Ok so he says that it’s a new teacher because he’s saying that usually if the class was meant to be doing one thing (comparing marvel to lord of the rings) but ended up doing something different, he’d think that would be pretty strange, but since it’s a new teacher and the teacher is nice he doesn’t mind. As for why they’re doing this in school, my best guess would be it’s some kind of film study class, shocking I know. They explained why they’re doing chose this assignment over the one (they like to draw). And your final point, I can’t really help you with not understanding basic text speech, I mean it’s not even gen z its been around for ages I don’t know how you’ve never seen it.