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Shawshank Redemption was a book. The Godfather was a book. Lord of the Rings, Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs... That's just from the first 25 of IMDB'S top 250.
The Thing is a remake. The Fly was a remake. Scarface, The Departed, The Mummy... all remakes.
The problem isn't remakes or adaptations, the problem is they're shit remakes and adaptations. Nobody cares that The Batman was the 75th adaptation of Batman, because it was good.
Shawshank Redemption was a book. The Godfather was a book. Lord of the Rings, Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs… That’s just from the first 25 of IMDB’S top 250.
From the top 10, only Pulp Fiction is original and not a sequel. If you go to the top 20, you can add Inception, The Matrix and Se7en. That's 4 out of 20 (or 1 out of 10). There's a lot more original material beyond the top 25 though, but your point that every great movie is a "ripoff" very much stands.
You’re not wrong that many of our favs are remakes, but OP does have a point that disproportionately more big box office movies are reboots or sequels than 30 years ago.
Is that actually true or is everyone in this conversation just forgetting about the new IP's being released?
Perhaps it's a matter of where the marketing budgets are going rather than just what's been produced? Or how remakes and sequels tend to stay in memory longer than a flash-in-the-pan one-off IP? It allows the owners of that IP to invest in more than just movies: all sorts of media and merchandise that keeps the IP in the minds of consumers for longer.
Heck, the two big summer blockbusters this year were Barbie and Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was definitely original. Does Barbie count? I actually haven't seen it and I'm not that interested, but i don't think it's the same cannon as the direct-to-vhs movies my sister had back in the 90's.
Cody Johnson put it very well when he talked about how movie executives saw that Barbie was a smart and funny movie with a good message and decided that meant they needed to make more movies about Mattel toys.
Executives don't even like movies very much. They just want to make money and they do whatever they think will make money, not make good movies.
Was gonna point to this exact video. Thanks!
I always love Cody's Showdy.
I swear the creator dialogue has got to have some amount of advertisment mixed in with real people because the biggest compliment I see everywhere is that the movie looks expensive but cost very little.
I saw it. It was gorgeous. The art direction was wonderful. But that was about everything positive I have to say about it.
The world building was atrocious, the plot was trope heavy, the sound design was serviceable but not many sounds stood out, I couldn't find an impactful or nuanced message, the pacing was a rubber band, and the individual challenges were boring.
I love original content, and quite frankly I feel like there's enough of them every year to not be heart broken everytime a bad original film doesn't make a stellar return. I'm kinda tired of the "where new IP" discussion though.
Of course I wish there were more big budget independent films but right now the problem seems to be big budget films in general to me. More often than not they hit like duds, but they're built on good will and that's all it takes to get me to return to the first dud.
Idk, Creator sucked and it hurts to say because I want new, great, and scifi worlds coming to the theater every year but the Creator isn't good simply because it's new and that doesn't meant new IPs are "hard for the masses" to understand/appreciate/turn-out-for.
I liked the Creator, I like how they portayed the US, not many movies turn the US into the bad guys, and irredeemable war-mongers at that.
I mean sure, I enjoy the US as bad guys too. But they were cartoonish, one-note, and their decisions made no sense. I mean the whole premise, as executed, didn't make any sense.
The US's war winning weapon was... Guided missiles; that they used to strike the enemy indiscriminately and generally didn't really care where they landed? They were afraid of AI because they hooked it up sky net style and it nuked LA, but later on that's revealed to be a human's fault? They supposedly hate AI but they use what seemed to be low level AI running robot bombs to attack the enemy? Their soldiers were happy to kill a dog to get the access to the secret base and cut off the face of an enemy to bypass a door but they're shown to have hacking devices for doors and in this hightech world we're supposed to believe they can't find a metal hatch in the ground going to a fuckin mass production factory?
The main antagonist to the US is... A father/daughter pair who make AI in seemingly their free time? Not the actual factories or research facilities with hundreds of scientists but the pregnant "god" creator who's trying to raise a kid with her husband on the beach.
Idk man. Slap a big US Army on the tanks that are destroying a village to kill a kid and that's an evocative painting, a real striking visual I guess. But a good 2.5 hour movie that does not make.
I never said it made sense lol, but i enjoyed it for what it was
Well don't let me down play what you enjoyed. I'm happy you got your money's worth and had fun.
It was worth it for me on these discussions alone, not even mentioning the beautiful visuals.
It’s easier to extract profit for the shareholders from an established IP, rather than trying to build value through building your own IP. Catching lightning in a bottle is difficult, so it’s easier to just sell replicas of the bottle.
movies, at the most fundamental level, are investments.
Before anything else can happen, somebody needs to put up the money, often hitting nine digit figures, to get it made.
They want to get their money back. They want sure bets.
If it isn't going to be a sequel, it had better carry some powerful names like Tom Cruise or Christopher Nolan or Margot Robbie + Ryan Gosling
Yay for being a powerful name!
Also, too add to this, I don't think big names really have that much of an effect any more. Both "Amsterdam" and "Babylon" were filled with big names, yet neither of them did very well in theaters.
Maybe the "death of the movie star" is true after all, and I don't think Hollywood knows how to deal with it.
Amsterdam was brilliant, I really liked that film.
It's important to note that the same is essentially true for theater goers. As a viewer, I am investing my time and money in a movie experience. With tickets being $15+, a theater date can easily cost $50. When a trip to the theater costs that much, I sure as hell don't go every other weekend, and I definitely don't want to see something batting 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.
So it ends up being a vicious cycle where studios only greenlight established IP or "surefire" bets and viewers only see the big hits. I don't know anyone anymore who just casually goes to the theater because it's so expensive, so in turn, casual movies have died. The only thing I can think of that's weathered this are genres with dedicated fan bases, like horror.
Walking out of an unsatisfying, crap movie after dropping $50 hurts, and staying at home is the easiest way to avoid it.
It's always been lowest common denominator content that's made the most money. I always ask people about movie preferences and an ever increasing common theme "Life is already tough, I don't want a serious movie, I just want mindless entertainment." Sequels provide that, you know the characters, you know the stakes, sprinkle in jokes and you have a mindless money maker.
And I say... is it too much to ask for both?
Look, I don't want to give the impression that I'm a film snob with my head up my ass or anything. I enjoy a good comic book movie, a mindless action film, all sorts of stuff. Hell, depending on what day you ask, I'd say Rogue One is the best Star Wars film (on the other days, it's Empire). Unpopular opinion - I think 2001 is overrated. It might be art, but I don't find it entertaining. And I agree with M500 - I loved San Andreas. It knew what it was, I could switch my brain off for a couple of hours and quietly snark at it with a friend. Good times.
I just don't want that to be all there is. And the more films like this fail to make hundreds of billions of dollars, the less the lawyers in charge of the studios are going to risk on them in the future. That's the tragedy for me.
Just the other night I watched San Andreas with my wife.
It’s a mindless action movie, but I loved that moment. It was great just watching some over the top movie and laugh about it/ comment on it.
Serious movies need attention and silence. There is time for that, but nothing is better than joking around with my wife about some movie.
Because people prefer familiarity over the unknown.
It's not a new phenomena, as there have been remakes and sequels for almost as long as there have been movies. It's also not unique to movies as far as sequels go. Readers begging for sequels to popular books are the bane of authors everywhere.
Just enjoy what you enjoy and ignore the things you don't. For every remake or sequel there's an original movie produced by a small independent studio somewhere that's desperate for viewers.
This is why: https://youtu.be/OZ28knLt5Rs?si=SddCmwZnETY3n_1R
Edit: I see I’m not the first person to post this video.
I think it’s also similar to the reason all the bands from the 70’s and 80’s have taken up touring again. When these bands started their audience was in the prime of their youth so they were interested in new sounds and experiences. Now that they’re all old and comfortable they don’t want to venture too far from what they know. They also acquired the bulk of the wealth and power and this group of people is also the ones running these companies
I still have yet to figure out why nobody does remakes like HeartGold and SoulSilver anymore.
Can you elaborate for me.
These are considered to be the best Pokémon remakes of all time, which were released in 2009 (approximately 10 years after the original Gold and Silver releases for the Game Boy)
When I look at modern remakes of films, video games, sometimes even TV shows, it just seems that all the magic is somehow sucked out of it. I never understood why.
Big reason is because people keep buying it.
Lesser reason is that these companies are risk averse, and would rather spend 500 million risking a flop on a remake of somethign that has an existing base, than spend 10million to support something new, unique and creative.
None of this is new. Remakes have been a thing for at least a hundred years.
Every few years someone reaches an age where they notice it and we get another OP asking the same question that's been asked countless times.
we get another OP asking the same question that’s been asked countless times.
I mean, I did answer the question in the post. I'm just sad because people complain that we don't get enough new stuff, but when that new stuff comes out, they don't go and see it. I can't blame Hollywood for playing it safe, when it doesn't pay off when they don't.
There's the corporate side of it, which other comments have covered, but consumer mentality is a big piece, too. Seems like we're so awash in content there's a widespread jaded expert mentality that's taken hold. A lack of naive willingness to try new things, possibly paired with or caused by a feeling of being overtaxed financially from all sides and having too many things demanding our time.
A lack of willingness to spend time or money on something we don't already identify with as being good, on both the sides of consumers and producers.
Late stage capitalism has changed us all. Feels like there's a lot less room for experimentality in this huge carefully curated experience. We've all seen too much.
edit to add: Maybe the popularity of reboots are us yearning for simpler times. We can't reboot society so we reboot our movies, music, shows, etc. Meanwhile, constantly rehashing old plots prevents the renewal we really want.
What are these new things you write about? The studios haven’t greenlighted a “new thing” in 20 years.
Risk.
The thinking is if an idea worked the first time, people will want more of it, so it's going to work the second time too.
Plus, it's way easier to get people working together on a project when everybody had already worked together before.
A movie about Risk, the tabletop game, you say?
Not everything is a sequel, reboot or remake.
Every week, original films are released. Most lack money for advertising and are commercial failures. If we wish to see more films like them made, we need to see them - preferably with people who wouldn't otherwise have, and spread the news about them in person or Lemmy or whatever you wish.
Or you could just wait. The movie industry has gone through this many times.
Most lack money for advertising and are commercial failures
A24’s strategy in a nutshell.
Part of it for me is im not paying for anything anymore. Avengers endgame was like the last thing I bought and that was mostly just wanting to finish off the story. To much rehashing and to much individual little streaming fifedoms and such.
Because it's cheap and people keep buying.
Here's another essay about this by Patrick (H) Willems. It touches on other factors as the risk adverseness of theaters and producers. The death of the movie star, the high costs of CGI, the devalue of the cinema experience by way of Netflix straight to stream content, the rise of streaming in general, profiteering by executives, the raise in TV series budget, etc.
But quite pointedly, it touches on the fact that audiences have been trained for decades now to stay at home and not to request higher quality media. The emotional experience of “going out” to the movie theater, spending the evening engaging with an unknown novel narrative, trusting the director and the publisher to keep you entertained for a couple of hours is all gone. Mass marketing media has made it so that this experience is not possible anymore, so people have stopped requesting it. People only invest on blockbuster, $200MM+ mega productions. So they go to the theaters once or twice every year for those mega events. But people no longer go any random weekend to a theater just to see something that's being played there regardless of mass marketing. It would take years to retrain audiences that such an offering exists and that they don't have to hunt on streaming services or pirate movies just to emulate that random Saturday evening experience at home.
money
Because the human being is habitual and prefers something that is always familiar to him. So the same things will be produced with the same actors, Tom Hanks will be forced to make films up to 90 years and if he dies he will be simulated by the IA until the end of time.
As much as I was fed up with "Batman: Hulks Revenge - Infinity Multiverse Edition, a Groot and Thanos Love Story" ten years ago, I can't deny that they're popular titles. I just hope that movie makers will shift back to originality at some point.
But for now, due to the shift in how media is consumed, they're unlikely to go for anything that is not a safe choice, which sadly means that they'll stick to sequels or renoots of established brands.
People want the familiar. That's why mom & pop stores lost out to chain retailers, why your dad just wants to go to chilies again instead of trying out that new place that just opened.
For various reasons I have mainly moved from watching movies/series to audio books, one plus is that there are way more books available than movies, and most of the time the book is better than the movie. Its also much easier to read a book in many parts, compared to watching a movie in parts.
