Has Hollywood ran out of ideas?

[Reaver]

*WARNING: The following post is a rant and in it are opinions held by me and me alone. In no way am I trying to convince anyone to agree, disagree or believe what I believe.*


Is it just me or has there been a lot of remakes and reboots of great movies over the last few years? Sure, there have been some really great originals coming along every once in a while, but it seems to me that for the most part Hollywood has taken the easy route.

By that I mean all the comic book, graphic novel and novel adaptations that while great for a cheap thrill, don't really enrich our lives with a terrific story full of characters that we care about. I mean, can you even imagine the shear volumes of screenplays that get rejected by the major studios?

I just don't get it. Instead of taking a chance on an original story that has the possibility to affect us in profound ways, some studio exec with no shred of imagination throws it in the trash for the sake of their bottom line.

Oh well. It is a multimillion dollar business and the most important thing to them is box office numbers not quality.

I'd really like to hear your opinions. Thanks in advance for your replies!

 

[MadMadys]

Well I have some experience in the movie business (I will admit, not at a very deep level) so I'll give my view of things.

I don't have a real problem with adaptations as they've been done since they started making movies. Some are good and some are bad but that's the same with original content as well. Just because it's a totally new idea doesn't mean it's good. The appeal, to studios, of adapting a comic or book or old cartoon is that there is an audience out there already. One of the biggest things a producer considers when they look to undertake a new movie is the audience the film can get. At the end of the day, it's a business. If they're going to invest money in something they want to be sure they can get a return one way or another.

Now many studios have set up smaller divisions, like Fox Searchlight, to look for smaller pictures to make as well. This all came about with indie movies in the early ninties doing rather well when it comes to return on investment. Today, for every mega-blockbuster you can't walk 15 minutes down a street without seeing an ad for, there are 2-3 indie movies out; if not tons more. Foreign films and shorts have also come a long way with production costs (editing, cameras, sound) being easier with the advent of computers and other tech. I could go down to a couple theaters near me and catch a flick with actors I've never heard of doing original material and half will have subtitles. They may not be good, indie doesn't equal good, but it's still out there.

As for having movies that have a profound effect on the audience, I'm not sure what you want. I enjoy a deep, resonating character study but I love comedies, stupid action and historical films as well that don't always leave me feeling emotionally more developed but were still entertaining. The Avengers is hardly a movie that will inspire anyone to rethink their lives but it probably touched off the imaginations of thousands of kids as well. Jurassic Park did that for me when I was younger and so did Indiana Jones. Hell, I had a minor in Archaeology because of it.

While I won't argue that Hollywood is sometimes adverse to taking risks (new horror movie? screw that, lets make another Saw!) and they do stagnate on certain themes (make all the comics into movies! put sarah jessica-actually a horse in movies because people like her!) there are sides that branch out as well.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I've felt the same as you Reaver for years now. I think it comes down to money & laziness, a powerful combination of motivators.

They already own the script & rights to a movie they produced 20-30 years ago. Rehashing it, when you know it was once a hit, for a new generation, seems logical business-wise while extremely short-sighted (at least to me).

It makes sense from their perspective on some level. Hell, I remember standing on an upright log, kicking around like some crippled bird for days when the first Karate Kid came out. Why wouldn't my children be equally enamored? Cha-ching!

Even though I understand it, I still loathe it. Minimum investment & effort, rendering maximum profits won't go away it until people grow tired of the remakes. I don't see them...ever. Vote with your wallet.

 

[saellys]

There are good movies out there, in the same numbers that there always have been. Hollywood is as greedy and as heedless of quality as it always has been.

 

[Reaver]

You know, I really wouldn't mind remakes as long as they left the classics alone. I mean they wrecked Total Recall, Fright Night and Red Dawn. Now they have their greedy sights on RoboCop and Mad Max. I've also seen rumors on the internet about a Back to the Future remake with Daniel Radcliffe clamoring to play Marty McFly. Why can't they remake movies that could've been great but failed miserably, like Waterworld, Timecop or some other 90's movie with two words mashed together to make one word?

It just goes to show that nothing is sacred in Hollywood.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Why can't they remake movies that could've been great but failed miserably, like Waterworld, Timecop or some other 90's movie with two words mashed together to make one word?

It just goes to show that nothing is sacred in Hollywood.

Simply put, they need the reputation of a good movie to try and resell it as a remake. Few people would care to waste money on films like Waterworld twice.

 

[Sparkie]

About a year ago, me and an old workmate of mine were talking about Tim Burton, who happens to be my friends favorite filmmaker. He complained to me about how he thought the 'hollywood system' was forcing Burton to do too many remakes of older movies and TV series, stuff like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes. I said that wasn't neccesarily true, that Burton still managed to make more original-feeling flicks like Big Fish and Sweeny Todd. My friend then pointed out that the movies I mentioned were, in fact, adaptations (Big Fish was a novel, Sweeny Todd a musical). He also stated that Burton had gotten away from making movies straight from an original screenplay, and that stuff like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks!, and Ed Wood would perhaps be impossible for him to get made today considering hollywood's current attitudes toward filmmaking.

I think my friend may have had a good point. Why would a movie studio make a thoughtful, unique motion picture when so many people line up to see blockbusters that entertain mindlessly?

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I hate to say it, but this is nothing new, except perhaps in its pervasiveness. Hollywood was churning out sequels and remakes long before any of us were born. Hell, some directors remade their own movies. Hitchcock made The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1934, and then did it again in 1956. DeMille directed two versions of The Ten Commandments, one in 1923 and one in 1956. There were countless series: the Thin Man, various Sherlock Holmses, adventure serials and so on.

There were fluctuations, of course; the Hays production code torpedoed a lot of types of material, and when it finally fell by the wayside we had an explosion (in the late 1960s and '70s) of high-quality films tackling issues that Hollywood hadn't been able to confront head-on before.

Then in the early 1980s, the major studios all started getting bought up by giant multinational conglomerates, to the point now where every single one of the major movie studios is owned by such a conglomerate. The problem with giant conglomerates is that they're risk-averse by their very nature; you try not to gamble $100 million on a project, when instead you can get a sure thing. The major studios all have "independent" arms now, which are "indie" only in that they typically produce films with smaller budgets and edgier material. But they're cheap, and occasionally one of them produces a film which is a huge box-office smash, and justifies making 30 other small movies that do so-so or fail outright.

The studios were fairly risk-averse before the conglomerates, because when you're dealing with millions, you don't gamble on something as unpredictable as movies and stay in business very long. So for every big-money gamble, you can see that there were scads of inexpensive, fairly profitable movies that would prevent the gamble from sinking the studio if it failed.

Even today, the studios put out a good number of high-quality films each year, in addition to the crowd-pleasers and the schlock that sells overseas even when it fails here. This is no different than it's been for decades. Hollywood has never been a place you look to advance the medium; when it happens, it's despite Hollywood's general trends. Sometimes a Matrix gets through, but most of the time you're going to see Transformers instead.

 

[SeverinR]

I am hoping they are just in a dry spell or like the economy reluctant to commit to large scale producitons.

Tv shows were stagnant, remolding the classics with nothing to add or reality tv. I love Canadian shows because they don't try to follow the US network mold of Model/actors always tossing out oneliners while posing for the camera. Flashpoint, Rookie Blue are not the standard American detective shows.

Arrow, Beauty and the beast, and one other one I forget the name of actually are worth watching.

I hope both tv and cinema figure out you cant rehash the same old stuff and keep making money.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Where is Rookie Blue, anyway? I like that show. Mentalist and Neighbors are fun, too. No laugh tracks! All the laughing happens on my side of the screen.

I seriously think I'm more into TV shows because that's where I see more original content.


Kid-friendly movies are original, especially Pixar's. Wreck-it Ralph is on my must-see list. I'M GONNA SEE IT!

 

[Steerpike]

Hollywood keeps making a bunch of knock-offs and remakes because people keep going in droves to see them. If the public truly grew tired of it and only went to see original productions, that's what they'd start making

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I hope both tv and cinema figure out you cant rehash the same old stuff and keep making money.

A quick examination of the past 30 years of TV and cinema demonstrates that this is not true. Mainstream mass media is mainstream (and massive) precisely because it rehashes the same old stuff with a shiny new coat of paint. The Avengers was loads of fun, but is it fundamentally any different than any of the countless prior stories of disparate heroes having to overcome their differences and band together to defeat a greater evil? No; it just happened to be a good example of that trope. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's not the only kind of story out there.

 

[Sparkie]

A quick examination of the past 30 years of TV and cinema demonstrates that this is not true. Mainstream mass media is mainstream (and massive) precisely because it rehashes the same old stuff with a shiny new coat of paint.

Too true.

The Avengers was loads of fun, but is it fundamentally any different than any of the countless prior stories of disparate heroes having to overcome their differences and band together to defeat a greater evil? No; it just happened to be a good example of that trope. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's not the only kind of story out there.

It's not the tropes that bother me, it's the constant brand-rehashing. (I know I'm a sinner for typing that. Branding is, as much as I hate to admit it, good marketing.)

 

[Penpilot]

Why can't they remake movies that could've been great but failed miserably, like Waterworld, Timecop or some other 90's movie with two words mashed together to make one word?

It just goes to show that nothing is sacred in Hollywood.

FYI, I hear there are discussions on remaking Waterworld... hahha.

Big studio movies cost big money so they want to invest their dollars on something more bankable. I can understand that, but to me it's like TV. The big networks want to reach a wider audience, so their shows aren't ground breaking. They keep doing making stuff like CSI: Antarctica and and Law and Order: Hoboken as the umpteenth shows in their respective franchises. I'm find with that because I know where to go if that's what I want, but there are really good options outside of the big networks and studios if you look a little.

If you think about it, we can be approaching a golden age of film and tv. For TV there are so many good shows like Dexter, The Walking Dead, etc. I can't watch them all.

For film, with the internet, films big and small and from all over the world are available now. And IMHO that's were I'm finding a lot of original stuff now. I found this film from Scandinavia called Headhunters it was really good. If you look at some smaller budget films from past years there are some really good ones. EG. Winter's Bone, starring a Pre-Hunger games Jennifer Lawrence or Take Shelter a totally engrossing psychological thriller, and there are tons more.

I say let Hollywood have their blockbusters. There are plenty of other sources for great film.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I just don't get it. Instead of taking a chance on an original story that has the possibility to affect us in profound ways, some studio exec with no shred of imagination throws it in the trash for the sake of their bottom line.

Oh well. It is a multimillion dollar business and the most important thing to them is box office numbers not quality.

I'd really like to hear your opinions. Thanks in advance for your replies!

Sounds like you do get it. I mean, it's not some kind of big mystery.

This is all part of a larger problem, which is that Hollywood simply isn't in the business of taking risks. If you try something original, you might fail, and there are just too large investments at stake for that. Anything that already comes with its own established brand recognition is that much more likely to get a movie, because more people will see it.

It's not that they've "run out" of new ideas. They just don't want new ideas, because new ideas aren't safe. The great machine has simply grown too large and too set in its ways.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

When I came up with a game concept, it was interesting enough to impress local game developers and one of the top IP lawyers in the country just enough to make me feel good... but not enough to get me past the concept stage. My IP lawyer told me that unfortunate truth about studios taking risks. "If this were a Conan game, they'd make it."

Anyway, you can guess how it ends. I kept my day job and sold dozens of copies--well, at least one dozen--of my own original story about a super strong hero (sidekick), and I'm finally writing another.

As for my IP lawyer, he represents Conan. (Cue cartoony wuh, wuh, wuh, wuuuuuuh music.)