# There's No Objective Reality in Media
July 29, 2025

I've just had a sudden realization about how people view fiction
that I think might be one of the biggest gulfs between how "normal"
people and people like critics or even just normal film/TV/book
nerds view media. And is one of the few drivers behind why most new
big-budget stuff now is just remakes and sequels and such.

Note that for the sake of giving examples and to avoid distasteful
but generic terms like "consume media", I'm going to be talking
about movies specifically; but this absolutely also applies to TV
and books and video games and such too.

The key difference is many people's perception that there is a
fully-formed, objective reality associated with the fictional
world, and that if something isn't shown it's because the
filmmakers are "hiding it from everyone". Rather than because the
artists involved in the production just... didn't write or
sometimes even conceptualize it. As such, when a crappy sequel is
made, they get excited because "Ooh, we get to see behind the
curtain, all the things they didn't show in the last one!" Not
realizing that it's not like this is something that exists in the
world but they didn't show in the previous movie; in this sequel
they can do literally whatever they want because there is no
objective reality beyond whatever the writers decide on a whim.
Worse, with crappy cash-grab sequels it's rarely the same
screenwriters or director so it's going to miss all the things that
made the original film good.

It would be harmless I suppose, except for the fact that
anecdotally it's a key driver (along with nostalgia and name
recognition and numerous other factors) behind the recent constant
stream of remakes and not bothering with any original IPs[1]. Plus
it causes there to be an unhealthy expectation of artists revealing
everything possible, when a lot of things are usually made better
with an air of mystery where your imagination can fill in the rest
better than anything they could show would (and just bloats it with
unnecessary exposition and superfluous reveals).

Although I can sorta understand a tangential feeling when there's
things that were removed from the script and even shot scenes cut
from the film, because it did exist but it is actually being kept
from the audience. But even then, other than studio interference
("cut it down to ninety minutes!"), ideas and concepts are cut for
a reason by the artists involved, that doesn't make it part of the
actual story. A famous example: The Abyss (1989) had a huge
plotline completely cut out with commentary on the cold war, that
was deliberately and explicitly cut by James Cameron because he
felt it made the movie unfocused and damaged the characterization.
The studio were actually actively against cutting that, so James
Cameron was going out of his way to do this for artistic purposes
and explicitly did not want it to be part of the world he was
creating. Or, for another example, all the Half-Life 2 beta stuff.
So much of it was random concepts they were throwing out and then
discarded for gameplay or narrative reasons; it's not all stuff
that "exists" in the world that they just decided not to show
players.


[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Aqr_tuQa24

## Postscript

It's hard to write this post without having the air of superiority
of a Sophisticated Art Critic™, but I mean, in this specific
instance it is sorta true. Like, this is one of the drivers behind
a lot of really irritating practices in commercial creative
industries and it doesn't make judgments on what people experience;
and all it requires is a very rudimentary, basic understanding that
"fiction is literally just made up by someone and doesn't actually
exist". Doesn't seem like a huge lift if you ask me lol. I would
fall into similar thinking when I was like... fourteen, but once
one has a more grounded relationship with media one would think
that people would start to understand.

IMO this complaint isn't like when a Sophisticated Critic bemoans
about "how could people enjoy that low art, *I* only enjoy complex
thinkers". As if they put on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or
Eraserhead (1977) on as fun, half-asleep relaxation after a long
day at work XD. I worry that sometimes people think that about me
because I really do exclusively watch arthouse-ish films and TV,
but that's because my stupid mindless entertainment is all youtube
videos rather than movies or TV; not because I'm too smart to deign
to watch dumb stuff.


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