Are teenage actors overturning the traditional adult actors?

If you are a university student or any other ordinary person out there, then I know one of your over-utilized hobbies is watching. With the availability of electronic gadgets, such as phones and laptops almost everyone is breaking their neck and squinting their eyes over the little and the big screens.

Currently in Kenya movie shops are cropping up everywhere. They are selling pirated movies at cheaper prices all to satisfy our unrelenting thirst of “satisfying” our eyes.

Most people watch movies as a way to kill boredom and time. And for this reason people would watch just anything to keep them distracted from the world. Which makes me wonder, is the world such a boring place?

Movie and film producers must have noticed a gap in the film industry. They must have noticed that their audience is interested in teenage drama. Almost every movie you watch today either offline or online it is in one way featuring teenagers. Does this mean that teenage life is that exciting?

But this trend must have started from somewhere. One of the earliest movies that featured a young boy Macaulay Culkin (Kevin) was called Home alone. The movie features an eight year old Kevin who has to defend his home against burglars.

The movie, shot in 1990, got a good reception from the audience with a rating of 65% on rotten tomatoes( a website that reviews movies and measures movie quality too) Everybody Hates Chris, a series that featured Tyler James Williams also flows closely with a rating of 95%. This one having been casted for the first time in 2005.

On the other hand the The Bold and The Beautiful, a romantic series first shot in 1987 was liked by 73% of the Google users. The Beauty and the Beast a movie produced in 2017, also got a rating of 71% on rotten tomatoes.

If you are keen you notice that these movies I’ve mentioned didn’t feature teenagers or teenage life. So does it mean that teenage life is that “juicy” is the audience inclined to teenage oriented content?

This might be true and the trend of the new age film makers. A crime series like Riverdale that was produced in 2017 tells it all.

According to top movie rating websites like IMDb(internet movie data base) the movie got a 7.1/10 rating 86% on rotten tomatoes and 8/10 on Tv.com. This means that the audience liked the movies this the high ratings. This is followed by others like Marvels Runaways, Ragnarock among many others. These movies basically feature the lives of teenagers, for instance they feature teenage relationships, rebellion, and the teenage lives at large.

The excellent reception of movies that feature teenagers has made film producers embrace the idea with open arms. The drama is also well structured with just enough suspense to keep you glued to your screen on the edge of your chair.

The film audience must have been bored by those films that featured Rambo and commando type of actors who forever have their guns blazing as if advertising the latest guns. So there you have it. If you are a film maker out there, try considering the young blood.

Teenagers and kid actors. Looks like someone realized that and they’re cashing in on the idea. Maybe soon the idea will be valueless I suggest you try making your dog to act or a ninety year old grandma re-live her adolescent years.

           By Nelson Oyengo                                                    

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