Morality in Storytelling

Stories operate within a moral framework. In the classical world, the hero was tested by overcoming a set of challenges and defeating a monster. In the Christian world, the hero was in a fight of good against evil. In the age of exploration, the hero explored new lands in the quest for discovery and treasure. In the social justice story, the hero fights injustice and repression. In the American story, the patriot defends American values and gets rich quick.

What moral framework do today’s protagonists fit into?

It’s probably an over-simplification to think that economic boom times produce lighthearted, optimistic heroes and recessions create darker protagonists coping with fearful environments. In reality there’s a lot of variety at any one moment. This reflects the different genres and audience segments.

The actual trends in storytelling are more about writers trying to replace stale and formulaic stories with something fresh and exciting. Audiences want emotionally exciting entertainment that meets their expectations while also showing them something ‘new’.

Stories change according to fashion and the cultural zeitgeist. They reflect the world at any one moment – the 1960s Counter Culture, Watergate, the internet, geo-politics, acts of terrorism, and so on. In more recent times there’s been an emphasis on feminist storytelling, anti-racism, and diverse casting.

Fictional characters operate in fictional worlds. Viewers give them greater moral leeway than they would a person in their own life. This is especially true when characters are fighting monsters, brutal criminals, or protecting their family and community.

Characters function as metaphors to illustrate ideas and to make social comments. Tony Montana’s moral decisions in Scarface (1983) are a parable about greed and capitalism, the American ‘get rich quick’ dream turning into a nightmare. Characters also have fantasy elements to them – wish-fulfilment and extreme competence. They are cyphers to explore moral choices, grey zones, and ethical dilemmas.

Popular characters like James Bond, and Don Draper in Mad Men (2007-2015) combine the allure of charisma, power and competence with negative traits like arrogance and philandering. Walter White in Breaking Bad (2008-2013) transforms from being a meek teacher man into a criminal drug overlord. He goes from being a downtrodden nobody into a feared criminal who shapes the world around him. He represents the ordinary person surviving in a hostile world. His criminal activities are in part justified by his need to provide for his family.

Many of the character ‘swaps’, ‘inversions’ and ‘switches’ in contemporary movies come from writers trying to do something different. When a superhero villain is humanised into an anti-hero, the character’s morally dubious behaviour is a metaphor for behaviour in society. This happened with the glamorisation of gangsters in 1930s gangster movies. The big screen reflected the notorious criminals who appeared in the national newspapers. Fiction is there to explore emotional observations about the real world, ones the audience are unable to express in their own life.

The question is, does the audience want to look in the mirror and see hopeful, idealistic heroes looking back at them… or do they want to see their own moral confusion and doubt?

‘Disclosure Day’

Disclosure Day (2026) is a science fiction, conspiracy, chase movie. There’s a lot going on, so it has a complicated plot with multiple characters.

The film turns from conspiracy movie into into The Fugitive (1993) with a paranormal tone. It ends up feeling like an episode of the X-Files (1993-2018). There’s a lot of good stuff, but it’s spoilt by over-complexity, an annoying idiot husband character, and some less than convincing special effects.

Because there’s so much going on, there’s never enough time to explore anything properly, which makes it hard to identify with the main characters. The end result feels like a Spielberg film-remix without offering anything fresh to the science fiction genre or the car chase movie.

I really wanted to like Disclosure Day – Spielberg is a storytelling legend and I’m a fan of Emily Blunt – but this didn’t work for me. What should have been a lean action story is way too complicated, and far too long.

‘The Invite’

The Invite (2026) follows in the tradition of films that are largely set in one location and work much like a theatrical play. The edgy story and dialogue of this film has been compared to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?‍ ‍(1966). The Invite had a $15 million budget and took $58.3 million at the box office, so it’s been a commercial success. Interestingly, it was filmed using 35mm film and not a digital camera.

The story is about a couple, in a stale phase of their relationship, invited by the couple upstairs to participate in some sexual experimentation. It’s a nicely produced film with decent acting. I was expecting more from the story though, and the comparison with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?‍ didn’t really stand up for me. I think this is the kind of film – like The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025) – which, if you’re in the right mood, it will resonate strongly, but if you’re not in the right mood, it could be underwhelming.

The Spider-Man Film Series

Hollywood loves a successful film series. The success of one film should in theory help to build the next one. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a great example. It’s the best of the Tom Holland era Spider-Man films and the most successful. It didn’t hurt that Tom Holland and Zendaya are the social media equivalent of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Spider-Man is an IP franchise that’s been managed as a film series. The film series features an actor who becomes synonymous with the Spider-Man character for a batch of films. This works in a similar way to the James Bond franchise.

While some film series are associated with one actor. Harrison Ford was Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981). Jennifer Lawrence was Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (2012). Sigourney Weaver was Elen Ripley in Alien (1979). Keanu Reeves was Neo in The Matrix (1999). Clint Eastwood was Dirty Harry in Dirty Harry (1971). The James Bond film series has featured multiple actors. It started with Sean Connery in Dr. No (1962). Daniel Craig, the last incarnation of Bond, first appeared in Casino Royale (2006).

A key difference between the Spider-Man and Bond film series is that the Spider-Man character has essentially remained the same, whereas the Bond character has shifted more in tone. This was noticeable with the change from Sean Connery to Roger Moore (which exaggerated the humour) and, more recently, with the Daniel Craig era Bond, which broke a key ingredient of the screen Bond character… his invulnerability.

Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man (2002) was essentially Paul Hood, the character he played in The Ice Storm (2002). He was a youthful, round-faced, comic-reading kid, finding his way in the world. His boyish portrayal of Spider-Man had an emotional core. It had a classic coming-of-age sensitivity and vulnerability that set the tone for later Spider-Man films. This contrasted Peter Parker with other superhero characters, like Batman, who had a chiselled adult muscularity.

Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man was more confident, with a sarcastic wit. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man feels lovably goofy, with a high-tech Spy Kids (2001) vibe. While the actors bring something of themselves (or what they’re known for) to the role, the Spider-Man character stays the same.

The Spider-Man film series is an old fashioned coming-of-age story. A romantic first love tale. It is also a special effects action adventure with a sense of humour. Having a screen-friendly face, like Tom Holland in the role of Peter Parker, goes a long way to make the magic work – but it’s also about the writers, being true to the promise of who Peter Parker is, and not breaking that promise with the audience.

‘The End of Oak Street’

The problem with big reveals is that the success of the story hinges on one surprise. If it works, like The Matrix (1999), it’s rewarding. If it doesn’t work, the twist feels like a gimmick.

The End of Oak Street was marketed with a trailer that hints at a big revelation, but the surprise isn’t the science fiction plot. So, this isn’t a ‘big reveal story’, like The Matrix (1999) or The Island (2005). This is a straightforward ordinary family survives a challenging science fiction nightmare.

Director David Robert Mitchell has given us some excellent films: The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010), a charming coming-of-age indie-style film, It Follows (2014) a cracking low budget horror, and Under the Silver Lake (2018) a quirky and off-beat homage to Film Noir. The End of Oak Street could have gone in a different direction. It could have been something more like Leave the World Behind (2023), an ‘Independent movie’ style production, which relies on atmosphere and the power of suggestion. Instead, it’s gone in a more mainstream ‘Hollywood summer blockbuster’ direction, like Jurassic Park (1993). As a result, the charm of his earlier films has given way to special effects and action sequences. This film is a homage to 1980s style sc-fi movies featuring an ordinary family thrust into a challenging situation. Typically, the arguing kids and parents learn to work together and harmony is restored. The End of Oak Street has remixed that with some bad poop jokes and an incongruous girlboss vibe, and without the harmonising resolution.

The power of storytelling comes from entertaining and delighting the audience by reinforcing or contradicting their expectations. The girlboss of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) can implausibly fight men twice her size. A skinny teenager can become a superhero with incredible powers… Spider-Man. The problem with The End of Oak Street is that it opts for a surprise character switch. In order to conceal the surprise the true nature of the characters cannot be foreshadowed properly.

As a result, the father is set up as the classic ‘nobody’ who transforms into a hero… but it turns out that he’s just a pathetic loser. While the mother takes on the unlikely girlboss role. Because the switch is supposed to be a surprise, it can’t be signalled to the audience in advance. The issue with these kinds of revelations is that the entire script has to make sacrifices for them to work. The costs can outweigh the benefits. The father’s role is set up only to be subverted later on, breaking the story promise. The story promise is that when the audience invests time in a character it shouldn’t feel pointless. There should be some kind of payoff later on. Without that, the audience will leave feeling disappointed. A similar thing happened in Blade Runner 2049 where the audience spent almost the entire film rooting for a character (who they thought would be the hero), only to be surprised by the revelation that he was a loser, a cog in someone else’s story. Emotionally investing in that character felt humiliating, like a bad bet.

There’s another revelation (in the style of 2013’s Oblivion) at the end of The End of Oak Street. This feels like an attempt to remedy the broken story promise. It isn’t given emotional significance and comes too late in the story. The end result lacks cohesion and concludes without a sense of balance having been restored to the story world.