Rated: 100% (3 votes)
Loading ...I Miss Originality.
Big_Adam
The decade that is 2000 been a bit of a cop out on the originality front, more so in the last two or so years.
Everyone is either “remaking” or “adapting” stuff for the big screen. I am Legend, Dawn of the Dead, Spiderman (well all the Marvel films) are all just remade or adapted films.
A better example is Knight Rider. The classic show with The Hoff and K.I.T.T. (a Pontiac Trans Am) tearing ass around saving people and foiling evil plans. 1980’s classic show.
NOW it’s not only being made into a movie (with no Hoff or Trans Am) it’s also being remade into a TV show with a Mustang. A FREEKIN MUSTANG! Who the hell thought of that. It’s the complete wrong car for new K.I.T.T. It’s not classic, stylish or funky. It’s just a mustang thats a classic mustang on steroids (hey look, another remake!).
Also talk of a new Star Wars with no William Shatner, Alvin and the Chipmunks got remade, we had 300 which is adapted from a comic. The list goes on.
It’s not that all these films are bad. 300 was excelent, Dawn of the Dead isn’t too bad (the zombie babie brings it back). But just seem that the rich lazy gits of Hollywood just seem to go “what new film can we do…hmm…lots of nice scripts here….fug’ it. Remake that show!”.
I want some originality to come back. Games are getting similar with the likes of Lara Croft’s remake in the past few years. Mario is churned out every few months. Master Chief is paraded up and down with new bump map every year or so.
I’m looking at a list of “Must see 2008 films” and it looks like someone copy and pasted half of it.
Got another Batman film, another Hulk, another Borat style film, another Bond, another Harry Potter, another Hellboy, another Indiana Jones.
I mean come on, really. Speed Racer! It was crap when 1st shown it’s going to be worse now as it’s another film that just goes into photoshop and makes everything on screen.
Originality isn’t hard. I got a stonking idea for a zombie film where people aren’t bloody morons. I got plenty of ideas for games.
So where is the problem?
Okay, there’s a writers strike at the moment but they still seem to just be churning out remakes of old shows.
Ah bugger it, I’ll go watch some more anime.
Of course you meant no Star *Trek* with William Shatner, didn’t you, but I see your point. However I thought The Hoff was going to be in the TV version? If anything had he not had his well-publicised problems, they’d probably have bitten his hand off to be in either project.
I Am Legend, to be fair, is from a 54 year old book and the last adaption was more than 20 years ago, so it’s not looking to reference either of those films, much like Point Blank vs Payback - different films and directions from the same book, The Hunter.
If you can make a good film out of a comic I take my hat off to you, and 2 out of 3 isn’t bad with SpiderMan, even if the last one was just a great comedy but ruined all the dramatics of the first two. Since 300 was fight after fight, only the IMAX screen made it a good film experience for me, on a normal screen I wouldn’t have cared. Hulk 08 is going off in the TV show direction rather than catering to adults like the first one did - the first one “only” made half a billion dollars which wasn’t enough so fire that director and actor…
But Batman, Bond, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones - the audience knows what they’re getting (especially Potter) each time and basically lap it up to give the studios some stupidly large opening weekend. It took me a few years, but once the right offer came along even I bought Die Another Day for the collection and the DVD Extras. Like The World Is Not Enough, maybe with age I’ll get to like it, but it was the most profitable Bond ever so must have done something right.
So it depends on the franchise.
I can understand your pain. BUT, you show us that list, and give it a biased view. I’m reading it, and almost all of what i see is original. not iron man and all that stuff, that oy’d mentioned, but a LOT of real new stuff. The problem is, everyone goes “THERES AN IRON MAN MOVIE!”
or “THEY’RE REMAKING OMEGA MAN!”
not “THEY’RE MAKING AN INTERESTING FILM ABOUT SOME MIT STUDENTS WHO ARE TRAINED TO COUNT CARDS. THE FILM FOLLOWS THEIR EXPLOITS AS THEY GO TO LAS VEGAS AND SWINDLE CASINOS OUT OF MILLIONS. IT LOOKS VERY INTERESTING!”
i’m sure a lot of those non-remakers will be new, good, interesting films. But remakes are cash cows, cus people want to see an iron man movie and get on with their lives. Unfortunately film fans (and i mean real ones, not pricks who think that “superman returns” is a classic of the modern age or whatever) suffer.
i will however say that anime is pants. 
300 wasn’t remade. It was adapted from a comic. Thats a totally different concept and I dont think that counts as a lack of originality as a lot of films are book/comic/script adaptations.
I dont think remakes are all that bad anyway in some cases. The new ‘Stang (although not suitable for Kitt) is a modern version of a classic design, Transformers is an awesome movie, and Halo 3 is arguably the best of the series.
Ok I agree we will still be seeing a constant stream of FIFA, NHL, PES, etc games every year and this lack of originality sucks, but dont discount something as bad simply because it is a remake or improvement of an older version.
I’m not bitching about films/games themselves. Some are damn good. 300 was damn good. Transformers was damn good (nothing like the show thought).
My problem is with that no one seem to have any good original ideas now. Everything is being made from someone else’s idea.
I want something new and spangly. Not something thats been “adapted” or is a remake of something else.
Where is the new and interesting things!
It happens with cars too, all fords look like the focus. Mercs all look like big or small variations. 911’s I can NEVER see a difference of.
i hate it how the Departed was filmed DIRECTLY after Infernal Affairs won multiple awards in Hong Kong (i have both DVDs and IA is still heck better). so F that, all hollywood films are probably remakes from somewhere somehow where we have no clue about - except those that are obviously american (where its probably been ripped off some indie film fest).
i think its now a fact of life that if it comes from Hollywood, 99 out of a 100, its a rip-off.
One of the issues with creative media products such as books, film and music is that the companies which produce them - film studios, publishers, record labels - are now owned by very large conglomerate companies, and these companies run the creative divisions in a very regimented way which requires a return on every outlay. In the past, a film studio would have funded 10 original idea films. Maybe 9 wouldn’t make much money, but maybe the 10th would be Taxi Driver and would pay for itself, and the other 9.
As a business model, this works, but as soon as you get an accountant in, he’ll just say, “well, if Taxi Driver can make all this money, why didn’t the other 9?” And maybe it was because they sucked, maybe the idea didn’t work out, maybe the audience wasn’t there. Thing is, you can’t predict how (or if) an audience will connect with an original idea. You can, though, say “well, Taxi Driver made $100 million, so Taxi Driver 2 stands a good chance of making the same amount as it’s a brand familiar to people.”
The fact the web has put a lot of pressure on these businesses has also meant this conservative impulse - to stick with what you know - has been heightened. Because if your audience has a choice (watch a film or stay home on the web), they reason that more people will vote with what they know (i.e. a franchise film, or a remake) than what they don’t.