‘Black Mirror’ Bandersnatch Isn’t the Future of TV, It’s a Microcosm of Netflix’s Current Business Model
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa599y/black-mirror-bandersnatch-isnt-the-future-of-tv-its-a-microcosm-of-netflixs-current-business-model
“Bandersnatch,” the new choose-your-own adventure episode of Black Mirror, is rightly getting lots of attention for its inventiveness and branching story arcs. Within hours of its release, redditors and Black Mirror superfans began mapping out all the possible ending, and how the viewer’s inputs would alter young programmer Stefan Butler’s descent into madness.
There have been hundreds of recaps and reviews of “Bandersnatch,” but if you still haven’t seen it, the interactive film follows Stefan Butler, a video game programmer working on an adventure game called Bandersnatch, based on a fictional choose-your-own adventure book of the same name. As he works on the game, Stefan slowly begins to lose touch with reality and suspects that he’s not in control of his own actions; one viewer decision even opens up a meta storyline in which he learns he’s part of a Netflix special. There are a handful of endings in “Bandersnatch.” Stefan can live a relatively normal life if he talks about his mental illness with his therapist and goes on meds; in another, he kills and dismembers his father and releases a well-reviewed game before eventually being arrested. My favorite involves him going through a mirror, time traveling to his childhood, and changing the past.