I’m only sharing a small bit because this is for paid subscribers but here is Natasha Stagg, writing for her Substack:

Not only is the millennial experience uniquely tonally hopeless (distinguished by a proliferation of suicidal teenaged killers, economic crises, melting ice caps, endless spin-offs, the word terrorism, the paradox of participation, the end of privacy, etc.), then, but the fictionalizations of it must meet so many relentless standards cooked up by its own particular turmoil: Characters feel impotent and judged, fenced in by a forced awareness of everything they should and could have done by now. At the same time, the millennial writers of these characters feel the same way, which leads us to an awkward show of last-minute meaning-seeking. This movie (sic) isn’t about nothing, exactly, each attests, half-heartedly. This was all in service of something larger, maybe—like deciding that characters with any type of privilege over others are always inherently a little wrong—right?

The films found me “at the right place and right time” were being made by the twentysomething gen X contingent. Primer was maybe the most influential but you know I was obsessed with Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind, others…

I wonder what inspiration gen Z are pulling from millenial films?

And what messages they’re taking away?