I would like more cinematic universes. At first I thought of them as expensive 2-hour-episode tv shows that played in theaters, but the directed-acyclic graph structure with a loose chronology is a much stronger story-telling scaffolding. TV is pretty linear.
TV universes too.
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What makes a workable cinematic universe vs a linear one? Is there a distinction?
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Well the real world has loosely connected parallel threads that only occassionally cross paths so it’s more realistic
Harry Potter is too linear in main series but now they’re universing it. Star Trek and Star Wars are old universes that bolted on parallels later(DS9+Voyager)
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I feel like the primary requirement is that the story premise be generalizable (ie, Harry Potter = wizards and magic exist.)
That seems different than a specific plot concept (ie, Oceans Eleven = rob a casino), which seems more tightly tied to specific characters and chronology.
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Hmm but you could easily turn that into a universe... the 11 could have their own movies, the antagonists could have theirs...
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You could totally do that by branching out with all the character storylines, but I wonder if it scales?
Maybe it does, but it feels more difficult.
I used that example, because like Fast & Furious, it seems like a good candidate for testing out a linear-to-universe transition.

