So I thought The Creator was brilliant. I watched it in the cinema, thoroughly enjoyed it and was gobsmacked when I learned it’s budget was only $79 million. It looks better than some films I’ve seen that cost three times that.
But apparently, while it may make that back, it’s unlikely to even earn $100 million globally.
So the answer to the question of why Hollywood churns out the same shite over and over is that, currently, tragically, that is what the masses want to spend their money on.
And that makes me sad.
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.
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.
420 lol
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.
It’s not true. The number of recent remakes has been lower than ever.
Who has suggested that being based on a book makes it unoriginal? Never heard that expressed and definitely not by op.
I’m failing to see how it could be original. You’re taking someone else’s idea and adapting it.
It’s a different medium entirely. Not to mention the book version is normally quite different.
Plus I never said my opinion or presented anything as fact. Just said I’ve never heard this idea. It probably strikes me as odd because perhaps the majority of movies ever made are based on books.