"Hollywood has no new ideas." So what? STFU!

Every time there's news of a remake or a reboot or a re-imagining, people will inevitably bitch that "Hollywood is running out of ideas!" They bemoan that it shows the general lack of creativity in Hollywood, and whine about how there are no new ideas anymore. Often, these people won't add anything else to the thread, as though their observation is worthy of posting on its own--as though it were an original thought.

It's getting on my nerves, to be honest.

For one thing, it immediately indicates the speaker's general ignorance of the history of story telling and film in Hollywood. Many of the movies we consider to be all time classics now were remakes themselves. Other movies that we hold up to be great films are simply filmed plays, slightly changed to be appropriate for the silver screen. What producers and directors didn't take from the stage and previous movies, they took from books. When you start naming former Oscar winners and AFI's Top 100 films, you're going to have quite the list of remakes and adaptations.

For another thing, Hollywood has never valued originality. Which is fine. It stems from theater, and while there are a lot of wonderful truly original stories, many are just "re imaginings" of other plays and classic tales. Shakespeare never told an original story and nobody expected him to. Nobody said "Well, quite frankly, I'm tired of the story of King Lear. Why can't playwrights do something original for once?" Well, okay, they might have, but if they did, nobody noticed or cared.

Also, I think the general bitching has something to do with a real disconnect between what Hollywood values and what the audience values. People who actually write and direct and act for a living know there's no original stories to tell. There just aren't. All of the stories have been told by the ancient Greeks. Sorry, there's nothing to be done about that. But that doesn't stop people from being creative, because it's not the plot that matters, it's how you interpret it. That's why the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho was so pointless. That's not the kind of remake anybody wants or needs, and it wasn't successful. He should have realized that by virtue of the fact that nobody had bothered to do it before. Hollywood values originality in dialogue (see Tarentino, who tells very basic plots ripped off from all kinds of movies, but he has a phenomenal understanding of dialogue and humor), directing, cinematography, etc. In other words, Hollywood wants originality in the language of film not in the plot of stories. So find something else to bitch about, will ya?

I don't have anything clever to say but I agree completely. This has always annoyed me.

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Originally posted by pepperlandgirl

Hollywood values originality in dialogue (see Tarentino, who tells very basic plots ripped off from all kinds of movies, but he has a phenomenal understanding of dialogue and humor), directing, cinematography, etc. In other words, Hollywood wants originality in the language of film not in the plot of stories.

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I would say this is a general value in entertainment and not one only restricted to film. All of those classic plays that highlight Shakespeare's genius are simply re-tellings of older stories. His language and methods were where the genius was at, not the plot. This is not a new thing.

Movies cost a lot to make with a very few exceptions like Clerks or Blair Witch so Hollywood needs to make a lot of money on nearly every project.

The Great old movies were usually based on successful plays or very successful books. (Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, West Side Story, Arsenic and Old Lace, Dracula, Maltese Falcon, The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.) The original ideas were fairly rare back in the Golden Age and even the post studios days. There have always been exceptional original screenplays and idea but it is not as bad or different as people think.

The Casablanca's and Citizen Kane's have always been the exceptions.

Well, I read today that NBC is remaking The Rockford Files.

As you can imagine, I am really not cool with this.

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Originally posted by pepperlandgirl

For another thing, Hollywood has never valued originality.

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This is a good point, and Jim's post is also good. By my count there were ten film versions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde before the 1941 Spencer Tracy version. The iconic Humphrey Bogart film The Maltese Falcon was the third movie based on Dashiell Hammett's book. Even The Wizard of Oz had been done before.

A little more on Oz. Beside the 1910 movie, there was a terrible one from around 1925 I saw on TCM and a Broadway play based on the extremely successful book.

It's not that Hollywood is remaking movies, it's that they're remaking movies that don't need to be remade. Red Dawn worked in the 80s because the Cold War was a real threat. But in the remake the Russians and Chinese invade the US for....some reason. Some movies have a time and a place, just because it worked once doesn't mean it will work again.

Some recent updates have worked better than others. IIRC The recent Manchurian Candidate had a nice modern spin on a Cold War tale and that's part of what the best rethreads do, they tell an old story in a modern context, with a different spin. I think the "Hollywood has no new ideas" concept comes from the fact that time to time cinema seems a bit tired. If EVERY summer blockbuster is a sequel or some other form of franchise vehicle it can be a bit disheartening, even if you enjoy one or other particular series of films.

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Originally posted by Revs

It's not that Hollywood is remaking movies, it's that they're remaking movies that don't need to be remade. Red Dawn worked in the 80s because the Cold War was a real threat. But in the remake the Russians and Chinese invade the US for....some reason. Some movies have a time and a place, just because it worked once doesn't mean it will work again.

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But people could have made the same argument about a lot of movies that got remade in the past century. Red Dawn was a product of Cold War fear, but now we're living under the threat of a different fear. Sure, we don't hear about terrorism every single night anymore, but our country is still at two wars in the name of stopping it. We may not have the same fear of Russians and Cubans invading, but we do have a generalized fear of our home soil being attacked, and unlike the 80s, we actually know for a fact it's possible.

Well most of (though not all) of Pixar's stuff has been fairly original, at least by Hollywood standards. Every year there are examples of original new movies, just not usually the blockbusters. I don’t see as many new movies as I use to but recently we had the Wrestler as a great example of something different and new. Maybe the 70s stood out for original movies before the success of Jaws and Star Wars but I think that 6 year period was an exceptional exception and not the norm.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

Movies cost a lot to make with a very few exceptions like Clerks or Blair Witch so Hollywood needs to make a lot of money on nearly every project.

The Great old movies were usually based on successful plays or very successful books. (Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, West Side Story, Arsenic and Old Lace, Dracula, Maltese Falcon, The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.) The original ideas were fairly rare back in the Golden Age and even the post studios days. There have always been exceptional original screenplays and idea but it is not as bad or different as people think.

The Casablanca's and Citizen Kane's have always been the exceptions.

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Not to nitpick, but Casablanca was based on a play. Admittedly, a play that was never actually produced, but a play nonetheless. :D

Anyway, I wholly endorse pepper's OP. The notion that theatre is supposed to be original is an extremely modern concept -- the Greeks redid the exact same stories year after year at their festivals; my main man Shakespeare ripped off everything he ever wrote from some other source; hell, you could make a pretty good case that most biographies aren't terribly original either, since they're all structured in one of two or three possibly ways, with several key, universal themes. The uniqueness is in the execution of those rehashed stories and ideas. Which is why a part of me is a little bit geeked up about the word that Hollywood is making "Gilligan's Island" into a feature film -the Ginger/Mary Ann debate returns!

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Originally posted by pepperlandgirl

They bemoan … the general lack of creativity in Hollywood, and whine about how there are no new ideas anymore.

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All right. Instead, how about; Hollywood is creatively bankrupt?

Confronted with a veritable wealth of relatively original works and much new material, Hollywood continues to choose remakes of existing movies that have been remade numerous times (e.g., Robin Hood), pathetic 1960's television shows (e.g., Lost in Space, Bewitched, Miami Vice) and comic books.

In their haste to milk baby boomers like the last cow on the farm, they have neglected a lode of untapped subject matter that could reinvigorate modern cinema. Classic fantasy tales such as those of William Morris ("The Well at the World's End") or Lord Dunsany ("The King of Elfland's Daughter", "The Charwoman's Shadow") are equally neglected along side modern work such as that of science fiction writer Peter Hamilton.

The sheer amount of high quality material that Hollywood overlooks in its haste at pandering to an audience with the attention span of fruit flies is damning enough as it is. That they also continue to resurrect a tiny assortment of old chestnuts on such a regular basis truly seals their consignment to moviemaking Hell. Said consignment well enough justified even without mentioning the remakes of movies which are so transcendant that remakes are instantly superfluous, per your own mention of "Psycho" and others like "Sabrina". I dread to think of how somebody will one day butcher "Citizen Kane".

I can certainly understand you being fed up with those who piss and moan without providing specific detail and, especially, alternative subject matter of a superior nature. That is both boring and offensive to legitimate discussions of the subject. However, Hollywood can do far better with the stupendous arsenal of resources that it has at its disposal and deserves more than a few brickbats for the dismal track record it keeps.

I love Lord Dunsany. But I don't think he would translate well to a movie.

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Originally posted by Zenster

All right. Instead, how about; Hollywood is creatively bankrupt?
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I think a better way to phrase is that Hollywood is a business. Hollywood has always been a business and the bottom line being the only concern. That's never been a secret. Watch The Bad and the Beautiful to get a pretty good idea on just what it took to avoid be "creatively bankrupt" and the sacrifices and finagling that went on to put a film together. Scorsese talks about this a great deal in his documentary about American film, about how all the great directors had to make one for the studio for every film they made for themselves. Obviously that's never stopped being the case.

If Hollywood relies on remaking old chestnuts and appealing to the fond memories of the Baby Boomers, it's because that's an equation that works. If they didn't turn a profit on that sort of project, they wouldn't bother green-lighting it. The answer, of course, is for the movie going public to collectively turn their backs on those sorts of films and instead pay to see really under-appreciated movies like "Big Fan" and "World's Greatest Dad." But they don't.

And I'll go see the new Robin Hood. I absolutely will sit through that, and probably pay to see it. But why shouldn't I enjoy it? Obviously there's something about that story that people do respond to. Or else it wouldn't have been made dozens of times since 1912.

Do I wish we lived in a world where Transformers 2 wasn't a viable, popular film? I do, but is that really any worse than the old Hammer films or Ed Wood or Roger Corman? Meanwhile, there are a lot of amazing movies produced and released every year. While there's only a finite number of films made every year, and the big blockbusters and the like take up a few of those slots, they don't take up all of them. Besides, it's those films that make the other ones possible.

Pepperlandgirl has it exactly right. While all arts are to some degree expensive, filmography is probably one of the most costly. The more money it takes to put something together, the more conservative that field will be. I agree with you that I would like to see more variation in film then there currently is in the mainstream filmhouses. But that's dependent on those films being a moneymaking venture.

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Originally posted by Inner Stickler

Pepperlandgirl has it exactly right. While all arts are to some degree expensive, filmography is probably one of the most costly. The more money it takes to put something together, the more conservative that field will be. I agree with you that I would like to see more variation in film then there currently is in the mainstream filmhouses. But that's dependent on those films being a moneymaking venture.

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It's sort of like getting more variety in your fast food options (just go with me on this). In a big city, with many different ethnicities represented and a huge market you can get fast food of all sorts. Hot dog vendors, taco trucks, falafel carts, etc, etc. But you also get a couple of big corporations--McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, etc--and those do not have a great variety. You don't go into McDonald's expecting to find authentic Mexican food, but McDonald's also has a far broader reach and more money in their pockets than a taco truck. You can still get McDonald's out in the middle of rural nowhere, but good luck getting falafel there.

Now, if we all ate at taco trucks more often McDonald's would probably make a taco, but it would not be a good taco. It would be a McDonald's taco. Sure, you could get that McDonald's taco all over the place (much like Hollywood films have greater distribution), but it wouldn't be as good as a taco truck taco.

Relying on Hollywood for greater variety--and actually wanting that variety to be good--is a losing bet. Once things get processed through that machine they tend to come out tasting the same.

tacotacotaco

At the very least people who've never had a taco might try one and then when they rave to me about the awesome McD's taco they had, I can point them to my taco truck of preference.

A fair point. Also, mm. Tacos.

I know, right? Who started talking about food?!

It seems to me that "Hollywood is a business" is exactly the worst argument to make about this sort of topic. Sure, Hollywood is a business. That means that, if they could make the most profit by distributing the exact same movies every single year, that is just what they would do. The only reason they don't do that is that people will pay for movies with varying degrees of novelty.

On the other hand, if enough people demand "original" movies, for whatever value of "original," then Hollywood will bend over and give it to them. If enough people want to see Warholian experimental cinema about fetus-eating weasels, HOLLYWOOD WILL GIVE IT TO THEM. Hollywood doesn't care. The only reason Hollywood doesn't crank out Birth of a Nation-style racist movies anymore is that we, the audience, don't want to pay for them.

So by no means should people "STFU" about what they want from Hollywood. If enough people really want Hollywood to do something, all they need to do is bitch louder, and keep bitching, and eventually Hollywood will give them what they want. Because Hollywood wants money.