Bruzzese studied millions of survey answers from thousands of people watching thousands of movies. It turned out that Campbell was right. There are rules to successful storytelling in popular films. The typical audience member couldn’t tell you explicitly what those rules are, but collectively audiences have been telling moviemakers for decades. Bruzzese’s grand theory will look familiar to readers of the first three chapters of this book: Most people love original storytelling, provided that the narrative arc traces the stories we know and the stories that we want to tell ourselves.
