This reminded me of the MacGuffin concept, popularized by Hitchcock, about the need for a goal to drive a the plot of the movie, but it was just a throwaway device used to get into the characters and their conflict (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin#Alfred_Hitchcock). The MacGuffin school assumes that the viewer understands the deeper meaning of the quest or centerpiece, and so can ignore it, but it turns out that many viewers, right or wrong, actually like clever plots and quests... along with great characters and snappy dialog, etc.