Most stories are for children

A child believes the whole world is about him; other people are just side characters, reacting to him. And he sees the world in stark black and white: good and evil, smart and stupid, beautiful and ugly.

Many popular stories, even respectable ones, have childish worldviews. Take Ford vs. Ferrari, one of the most critically acclaimed movies of 2019. Every scene follows the same pattern: our good guys are smarter and better than everyone else, and they have to fight against the cruelty and stupidity of assholes every step of the way. Is that really very different from Batman fighting a bunch of supervillains?

Even classic literature often pitches to childish thinking. Look at Hamlet and Pride and Prejudice. Sure, Hamlet and Elizabeth are multidimensional, but they are surrounded by buffoons and villains. Claudius and Wickham are no more nuanced than bad guys from children's theater. Perhaps their tactics are more complicated, but their psychologies are not.

What’s going on here? You probably know you have an "inner child," a part of your mind that thinks like a child. Your inner child is the one who wakes you up at night, worried you can’t handle life. Your inner child is the one who gets road rage at all these slow morons and fast assholes on the highway. Your inner child feels—and is—your most visceral, powerful emotions.

So the most resonant stories—the ones that grab you viscerally and take you to emotional depths—pitch to your inner child. They play to his worldview.

Are there counter examples? Of course. There are stories about character ensembles. They depict a complex tapestry of multidimensional characters and moral ambiguity. Crash, Babel, No Country For Old Men, The Wire—the results are often brilliant. But while I admire them intellectually, they frustrate me emotionally. Or more accurately, they frustrate my inner child. He wanted simple answers.