"Surprising" Phenomenon
Why do people enjoy seeing so many movies when most have recycled plots?
Objective
The correct answer will offer an unsatisfactory hypothesis, one that fails to explain why people enjoy seeing movies with unoriginal plots. Every wrong answer, meanwhile, will give a reason for people to enjoy these movies anyway.
A
Movies based on standard plots are more likely to be financially successful than are ones based on original plots.
This is a consequence of those movies’ popularity, not a reason for it. It does not explain why people choose to see them.
B
If the details of their stories are sufficiently different, two movies with the same basic plot will be perceived by moviegoers as having different plots.
This explains why people will see multiple movies with similar plots. If they do not notice that a film's plot is unoriginal, they will not be turned off by that unoriginality.
C
Because of the large number of movies produced each year, the odds of a person seeing two movies with the same general plot structure in a five-year period are fairly low.
This explains why people see new movies each year. Although most movies use recycled plots, the particular movies a given person sees are unlikely to share plots very often.
D
A certain aesthetic pleasure is derived from seeing several movies that develop the same plot in slightly different ways.
This explains why people will see multiple movies every year. They see an unoriginal plot as a positive, one that makes a movie more enjoyable.
E
Although most modern movie plots have been used before, most of those previous uses occurred during the 1940s and 1950s.
This explains why people continue to watch movies even though their plots are largely recycled. Because the movies first using those plots are so old, few viewers have seen them, so the plots are largely novel to the people watching.