Fresh ideas for movies seem to have gone staleBY EMIL TIEDEMANN
It was not much more than two months ago that I spent $12.50 ($43.50 if you include popcorn!) to see Jason Voohries brought back from the grave (again!) in
Friday the 13th, the remake of a 1980 cult classic. It wasn't long after that that I checked out the first movie stills of the sequel to the remake of another horror staple,
Halloween. And just days ago I read that the
Child's Play and
Nightmare on Elm Street franchises will receive their own reboots, just as we are about to see new efforts in the
Star Trek,
X-Men, and
Harry Potter series as well.
Is tinsletown tapped out, or just plain lazy?! Whatever the reasoning behind this trend of remakes, adaptations, sequels, prequels (and even an interquel {see
Fast & Furious}), it doesn't seem to be hurting the numbers at the box office, as one of the few industries seemingly unaffected by the current recession.
Let's take a look at the top 20 movies in theatres right now, and it's full of stories we've already heard, or characters we already know. I'm not necessarily complaining here, but these people--the actors, directors, producers, writers, executives--make millions, have the world's most talented peers, and many others begging at their doorsteps, so why is it that the movie industry is starting to sound like a broken record?
The No.2 film in North America,
State of Play, is a political thriller born out of a 6-year-old British mini-series of the same name. At No.4 is
Hannah Montana: The Movie,
Miley Cyrus' feature film debut that is based on her hit TV series, titled...you guessed it,
Hannah Montana. As unoriginal as the title of the
Montana movie is, it's still not as bad as the No.5 movie,
Fast & Furious. All
it did was drop a couple of "the's" from the 2001 original, which inspired this new film and two others prior.
Right behind that, at No.6, is
Jason Stathem's
Crank: High Voltage, a sequel to a film that really had nothing more to say. Moving down the list we run into
Observe and Report (No.7), which is set to an original screenplay, but instantly reminds us of another comedy flick that is actually still in the top 20,
Paul Blart Mall Cop, at No.17. Rounding out the top 10 is the ghost feature
The Haunting in Connecticut, which isn't a remake or a sequel, but is based on a true story (like currently-playing
Che and
Hunger), dramatized to tie it into every one of the other '
Haunting' movies we've seen of late.
Moving out of the better half of the charts and we come to No.11,
Dragonball Evolution, which borrowed its plot from the 25-year-old series of Japanese comics. The live action adaptation was a bust, most likely rushed through the red tape to cash in on a classic children's franchise. Four spots below is
Race to Witch Mountain, a "re-imagining" of the 1975 adventure movie
Escape to Witch Mountain, it in itself based on a 1968 sci-fi novel by
Alexander Key.
No.18 belongs to
The Last House on the Left, a re-telling of
Wes Craven's infamous horror flick from 1972. They didn't even bother coming up with a new name for this one. Outside of the top 20 are many other examples of movie producers and studio executives who are slowly ridding original stories and ideas more and more, to cut corners perhaps, but at the expense of quality. There are comic book adaptations (
Watchmen), video game adaptations (
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li), semi-autobiographical takes (
The Class), thrasher reboots (
Friday the 13th), short story conversions (
Two Lovers), and even a movie adapted from a best-selling relationship book (
He's Just Not That Into You)!
But it's not just the movies currently in theatres....it's also the anticipated ones coming up that bare familiar tales, including
Angels & Demons (the sequel to
The Da Vinci Code and an adaptation of a
Dan Brown novel),
Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince (the sixth installment of a film series based on a 6-part book series by
J.K. Rowling),
Star Trek (another "re-imagining" of a classic film, based on a classic TV series),
X-Men Origins: Wolverwine (a spin-off of a film trilogy based on a comic book chain), and even
Where the Wild Things Are, a live action film version of a 46-year-old children's picture book!
What happened to the
Matt Damon's and
Ben Affleck's of the late-'90s? Where are all the
Project Greenlight's? Where's the originality? Hollywood seems to have misplaced all of that (especially Ben Affleck!), relying on motion pictures that resemble graphic novels, television sitcoms, and other motion pictures that got to the punchline years ago.
So, to sum things up, these head honcho's simply need to stop cutting corners in their cheque books, satisfying
their bosses, sacrificing
our patience, or at least
my patience. This is a shout out to all the layman literates and struggling scripters to spread the word, put pencil to paper (or more likely, fingertips to the keyboard), and break the cycle, before some la la land big shot turns this here editorial into a movie!
