As the holidays are coming up, I’ve seen many movie trailers that are re-tellings of stories that we know and love. The Beauty and the Beast trailer came out yesterday, and there’s also buzz for Star Wars, Rogue One, which I didn’t think was very impressive. There’s also Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is a spinoff of the Harry Potter cash cow.
More and more movies are adapting the tales from books, like Mrs Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the not so recent Hunger Game and The Fault in Our Stars. Oh yeah, also Divergent.
The only original movie I am looking forward to is Disney’s Moana, because it’s the only thing on December’s holiday roster that has some semblance of originality. Not to mention that it’s a Polynesian story with a Polynesian princess. Now, that’s not something you see every day.
As it is, there are plans to re-make movies that have already been done until 2020. There’s also a list of re-makes that can be found here.
I get it. They are made for the fans, and the kids of the fans who will see these movies so that the fandom will continue forever more. These are safe bets. Hollywood and Disney or whoever is behind producing these films will make money, and making movies is a risky business since you spend a shit ton of it.
However, when you put money in the equation of creating something, it corrupts the integrity of the project. Whatever is being created has no soul, but is formulaic drivel. Star Wars, Episode VII was completely derivative of Episode IV, and it was staring at us right in the face. So many fans, even the ones who loved the movie, conceded that it was pretty much like copy and paste from the very first movie, but they were so choked up on feels that they saved their criticism for later.
The thing is, there is still room to tell original stories, like Kubo and the Two Strings. Even the books that were made into successful movies sold well because someone took a chance on an idea. Yes, the risks of success on an original project may be lower because there isn’t much of a fanbase, but investors and audiences will not learn to love something original if it’s not even given some place to shine.
I’ll do my best to watch as many original movies as I can, but I won’t be surprised to walk to the cinema and see sequela or prequels playing.