot their primary suspect.

In 2014 when they adapted the Bosch series to Amazon, they featured the same basic plot adapted to the present. This time it was changed to Bosch following their suspect on foot and being isolated from backup due to a more reckless series of decisions. It thus required a slightly more contrived situation that was solely because of the character's actions rather than a limitation of technology. So perhaps that is the lesson here. It is possible to feature older plots, but the characters will have to be somewhat different in order to keep them given the changes in technology.

As for sitcom plots, How I Met Your Mother did fine with this even though it used cell phones heavily. It turns out that people are really good at ignoring them when it fits the plot. But in a way that is realistic. People really do ignore cell phones quite frequently in reality.

[Channel72]

Cell phones (and/or GPSs) are probably the biggest technological fuck-over in the history of dramatic storytelling. Although, if you look at a lot of science fiction stories (like every single episode of Star Trek ever since the 60s) you realize that writers have been dealing with instant-communication for half-a-century now.

Probably the biggest problem with cell phones are how blatantly obvious the cop-outs are to your average audience member - it's either "I'm not getting a signal" or "battery died". While these are actually pretty realistic excuses, it just doesn't come off well to an audience, because it's obviously a plot contrivance.

Also, the "why doesn't the main character just call the police?" has been a problem for writers even before cell phones. I remember watching Home Alone as a child, and thinking, why the fuck doesn't he just call the police ?

In terms of shifting politics, it's ironic that certain movies become dated not because the source material is obsoleted by current events, but because current events have pretty much surpassed the ideas in these movies in such an extreme fashion, that the movie itself is rendered sort of quaint or naive. For example, there's a 90s Bruce Willis flick called The Siege which was about Islamic terrorist cells blowing up buses and restaurants in NYC, and how the government overreacts and declares Martial Law in New York. From today's vantage point, this movie looks pretty quaint, considering that 9/11 was way more cinematically fantastic than the wildest dreams of any non-sci-fi Hollywood writer of the 90s, and the US government actually did overreact - only in a much, much worse and more extreme way than just declaring Martial Law in one city for a few days.

Basically, it's like the movie was warning us: be careful, this could happen - don't give up your freedom to improve security! Except then we actually did just that, 1000-times over, on a national scale, after something out of Bruce Willis' other 90s flick (Armageddon) actually happened in downtown Manhattan - and for the most part nobody really cares because we still root for Jack Bauer to kick some ass.

[Simon_Jester]

Cell phones (and/or GPSs) are probably the biggest technological fuck-over in the history of dramatic storytelling. Although, if you look at a lot of science fiction stories (like every single episode of Star Trek ever since the 60s) you realize that writers have been dealing with instant-communication for half-a-century now.

Probably the biggest problem with cell phones are how blatantly obvious the cop-outs are to your average audience member - it's either "I'm not getting a signal" or "battery died". While these are actually pretty realistic excuses, it just doesn't come off well to an audience, because it's obviously a plot contrivance.

Yes, unless you have people who are blatantly stranded in a howling wilderness, or if you have people out and around without an opportunity to recharge.

Basically, it's like the movie was warning us: be careful, this could happen - don't give up your freedom to improve security! Except then we actually did just that, 1000-times over, on a national scale, after something out of Bruce Willis' other 90s flick (Armageddon) actually happened in downtown Manhattan - and for the most part nobody really cares because we still root for Jack Bauer to kick some ass.

As an earlier example of this happening we have Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, which was an admittedly comedic take on Hitler and Naziism designed to end in a plea for peace and sanity... and part of the weirdness of watching it in retrospect is that the Nazis turned out to be SO MUCH WORSE than Chaplin could possibly have known at the time. Not that he didn't have sufficient reason to parody and oppose them, just that they were EVIL on a scale almost no one could really grasp until it had already happened.

[Adam Reynolds]

Yes, unless you have people who are blatantly stranded in a howling wilderness, or if you have people out and around without an opportunity to recharge.

Or they are in a conspiracy thriller and thus can't call anyone. This was largely done well in Captain America: The Winter Soldier(though not specifically with phones, it was more an explanation as to why they never called the rest of the Avengers). Regardless of details, smart criminals/spies should get in the habit of not even carrying cell phones on a regular basis, despite the difficulties. That would rather neatly solve the connectivity issue.

And this is something that is incredibly realistic. In Antwerp in 2003 some very smart diamond thieves learned the hard way that even prepaid cell phones can still be used to construct a social network. They were hurt by the fact that their phones were never used for anything else and once one of them was arrested with his sim card, this was used this to implicate the rest of the crew once their phones were eventually discovered by police. Of

In Milan in 2002 a CIA team screwed up even worse. When one person made the mistake of calling a case officer connected to the embassy, Italian authorities were able to roll up the entire team. This was even worse when the same basic thing was done by Hizbollah in 2011. Almost the entirety of CIA operations in Lebanon were shut down any many of their sources inside the organization were lost.

I can't imagine how the CIA or KGB could have ever conducted their elaborate games today with cell phones. Especially since it could even be used as weak evidence of guilt to see a person without a phone. Why would anyone that appears to otherwise be involved in diplomacy not have a phone if searched?

[Gaidin]

Cell phones (and/or GPSs) are probably the biggest technological fuck-over in the history of dramatic storytelling. Although, if you look at a lot of science fiction stories (like every single episode of Star Trek ever since the 60s) you realize that writers have been dealing with instant-communication for half-a-century now.

Probably the biggest problem with cell phones are how blatantly obvious the cop-outs are to your average audience member - it's either "I'm not getting a signal" or "battery died". While these are actually pretty realistic excuses, it just doesn't come off well to an audience, because it's obviously a plot contrivance.

Preferentially....I'd run with "I don't want to be found" and take out the battery and sim card. I mean, considering the way those things are always pinging towers. At least have your character take action.

[Purple]

I can't imagine how the CIA or KGB could have ever conducted their elaborate games today with cell phones. Especially since it could even be used as weak evidence of guilt to see a person without a phone. Why would anyone that appears to otherwise be involved in diplomacy not have a phone if searched?

He can have a phone just fine. He just needs to not use it for spy stuff. Use it to take pictures or post facebook updates for his fake spy persona or something and not to contact his handler.

[Adam Reynolds]

I can't imagine how the CIA or KGB could have ever conducted their elaborate games today with cell phones. Especially since it could even be used as weak evidence of guilt to see a person without a phone. Why would anyone that appears to otherwise be involved in diplomacy not have a phone if searched?

He can have a phone just fine. He just needs to not use it for spy stuff. Use it to take pictures or post facebook updates for his fake spy persona or something and not to contact his handler.

Still won't work. Say you need to meet a source. You can do one of two things. Either you both leave your non-work phones on and are tracked to your meeting, or you turn them off just before meeting and are then seen as suspicious. If a person turns their phone on and off multiple times in a day they are all but guaranteed to be doing something they shouldn't. Metadata from cell phones is extraordinarily valuable for intelligence gathering.

[Purple]

Still won't work. Say you need to meet a source. You can do one of two things. Either you both leave your non-work phones on and are tracked to your meeting, or you turn them off just before meeting and are then seen as suspicious. If a person turns their phone on and off multiple times in a day they are all but guaranteed to be doing something they shouldn't. Metadata from cell phones is extraordinarily valuable for intelligence gathering.

Or you can forget to charge your phone on that one day. They search you, find the same phone they find every other day when they search you and find it has run out of batteries. Metadata shows you playing video games on it the night before.

[The Romulan Republic]

If a person turns their phone on and off multiple times in a day they are all but guaranteed to be doing something they shouldn't.

That's absurd. I frequently turn my phone off to make the battery last longer and to avoid getting calls in situations where they would be disruptive (I volunteer at a theatre and you don't want a phone going off during a show/rehearsal). Its nothing to do with doing anything improper.

But maybe its different if you're a diplomat. Maybe they're expected to have their phones on all the time.

[Eternal_Freedom]

[
I can't imagine how the CIA or KGB could have ever conducted their elaborate games today with cell phones. Especially since it could even be used as weak evidence of guilt to see a person without a phone. Why would anyone that appears to otherwise be involved in diplomacy not have a phone if searched?

Funnily enough, this is talked about in the Kingsmen film. The main character is being shown all the old-school spy gadgets (weaponised umbrellas, spikes in shoes, taser ring, poison pen, cigarette lighter grenade etc), looks over at a row of tablets and smartphones and says "what gadgets do those hide?" The answer: "none, they're normal. Phones have caught up with the spy business these days."

As for plots and stories that are obsolete: anything that would be easily solvable by modern computers, or by using aircraft. Say, a plot point about having to calculate something big and complex by hand, or trying to break codes, or trying to find a secret camp in a desert.

[Simon_Jester]

Spies merely need to construct the cover of a forgetful person who regularly lets their cell phone battery run down, or habitually leaves it at home... both those are fairly normal, at least for now.

Plots about calculation have shifted gracefully to include plots that use theoretical math (which computers can't do readily), or plots that use computer programming to set up the computer to perform the calculation.

Plots about finding a secret camp or the like... well, you have a number of options. One is that the person or group needing to find the camp may lack easy access to aircraft- say, if they are a small group of spies trying to operate unobtrusively, or lack the resources of a national government. Google Earth and so on have limitations because most of their satellite footage is years old, and there are numerous ways to get your own chunk of land obscured from their database.