Story Genres start to decline when ...

Creators are only influenced by stuff from inside said genre. You can tell when a creator of superhero stories only reads other superhero stories. His stories start to be filled with weird obscure stuff that only people who are obsessed with superheroes will understand. But at the same time their work is very derivative, either playing off established works or referencing stuff that already exists within the genre.

Compare this to older creators who didn’t have decades of in genre material to pull from and hade to pull from else where.

[QUOTE=mathew101281;5575275]Creators are only influenced by stuff from inside said genre. You can tell when a creator of superhero stories only reads other superhero stories. His stories start to be filled with weird obscure stuff that only people who are obsessed with superheroes will understand. But at the same time their work is very derivative, either playing off established works or referencing stuff that already exists within the genre.

Compare this to older creators who didn’t have decades of in genre material to pull from and hade to pull from else where.[/QUOTE]

I would say that’s right. At the same time it’s possible that someone familiar with genre can create something interesting while people familiar with external influences can f—k up.

I think I’d have to disagree; genres tend to be flexible and “organic” in how they can grow and reflect back upon themselves in the hands of a skilled creator.

The mystery genre, for instance, is one of the oldest “respectable” ones in literature and media, but was capable of producing “self-inspired” subgenres and revitalizations like Colombo or Knives Out, and is even capable of simple “updates” that produce success form older works (see: Sherlock Holmes adaptations.) Horror also sees the genre “feed” on itself, but that’s led to guys like Stephen King finding success simply fine tuning and embracing old tropes and ideas. The Western, while seemingly on life-support now, still went for decades as a self-referential behemoth that spawned the spaghetti western, reconstructive western, and eventually the reconstructive western.

And the “affectionate parody/pastiche” subgenres that tend to creep up if given enough time almost [I]require[/I] someone to look back at the genre alone.

NOW! That’s not to say there aren’t clear pitfalls and risks to such things: The Rise of Skywalker is a bad movie *in part* because LFL and Abrams were looking only to Star Wars itself for inspiration. But in contrast, The Force Awakens is actually a pretty good movie that people sometimes inaccurately criticize when looking back at it, as while it wasn’t very original at all, or still functioned very well and nailed the main things a Star Wars film needs - adventure, excitement, and most importantly, believable and engaging human relationships (Rey and Finn under Han.) The Last Jedi, in contrast, clearly saw Rian Johnson, normally a skilled film maker, deliberately try to take inspiration from similar outside sources as Lucas had done... but is ultimately just as constrained and limited as TFA was, but without the core human relationships or excitement TFA had... which ultimately bears more responsibly for TROS sucking, as it boxed the story into an inescapable corner.