"Intellectual Property, The 20-Years-Later-Sequel..." Topic

…, And The Creative Constipation Of The Film Industry.

"In which nostalgia, greed and a touch of laziness make for profitable garbage.

The last ten years have seen a proliferation of the old made new again, with every studio mining their intellectual property in order to bank on established familiar products and turn them into franchises. From a business perspective, this is a cheaper, easier and potentially more profitable means of making money than investing time and resources into new, original, and untested material. However, creatively it is hollow and unfulfilling, and by and large the resulting products undermine the integrity of the original IP. Or, at least, that's what the issue feels like. The truth is actually this: this is nothing new. What gets lost in the hyperbole is any sense of perspective, and the refrain that "it's the worst thing ever" tends to only mean "it's rather upsetting, within the framework of the last five or ten years."

As long as there have been popular stories, there has been the endless recycling of those stories. Even focusing only on cinema, this is as old as the medium. While some might hold the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz in high regard, and dismiss any attempt to remake, reboot or sequelize the film as sacrosanct, it is important to realize that the 1939 film was at least the fourth adaptation of the Oz stories to film. It is also important to note that it is nothing new for film studios to run a property into the ground in the name of selling a familiar brand. The Charlie Chan series produced dozens of films in the 30's and 40's; the Pink Panther series of the sixties includes several reboot attempts, alongside a sequel made featuring a dead star; the Universal Monsters series saw each monster get at least a pair of sequels during the forties, not to mention the "monster rally" films under the "House of" titles before culminating in encountering Abbott and Costello (possibly the first shared universe that, beating Marvel by sixty years)…"
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Armand

Yeah, but the difference is that most of that old stuff WAS WATCHABLE!

Charlie Chan never had a single origins story, never mind five of them (or whatever Superman, Spiderman, and Batman are up to now). Charlie Chan (and other B unit serials) was basically a long-form TV show before there was TV.

And all those old brands that somewhat got run into the ground did so because the studios went cheap on them.

It's new to you if you haven't seen the earlier incarnations. Hollywood gets away with reboots and sequels because there's always a new generation of movie-watchers who would see them.

And with international markets like China, a movie no longer has to a box office hit domestically to be considered a success. Studios even cast Chinese stars and let Chinese firms co-finance films so they have a stake in their success.

Oh if they remade a Charlie Chan movie today he would have a origin story.

But would probably still be played by a Caucasian.

No, lots and lots of that old stuff was utterly horrible. It's just that the relatively few ones that are good are the only ones anyone today has seen. The crap is not shown or has been lost altogether.

The other thing keeping Hollywood trapped is the idea of "big budget = big box office". Never mind all the great stuff that has been done on a shoestring, including the original Star Wars and all that cool stuff on YouTube. If you make a movie you're going to spend $150 USD million even if it's just a stupid summer teen comedy. So it *has* to work, because so much money is on the line. So fifty thousand people have to approve it, all of think their job is on eat line if they approve a flop. So they don't take any risks. They use the same screenplay structure (google "Save The Cat") every time, plus stick to reboots, remakes, etc.

So it's creativity without risk, which is not very creative. Plus it's pretty samey, when we want novelty.

South Korean movies are great. Bollywood can be a lot of fun. With Indiegogo and Kickstarter, Youtube and Vimeo, independent film has never been so prolific, accessible, or good. We have alternatives.