Recycled Cinema: Hollywood’s Creativity Crisis
There are hundreds of movies released in the United States each year. Within these hundreds of movies, not all of these can be life-changing and award-winning—the majority of them are not. Beyond that, not all of them can be, or are, original. In recent years this lack of originality seems to be becoming more common, especially in the matter of remaking already existing movies. There have been hundreds, including: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Hairspray, Batman, Nosferatu, Annie, and Footloose. While extremely profitable and popular, these movies begin to wear at the integrity of films as a form of art as they dominate the big screen with repetitive and lazy plots.
These movies get a leg up using already existing fans to create a profit. In this, they—writers and producers of these movies—are often preying on nostalgia. Nostalgia is a popular theme right now. In a society of people working to heal their ‘inner child’ and reviving the early 2000s, nostalgia is all the rage. Here, remakes are at an advantage. People get to relive what they once loved on screen, and they don’t have to pay as much attention to be able to understand the stories playing across them. When attending these remade movies, audiences are entering an already existing world. Within these already existing narratives, audiences and writers alike do not have to pay as much attention to world-building or the details that make great movies…great—small intricacies and well-developed plots and characters. Instead, they get to piggyback off the fact that people are seeing these movies with a base knowledge. They do not have to put the same effort into gaining an audience, nor do they have to put the same effort in keeping an audience watching, captivated, and informed. In an era of media-laziness (as opposed to media illiteracy) where people speed up thirty-second TikToks and where scrolling is second nature, this easy route fits an audience perfectly. People are not looking for good, they are looking for easy.
When things are easy to produce, they become mass-produced. The rise of remakes is very simply reduced to the fact that they make money, lots of it. There’s no denying that people do see these movies and even enjoy them. But, when mass production enters art it becomes consumerism, stripping the form completely from its artistic roots. To further this point, Mufasa, on its opening weekend, made 122.2 million dollars. The Brutalist, on the other hand, which premiered on the same day, made 2.8 million that weekend, despite being a Golden Globe-winning and now Oscar-nominated movie, and is, in the words of a Rauhl Malhorta from a Collider article, “One of the most acclaimed films of 2024.”
One of these movies follows CGI lions under the guise of being ‘live-action,’ and the other follows a Jewish-Hungarian architect who fled to the U.S. after surviving the Holocaust. This is an unfair comparison, of course. Disney is a conglomerate, and a movie filmed on VistaVision-film has no chance of beating it in any world, no matter its artistry. However, it works to show the multi-million dollar gap between nostalgia and creativity nonetheless. Even the new (2023) Disney film, Wish, only made 31.7 million dollars on its opening weekend. The movie was overshadowed by the release of The Little Mermaid, which made 118 million dollars in return that same year. Wish, was an all-new Disney animation project, an all-new Disney princess to add to the list with an all-new Disney soundtrack, but unlike Jasmine, Ariel, and Tiana, Asha’s name sank to the bottom while Ariel’s re-emerged from the sea.
This is not to say all art has to be original to be great, not even all movies have to be original to be good, but there should be respect given to the movie as a form of art. This is well done in the new remake of the horror film Nosferatu, which is the third rendition of this classic based on Stoker’s Dracula. While a remake, the cinematography, the dedication to storytelling based on the source material, the differences from its predecessors—in the depiction of Count Orlok, and the more somber tone and dialogue, all make it more artfully done than other remakes. Nosferatu, a Robert Eggers film, was made by a man who loves films for the sake of film and artistry, who loves gothic horror, and who has dedicated his career to doing it justice through tone, dialogue, and coloring.
When movies are made just for money’s sake, and it would be hard to argue that Will Smith playing the genie in Aladdin is anything but a money grab, it takes away from what movies ought to be. Movies, in their purest form, are an art, as all entertainment is. It’s undeniably disappointing to writers and producers of new films that they are being outsold by unoriginal content while their own creative projects fall flat.
Remakes themselves are not the problem. The problem lies in the laziness of the filmmakers and the viewers who so easily accept these movies without question and without critique. Movies should not be made for money’s sake but, like all art should be, for the emotion of it; whether that be joy or sadness, anger or disgust, or whatever is intended or received.
Movies are not dead, and the art of film is not yet obsolete, you may just have to dig a little more to find it. You may just have to look past the biggest movie posters and the familiar titles and dive into what genuinely looks intriguing—what has thought and effort put into it, good cinematography and good writing, new concepts, and original plots.
So, in the words of movie theaters everywhere, silence your cell phones, be quiet and courteous, and throw away your trash at the end of the movie; there’s still plenty of new things to see.
Sources:
Mufasa: The Lion King Box Office Milestone Makes It One Of 2024's Biggest Movies After Rocky Start
'The Brutalist' Constructs Global Box Office Victory After Major Expansion
Wish's Box Office Flop Explained: Breaking Down Disney's New Animated Movie's $31.7M Opening
Live-Action ‘The Little Mermaid’ Remake Wins Big With $118 Million Premiere Weekend
Cover Photo: Part of Daisuke Takakura’s series Monodramatic (2013)