However, there is one huge exception in this crowd. Jordan Peele completely revolutionized the modern horror genre with his masterpiece, Get Out. Can you think of any other movie like it? Peele boldly takes horror, comedy and satire and weaves them into a story that is simultaneously a modern racial commentary, a parody of traditional horror tropes and just darn good entertainment. The movie could easily have become "too much" of any one thing – too preachy, too silly, too scary – but instead it walks an amazing genre-tightrope, delivering laughs and screams, while also leaving the audience with some larger food for thought about modern racism in America. It refuses to fit into any one box. I don't mean to insult the other scripts – they all obviously told very affecting stories in their own way – but none of them are operating on the same level as Peele. The other screenplays work within their genre conventions. Peele is creating his own.
While every nominee for best original screenplay tells a beautifully crafted story filled with original characters and iconic dialogue (see: literally any exchange between Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), nearly every script this year can be described as a retread of a genre we know. There's the coming-of-age story in Lady Bird, the classic rom-com of The Big Sick, the small-town drama of Three Billboards, and so on.