Ours is a timeframe in which we see more remakes and reboots than original films. Now, without getting into a snooty debate about what constitutes “original,” let me clarify. I am referring to movies based on characters and settings that have previously been published for commercial means. So, those are the sequels, the adaptations from already famous properties, and the 1990s cartoons brought back from the dead to destroy my childhood.*
I am analyzing the situation based on those factors: the creation of characters and settings, rather than plots. This is because, in my experience as both a writer and an audience member, those are the hardest things to do “right.” Plot is more like lateral thinking cause-and-effect logic once your characters and setting are perfectly in place. Also, one could argue that any plot can be boiled down into a few key elements, so there’s no point in analyzing it for something I already know I’m going to find. So I’m just talking about movies that reuse characters and settings.
What I notice is a strange yin and yang effect in terms of what audiences prefer. The more the mainstream narrows down the scope of originality, the more we crave it. However, online, where we can see anything we want, we gravitate towards things with which we are already familiar. So what do we want? Originality or reboots, and is it really our choice?
The studios tend to invest in only the least risky properties. They’re not going to spend their money making a movie about characters no one has heard of. Therefore, the pool is limited from the get-go. A lot of the people I talk to are hemorrhaging patience for 3D “Yogi Bear,” and their “Last Airbender” rate flatlined about a week after the film first appeared in theatres. In fact, the only long-running series that people haven’t tired of is “Harry Potter” – which is technically still on its first run because it was intended to have seven stories to it.
But are the studios wholly to blame? If they chanced it on original stories from non-Disney et al companies, would you go to see those new movies? Let’s have a look at what is happening online. Webcomics, webtoons, and webisodes of web tv… there is enough web out there to keep Doctor Octopus incarcerated for weeks, and yet do we actually seek out the brilliant and daring?
Let’s take webcomics, for example. Most people I know go only to Penny Arcade, VG Cats, and then one or two of the many comedic tales mocking the swords and sorcery tropes. And that is where they draw the line. No offense, of course, to the folks who created those successful properties. In this moment, I’m judging the readers.**
When did we become so stuck in our ways? As much as we lament the studios and their dumbing down of our culture, could they be right? Are we really so reluctant to take a chance on a new series? A new genre? A new anything, save for a new medium whose potential we will ignore so as to quickly make a new injection site for more of the same?
If you need more proof, go to any online literature*** site. You know, like Wattpad, or deviantArt’s prose section, or anything except for a fanfiction site (because I am talking about original characters and settings). There are some amazing stories out there. You can tell that the writers really put a lot of effort into their works. There are fantasy stories that are, you know, actually interesting. I read a crime drama and was quite entertained, and I hate most crime dramas but this one was so well done, I couldn’t look away. When you’re done enjoying one of those stories, look at the stats for that page. The story will have received one or two views, and zero comments. Zero. How encouraging is that? The monetary and bureaucratic barriers to entry may have been removed, but they have been replaced by a wall of overwhelming audience apathy. So where are all the views and comments going?
The “Twilight” knockoffs. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all teeming with comments professing readers’ love and begging for more chapters. Let me assure you, this is not due to quality. So why are we drawn to vampires in guyliner? Because they’re cool. Why are they cool? Because we’re drawn to them. The more we squee, the more we promote, and the more we promote, the more we squee. I beg you, stop this vicious sparkle – I mean, cycle. Take a chance on something new.
Make something original, if you can, but more importantly than that, read something original. And comment. And fave. Reach across the void and tell that other creator, “I hear you, and you do not suck.”
The studio system was set up to propagate itself, as one might expect from something controlled by big businesses. The Internet, however, is in our hands. Let’s not make the same mistakes that turned us off the mainstream in the first place.
*The Chipmunks were NOT “gangsta.”
**Pitchfork mob in 3…2…1…
***“literature” may not be the correct word for it.
-Tamara Hecht