Is Hollywood lazy, or are they just giving us what we want?

So I get into a conversation with somebody day before yesterday about the fact that there are no more original movies, and everything these days are remakes, sequels, etc. Yeah, we’ve all heard it before, I hear people saying it all the time, it’s a worn down topic. But the thing is, at the time I was having that conversation, my wife was at the movies with her mom seeing The Age of Adaline, which just so happens to be one of those original movies that everybody says no longer exists. Now judging from what my wife said about the film, it sucks monkey balls, but regardless of quality, it is still an original movie. So this gets me thinking – when I saw Avengers: Age of Ultron on Saturday, what movie previews did they have before the film?

They had the two upcoming Marvel comics films Ant Man and the Fantastic Four remake of a remake, but they also had Tomorrowland and Pixels, neither of which are based on anything as far as I could tell.

Both of which look entertaining.

I looked up Tomorrowland and learned that they decided to take the name from an attraction at Disneyworld, sort of like they did with Pirates of the Carribean, so I guess in a sense, this doesn’t count as an original movie. I mean, the script and story was original, but it was based on, or should I say inspired by, Disney’s Tomorrowland, so that one’s out. Then there’s the movie Pixels, which looks stupid, just another Adam Sandler retarded film from his production studio Happy Madison.

The studio that brought us these classics.

I go to look that one up, and it is based on a short animated French film. So the two possibly original movies I saw trailers for aren’t original at all. This seems to strengthen the ever so popular argument that original films are dead. But then I get to thinking that I heard somewhere that the majority of the movies that won Oscars last year had never been seen or heard of by the majority of the population.

Before I go any further, I guess I should change my definition of “original”, because technically nothing is absolutely original, the idea has to come from somewhere, or is inspired by something, so for argument’s sake, I’ll just go with sequels and remakes/reboots.

I looked it up and the highest grossing movies of 2014 were Transformers 4 (sequel), Hobbit 3 (sequel in a series, and the series itself is a prequel), Guardians of the Galaxy (original-ish. Part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and all of these movies are related in one way or another, sort of sequels, to each other since one leads into the next one), Maleficent (Remake? Reimagining? Not sure what to call this one, but it counts as unoriginal), Hunger Games 3 (sequel), X-Men…7? (Days of Future Past, a sequel), Captain America 2 (sequel), Spider-Man 2 (or 5, depending on how you’re counting, and a sequel to a remake), Planet of the Apes 2 (sequel to a reboot), and last but not least, one original movie – Interstellar.

So then I looked at the award winning movies for that year: Golden Globes, Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Critics Choice Awards. Looking down the list, I noticed an interesting trend – not one, not a single movie listed that won an award matched up to the list of unoriginal money making box office smashes for that year. Movies like Birdman (original film), The Imitation Game (original film), The Grand Budapest Hotel (original film), Boyhood (original film), The Theory of Everything (original film), Selma (original film)… the list goes on. Nobody’s heard of half these films, so either they aren’t being advertised (part of the problem, I’m sure), or nobody’s going to see them, which is clearly a part of the problem. Everybody says there is nothing unique or original, but when its time to go to the movies, what do they go see, one of the remakes, reboots or sequels. Hollywood’s just feeding the public what it is clear that they want. I’m guilty myself. Just saw Avengers 2, plan on seeing Jurassic World and Mad Max, so maybe we’re all part of the problem. Hollywood is giving us what we are paying for, so if we didn’t all fork over our money to see Dumb and Dumber To, maybe they’d feed us an original movie we’d all like to watch.