Now

Turned on The Spectacular Now, expecting to see a Civic coming of age story or something similar.

But rather quickly it didn't seem like it was working. And the possibility came to mind that maybe it was a not a good match for the Four Stories model - the idea that people from a particular generation tend to set up a standard story that fits them best, and that stories will tend to do better if targeted in that way. That is, this one should have been a Heroic arc, with success coming through working with friends and sacrifice in support of the greater good.

Instead, though, the main character is clearly Bad right from the start.  Not a bad person, really  - he seems to be the guy at parties who is Liked and maybe even Well Liked - but he obviously and seriously has a drinking problem right from the start. The Civic generations - what were called Hero archetypes in The Fourth Turning and later books - might be depicted as flawed but not so severely. That makes it easier for their stories to focus on winning their struggles, while Nomad stories are more often about redemption. If anything, though, this film was looking like it matched the "everyone is Doomed or Damned" model of an Artist story. Still, there was stretches where it seemed like it had to be heading in a redemptive direction, so maybe not that ... but ultimately it just couldn't be Heroic. Which didn't fit well with high school students who were clearly in recent times.

Of course, Four Stories is a simple model of a complex world, which certainly may have flaws. There's not a problem if it doesn't explain everything - that helps ensure that it's being honestly compared with it's subject. Maybe there's something to be added to it....

Eventually, though,  the disconnect about where it seemed to be heading became too much. To the extent that I had to check where the story came from and sure enough, the screenwriter is Generation X, as is the director. Although the original novel is from a late Boomer (Tim Tharp, 1957), not a Reactive. Which makes him the same age as Cameron Crowe, who came to mind because Sutter seems like a much more flawed Lloyd Dobler.

All of which might explain why it didn't do super well at the box office, although critics - mostly Boomer and GenX - did like it. It was marketed in one direction but with a narrative that doesn't match what's expected. It does, in fact, turn into a perfectly fine redemptive story, so it might have worked if marketed that way - i.e. as a troubled teen redemption story rather than romantic comedy or coming of age.