“The Red Turtle,” a visually stunning film by Studio Ghibli and Wild Bunch, displays a deep level of compassion.
The article, Do films with positive messages make more money than those without? by Stephen Follows, a data researcher in the film industry analyzed 4,271 films and sought to find correlations to their financial success and their levels of positivity. He pulled his tallies of scenes containing positive messages from Common Sense Media and their experienced film reviewers. His findings were that films with an abundance of positive messages financially outperformed those with no or few positive messages by around 20%. Films with fewer positive messages in them made less money.
An interesting point Follows made in the article was that, “positive messages are slightly nebulous concepts.”
Watching other people battle through their tribulations could help give us insights into our own struggles, and how to view or overcome them. This could leave us in a positive state of mind and uplifted, even though the themes of the movie might be dark and have a lot of negative undertones.
Follows gave his thoughts on why certain films in the past were popular, “In the 1940s, musicals provided a colourful escape from war, stories of rebellion in the 1970s gave hope to audiences losing faith in political systems and modern-day superhero movies provide easy delineation between good and evil in murky times. So what will be the escapism of the 2020s?”
Follows left us an interesting question. As our world had turned upside down this year with every other week piling on another society-altering event, what do you think would resonate with people now? What would we consider uplifting or positive in these times?
For information on the rating of positive messages of your favorite films, check out https://www.commonsensemedia.org/