There have been various suggestions as to the number of basic plots in literature, and therefore I would suppose in film. The number proposed has varied from 1 to 69. If we take the twenty suggested by RB Tobias as a fair compromise (though personally I prefer the 7 that are usually proposed), we have:
1. Quest
2. Adventure
3. Pursuit
4. Rescue
5. Escape
6. Revenge
7. The Riddle
8. Rivalry
9. Underdog
10. Temptation
11. Metamorphosis
12. Transformation
13. Maturation
14. Love
15. Forbidden Love
16. Sacrifice
17. Discovery
18. Wretched Excess
19. Ascension
20. Descension.
From: Tobias, Ronald B. 20 Master Plots. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1993. (ISBN 0-89879-595-8)
I guess it would be possible to classify films against this, or any other (say from 7 to 69), standard but I don’t know if anyone has ever done it. Now if you could get Halliwell on CD ROM (or better still DVD so it could include extracts) and it had the right identifiers then you could sort against the 20, or whatever, plot types! Sounds to me like a good business opportunity.
