AI is going to be great for this, in all the ways studios will never see coming.
Stuff like Sora isn’t how executives get rid of talent. They’re how talent get rid of executives. We have the tech to generate finished shots just by describing them into existence. Shit is gonna get weird.
American audiences are no longer the sole demographic for Hollywood. The audience is global, and high budget films are planned with that in mind. The lowest common denominator is the result.
During his Academy Award speech, Cord Jefferson (who won for the American Fiction screenplay) argued for more low-budget films at the cost of a single big-budget mess. More movies means more types of stories, allowing more niches to be filled. It also creates more industry jobs, and deepens the bench with talent development.
The best way to come up with good ideas is to figure out how to have a lot of ideas in the first place.
The movies of the late 90s are great examples of this. Dozens of different types of new stories made on what are now considered very low budgets. The problem is that without the home video and TV markets those sorts of movies don’t make any money. So many 90s classics didn’t make much at the box office but made bank on home video or with licensing.
Market conditions have changed, and the product needs to change with it. Just like how MTV hasn’t been “music television” for a long, long time.
From what I understand this keeps happening because “Hollywood money” is afraid of untested “formats.” Everyone wants easy money, “no one” (read: investors) wants to create art, they want an “easy” jackpot.
This kills the medium. I haven’t watched a new movie in I can’t even say how many years, possibly a decade.
I watch a lot, and can say there’s plenty of stuff out there that’s still good, whether it’s arty (Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things) or fun (M3GAN, Barbie).
There’s a fuckload of money being squandered on absolute bollocks though. Aquaman 2 cost over $200 million. Expend4bles cost $100 million. Both should have been scrapped before filming.
With that though, I’m happy with good sequels to old movies, franchises or shows. Not many actually do that, but a few gems IMHO include Rogue One and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Really though, if they’re going to regurgitate old stuff why not take a movie/series that had a good premise and bad execution. It at least stands a chance of being better the second round.
Hell, you could even poke fun at the reasons the original sucked and/or make it a twist in the remake.
I wouldn’t mind remakes of old movies, because personally I’m not going to go watch a movie that was made in the 80s even if it is a classic or was amazing at the time.
I don’t care for remakes of movies that are like 8-10 years old.
The 80s is too old? I understand not enjoying the style of the Golden Age of Hollywood, but what about movies like Back to the Future or Full Metal Jacket or The Princess Bride puts you off?
Not sure, I like watching movies but I’m no movie buff. I don’t analyze movies critically for art and style, I just like it or I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie from earlier than 2000 that I can say I’ll rewatch it again sometime because I loved it so much. Tried a few here and there but they just never caught my interest much.
Probably the oldest movie that I can actually say I loved and will rewatch every few years is 28 days later from 2002. I would even struggle to name any movie older than that.
Yeah, maybe that’s cause we don’t have nostalgia for any of the adapted properties they keep choosing over and over. The original star wars came out in 1970-something. Maybe some older Millennials have some nostalgia for the prequels, but even most of them tend to know that it sucks pretty hard. I feel like a lot of the millennial childhood movies, the nostalgia-bait, is gonna be stuff that are bad remakes or sequels of older movies. Gen-X had predator, Millennials had alien vs. predator: requiem. Maybe early Millennials had heathers, but mostly, Millennials have mean girls, which recently got a 1-to-1 musical remake, which wasn’t that good. Last two times they’ve tried to adapt avatar, it’s been pretty bad, as well. I just don’t have supreme confidence that anyone will really understand the appeal of any of these works or realistically be able to replicate them.
I think probably a primary driver of this is that a lot of these works’ appeal is rooted in their specific aesthetic, and hollywood as of late has felt very homogenized to greenscreen soundstages where everything is set in a concrete cityscape with overcast noonday lighting, because all the non-unionized CGI patsies are subject to a bunch of crunch time pressure where they just have to churn out garbage over and over. Also not helped by the amount of this which is done overseas, and can’t actively take any co-ordinated input in the middle of production. Mergers, leading to ballooning budgets, leading to shittier, more controlled, more generic products. Same shit has been happening in gaming, too. Easier to sell a committee decision on a remake, adaptation, or sequel, too, something that’s “proven” as a property, instead of an original IP.
That’s not even really to talk on how many Zoomers probably have nostalgia for early youtube videos, and shit like that, rather than mainstream movies or franchises. They don’t need to watch a remake of like, an old markiplier video, they can just tune into him doing basically the same thing he’s done for the last 15 years if they want a shitty nostalgia hit. I don’t need a remake of homestar runner, they’re still releasing shorts that I can watch occasionally. You can watch most of the same old guys because they’re still doing the same stuff they used to do. For the most part, anyways, lots of them got cancelled for being shitbags, or have had severe mental breaks. Still, point stands that, at the lower end especially, I can just go online and watch a bunch of amateur artists destroy their craft, I don’t need the movies or TV for those niche hits anymore.
Movie studios pay unimaginable money to learn what people want. It is a constant, year round expenditure for them. Their information and data suggests that while a vocal minority may be fed up with remakes, people still fervently buy them, have very short memories and seem to go bananas for any shred of nostalgia bait.
Remakes are as a result an incredibly safe bet, they are less expensive and less risk, which in financial terms is a green light. Until they aren’t either of those things and they carry more risk, they will continue to be pedalled out.
False. They pay unimaginable money to find out the least amount of money required to make the most profit. Which means reducing risks on unknown properties, repeating trends that have been successful. So original stories represent unknown risk even if it’s something the public wants.
In terms of movies the worst offenders are remakes of foreign films for the US audience. Like the Oldboy remake was completely unnecessary and it changed key parts of the story. Funny Games was just a shot-for-shot remake of the original one!
Personally I’m finding the video game remakes even more egregious than the movie/tv remakes. I think it’s a side effect of the modern day development costs being so out of control but as long as people keep doube - and triple - dipping on games this is going to continue.
Edit: Wah wah boo hoo your generation is middle aged and buying stuff little old you doesn’t like because you’re extra special. Has no baring on reality. Gen X is America’s largest consumer group. Get over it.
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