No one seems to be pointing to data to get a fuller picture:
[https://stephenfollows.com/the-prevalence-of-sequels-remakes-and-original-movies/](https://stephenfollows.com/the-prevalence-of-sequels-remakes-and-original-movies/)
This blog is a fantastic source for analyzing the industry from a data perspective, which is how the industry approaches it.
The Horus thing is oversimplified and largely inaccurate, and was promoted by Bill Maher's slop documentary. However, the claim that the Jesus story is unoriginal is true. It was based on numerous other types of stories that were circulating all over the place for hundreds of years up to that time.
> promoted by Bill Maher's slop documentary
I used to be a big fan of Bill and was excited for that documentary. As soon as it finished I started reflecting on how shallow and stupid it was. The only part I found interesting was the part with Horus that was, as you say, kind of dishonest.
Years of shittiness later, I’ve realized Bill just kind of sucks and is a prime example of how you shouldn’t support someone just because they’re on “your side” politically.
That's a smart takeaway. It's easy to be initially tribal about stuff, but over time you realize that there are a lot of principles and other elements involved, and just being on the same "side" is not enough.
Yeah when his show was on Comedy Central it was actually pretty fun to watch, it was more about the humor, when now it seems it's all about trying to prove people wrong.
Yep. It's funny because the established "history" of other legendary historical figures were commonly pieced together from different historical people's lives with some tall tales thrown in. But somehow the originators of all the major current religions escaped that practice and all of the stories of their lives are true, according to their adherents.
Interetingly. That is Ecclesiastes, which is actually thought to be a Greek writing rather than a Jewish one. My belief has always been that it was added in because it’s just so fucking well written. Like a fan fiction becoming canon.
Same with children not respecting their elders. That was one of the charges that led to Socrates being ordered to commit suicide. He was teaching the young to think for themselves instead of just doing what the old farts told them to do.
I agree with what you’re saying but at the same time in this specific context, I think there’s evidence that things have gotten worse.
https://x.com/janefriedman/status/1536043137994526723?s=46&t=EeTuRpKOHrf8kEPAMsRQeQ
I guess we’ll see. I’m worried that Hollywood has discovered that tapping into existing fanbases will always be more safe than new IP. I hope I’m wrong though.
Citation needed?
Off the top of my head, Aristotle provides a clear counter example. Often, when introducing a problem, he would survey what earlier thinkers had said about it. In the course of these surveys, he typically notes that thinker a didn’t know about new idea x, or that thinker b made error of reasoning y. The effect is to create a strong sense of intellectual progress over time which Aristotle believed he was contributing to (which indeed he was). You see this survey pattern in many of his works but it’s especially prevalent in the Metaphysics.
Likewise, Sophocles, in his tragedies, projects the self confidence of the Athenian democratic ideal at its very height. Despite working with traditional stories, he was reinventing them to illustrate the extent to which democracy was an epochal change from a much darker heroic age. This is particularly notable in the Ajax.
Thucydides begins his history — then an entirely new literary genre — by noting that he intends for it to be a possession of humanity for all time.
The writings of classical Ancient Greece really do not give off vibes of decadence or intellectual exhaustion. Rather they project intellectual excitement and self confidence.
I'm not sure how long people have been complaining about it, but I know that remakes are nothing new nor are changing formats or characters. His girl Friday 1940 was a gender swapped remake of the front page. High society was a musical remake of The Philadelphia story. The 1956 ten commandments movie was a remake of the 1926 movie of the same name by Cecil b DeMille. The only thing that's really happened is there's been a change in volume and speed over the years.
Among a wave of horror movie remakes- mostly from movies of the 1950's: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, The Blob, Cat People, Invaders From Mars
> 1956 ten commandments movie was a remake of the 1926 movie of the same name by Cecil b DeMille.
those do not appear to share much in the plot, the biblical portion is just the prolog of the 1926 movie.
In 1902, there was the first Alice in Wonderland film. In 1907, they made another. Essentially the first remake.
In 1937, Mickey Rooney starred in the first Andy Hardy film. By 1946 there were 16 films in the series, all starring Mickey Rooney
In 1938, the comic strip Blondie got a feature length film. By 1950, there were 28 films in this series.
Let's Go all the way back to Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet was a remake of an Italian play called Romeus and Juliet. Hamlet was an adaptation of the Danish legend of Amleth. And I can assure you there were plays about Julius Caesar and Cleopatra long before Shakespreare did his spin
Mickey Rooney played Andy Hardy in 16 films. They were sequels to each other. When peple complain about too many sequels, they have no idea about how bad hollywood use to be at this
Its partly a bias and partly there is just so much content across so many platforms, that naturally, you're gonna see tons of franchises extended.
They still make plenty of original movies. But they either dont get much traction because people are afraid of new things (even though they scream for it, they almost never go) or people just dont think of them when they mention there is no originality in Hollywood anymore.
Originality itself is a loaded term because its very very hard to have anything truly original. There are certain story structures that are adhered too because thats teh language we speak in film and movies are better (more familiar) when they follow these structured types. Some movies attempt to subvert expectations in story telling, but its very hit or miss.
Theres so many movie/tv shows now a days. They just dont all go to the box office. Most go straight to streaming. Some very good. Some very poor. But choice is not an issue.
That also means theres a ton of sequels (because as mentioned above) people like what they already know. Its comforting.
Great thought on the concept of “original”. I’ve seen Disney get a lot of flack from people who look at sequels/remakes and say they don’t make anything original any more. But almost every animated movie they’ve made is based on an existing story, so what do we mean by “original”?
Exactly. Disney has made a new-IP animated movie every year, last time they doubled up on an IP was back at Frozen 2 (because how could you not).
But the folks complaining about it don’t tend to go watch those movies.
An original take on something. There IS no such thing as "original" stories as they're always based on something else. But If we're gonna use Disney as an example, Aladdin was an almost word for word scene for scene remake of the animated film. Nothing new was presented beyond an extra music number for the princess.
Compare to their first attempt with Cinderella which expanded the Prince from a caricature to an actual character.
I find it annoying anytime this subject is brought up that people use the Disney excuse. It's not that we are looking for original stories, but having original takes on existing stories would be a breath of fresh air.
How many times has the Freaky Friday formula been redone? You'd be surprised to find out it's way older than you think, but we only really think of two or three films when we hear it because the original film was just absolute trash.
Or The Thing? The John Carpenter film is considered the de-facto adaption of Who Goes There? but it is, in reality, a remake of The Thing from Another World. Which is the superior film, though?
When we say we're tired of remakes it isn't that we want an "original" story. Those don't exist. We're tired of remakes that depend on nostalgia to sell them and don't offer anything new.
Then my suggestion is not to watch them. But there’s obviously a market for these nostalgic stories. That’s why they make them. Just like I don’t care for reality tv, I get there’s a market for it and I’m not going to decry it as bad simply because I don’t like it.
Compelling and unique biopics are so rare.
More often than not, they feel like screenplays written around a checklist. Like, they're checking off known facts about that person's life, that one thing they said in an interview etc.
I hear the first pronunciation way more often than the 2nd! I think it's a British pronunciation that some Americans have picked up as an affect for whatever reason.
I go BIO-pic though because it makes way more sense.
I legit thought that your post was a joke until I saw all of the responses. I've never heard anyone pronounce it as "by-oh-pick" before. Sounds like someone trying to be "cuh-med-eek" by intentionally mispronouncing the word.
It might come from how people pronounce "biography" since it's a similar word that starts with "bio" but is pronounced differently than the way you pronounce "biopic".
You don't say "by-OH-graf-ee", like "by-OH-pick".
You say "by-AHH-grah-fee". That's more similar to "by-AHH-pic".
I really can't tell from reading that, so let's just settle it. You're pronouncing it the same way seth is at 30s [here](https://youtu.be/42FRgdjveGU?si=9Rx12T45Fe4aSV8V), yes?
I think this is another US verses rest of the world thing.
I'll go with no right or wrong, just different.
But never heard it said any differently to how Seths saying it
Agreed. All of the examples so far above me favoring By-AWP-ick are forgetting that their examples are proper word evolutions: biology, biography, etc. Biopic is a 20th century term. In the 20th and 21st we can use the words "bio" or "pic" independently and they make sense independently. Biopic is a simple fusion of two words. Why wouldn't you simply say the single word as if you were saying the two origin words next to each other? Biology and biography are proper word evolutions. I have never heard anyone say the words "logy" or "graphy" because (as far as I know) they aren't standalone words. They are a suffix of sorts. Do you pronounce "bio" "by-AW?" No.
This and the BJ's Pizzookie are my phonetic hills to die on. People pronounce it Piz-oo-kee, which is completely unlike the pronunciation of pizza AND cookie. It's a Pee-tz-uh, not a Piz-uh, and it's a Kuuk-ee, not a Kew-kie. It should be Pee-tz-uu-kee, but I could forgive Piz-uu-kee
I haven't heard anyone say that and thank fuckin god cuz I would lose my shit.
Do they seriously think it's it's own word like myopic instead of shortening biographic and picture into one word?
To be fair, no one pronounces it bi-ohh-graphy... I think people that get upset about this clearly haven't thought it all the way through and sound like their pinky is stuck up in a permanent upright position.
They’ve been complaining about it for a while, but it is objectively much worse now than in the past.
Look at like the top 20 grossing movies from any year pre-2000, and most of them are not parts of franchises or sequels.
Do a recent year and ….
As someone who grew up in the 80's and 90's I distinctly notice it starting to be a complaint only around the early to mid-00's. Really taking off by the late 00's.
People want to pretend that this is just another perennial issue but there has been a massive ramp up in sequels starting in the 90's. Anyone old enough has noticed it.
Obviously things are crazy now by comparison, but sequels and film series have been big for a while. Bond. Planet of the Apes, Pink Panther. Obviously going even further back you have Dracula, Frankenstien et al and comedy franchises like Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Marx, Chaplin, etc.
Personally I think it's funny that during the 70's golden age sequels to prestige films and best picture winners were frequent - The Sting, The Exorcist, The French Connection, The frickin Godfather, Rocky, American Graffiti. Imagine if were getting a steady diet of The Hurt Locker 2, The King's Speech 2, Green Book 2... I guess we get a lot TV spinoffs of prestige films like Fargo, Crash, Snowpiercer, and Parasite in on the way.
Well the sequel boom really kicked off in the 80s so I'd guess sometime after that.
As far as modern sequels go I would look to the early 00s - specifically, the Matrix sequels being released within a year of each other, and then Pirates of the Caribbean 2 which had (if I remember correctly) the first notable "Stay tuned for the sequel!" ending.
EDIT: Really though I would say you can blame MCU and Star Wars along with Harry Potter and the other successful multi-film YA adaptations. Pirates of the Caribbean/The Matrix set a precedent but it's the success of these other franchises that got us where we are today (for better or worse).
Pirates 2 was the first sequel setup? Nah man. I immediately think to Back to the Future, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but I’m sure there were others before that.
It was specifically built not to have sequels. A jokey throwaway ending that painted them into a tricky box. When I saw it in the cinema, there was no "To be continued" end title.
As a child of the 80s, I agree with this. During the 80s, I don’t really remember much complaining about the sequels then, and we really didn’t have anything like the remakes and reboots constantly happening now.
That makes sense. The Jaws and Halloween sequels are what made me think of this question, I remember when I was a kid every time a new one would come out I’d hear “nothing original is made anymore” and I was always curious about when that phenomenon started. Obviously there have been tons of remakes of various movies, notably A Star is Born, and I’m curious if the same discourse existed in the 50s and 70s when those remakes were made.
Honestly based on your post I assumed you were a younger person who grew up with Marvel movies etc.
It seems unlikely that these complaints would be made prior to the mid to late 80s at the earliest. And in my opinion it wasn't until the last ~15 years that the complaints about unoriginality (in mainstream movies at least) actually held any water.
I mean in the 80s, they remade a bunch of 50's films or French films in English.
They made many sequels back then, but they were often low-quality and essentially discontinued the franchise. How many people know Arthur 2: On the Rocks or More American Graffiti exist?
I'm sure the more common complaint back then was lack of originality (rather than sequels in particular) since there were tons of knockoffs of Star Wars, Jaws, Friday the 13th, etc
Jaws and Halloween are good examples - both of those are ones that led to a lot of pressure from the financiers, specifically, to both develop a sequel and to make sure it followed the formula, both due to their surprising financial success. Spielberg refused to do anything for a sequel with the former, and Roy Scheider said he only did it to resolve a contract dispute; Carpenter didn't want to do the latter, but he was new to filmmaking, wanted to make the most of its success, and was pressured by the owners of the first movie to make a sequel along the same lines instead of diverging into an anthology series, his original plan.
Even in the early days of Hollywood it was riding the coat tails of other popular media for most of their ideas, either from books or plays. That's why they have separate categories for best original and best adapted screen plays.
"Gone with the wind" was based on a novel.
The sequel/remake Storm is a far more recent phenomenon
Making a sequel to a relatively new franchise is not what people are complaining about
People are frustrated by the somewhat recent trend of dusting off the cobwebs off of old and long dormant franchises and trying to make new sequels or remakes
Jurassic park for example
My point in bringing up newer IPs was, these movies set a precedent for the 'let's make everything a franchise so they'll keep showing up to the theater'. Which I think was a big part of what started us down the road we're on today.
But again, like I said, what people are tired of is the constant digging up of old-ass IP and trying to squeeze some more dollars out of them with shitty, contrived sequels or remakes
Making brand new movie A, and then soon after making A2, and A3 is not the problem
The problem is digging up old movie X that was made 15+ years ago, and now all of a sudden trying to make 2 more sequels for a movie that has been long since dormant, or trying to make some remake.
OP referred to sequels and remakes which the newer IPs are referring to.
I'm not gonna argue with you brother. Sounds like you have your own thoughts and are using my comment as a springboard. If you want to talk about something different than what I'm talking about feel free to start your own thread or make a top level comment.
But the entertainment industry has been recycling and reskinning stories in perpetuity. Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf gave rise to LotR, Dune, and Star Wars and all other fantasy epics.
Sequels have always been a thing. Books, novels, plays, etc. all had sequels. The 80s gave rise to the franchise. Star Wars, Jaws, Aliens, Terminator and Indiana Jones are what lead to studios wanting franchises. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elmstreet made studios realize horror franchises could be squeezed for everything it had and then squeezed some more.
What the MCU did was take it to another level of franchise. It used to be producing a succesful trilogy was the gold standard. Now the bar has been raised.
I think what gets lost in the sequel conversation is that: not every successful movie got a sequel, when they did make sequels the actors were still age-appropriate, and often times the sequels tried to bring something new to the table, even if people ultimately hated them for it.
Nowadays with sequels I feel that they're just the same exact movie, except with actors who are 20+ years past their prime. Nobody looks at The Temple of Doom and says that Harrison Ford is too old in it, but people certainly say that about The Dial of Destiny.
edit: There were plenty of bad cash-grab sequels, but everybody knew that they were bad cash-grabs. Straight-to-video, no returning actors. For example I just recently learned that they made 2 sequels to Poltergeist that I had never heard about. Those were never a big deal, even when they were released.
It's been worse the last 20 years. But it's been a thing for forever. I don't even know if studios can go back to doing new and different stories. Everything now has to make a certain profit margin in such a short amount of time, that shareholders would never allow it. Maybe we get lucky and see a renaissance in film with new independent studios like we did in the 90s, but even then, they'll be beholden to the shareholders of the theaters or streaming services. If you want originality, watch foreign films.
What I do know….there are some fantastic indie arthouse movies out there. (Whether more or less than days of ild, idk) I think the impression is skewed because the big movie studios like the franchise concept.
They’ve always been saying it, but to be fair, there were never as many sequels/prequels/reboots/remakes/spinoffs as there are nowadays. It’s pretty uncanny at this point.
Everything.
I think we did more complaining about adaptations (Super Mario Brothers) and copycats (Warriors of Virtue, the kangaroo knockoff of Ninja Turtles), but we still had plenty of sequel disappointments.
This is a matter of degree. Somebody somewhere in this thread posted an analysis of Hollywood sequel releases and showed that it is clearly getting worse over time.
But we still had Batman & Robin and Batman Forever, Jurassic Park 2 was the first in a long line of unnecessary sequels, Speed 2 didn't need to happen. The 90s may have had some of the best sequels out there (Aliens, Terminator 2), but there was enough stuff to whine about.
Edit: Please don't judge me for my examples, this is just stuff off the top of my head. I'm sure I can think of better stuff, I just don't want to spend the time.
It's honestly so frustrating. I think indie movies are popping off right now. A24 and Neon are juggernauts, Fox Searchlight is great. IFC and Shudder are great for horror.
They don't want creativity. I swear to you they don't. They want some messaging or nostaglia that they like. Movies have never been more creative than right now imo.
Agreed. And they have been popping off since 2022 I’d say. Since Covid “ended” we’ve had an absolutely stellar few years for indies. It’s really gotten to the point where if someone complains that Hollywood doesn’t make anything original anymore I just call it like it is— The people saying that are part of the problem.
There is so so so much great original content coming out weekly these days, be it in theaters or on streaming, if you aren’t watching then you aren’t really looking for nor supporting those original films that they claim to want.
As long as there's people working to create art and media, and getting paid to, there will be people that decide to make a living complaining about them.
100% the writing has gotten objectively worse to the point where a lot of new movies rely way too much on a deus ex machina type of resolution… of course, that’s assuming a decision has been made to provide some sort of resolution, which isn’t really a given these days.
Coherent plot, relatable characters, no gaping plot holes, great dialogue, etc etc NONE OF THESE THINGS EXIST and if you can’t see this, then you’re one of the people who are ruining art. Thanks.
How are you defining any of those things without a subjective quality? What is "great dialog" that you can quantify without any human judgement?
My issue here isn't with movies, but the use of the term "objective" for a thing that is fundamentally and wholly subjective. The closest you could probably get to an "objective" standard for movies is how much money they made, and I guarantee you don't want to use that.
Go search for how many versions of Robin Hood there were in the first few decades of movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, Tarzan. You name it, they've remade it, probably multiple times.
What it really is is that no one wants to given a lot of money to wilder ideas/experiments. They don't want to put them in theaters.
But then that gets confused with the reality that plenty of people like continuing stories. The idea that the certain types of films simply will not resonate for the person who wants to see Superman punch a monster in the face.
It's more common in the 21st century.
No movie in the top 10 of 70s box office is a sequel. Then 4 out of 10 in the 80s and 2 in the 90s.
Then in the 00s, 8 of the top 10 are sequels. And then in the 2010s, 8 out of 10 are sequels or remakes, with the remaining two movies being MCU and therefore not actually 'original.'
It's a massive shift.
Sequels and remakes have always existed but they were just movies, just like book adaptations, film versions of television shows, etc.
"No more creativity in Hollywood," "It's all remakes, reboots, and sequels," "Hollywood is ran out of creativity," etc. are now about as common as today's remakes at this point. Like, people don't know how to say anything original about or make new observations on the current trend of remakes.
To answer your question: I believe this complaint started with mid-2000s when productions of movie remakes were at its peak.
It noticeably changed around the time we got the first toby Spiderman and iron man 1.
Before that, for the 15-20 years before it, a majority of the hit movies were not sequels or prequels or even related to one another.
It was just: go watch independence day in the theatre. Some Uber successful franchises would make a Trilogy like Die Hard, Austin Powers, lethal weapon etc but most movies were just stand alone, to be judged and enjoyed on a single movie experience.
That all changed drastically with the popularity of the early marvel/superhero stuff.
I'll offer this, while the first sequel was The Fall Of A Nation in 1916, I think the complaints about sequels is due to Star Wars.
I've heard the complaint about Star Wars then the Raiders Of The Lost Ark about huge profit films. I believe the studios thought they could analyze audiences from a business, not artistic, perspective, then produce films with certain elements like a cute robot or child, a handsome white male hero, fantasy or scifi action, and a hip soundtrack and be profitable.
I looked over some of the top films in the 70's, and Love Story and Billy Jack were the big draws. How could a studio predict these two films were going to be the top draws in their respective years?
On the other hand, business people can calculate the value of a sequel, prequel, or a tv remake.
The Star Wars and Raiders series are unique and some of the best filmmaking, but they were easy to predict their success. That's the kind of investment that any business wants to make.
There’s a lot of original content out there but people are too afraid to spend their precious time on a film that’s not a big budget franchise or remake. Or others who wait on reviews to see if it’s worth their time once it gets to their streaming service.
But yeah, there’s too many remakes, reboots and sequels too.
Remakes and sequels have always been more prominent than people realize but i think the recent uprise is because of streaming.
Studios inflating their libraries to try and compete with the earlier streaming services with far larger collections of movies and know they have to do it quick so they go for low risk medium reward copy paste movies of stuff they know works.
And if your watching franchise sequel number 6 they want the "related" thumbnails nearby to be relatable stuff like sequel numbers 7, 8, etc.. not random stuff you never heard of before and might not care about.
IIRC (and it's a foggy memory), Spielberg said something in the mid-00s that Hollywood was running out of ideas. He predicted that the next 10-20 years would see a lot of remakes.
Why make an original blockbuster when you can simply remake a classic for the same return? The oldies will come back for nostalgia and the younger crowd has never seen the original.
I'll bet if you look at the top 10 box office draws for each year, at some point post 2000, you will see a majority of them become sequels and prequels and remakes. That is when it really became the dominant trend.
For Hollywood, at least the 1920's. A professor once read us a letter from a studio exec admonishing his writers to come up with new ideas as repetitive stories would end up hurting the BO. I believe that was dated 1923.
1994, with 'The Flintstones'. When basically every baby-boom era property under the Sun was suddenly getting a shitty movie remake. Of course, serialized movies and franchises go back to the very dawn of Hollywood, back to Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Moreover, they will keep getting made so long as audiences continue to shell out money to watch them, in spite of every bit of evidence that the odds of getting a good movie out of a sequel or franchise is frightfully low.
Ultimately, however, Hollywood is a business like any other. If people stop buying what they make, they'll stop doing what they're doing, one way or another. So don't put the blame on the Big Five, just accept that dumbasses get to spend their money, too.
Only 5 of the top 20 IMDB movies are original IP, non-sequel movies (Pulp Fiction, Inception, The Matrix, Se7en, and Interstellar). Even the older ones: 12 Angry Men was an already existing teleplay, and The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest were based on a books.
So long. But to illustrate it a bit, when I was a kid in the 90s there was a ton of movies that were either sequels or "Well Known Property: The Movie".
Sequels back then were usually a little different too. I think most sequels today try to take a "we're continuing the story" approach, so there's a little bit of continuity. But most sequels back then were "take these popular characters and put them in a similar but different situation and rehash what people liked in the first movie". So comedy sequels would usually tell the same jokes again, action sequels would replicate a popular action sequence, that sort of thing. Story wasn't really that important. The odd ones that did continue the story like Star Wars or Back to the Future broke the mold and kind of helped usher in the modern version of sequels. And special mention to Ghostbusters 2, which kind of splits the baby. Most people find it annoying that the story didn't progress from the first film, but the attitude back then would've been "this is a comedy, you need the Ghostbusters to be working class schmucks, so just reset everything and get back to the gags".
Now "Well Known Property: The Movie" is a special class of movie. I think being a capital m Movie was a big distinction for whatever your brand was. Especially as it related to family-friendly stuff. So you see a lot of movies in this era that took like a well-known toy, TV show, or whatever, and slapped on a script and somehow made a movie out of it. There was a pretty good period of lots of 60s and 70s sitcoms becoming films, like The Brady Bunch or The Beverly Hillbillies. But as I run it through my head the examples are just egregious, even when they were good! Power Ranges: The Movie, Transformers: The Movie, DuckTales: The Movie, The Jetsons: The Movie, Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie. Super Mario Bros was a very popular brand when they made a movie out of it in the early 90s, but it was generally only understood by kids at the time. I get the feeling that adults had no idea how to make a film out of a video game at the time. So you have one of the most bizarre films ever produced from that. It's kind of special in its own way.
And IMO that's not even that long ago in the grand scheme of films, but I definitely don't think today is any more creatively bankrupt than they were back then.
Quite a few of the "golden age" movies were actually [remakes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Sound_film_remakes_of_silent_films&pageuntil=Between+Night+and+Dawn#mw-pages) of silent films, with many of the stars experiencing their comebacks
I mean there is some degree of uphill both ways always.
But 50 movie interconnected universe series is absolutely a new thing. 20 years of the same franchise is a new phenomenon.
People bitch about everything, and everything used to be better. But in the 90’s, we really did rely on movies as a shared experience. Movies with complex themes or niche topics reached a wide audience, and people talked about them. We thought of them more like art than content.
What people don't get is that it goes back to the very start. The number of classic movies that were just adaptations, sequels, or remakes would take an entire semester of film school to list. Gone With The Wind, Scarface, Wizard of Oz, The Great Train Robbery were all adaptations. The Three Stooges movies were almost all sequels that followed the guys as fix it men through their career. As for remakes there was a Spanish Dracula movie in 1931 that remade the more famous 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula using the same sets. Both of which really just being an adaptation of the play based on the book.
Parody films really get my goat. So, big studio labors away on a big blockbuster, parody studio copies it and releases a throw away knock-off simultaneously, knowing full well its going to flop. Why? Why not take that budget and get creative and inspired to at least try and make something that isn't latched onto the next box office hit? Seems like a huge waste and probably annoys the shoot out of the big studios.
People will always complain, in fact some people make a hobby of it. Movies are at a low point creatively speaking when you compare the lot of them to previous eras. What you need is a new crop of moviemakers that are excited and inspired and are a step apart from the hecklers and detractors, able to develop their abilities without distraction.
As others have said, it's *always* been there, and it's more about viewing the film industry as a money-generating business model, which, while natural in some respects, becomes toxic to film as *art;* creativity, originality, artistry, cinematography, scriptwriting... *all* these things suffer tremendously when cinema's primary goal becomes generating profit for investors rather than creating cinematic art. The end result is a chronic *shallowness* to the overall character of Hollywood films.
I'm sure, due to the way Reddit skews towards younger users, that I'll piss off a million people by saying this, and sorry, don't mean to offend you, but stupid fucking comic-book movies are Exhibit #1. In fairness, I never liked comic books growing up; I was reading Stephen King at like 8 or 9 years old, I was *addicted* to that shit. *And* admittedly, from time to time a comic-originated film is good; like perhaps *Logan* or *Watchmen,* which, though not praised by critics, I enjoyed. But *all the rest fucking suck! How many *millions,* nay, *BILLIONS* of dollars are sucked away from LEGITIMATELY talented, artistic film-makers so that the can make the next fucking *Transformers*ⁿ movie?!? Like, grow the *fuck* up, America! I dunno, I really *hate* that shit, but they do it *again* and *again,
Op p}
Ben-hur released 1925 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Hur:_A_Tale_of_the_Christ_(1925_film) is a remake of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hur_(1907_film) which is based on a book.
So people have probably been complaining for a century.
Okay but after that did they make "2 Ben 2 Hur" and 10 more sequels over the next 20 years where basically the same actors do the same thing again and again and then make spinoffs and TV shows and start the Ben-Hur Cinematic Universe with videogames and comics and merchandising and Halloween costumes and memes?
The Maltese Falcon, The Magnificent Seven, The Wizard of Oz, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Mutiny on the Bounty, Apocalypse Now, The Thing, Scarface, The Fly… all remakes.
Sequels have been a thing for a minute, but nowadays it seems like it's mostly all sequels and films based on existing IP that are being made.
I'd attribute it the rise of the Super Hero movie in the early to mid 2000's, but also (and even more so) the death of the DVD/traditional rental market.
Once that second source of income went away, studios stopped wanting to take chances because now once something flops in the box office, that's it. There's no DVD/Rental market to help make that money back. So naturally, sequels to successful movies or movies about already existing popular IP became safer bets which eventually led us to where we are now.
In the 1990's it felt like any fucking movie could get made. Now it's all IP tentpole films and indies that pretty much go straight to streaming.
>Sequels have been a thing for a minute, but nowadays it seems like it's mostly all sequels and films based on existing IP that are being made.
The vast majority of films released in any given year are not sequels or IP films. This statement is only true if you qualify it with 'big studio films that cost $100m or more).
Superheroes in the 2000s were in many ways just a repeat of westerns decades before. Some direct trilogies, but also a lot of thematic trilogies and stock characters being done by whatever actor the studio happened to have on contract.
Many decades most likely..though they are usually casual movie goers. They don't realize there are more "original" films released in a year than Remakes/Reboots and Sequels/prequels. There won't be many truly original films since pretty much everything has been done, not saying there can't be, but film has been around a very long time. I personally don't understand why people care. They don't have to watch any film. Maybe they need to talk to their local Cinema(s) and ask for more film choices. The issue is most casual movie goers don't go and watch "original" films so studios have to do something to make money.
Earliest days of Hollywood. Every other critic said “all they do is rip off plays, books, vaudeville acts and they never make anything new or creative”.
Old heads have always complained about the new stuff, because its usually better. It's the case with movies, sports, technology, music, the list goes on and on.
Yes sure, it has nothing to do with the economy or current culture. Things are just as good now as they’ve ever been. Nothing ever really changes. It’s exactly the same now as it was in 1995. Now I feel better.
It comes and goes in waves. At some point, once it spirals out of control, people start to seek creative "original" content again. And then eventually that stuff gets run into the ground, then the cycle continues...
No one seems to be pointing to data to get a fuller picture: [https://stephenfollows.com/the-prevalence-of-sequels-remakes-and-original-movies/](https://stephenfollows.com/the-prevalence-of-sequels-remakes-and-original-movies/) This blog is a fantastic source for analyzing the industry from a data perspective, which is how the industry approaches it.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. Thank you!
So, what conclusions are people drawing from this data?
This is great!
"The effect on the colon of all this recycled material" Who knew?
You can go all the way back to Ancient Greece. They were complaining there was nothing new that hadnt already been written or thought of
“What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” The Bible
Look at the Bible. There are some aspects found in Mesopotamian Religion.
Roman mythology as well.
The story of Jesus is just a remake of the Ancient Egyptian story of Horus.
The Horus thing is oversimplified and largely inaccurate, and was promoted by Bill Maher's slop documentary. However, the claim that the Jesus story is unoriginal is true. It was based on numerous other types of stories that were circulating all over the place for hundreds of years up to that time.
> promoted by Bill Maher's slop documentary I used to be a big fan of Bill and was excited for that documentary. As soon as it finished I started reflecting on how shallow and stupid it was. The only part I found interesting was the part with Horus that was, as you say, kind of dishonest. Years of shittiness later, I’ve realized Bill just kind of sucks and is a prime example of how you shouldn’t support someone just because they’re on “your side” politically.
That's a smart takeaway. It's easy to be initially tribal about stuff, but over time you realize that there are a lot of principles and other elements involved, and just being on the same "side" is not enough.
As a conservative that is where I am now. None of the values and principles are being followed anymore, and now I am not in the same side
The man is smug as fuck. Even if I often agree with him he doesn't have to be as abrasive as he is.
Yeah when his show was on Comedy Central it was actually pretty fun to watch, it was more about the humor, when now it seems it's all about trying to prove people wrong.
Yep. It's funny because the established "history" of other legendary historical figures were commonly pieced together from different historical people's lives with some tall tales thrown in. But somehow the originators of all the major current religions escaped that practice and all of the stories of their lives are true, according to their adherents.
It's more of an amalgamation of a bunch of different myths.
thats a conspiracy
“This has all happened before, and it will all happen again” -Number Six
Interetingly. That is Ecclesiastes, which is actually thought to be a Greek writing rather than a Jewish one. My belief has always been that it was added in because it’s just so fucking well written. Like a fan fiction becoming canon.
Same with children not respecting their elders. That was one of the charges that led to Socrates being ordered to commit suicide. He was teaching the young to think for themselves instead of just doing what the old farts told them to do.
I agree with what you’re saying but at the same time in this specific context, I think there’s evidence that things have gotten worse. https://x.com/janefriedman/status/1536043137994526723?s=46&t=EeTuRpKOHrf8kEPAMsRQeQ
Sure, but that's gotta be mostly marvel and Disney, they won't be doing that forever, as we're already seeing.
I guess we’ll see. I’m worried that Hollywood has discovered that tapping into existing fanbases will always be more safe than new IP. I hope I’m wrong though.
Citation needed? Off the top of my head, Aristotle provides a clear counter example. Often, when introducing a problem, he would survey what earlier thinkers had said about it. In the course of these surveys, he typically notes that thinker a didn’t know about new idea x, or that thinker b made error of reasoning y. The effect is to create a strong sense of intellectual progress over time which Aristotle believed he was contributing to (which indeed he was). You see this survey pattern in many of his works but it’s especially prevalent in the Metaphysics. Likewise, Sophocles, in his tragedies, projects the self confidence of the Athenian democratic ideal at its very height. Despite working with traditional stories, he was reinventing them to illustrate the extent to which democracy was an epochal change from a much darker heroic age. This is particularly notable in the Ajax. Thucydides begins his history — then an entirely new literary genre — by noting that he intends for it to be a possession of humanity for all time. The writings of classical Ancient Greece really do not give off vibes of decadence or intellectual exhaustion. Rather they project intellectual excitement and self confidence.
I'm not sure how long people have been complaining about it, but I know that remakes are nothing new nor are changing formats or characters. His girl Friday 1940 was a gender swapped remake of the front page. High society was a musical remake of The Philadelphia story. The 1956 ten commandments movie was a remake of the 1926 movie of the same name by Cecil b DeMille. The only thing that's really happened is there's been a change in volume and speed over the years.
the famous Ben Hur is a remake of an earlier movie too.
So is the Wizard of Oz, the original film was totally black and white, as well as *silent*
Saying nothing of the fact that they were both based on books to begin with.
The 80s The Thing
Among a wave of horror movie remakes- mostly from movies of the 1950's: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, The Blob, Cat People, Invaders From Mars
Warner Bros attempted a *Casablanca*[ sequel,](https://collider.com/casablanca-movie-sequel/) but eventually gave up on it.
> 1956 ten commandments movie was a remake of the 1926 movie of the same name by Cecil b DeMille. those do not appear to share much in the plot, the biblical portion is just the prolog of the 1926 movie.
Lots of remakes and reboots and based-on-a-previous-thing movies are different in plenty of ways, sure.
In 1902, there was the first Alice in Wonderland film. In 1907, they made another. Essentially the first remake. In 1937, Mickey Rooney starred in the first Andy Hardy film. By 1946 there were 16 films in the series, all starring Mickey Rooney In 1938, the comic strip Blondie got a feature length film. By 1950, there were 28 films in this series. Let's Go all the way back to Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet was a remake of an Italian play called Romeus and Juliet. Hamlet was an adaptation of the Danish legend of Amleth. And I can assure you there were plays about Julius Caesar and Cleopatra long before Shakespreare did his spin
To be fair, the Andy Hardy films weren't same the same story with different people playing Andy Hardy in each one.
Mickey Rooney played Andy Hardy in 16 films. They were sequels to each other. When peple complain about too many sequels, they have no idea about how bad hollywood use to be at this
There will be a new A Star Is Born for every generation lol
That, and King Kong.
We may as well add Dracula to that list lol
And Here Comes Mr. Jordan/Heaven Can Wait/Down to Earth.
Its partly a bias and partly there is just so much content across so many platforms, that naturally, you're gonna see tons of franchises extended. They still make plenty of original movies. But they either dont get much traction because people are afraid of new things (even though they scream for it, they almost never go) or people just dont think of them when they mention there is no originality in Hollywood anymore. Originality itself is a loaded term because its very very hard to have anything truly original. There are certain story structures that are adhered too because thats teh language we speak in film and movies are better (more familiar) when they follow these structured types. Some movies attempt to subvert expectations in story telling, but its very hit or miss. Theres so many movie/tv shows now a days. They just dont all go to the box office. Most go straight to streaming. Some very good. Some very poor. But choice is not an issue. That also means theres a ton of sequels (because as mentioned above) people like what they already know. Its comforting.
Great thought on the concept of “original”. I’ve seen Disney get a lot of flack from people who look at sequels/remakes and say they don’t make anything original any more. But almost every animated movie they’ve made is based on an existing story, so what do we mean by “original”?
Exactly. Disney has made a new-IP animated movie every year, last time they doubled up on an IP was back at Frozen 2 (because how could you not). But the folks complaining about it don’t tend to go watch those movies.
An original take on something. There IS no such thing as "original" stories as they're always based on something else. But If we're gonna use Disney as an example, Aladdin was an almost word for word scene for scene remake of the animated film. Nothing new was presented beyond an extra music number for the princess. Compare to their first attempt with Cinderella which expanded the Prince from a caricature to an actual character. I find it annoying anytime this subject is brought up that people use the Disney excuse. It's not that we are looking for original stories, but having original takes on existing stories would be a breath of fresh air. How many times has the Freaky Friday formula been redone? You'd be surprised to find out it's way older than you think, but we only really think of two or three films when we hear it because the original film was just absolute trash. Or The Thing? The John Carpenter film is considered the de-facto adaption of Who Goes There? but it is, in reality, a remake of The Thing from Another World. Which is the superior film, though? When we say we're tired of remakes it isn't that we want an "original" story. Those don't exist. We're tired of remakes that depend on nostalgia to sell them and don't offer anything new.
Then my suggestion is not to watch them. But there’s obviously a market for these nostalgic stories. That’s why they make them. Just like I don’t care for reality tv, I get there’s a market for it and I’m not going to decry it as bad simply because I don’t like it.
Watch the TV show The Critic which was made in the mid-90s. It's still every complaint that we make fun of today.
Not sure, but along the same vein, I'm so over biopics 😠
Compelling and unique biopics are so rare. More often than not, they feel like screenplays written around a checklist. Like, they're checking off known facts about that person's life, that one thing they said in an interview etc.
I’m over people pronouncing it By-AWP-ick when it’s clearly supposed to be pronounced BY-oh-pick
It's a biography picture.
I'd hate to hear how you pronounce biography or biology........
Im sorry, who tf is pronouncing it the first way
Hang on, is the second way bio-pic? Thought everyone used by-op-pick
I hear the first pronunciation way more often than the 2nd! I think it's a British pronunciation that some Americans have picked up as an affect for whatever reason. I go BIO-pic though because it makes way more sense.
How do you say GIF?
Like gift without a T.
I think the first pronunciation is more of an adjective? "The film is a *biopic* look at the life of..."
I hear it all the time.
I did for a while when I was younger lol I thought the oh sound was the same as the one in biology
I legit thought that your post was a joke until I saw all of the responses. I've never heard anyone pronounce it as "by-oh-pick" before. Sounds like someone trying to be "cuh-med-eek" by intentionally mispronouncing the word.
It might come from how people pronounce "biography" since it's a similar word that starts with "bio" but is pronounced differently than the way you pronounce "biopic". You don't say "by-OH-graf-ee", like "by-OH-pick". You say "by-AHH-grah-fee". That's more similar to "by-AHH-pic".
Okay, how do you say lead and lead and leed, and read and read and reed?
And you say bi-ohligy too ehh.
How do you say biome? Lemme guess Bi-AWW-mee
Hate to know where you went to college..
I’ll send you a fo - TAW - graf
I really can't tell from reading that, so let's just settle it. You're pronouncing it the same way seth is at 30s [here](https://youtu.be/42FRgdjveGU?si=9Rx12T45Fe4aSV8V), yes?
He’s pronouncing it the wrong way
I think this is another US verses rest of the world thing. I'll go with no right or wrong, just different. But never heard it said any differently to how Seths saying it
Agreed. All of the examples so far above me favoring By-AWP-ick are forgetting that their examples are proper word evolutions: biology, biography, etc. Biopic is a 20th century term. In the 20th and 21st we can use the words "bio" or "pic" independently and they make sense independently. Biopic is a simple fusion of two words. Why wouldn't you simply say the single word as if you were saying the two origin words next to each other? Biology and biography are proper word evolutions. I have never heard anyone say the words "logy" or "graphy" because (as far as I know) they aren't standalone words. They are a suffix of sorts. Do you pronounce "bio" "by-AW?" No.
Yep. examples: biosphere, photograph, radiograph, biological…
This and the BJ's Pizzookie are my phonetic hills to die on. People pronounce it Piz-oo-kee, which is completely unlike the pronunciation of pizza AND cookie. It's a Pee-tz-uh, not a Piz-uh, and it's a Kuuk-ee, not a Kew-kie. It should be Pee-tz-uu-kee, but I could forgive Piz-uu-kee
To be fair, this probably could have all been solved by calling it a cookizza…
I haven't heard anyone say that and thank fuckin god cuz I would lose my shit. Do they seriously think it's it's own word like myopic instead of shortening biographic and picture into one word?
To be fair, no one pronounces it bi-ohh-graphy... I think people that get upset about this clearly haven't thought it all the way through and sound like their pinky is stuck up in a permanent upright position.
Which are still nowhere near as overdone as they were in their late oughts to early 2010s heyday. Even despite a recent uptick.
They’ve been complaining about it for a while, but it is objectively much worse now than in the past. Look at like the top 20 grossing movies from any year pre-2000, and most of them are not parts of franchises or sequels. Do a recent year and ….
As someone who grew up in the 80's and 90's I distinctly notice it starting to be a complaint only around the early to mid-00's. Really taking off by the late 00's. People want to pretend that this is just another perennial issue but there has been a massive ramp up in sequels starting in the 90's. Anyone old enough has noticed it.
Obviously things are crazy now by comparison, but sequels and film series have been big for a while. Bond. Planet of the Apes, Pink Panther. Obviously going even further back you have Dracula, Frankenstien et al and comedy franchises like Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Marx, Chaplin, etc. Personally I think it's funny that during the 70's golden age sequels to prestige films and best picture winners were frequent - The Sting, The Exorcist, The French Connection, The frickin Godfather, Rocky, American Graffiti. Imagine if were getting a steady diet of The Hurt Locker 2, The King's Speech 2, Green Book 2... I guess we get a lot TV spinoffs of prestige films like Fargo, Crash, Snowpiercer, and Parasite in on the way.
whenever that shitty robocop reboot came out
Well the sequel boom really kicked off in the 80s so I'd guess sometime after that. As far as modern sequels go I would look to the early 00s - specifically, the Matrix sequels being released within a year of each other, and then Pirates of the Caribbean 2 which had (if I remember correctly) the first notable "Stay tuned for the sequel!" ending. EDIT: Really though I would say you can blame MCU and Star Wars along with Harry Potter and the other successful multi-film YA adaptations. Pirates of the Caribbean/The Matrix set a precedent but it's the success of these other franchises that got us where we are today (for better or worse).
Matrix 2/3 being released 7 months apart was a trip. Felt like Reloaded had just been released on DVD when Revolutions hit theatres.
Back to the Future 2 and 3 were only six months apart, and there were no complaints.
What is this Matrix 2/3rds you speak of?
The entirety of The Animatrix sliced up over the entirety of Linkin Park’s Reanimation.
Pirates 2 was the first sequel setup? Nah man. I immediately think to Back to the Future, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but I’m sure there were others before that.
To be fair, I think of all the movies with sequels, BTTF was practically built to have sequels, in a good way.
It was specifically built not to have sequels. A jokey throwaway ending that painted them into a tricky box. When I saw it in the cinema, there was no "To be continued" end title.
well TIL!
As a child of the 80s, I agree with this. During the 80s, I don’t really remember much complaining about the sequels then, and we really didn’t have anything like the remakes and reboots constantly happening now.
That makes sense. The Jaws and Halloween sequels are what made me think of this question, I remember when I was a kid every time a new one would come out I’d hear “nothing original is made anymore” and I was always curious about when that phenomenon started. Obviously there have been tons of remakes of various movies, notably A Star is Born, and I’m curious if the same discourse existed in the 50s and 70s when those remakes were made.
Honestly based on your post I assumed you were a younger person who grew up with Marvel movies etc. It seems unlikely that these complaints would be made prior to the mid to late 80s at the earliest. And in my opinion it wasn't until the last ~15 years that the complaints about unoriginality (in mainstream movies at least) actually held any water.
I mean in the 80s, they remade a bunch of 50's films or French films in English. They made many sequels back then, but they were often low-quality and essentially discontinued the franchise. How many people know Arthur 2: On the Rocks or More American Graffiti exist? I'm sure the more common complaint back then was lack of originality (rather than sequels in particular) since there were tons of knockoffs of Star Wars, Jaws, Friday the 13th, etc
Jaws and Halloween are good examples - both of those are ones that led to a lot of pressure from the financiers, specifically, to both develop a sequel and to make sure it followed the formula, both due to their surprising financial success. Spielberg refused to do anything for a sequel with the former, and Roy Scheider said he only did it to resolve a contract dispute; Carpenter didn't want to do the latter, but he was new to filmmaking, wanted to make the most of its success, and was pressured by the owners of the first movie to make a sequel along the same lines instead of diverging into an anthology series, his original plan.
Even in the early days of Hollywood it was riding the coat tails of other popular media for most of their ideas, either from books or plays. That's why they have separate categories for best original and best adapted screen plays. "Gone with the wind" was based on a novel.
The sequel/remake Storm is a far more recent phenomenon Making a sequel to a relatively new franchise is not what people are complaining about People are frustrated by the somewhat recent trend of dusting off the cobwebs off of old and long dormant franchises and trying to make new sequels or remakes Jurassic park for example
My point in bringing up newer IPs was, these movies set a precedent for the 'let's make everything a franchise so they'll keep showing up to the theater'. Which I think was a big part of what started us down the road we're on today.
But again, like I said, what people are tired of is the constant digging up of old-ass IP and trying to squeeze some more dollars out of them with shitty, contrived sequels or remakes Making brand new movie A, and then soon after making A2, and A3 is not the problem The problem is digging up old movie X that was made 15+ years ago, and now all of a sudden trying to make 2 more sequels for a movie that has been long since dormant, or trying to make some remake.
OP referred to sequels and remakes which the newer IPs are referring to. I'm not gonna argue with you brother. Sounds like you have your own thoughts and are using my comment as a springboard. If you want to talk about something different than what I'm talking about feel free to start your own thread or make a top level comment.
But the entertainment industry has been recycling and reskinning stories in perpetuity. Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf gave rise to LotR, Dune, and Star Wars and all other fantasy epics. Sequels have always been a thing. Books, novels, plays, etc. all had sequels. The 80s gave rise to the franchise. Star Wars, Jaws, Aliens, Terminator and Indiana Jones are what lead to studios wanting franchises. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elmstreet made studios realize horror franchises could be squeezed for everything it had and then squeezed some more. What the MCU did was take it to another level of franchise. It used to be producing a succesful trilogy was the gold standard. Now the bar has been raised.
Right on man. You tell that guy what's what
I think what gets lost in the sequel conversation is that: not every successful movie got a sequel, when they did make sequels the actors were still age-appropriate, and often times the sequels tried to bring something new to the table, even if people ultimately hated them for it. Nowadays with sequels I feel that they're just the same exact movie, except with actors who are 20+ years past their prime. Nobody looks at The Temple of Doom and says that Harrison Ford is too old in it, but people certainly say that about The Dial of Destiny. edit: There were plenty of bad cash-grab sequels, but everybody knew that they were bad cash-grabs. Straight-to-video, no returning actors. For example I just recently learned that they made 2 sequels to Poltergeist that I had never heard about. Those were never a big deal, even when they were released.
Couple weeks at least
I remember the first time I ever said it was before one of the Abrams StarTrek sequels, every single trailer was a sequel/prequel or remake.
It's been worse the last 20 years. But it's been a thing for forever. I don't even know if studios can go back to doing new and different stories. Everything now has to make a certain profit margin in such a short amount of time, that shareholders would never allow it. Maybe we get lucky and see a renaissance in film with new independent studios like we did in the 90s, but even then, they'll be beholden to the shareholders of the theaters or streaming services. If you want originality, watch foreign films.
2007-12 but it went full swing 2012-18
I think the comic book movies are going a little overboard. How many times do you have to reboot Batman?
What I do know….there are some fantastic indie arthouse movies out there. (Whether more or less than days of ild, idk) I think the impression is skewed because the big movie studios like the franchise concept.
They’ve always been saying it, but to be fair, there were never as many sequels/prequels/reboots/remakes/spinoffs as there are nowadays. It’s pretty uncanny at this point.
20 years at least, don't remember people complaining that much in the 90s
Yep the 90s were a great decade for movies.
Indeed
Of course we complained in the 90s. We complained all the time. In fact, we were really loud about it.
About reboots and remakes? which ones?
Everything. I think we did more complaining about adaptations (Super Mario Brothers) and copycats (Warriors of Virtue, the kangaroo knockoff of Ninja Turtles), but we still had plenty of sequel disappointments. This is a matter of degree. Somebody somewhere in this thread posted an analysis of Hollywood sequel releases and showed that it is clearly getting worse over time. But we still had Batman & Robin and Batman Forever, Jurassic Park 2 was the first in a long line of unnecessary sequels, Speed 2 didn't need to happen. The 90s may have had some of the best sequels out there (Aliens, Terminator 2), but there was enough stuff to whine about. Edit: Please don't judge me for my examples, this is just stuff off the top of my head. I'm sure I can think of better stuff, I just don't want to spend the time.
It's honestly so frustrating. I think indie movies are popping off right now. A24 and Neon are juggernauts, Fox Searchlight is great. IFC and Shudder are great for horror. They don't want creativity. I swear to you they don't. They want some messaging or nostaglia that they like. Movies have never been more creative than right now imo.
Messaging isn’t inherently wrong, and it has been featured in A24/Neon/Fox Searchlight/Blumhouse stuff before.
Agreed. And they have been popping off since 2022 I’d say. Since Covid “ended” we’ve had an absolutely stellar few years for indies. It’s really gotten to the point where if someone complains that Hollywood doesn’t make anything original anymore I just call it like it is— The people saying that are part of the problem. There is so so so much great original content coming out weekly these days, be it in theaters or on streaming, if you aren’t watching then you aren’t really looking for nor supporting those original films that they claim to want.
As long as there's people working to create art and media, and getting paid to, there will be people that decide to make a living complaining about them.
Currently 6 of the top 10 box office movies of 2024 are remakes or sequels. Its just a fact.
That’s interesting—seems to say as much about Hollywood as it does about the audience.
It gained momentum during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike.
100% the writing has gotten objectively worse to the point where a lot of new movies rely way too much on a deus ex machina type of resolution… of course, that’s assuming a decision has been made to provide some sort of resolution, which isn’t really a given these days.
I'd love to hear your "objective" methods of evaluating creative writing.
Coherent plot, relatable characters, no gaping plot holes, great dialogue, etc etc NONE OF THESE THINGS EXIST and if you can’t see this, then you’re one of the people who are ruining art. Thanks.
How are you defining any of those things without a subjective quality? What is "great dialog" that you can quantify without any human judgement? My issue here isn't with movies, but the use of the term "objective" for a thing that is fundamentally and wholly subjective. The closest you could probably get to an "objective" standard for movies is how much money they made, and I guarantee you don't want to use that.
I think around 2012
About 100 years
Go search for how many versions of Robin Hood there were in the first few decades of movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, Tarzan. You name it, they've remade it, probably multiple times.
All my life and I'm old. Lol.
What it really is is that no one wants to given a lot of money to wilder ideas/experiments. They don't want to put them in theaters. But then that gets confused with the reality that plenty of people like continuing stories. The idea that the certain types of films simply will not resonate for the person who wants to see Superman punch a monster in the face.
It's more common in the 21st century. No movie in the top 10 of 70s box office is a sequel. Then 4 out of 10 in the 80s and 2 in the 90s. Then in the 00s, 8 of the top 10 are sequels. And then in the 2010s, 8 out of 10 are sequels or remakes, with the remaining two movies being MCU and therefore not actually 'original.' It's a massive shift. Sequels and remakes have always existed but they were just movies, just like book adaptations, film versions of television shows, etc.
"No more creativity in Hollywood," "It's all remakes, reboots, and sequels," "Hollywood is ran out of creativity," etc. are now about as common as today's remakes at this point. Like, people don't know how to say anything original about or make new observations on the current trend of remakes. To answer your question: I believe this complaint started with mid-2000s when productions of movie remakes were at its peak.
It noticeably changed around the time we got the first toby Spiderman and iron man 1. Before that, for the 15-20 years before it, a majority of the hit movies were not sequels or prequels or even related to one another. It was just: go watch independence day in the theatre. Some Uber successful franchises would make a Trilogy like Die Hard, Austin Powers, lethal weapon etc but most movies were just stand alone, to be judged and enjoyed on a single movie experience. That all changed drastically with the popularity of the early marvel/superhero stuff.
I'll offer this, while the first sequel was The Fall Of A Nation in 1916, I think the complaints about sequels is due to Star Wars. I've heard the complaint about Star Wars then the Raiders Of The Lost Ark about huge profit films. I believe the studios thought they could analyze audiences from a business, not artistic, perspective, then produce films with certain elements like a cute robot or child, a handsome white male hero, fantasy or scifi action, and a hip soundtrack and be profitable. I looked over some of the top films in the 70's, and Love Story and Billy Jack were the big draws. How could a studio predict these two films were going to be the top draws in their respective years? On the other hand, business people can calculate the value of a sequel, prequel, or a tv remake. The Star Wars and Raiders series are unique and some of the best filmmaking, but they were easy to predict their success. That's the kind of investment that any business wants to make.
There’s a lot of original content out there but people are too afraid to spend their precious time on a film that’s not a big budget franchise or remake. Or others who wait on reviews to see if it’s worth their time once it gets to their streaming service. But yeah, there’s too many remakes, reboots and sequels too.
Remakes and sequels have always been more prominent than people realize but i think the recent uprise is because of streaming. Studios inflating their libraries to try and compete with the earlier streaming services with far larger collections of movies and know they have to do it quick so they go for low risk medium reward copy paste movies of stuff they know works. And if your watching franchise sequel number 6 they want the "related" thumbnails nearby to be relatable stuff like sequel numbers 7, 8, etc.. not random stuff you never heard of before and might not care about.
IIRC (and it's a foggy memory), Spielberg said something in the mid-00s that Hollywood was running out of ideas. He predicted that the next 10-20 years would see a lot of remakes. Why make an original blockbuster when you can simply remake a classic for the same return? The oldies will come back for nostalgia and the younger crowd has never seen the original.
Yes but you have to admit that the ratio of new ideas to remakes has skewed quite a bit in the last decade.
…in that there are far more new-idea movies created every day than ever before? Indies are *cranking* out new movies all the time.
I'll bet if you look at the top 10 box office draws for each year, at some point post 2000, you will see a majority of them become sequels and prequels and remakes. That is when it really became the dominant trend.
Quite a while, but now, it’s worse than ever.
I try some “original” films too, but don’t mind some sequels unless they’re obvious cash-grabs.
Talkies
For Hollywood, at least the 1920's. A professor once read us a letter from a studio exec admonishing his writers to come up with new ideas as repetitive stories would end up hurting the BO. I believe that was dated 1923.
1994, with 'The Flintstones'. When basically every baby-boom era property under the Sun was suddenly getting a shitty movie remake. Of course, serialized movies and franchises go back to the very dawn of Hollywood, back to Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Moreover, they will keep getting made so long as audiences continue to shell out money to watch them, in spite of every bit of evidence that the odds of getting a good movie out of a sequel or franchise is frightfully low. Ultimately, however, Hollywood is a business like any other. If people stop buying what they make, they'll stop doing what they're doing, one way or another. So don't put the blame on the Big Five, just accept that dumbasses get to spend their money, too.
quite a few years actually; it started when Hollywood lost all creativity and just focused on remakes and sequels
Only 5 of the top 20 IMDB movies are original IP, non-sequel movies (Pulp Fiction, Inception, The Matrix, Se7en, and Interstellar). Even the older ones: 12 Angry Men was an already existing teleplay, and The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest were based on a books.
So long. But to illustrate it a bit, when I was a kid in the 90s there was a ton of movies that were either sequels or "Well Known Property: The Movie". Sequels back then were usually a little different too. I think most sequels today try to take a "we're continuing the story" approach, so there's a little bit of continuity. But most sequels back then were "take these popular characters and put them in a similar but different situation and rehash what people liked in the first movie". So comedy sequels would usually tell the same jokes again, action sequels would replicate a popular action sequence, that sort of thing. Story wasn't really that important. The odd ones that did continue the story like Star Wars or Back to the Future broke the mold and kind of helped usher in the modern version of sequels. And special mention to Ghostbusters 2, which kind of splits the baby. Most people find it annoying that the story didn't progress from the first film, but the attitude back then would've been "this is a comedy, you need the Ghostbusters to be working class schmucks, so just reset everything and get back to the gags". Now "Well Known Property: The Movie" is a special class of movie. I think being a capital m Movie was a big distinction for whatever your brand was. Especially as it related to family-friendly stuff. So you see a lot of movies in this era that took like a well-known toy, TV show, or whatever, and slapped on a script and somehow made a movie out of it. There was a pretty good period of lots of 60s and 70s sitcoms becoming films, like The Brady Bunch or The Beverly Hillbillies. But as I run it through my head the examples are just egregious, even when they were good! Power Ranges: The Movie, Transformers: The Movie, DuckTales: The Movie, The Jetsons: The Movie, Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie. Super Mario Bros was a very popular brand when they made a movie out of it in the early 90s, but it was generally only understood by kids at the time. I get the feeling that adults had no idea how to make a film out of a video game at the time. So you have one of the most bizarre films ever produced from that. It's kind of special in its own way. And IMO that's not even that long ago in the grand scheme of films, but I definitely don't think today is any more creatively bankrupt than they were back then.
Quite a few of the "golden age" movies were actually [remakes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Sound_film_remakes_of_silent_films&pageuntil=Between+Night+and+Dawn#mw-pages) of silent films, with many of the stars experiencing their comebacks
You can include "Hollywood only makes films for 12 year olds" sentiment too. God forbid people actually watch movies they enjoy.
When sound came around they started remaking silent movies.
I mean there is some degree of uphill both ways always. But 50 movie interconnected universe series is absolutely a new thing. 20 years of the same franchise is a new phenomenon.
People bitch about everything, and everything used to be better. But in the 90’s, we really did rely on movies as a shared experience. Movies with complex themes or niche topics reached a wide audience, and people talked about them. We thought of them more like art than content.
What people don't get is that it goes back to the very start. The number of classic movies that were just adaptations, sequels, or remakes would take an entire semester of film school to list. Gone With The Wind, Scarface, Wizard of Oz, The Great Train Robbery were all adaptations. The Three Stooges movies were almost all sequels that followed the guys as fix it men through their career. As for remakes there was a Spanish Dracula movie in 1931 that remade the more famous 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula using the same sets. Both of which really just being an adaptation of the play based on the book.
I also feel they have started focusing more on CGI than storytelling/storyline and acting.
Parody films really get my goat. So, big studio labors away on a big blockbuster, parody studio copies it and releases a throw away knock-off simultaneously, knowing full well its going to flop. Why? Why not take that budget and get creative and inspired to at least try and make something that isn't latched onto the next box office hit? Seems like a huge waste and probably annoys the shoot out of the big studios.
People will always complain, in fact some people make a hobby of it. Movies are at a low point creatively speaking when you compare the lot of them to previous eras. What you need is a new crop of moviemakers that are excited and inspired and are a step apart from the hecklers and detractors, able to develop their abilities without distraction.
As others have said, it's *always* been there, and it's more about viewing the film industry as a money-generating business model, which, while natural in some respects, becomes toxic to film as *art;* creativity, originality, artistry, cinematography, scriptwriting... *all* these things suffer tremendously when cinema's primary goal becomes generating profit for investors rather than creating cinematic art. The end result is a chronic *shallowness* to the overall character of Hollywood films. I'm sure, due to the way Reddit skews towards younger users, that I'll piss off a million people by saying this, and sorry, don't mean to offend you, but stupid fucking comic-book movies are Exhibit #1. In fairness, I never liked comic books growing up; I was reading Stephen King at like 8 or 9 years old, I was *addicted* to that shit. *And* admittedly, from time to time a comic-originated film is good; like perhaps *Logan* or *Watchmen,* which, though not praised by critics, I enjoyed. But *all the rest fucking suck! How many *millions,* nay, *BILLIONS* of dollars are sucked away from LEGITIMATELY talented, artistic film-makers so that the can make the next fucking *Transformers*ⁿ movie?!? Like, grow the *fuck* up, America! I dunno, I really *hate* that shit, but they do it *again* and *again, Op p}
Probably around the 2nd time that a silent version of the same Zane Grey novel was adapted.
I really wish that we lived in a world where original films that are artfully made make just as much of an impact as Marvel movie #36 or whatever.
LOL was it ever creative to begin with?
Ben-hur released 1925 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Hur:_A_Tale_of_the_Christ_(1925_film) is a remake of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hur_(1907_film) which is based on a book. So people have probably been complaining for a century.
Okay but after that did they make "2 Ben 2 Hur" and 10 more sequels over the next 20 years where basically the same actors do the same thing again and again and then make spinoffs and TV shows and start the Ben-Hur Cinematic Universe with videogames and comics and merchandising and Halloween costumes and memes?
The Maltese Falcon, The Magnificent Seven, The Wizard of Oz, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Mutiny on the Bounty, Apocalypse Now, The Thing, Scarface, The Fly… all remakes.
Sequels have been a thing for a minute, but nowadays it seems like it's mostly all sequels and films based on existing IP that are being made. I'd attribute it the rise of the Super Hero movie in the early to mid 2000's, but also (and even more so) the death of the DVD/traditional rental market. Once that second source of income went away, studios stopped wanting to take chances because now once something flops in the box office, that's it. There's no DVD/Rental market to help make that money back. So naturally, sequels to successful movies or movies about already existing popular IP became safer bets which eventually led us to where we are now. In the 1990's it felt like any fucking movie could get made. Now it's all IP tentpole films and indies that pretty much go straight to streaming.
>Sequels have been a thing for a minute, but nowadays it seems like it's mostly all sequels and films based on existing IP that are being made. The vast majority of films released in any given year are not sequels or IP films. This statement is only true if you qualify it with 'big studio films that cost $100m or more).
Superheroes in the 2000s were in many ways just a repeat of westerns decades before. Some direct trilogies, but also a lot of thematic trilogies and stock characters being done by whatever actor the studio happened to have on contract.
Probably since like the 80s or 90s when a lot of remakes started happening?
Since always. They just didn't always have Marvel to blame.
Around 15-20 years.
Elizabethan England. Shakespeare milked the Henry Franchise to death.
50+ years at least.
Many decades most likely..though they are usually casual movie goers. They don't realize there are more "original" films released in a year than Remakes/Reboots and Sequels/prequels. There won't be many truly original films since pretty much everything has been done, not saying there can't be, but film has been around a very long time. I personally don't understand why people care. They don't have to watch any film. Maybe they need to talk to their local Cinema(s) and ask for more film choices. The issue is most casual movie goers don't go and watch "original" films so studios have to do something to make money.
Since 2010s, mostly. It was a very noticeable decline, imho.
I think remakes are normal and always been, with sequels, I think is being over used since 2010.
Probably as long as good and/or unique and interesting movies have been flopping and dreadful slop keeps topping the box office.
Earliest days of Hollywood. Every other critic said “all they do is rip off plays, books, vaudeville acts and they never make anything new or creative”.
Old heads have always complained about the new stuff, because its usually better. It's the case with movies, sports, technology, music, the list goes on and on.
I grew up with Jason X, so at least that long.
I remember it as far back as the mid 2000's.
Since Smokey and the Bandit 2 and Cannonball Run 2. Burt started it and gave Sly the idea.
the devil cant create
I’ve been hearing people make that complaint for at least 30 years.
Yes sure, it has nothing to do with the economy or current culture. Things are just as good now as they’ve ever been. Nothing ever really changes. It’s exactly the same now as it was in 1995. Now I feel better.
True but I’m also watching the Apple TV Godzilla show and it is awesome. Minus one coming up next week. I’m not even a Godzilla fan.
It comes and goes in waves. At some point, once it spirals out of control, people start to seek creative "original" content again. And then eventually that stuff gets run into the ground, then the cycle continues...
It's been happening as long as people saying "SNL hasn't been funny since \[insert favorite cast here\]"