# The Recent Lack of Originality in Cinema



## Paxyn (Jan 16, 2008)

Am I the only one out there who's irritated with Hollywood's lack of originality? 
It seems that hardly any new stories are coming out anymore. They are all supheroes, children's books, sequels or other comics cooked up for the silver screen. 
There is nothing _wrong_ with adapting these and making sequels and such... It's just when that's all that there is to choose from it makes me, as an avid film-watcher, bored as hell. 

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of seeing superheroes on the screen yet again, and as great as The Golden Compass is, it's a book adapted for the screen, as well as Harry Potter and Eragon and a number of others. Child doesn't know they have strange/mystical powers/are the chosen one. Child finds out they have strange/mystical powers/are the chosen one. Child discovers self. Child almost gets their ass kicked and gets saved by psychologically important third party. Child goes on to learn how to use powers better. Child saves world. Seriously, I love the HDM trilogy, I really do and I see a lot of points of originality and mold-busting in the fact that it directly confronts the oppression of religion and authority. But in the end, it is another book about an amazing child protagonist who learns to save the world. 

I'm tired of Disney raping and re-hashing their great library of golden classics for half-baked and unimaginative sequels animated in choppy Flash by outsourced animators. I'm sick of them buying out any animation company that might even think of rivalling them, and then, Borg-like, assimilating them, working them to death and sucking all the originality and life from them, forcing them to fit into the conservative republican image. Animation has gone down to a sickeningly decrepit degree, in film and television alike. I look back to features produced by the masters such as Osamu Tezuka, and marvel at the quality of work produced even in those days when equipment was hard to come by and in a country still making a comeback economically. I switch on the television and see the latest crap slap-dashedly done in Flash and I retch. What are we feeding our kids visually? 

I'm tired of seeing the latest slasher film done again and again and again, to the point where the damn killer himself is dead and they still manage to do another film in the same series. 

I'm tired of American screenwriters snatching concepts from Japan and re-writing, re-casting and re-hashing the same thing with some prettier effects. 

I'm tired of the same romantic/situational comedy/"go-grrl"/bumpkin bullcrap that keeps getting pumped out under the 'feel-good' premise. The world doesn't work like that. The ugly chump doesn't get the hot girl. Not everything works out in the end. Not everyone is there in the end. Not all the time. 

I want to see something new. I want to see a great, multi-million dollar production with amazing talent and sound and effort invested into an entirely new world with new characters and new concepts that have never been seen before in any format, be it book, series, comic, celebrity or internet web-comic. I want to get to know a new idea of characters and the setting they're in entirely from scratch, from the images and dialogue presented to me. I don't want to be able to go home and reference the comic or the book to see how 'faithful' it is. I want to go home and go onto the forums dedicated to it and speculate and create and add to the world by thinking about it. 

And that's what I'm gonna do.


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## Aden (Jan 16, 2008)

Well, unfortunately, those things will continue to make money, so they will continue to produce them. Welcome to America!


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## Bokracroc (Jan 17, 2008)

I just want old skool Action movies to come back


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Jan 17, 2008)

This is why I enjoyed No Country for Old Men a great deal. Even though it was probably an adaptation of a Cormack McCarthy novel.


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## Get-dancing (Jan 17, 2008)

You do know there haven't been any new stories since Shakespear? And also all the charecters have been used?
But its sad but its true. The audiences now are un-cultured shitheads. And its all because of Spielberg, Lucas, Bay and the lot. 
People couldn't care less about real acting, art, charecter development, ideas, progression, plot, they think thats "boring". 99.9% of the real film makers arent making a living that they do so deserve because the producers are obssesed with money, not critics, not awards, not festivals, just money. Hitchcock must be rolling over in his grave.
Im PRAYING the hollywood writer strike lasts so then the people can see some real films.


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## Marl Duothimir (Jan 17, 2008)

Now you see, if I were making a movie with any decent budget, I could (in deep, EPIC voice) CHANGE THE WORLD OF MOVIE-MAKING. ...Or not. Would a movie in which the hero is the villain with a sarcastic view of the world actually be any good? With proper planning, it might...

Hm...I think I'm starting to stray off topic, if I wasn't off to begin with. Yes, I have noticed that there is a distinct lack of "good" movies lately. Transformers, for all of its hype and whatnot, was excellent in terms of special effects. That is the point at which I stop caring for it. Strip it down to the bare "bones", and what you have is a cliched sci-fi/action flick with little or no character development, a far too large cast, and the fact that the actual Transformers themselves weren't even the main characters, more of a bunch of background asskickers. Points which have already been brought up by people before me, natch. 

I'd review more, but I pretty much gave up watching new movies after seeing that.


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## Paxyn (Jan 17, 2008)

Personally I was really pissed off at Aliens vs Predator 2.
Being nuts for both, I was stoked at the fact they finally dropped the PG-13 rating and went for R.
Sweet! I said. R Rated! I cried. Gore! I exclaimed.

You see the aliens and predators for about five minutes, the rest is all emo whiny bullshit humans hogging the camera and getting in the way of major awesome win of Yautja and Xenomorphs kicking ass. Fuck humans. I wanna see a whiny bullshit human drama I'll see a whiny drama bullshit human drama. I go to AVP:R to see Aliens Vs Predator.

Why couldn't they have done a story centering on a young Yautja embarking on his journey for his first Marks?
Oh yeah, because that would've involved more creativity than simply sticking a bunch of emos and two guys who look exactly the same with a dumbass slutty cheerleader with aliens and predators kicking ass somewhere off screen.


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## Renian (Jan 17, 2008)

Hmm... I think most horror films have become simple gore-fests with overacted screaming and running through dark hallways. Even most monster movies seem to be that way. Aliens vs Predator probably has plenty of that, because that seems to be what people care about more often than not.

Psycho (the original Hitchcock version) Has almost no blood in it at all, but it was still scary because it used a very simple premise with effective characters.

A fun way to make a horror film that would be interesting would be to take all the dumb things that often happen, people going off alone for instance, and then turn them on their head. One or two people leaving on their own only to find the whole group that stayed behind completly dead would be a nice change. After all, a smart killer would know that it's easier to kill people in a crowded room while they scream and run around crazily than to chase one person through a bunch of dark damp seeming corridors. 

As for the killers themselves, instead of making them silent immortal machines of death, they should have at least a little development in the character department (I exempt things like the alien creatures for this because they are for lack of a better word true simple minded monsters). Not only that, but they should seem to at least react to being shot at, hit with assorted weapons, have a house fall on them, or be blown up. In fact another way to shatter this idea would be to have the apparent main monster in the show killed by someone smart enough to realize that slow lumbering people make easy targets.

Okay, maybe I just don't like horror films all that much...


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## Kajet (Jan 19, 2008)

But... without originality you wouldn't get "Crappy dance movie 10", "immature collage comedy 52", "retarded spoof 876", "idiotic PG-13 slasher 20" or even "generic midevil fantasy 38"...

if you can't see the sarcasm you are blind


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## Adelio Altomar (Jan 19, 2008)

The directors are getting desperate for the writers and they're showing it, whether they're realizing it or not. I heard on the news that some writers are being paid by the directors themselves. I'm hoping this strike goes on because without them hard-working people, pretty-boys and cute-girls like Brad Pitt, Leonardo diCaprio, Angelina JoLie, they are nothing without them writers. And they wouldn't be anything if it weren't for them. 

I hope that people at least turn and look at the writers and realize that they are just as important, if not more than the cast themselves. Hey! These people were the ones that created all that you see. And they really don't get much out of it since the industries only want that they spew out crap that can make money for themselves.


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## kitetsu (Jan 19, 2008)

What i can't figure out is why they need the strike to begin with if more than half the writers participating can't write something good for once, because i just KNOW that there are writers with extreme talent that get a fraction of their wages. If it was Conan O' Doyle, however, that would be a different story.


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## Katana2 (Mar 31, 2008)

I think you're being too cynical. A lot of people like to look back on the 50's/60's/70's as the "Golden Era", when, in reality, there probably never was a "Golden Era". But everyone says, "But *The Godfather*! *Serpico*! *Sunset Boulevard*!", to which I'd reply "*Royal Tenenbaums*! *Punch-Drunk Love*! *No Country for Old Men*!" We like to think old movies are better, and use examples like Cinderella 9 or Superhero Movie or whatever, but in reality awful movies like that existed back when. People in the 70's probably said, "Man, the 30's were great for films". It's how it always has been, and always will be. The 90's was pretty awful, I'll give you that, but recently we've had more and more good stuff.


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## kitetsu (Mar 31, 2008)

Give me one mainstream non-european movie that strays from the "Hero's journey" script formula used in 8 out of 10 films.


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## RedVein (Mar 31, 2008)

kitetsu said:
			
		

> Give me one mainstream non-european movie that strays from the "Hero's journey" script formula used in 8 out of 10 films.



well I guess you might like We are the Strange.
it's an odd little film made of awesome that I think you might like. 
it was realsead like at the end of last year, so it aint a recent realease but it's still worth a glance.


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## eternal_flare (Mar 31, 2008)

People nowadays seems to forget the word "brain storming".

Oh yes, why do they need to try new style out since the old style is likely to guarantee the success, plus it would be a waste of money to making films not knowing the reaction from the people.
So, we have no choice but to let them bore us to death.


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## kitetsu (Mar 31, 2008)

eternal_flare said:
			
		

> People nowadays seems to forget the word "brain storming".



Most likely that's because they want to go the "safe" route, when the definition of that word is getting more vague with more recent films.

Will check "We are the Strange" when i get the chance.


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## SnowQueen_TigerClaw (Mar 31, 2008)

I think one of the biggest problems with today's movies is the lack of really good actors. There is no one out the the caliber of Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda or Katherine Hepburn anymore. A movie is only as good as its actors.
I'm also sick of all the remakes. What's the point? Psycho was a complete waste of time. 
And horror movies nowadays aren't even that scary. All they are filled with is blood and guts and sex. Where is the scare factor?


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## OttahMatic (Mar 31, 2008)

Relevant.


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## Azure (Mar 31, 2008)

I'm gonna have to echo the lack of good actors comment.  There simply is not that much talent out there right now, and all the ones with talent are pretty fucked up in the head.  Another thing is the proliferation of ridiculous amounts of gore and blood.  Blood and guts have not scared me since I was a small child, because they are so over used.  I'll cite the awful movie Hostel as an example, the amount of gore in that movie reached epic levels, yet I was not scared, hell for most of those scenes, I laughed at those poor bastards.  Movies in general today have become one trick ponies, where overbuilt stories and weak actors only manage to give enough good material to go into a 3 minute movie preview.


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## Vore Writer (Mar 31, 2008)

SnowQueen_TigerClaw said:
			
		

> I think one of the biggest problems with today's movies is the lack of really good actors. There is no one out the the caliber of Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda or Katherine Hepburn anymore. A movie is only as good as its actors.
> I'm also sick of all the remakes. What's the point? Psycho was a complete waste of time.
> And horror movies nowadays aren't even that scary. All they are filled with is blood and guts and sex. Where is the scare factor?



The scare factor is in the acting.


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## Azure (Mar 31, 2008)

Vore Writer said:
			
		

> SnowQueen_TigerClaw said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, the terribly amateur acting.  I haven't seen a good horror flick in years.


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