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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30001 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Red Letter Media just did a review of Guardians of the Galaxy 3. In their usual tangent at the beginning of the video, Mike read off an online article of the 34 biggest movies coming out this year. Of the 34, 28 are sequels/remakes/reimaginings of existing properties. Of the remaining 6, 3 are based on real-life people (ex. Oppenheimer). That leaves three major movies in all of 2023 based entirely on original ideas, and all three are made by big, established filmmakers with lots of studio clout. This is a trend people have been recognizing for at least the last 5 years, if not the last decade.

EDIT - the RLM guys actually got a few of these wrong and the numbers are even worse than they thought. At least one of the 6 supposedly original films are based on a book (Scorcese's next project) and another is based on a true story (Taika Waititi's next film).

My question is -

Is there any historical precedence for this? Has there been a time and place where popular culture so heavily converged on recycling products that the flow of new products was stymied.

I don't want to be too doomer about this. There are still new, original, interesting movies being made, but they have been shuttled off to low-budget indie and streaming avenues. These days, if a movie is big enough to get a wide release, it is almost certainly not original. It's hard to imagine a new Star Wars (the original) or anything like it coming out today - a big, bold, truly original vision with a budget.

(Alternatively, maybe most of the cinematic creativity is flowing into television where for a variety of technical and cost reasons, interesting stuff can still be made on a big budget (ie. HBO).

1939 is widely considered to be the best year for motion pictures in history. But nearly all of the films (Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men, etc) were based on a novel or other previously published material. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is the one of the few notable original works. I suspect that truly original works have always been the exception rather than the rule, but it is the exceptions that stand out. I suspect that the number of sequels/reboots has increased while the numbers of films based on written media has declined, rather than cutting into the original works. But just a guess without digging into it.

Or take 1999, another "great movie year". What were the top-grossing movies?

  • Star Wars ep. 1 - existing IP

  • The Sixth Sense - original

  • Toy Story 2 - existing IP

  • The Matrix - original

  • Tarzan - existing IP

  • The Mummy - original

  • Notting Hill - original

  • The World Is Not Enough - existing IP

  • American Beauty - original

  • Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - existing IP

50% of the highest-grossing movies use existing IP, 40% are sequels.

What were the best movie award nominees at the Academy Awards that weren't in the top 10?

  • The Green Mile - existing IP

  • The Insider - existing IP

Best director award nominees?

  • The Cider House Rules - existing IP

  • Being John Malkovich - original

A cult classic that wasn't initially liked neither by the audiences nor by the critics?

  • Fight Club - existing IP

  • Office Space - it's a stretch, but existing IP

  • Ghost Dog - original

The Mummy - original

This only strengthens your point, but I think The Mummy was a remake or reimagining of an older film from the 30s.

I think using a source novel is distinctly different from what we're seeing now, where an IP is stretched for dozens of movies which are themselves the source material.

Yeah, a lot of Kubrick's movies were really just novel adaptations, and much of Kubrick's body of work are considered classics. Markedly changed from their source material a lot of the time, sure, but adaptations nonetheless.

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