Complex Narratives

In the opening chapter, "Complex Narratives," Jan Simons brings together narratology, game theory, and complexity theory to untangle the intricate nature of complex narratives in contemporary cinema. He presents an overview of the different concepts - forking path narratives, mind-game films, modular narratives, multiple-draft films, database narratives - used in current film theory to discuss complex narratives, arguing that "new media structures (such as databases and 'navigable spaces'), virtual realities, (including phenomena such as parallel worlds, forking paths, and imagined 'others'), and nonlinear temporality emerge as the most salient features of the complex film.