What is the surest way to guarantee a hit in Hollywood? The answer is that there is none. Nothing you can do can assure you of success. However, there are certain things you can do to get you closer.
It is a well-known precept in Hollywood that the closest you can get to a guarantee of success is to create something based on a previous project already known to be popular and lucrative. This is what gave rise to sequels, spinoffs, and eventually reboots.
One might think this a relatively harmless way for studios to bring in some cash, but if you look to the last week in the US box office, you will see that the leading films were “Superman”, “Jurassic World Rebirth”, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “Smurfs”, and “F1”, only one of which was an original film. Likewise, if you look at the highest grossing films of the past ten years, you will see that not a single one is based on an original idea.
One could make the argument that many of these films are good, or even great pieces of art. Nevertheless, the downsides of oversaturating the film medium with unoriginal ideas are many and manifold.
There has been a recent trend to resurrect older films for twenty-or-thirty-year-later sequels; just look at the last week, which saw the release of “Happy Gilmore 2” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, a sequel to the 1997 film of the same name; or at the coming weeks which will see Liam Neeson’s sequel to “The Naked Gun”, and Disney’s attempt to cash into the fan nostalgia of 2003’s “Freaky Friday” (which was itself the second remake of an older film). While there have been successful and satisfactory attempts at this idea, more often than not these kind of films fall flat because there was nothing behind them to begin with other than the vague hope that a few more dollars can be squeezed out of the intellectual property. Rather than creating new and interesting characters, film studios rely on nostalgia as a substitute.
Then, of course, come the never-ending remakes. One could almost say that the 21st century in film has been defined by how many older art pieces can be resuscitated. Not only does this create a precedent for lack of creativity and laziness, but gives off the idea that old films are somehow lacking merely by virtue of their age. Why does a film as perfect as “It’s a Wonderful Life” need a remake? (Yes, it is getting a remake.) The more cynical answer is that while the old movie may continue to bring in some money, it can’t compare to the cash hit of a successful theatrical release. The less cynical is that today’s film-makers may honestly believe that old works like these are just not suited to modern audiences. Films like “It’s a Wonderful Life” cannot be let be because they are simply not representative of what society is like today, it would seem. This sense of moral and intellectual superiority is present in many remakes – the idea that we are somehow better than the people who came before us, and therefore our take on their artwork will be an improvement. Anyone who needs proof of the lunacy of such an idea need look only as far as Disney’s 2025 “Snow White”.
Yes, reboots and unnecessary sequels are often lazy and forgettable; but despite their mediocrity, they pose a greater threat to the art form of film than one might think.
It is easy to forget today that film really is an art form, particularly when most films don’t require two brain cells to view. Nevertheless, there was a time when people would actually attempt to use the medium to tell some of the greatest stories ever conceived, such as “Casablanca”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, or “Gone With the Wind”. Film, during the golden age of Hollywood, was used not only to entertain, but also to spark serious thought and conversation; to raise important questions and concerns; and to familiarise people with ideas or things which they might not have come to know otherwise.
The modern intellectual property method of filmmaking is the antithesis of this in many ways. It does not promote creating great stories, but rather turning a quick buck when you can. Reboots and sequels rarely aim to incite real conversation, but rather to give audiences a momentary thrill in the hopes that this will be enough to get them back in seats. Modern legacy films hardly ever ask serious questions, but instead choose to pander to the liberal biases of Hollywood, which – as in the case of the recent Snow White remake – seem to be increasingly out-of-step with those of the film-going public.
The fact that the big studios keep churning out more and more products affects not only their own ability to create original films, but also the ability of everyone else in the business. When funding and attention is directed to the constant stream of sequels, remakes, and reboots, there is hardly any room left for aspiring new filmmakers to produce their own – riskier – original ideas. What this results in is a whirlpool of franchises with the rare original film mixed in. Even the franchises get tired over time though, as demonstrated by Marvel, Lucasfilm, and many other studios.
Art thrives on originality and change. When film media cannot create original or new art, what does that say about our culture at large? Have we simply run out of ideas, or are we hooked to franchises like mindless drones ready to feed money to the IP machine? If the movie business cannot find a way to incentivise and promote real artists in the creation of new and original art, it may find itself in a rut out of which there is little hope of escape.
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Patrick Vincent writes from Dublin