Do generic conventions help or restrict filmmakers?

I believe there are two valid arguments for this, generic conventions can help and also restrict filmmakers. It helps them because give filmmakers a genre for their film, and because of all the standardized conventions for this genre, they will have a solid outline of what kind of things to include in their film. For example, tell filmmakers they need to make an action film, they would automatically know to include guns, action stars like Jason Statham, explosions and slick fight scenes.

However, generic conventions also considerably restrict filmmakers to what they can really do and explore further into their genre for the film. For example, action films can be considered restricted to just having explosions, guns and fighting scenes. It's rare to see action films that branch out from being conventional, and to find action films with sustained love interests for example and drama. In addition, filmmakers are restricted in the genre of horror. Horror films nowadays are all incredibly alike, most of them including some kind of demon or entity, that is haunting people and their families, such as 'The Conjuring,' Therefore, I think that filmmakers doing horror films are restricted, because us as the audience always expect with horror films, demons, jump scares, old abandoned houses or even creepy little children. We can also very much predict horror films because we have seen it all before so many times. You would say' I bet this is what will happen', and then it turns out to happen; we can predict horror stories. They are very formulaic at the moment, and we are waiting for a horror film that is un-ordinary and something we really haven't seen before.

However generic conventions can also help filmmakers. Take a film like 'Skyfall' from 2012, directed by Sam Mendes. This was a great James Bond film. I believe this film is a good example of generic conventions helping filmmakers. Firstly we as the audience have all seen James Bond films before many times, so we have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Skyfall, in terms of generic conventions. We would all expect to see shoot-outs, James Bond and his women, some form of advanced gadgets, and of course slick cars. Therefore, the director of the film also knows this and as a result all of this is included in Skyfall. Generic conventions has helped this film be a success, because the audience loved the film because it met our expectations as a James Bond film.