7 ms·

Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. Remakes are seen as an excellent investment because, so long as they are properly stylized and full of dazz

Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. Remakes are seen as an excellent investment because, so long as they are properly stylized and full of dazzle, they are low-risk and have reasonable returns. Usually. This won't work for them forever, and I think everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. The other day, my cousin's 11 year old son was over and we were trying to figure out what movie to go see. We asked him if he wanted to go see the live-action Aladdin remake. He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again with actors to make more money. I gave him a fist-bump. He's not even a cynical kid, either. We ended up not even going to the movies because everything that was out was either a remake or n-th sequel, ridiculous looking, or rated R. If kids who weren't even around when Aladdin or The Lion King first came out are catching on to the fact that corporations are just recycling their parent's generation's culture, it's a sign that Hollywood has gotten completely full of itself and is in early-stage apoptosis.

goto11 7y ago
> everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc. "catching on to the fact" suggest that this is some secret insight which undermines the enjoyment of the movie. But I'm pretty sure most people who goes to the Disney remakes go because it is remakes of movies they already know and love. They want to see the same thing in a new way. According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. Hollywood does have problem, but it is not due to lack of originality. Hollywood produces plenty of original stories still, but it is the remakes and franchises which grosses the most. Because the consumers likes this stuff.
- magduf 7y ago
  >But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. Yes, but I think it's safe to say that there were a lot more original movies a few decades ago than there are now. Hollywood used to take more risks. >According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. Exactly. People are bemoaning the current state of Hollywood, but it's extremely profitable, and that's all that really matters to them. There's no shortage of paying customers willing to see the latest sequel/prequel/remake/reboot. Sure, they might lose a few ticket sales from people like me and this OP and his nephew, but it's more than made up for by countless others who just don't care and want entertainment. And yes, they might make more profit on a really great original movie (like the original Star Wars in 1977), but that's also a big risk and it might flop and be a giant loss, so they tend to shy away from such things now and make safer movies that have an almost guaranteed profit, even if it isn't as much.
  - BurningCycles 7y ago
    Just to be clear, out of the gross $920 million, Disney get ~50%, and the production budget of $180 million does not include advertising/promotion which is reportedly in the range of $50-100 million for big releases such as this. That said it's still making good money and will make even more after the box office run.
  - liber8 7y ago
    "Hollywood" has never, ever taken more risks than they are taking today. Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content in 2018. They expect to spend $15 billion in 2019, and expect this to hit almost $18 billion in 2020.[1] There is more new, original content being produced than anyone could ever expect to watch in one lifetime. Compare this to a few decades ago when you had 3 or 4 networks on TV each making a dozen or so shows each year, and a handful of studios producing movies (many of them remakes from the 30s, 40s, and 50s). Everyone seems to view "Hollywood" with rose colored glasses. The medium through which people consume entertainment certainly seems like it is starting to change, but that doesn't mean "Hollywood" is dead or dying. The exact opposite is happening. [1] https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spending-2019-15-billion-1203112090/ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spendi...
- l33tbro 7y ago
  >Hollywood produces plenty of original stories still I'd love to see you back this up with data in comparison to previous years. Even a cursory glance at opening weekends over the years on Box Office Mojo tells me you're misinformed.
  - patrick5415 7y ago
    You’ve asked for hard data, and then make a contrary assertion for which you have no data either. No, glancing at a website periodically doesn’t count.
    - l33tbro 7y ago
      Conversely, you made a broad claim that runs contrary to popular consensus. Cursory glance or not, the onus is on you to back up your initial wild claim with a source. Regardless, are you really going to double-down on Hollywood producing more original stories than ever? Hollywood studios today are in the business of SASOR (sequels, adaptations, Spin-offs, Remakes). That is their primary business model. They may buy up an original productions at festivals like Sundance & SXSW, but that is only for distribution and a light spend on P&A.
      - patrick5415 7y ago
        I’m not the op. But I see you doubling down on your own claim, still without providing any data. What makes the op’s claim any more wild than your own? Why is the onus them, rather than you? You have presented no data to back up you claim that greater than 50% of people (popular consensus) believe Hollywood produces less original content than at some time in the past. Even if you did, the fact that most people believe something is distinct from that thing actually being true. For what it’s worth, my intuition says you’re right. But intuition is not data. Confirmation bias is real...
      - goto11 7y ago
        To even discuss this quantitatively, we have do define what "original" means. Is a movie based on a book, play, or comic original? What about a sequel with an original story but existing characters/universe?
- closeparen 7y ago
  An old story in a new telling and interpretation is a different thing from a remake.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  I can’t watch the original stuff they are making if it doesn’t come to my theater. My theater is a bunch of sequels and remakes, the Hollywood you are describing seems completely foreign to me in this era.
- luckydata 7y ago
  > But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc. Not to this degree. The last good year for movies was 1999. This is the list of major releases that year: The Matrix Fight Club The Sixth Sense Toy Story 2 The Green Mile American Beauty Being John Malkovic Office Space The Iron Giant Magnolia Austin Powers American Pie The Talented Mr. Ripley Eyes Wide Shut Dogma Galaxy Quest The Insider Notting Hill Man on the Moon Analyze This Detroit Rock City Mystery Men Bicentennial Man This is not even the entire list, just the ones I enjoyed and I'm bothering to type. You can't look at that list and honestly say nothing has changed, because it's just not true. The energy and creativity has clearly moved somewhere else, to TV and streaming services. This year alone there's two FANTASTIC shows, Chernobyl and Stranger Things S3 that definitely deserve praise.
  - webwanderings 7y ago
    Good point. I think “Hollywood” got eaten up by globalization (China) and easy route of super hero movies all-the-time. The Disney’s and big studios alike have no patience to make money off of creativity. Why do we even need Toy Story 4 to begin with? And how many super hero movies one need to drive same points again and again?
  - nappy 7y ago
    This is anecdotal to the point of being noise. How about comparing the top X grossing movies of 1999 vs. last year? Still subjective, but a step forward from "just the ones I enjoyed and I'm bothering to type" and two Netflix releases.
  - fouc 7y ago
    That's almost 20 good new movies in 1 year. I feel like I have trouble finding 20 good new movies for the recent years.
  - goto11 7y ago
    Why did you exclude the highest grossing film that year from the list? It seems you just selected the movies you thought helped you point. Movies among the top ten grossing which you left out of the list: - Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace - Tarzan - Big Daddy - The Mummy - Runaway Bride - The World Is Not Enough - The Blair Witch Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1999_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States#cite_note-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1999_box_office_number... I do agree Hollywood is different today, but rehashing ideas is nothing new. The Godfather was a book. Twelve Angry Men was a play. Ben Hur (1956) was remake of Ben Hur (1925). All the songs in Singing in the Rain was recycled from previous movies. The Lion King was the first Disney animated movie with an original story (and even then people say it was plagiarized from Kimba). As for TV shows and made-for-streaming, do you exclude this from Hollywood? It is increasingly the same talent writing producing and acting, so it is more a question of format and distribution.
- Retra 7y ago
  >According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. That's not an objective way to look at things. If there were only 1 model of car being sold this year, you can bet it will sell with record numbers and produce more profit than any other vehicle in the past. The fact that records are being broken so rapidly is a bad thing; it means there's very few films worth watching, so everyone is going out to see the same thing.
  - goto11 7y ago
    But the number of movies released has been steadily growing, not shrinking.
    - Retra 7y ago
      "Released" isn't really important; "marketed and/or advertised" is.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Originality? Hah! Even remaking Frankenstein every 20 years or so brought a new take to it, whether Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Robert de Nero, they all brought something new. More than any point I can remember before Hollywood now turn every movie and remake into the exact same movie. There was always some degree of fashion, but there's no contrast any more - it's all highlight, so it drags and drags by being boring and samey (but loud). Highlight is now just the dull background. The loudness wars, movie edition. Doesn't matter what it is, a current film (or Netflix high budget, Game of Thrones etc) will have: + An absurdly overblown inspirational speech inspiring the troops (or children, or escapees, or office colleagues)! This will take 5-10 ear-bleeding, cringing minutes. If unlucky, you'll get two or three of these in one show! + An absurdly artificial, but highly 3D friendly chase scene with no production value other than hype. This will take 5-15 minutes. It stopped being interesting after Blues Brothers' piss take of chase scenes! + Ditto, ditto fight scene. Super slow motion. I always think of Adam West's TV Batman, complete with music - Zap! Pow! OWWW! Biff! 300 enemies die, town levelled, 342,000 rounds of ammunition spent, hero hasn't broken sweat. Just about the only recent exceptions I can think of are Deadpool and Sin City. Damn, the sequels were disappointing. + Ditto, ditto villain's death or capture. I wait for them to land on Netflix, then go make tea, tidy the kitchen or watch some paint dry in all those "highlights". Independents with next to no budget can still do original though.
  - goto11 7y ago
    This is getting close to "all the new music is crap and sounds alike, the music when I was young and impressive was much better". Every generation says that, regardless of when they were born. Maybe those older movies just didn't seem so derivative to you because it was new to you then?
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      It was interesting from 50+ years before I was born, through B&W B movies of the 50s, to maybe early 00s. Independent movies don't have the same absurd tendencies, and often still have lots of contrasts. Sure, some of those are just poor too. Independents have changed too, but haven't magically ended up with the same framework every time. Hollywood didn't used to. There were always derivatives, themes, fashions, but without dull homogeneity. Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, but it seems to have reached self parody with succession of predictable remakes that add the standards and take away what made the original interesting in the first place. e.g. Total Recall I still regularly find new bands and music. shrug.
dragonwriter 7y ago
Recycling culture nakedly has always been Disney's thing, the familiarity of the stories has always been a selling point with much of the market (and the “its just recycling what I've already experienced” has always been the refrain of another part of the market.) That's also true of Hollywood more generally. To the extent Hollywood is dying it's because new media (that are no less enthusiastic about recycling culture) is displacing old, but the same corporate Giants (and even moreso the same moneyed interests behind them) control much of new media as dominate the old, so ultimately the difference it makes is pretty minimal.
- notfromhere 7y ago
  Recycling concepts is one thing. Recycling a movie thats still popular only with slightly different acting is quite another.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    It’s been well over a decade since the original Aladdin was released. This isn’t exactly complaining that people keep on staging Macbeth instead of newly written plays but it’s in the same direction. Critics and connoisseurs care far more about originality than casuals, who are always all about competent execution. Is the movie any good when judged as a singular work? Is it good if you’re not jaded by having watched a movie a day for years?
  - astura 7y ago
    But the original Aladdin isn't even an original story, it's just on of the many adaptations of a middle eastern folk tale.
- davesmith1983 7y ago
  It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important. 1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful. So lets take some case studies: * Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a shockingly violent film (the effects look awful now, but they were quite convincing back in the mid-90s still) that completely missed the point of the original movie. * Ghostbusters (2016) was another movie that not only looked completely awful in the trailer, it completely again misunderstood the original movie, added nothing much new and they outright attacked the fandom after they said to the studio "What the hell are you doing". The original Ghostbusters movie wasn't really a comedy movie, it was a Action Horror with some Jokes. The new movie was just a comedy movie, which looked like a Spoof along the lines of "Scary Movie". I have no idea who they were marketing it towards. Lets take sequels: * They have also totally squandered two solid Sci-fi Action Movie franchises (Alien and Predator) to the point where the previous low points of the franchises look good (Alien vs Predator and Alien 3 & Alien 4: Resurrection). * Star Wars has been completely ruined from a fan's perspective. The prequels (in the 2000s) has some terrible acting, iffy CGI now but I can at least appreciate what they were attempting to do and it was an honest attempt by Lucas to flesh out Star Wars universe. However the new Sequels go from "This is Okay, but it is the 1977 movie retold essentially" to terrible (The Last Jedi). The Last Jedi doesn't make any sense on quite a number of levels. It also ruins one of beloved characters on screen and it was probably intentionally written to not only upset the fans but also kill the franchise i.e. there is at least one scene where Kylo Ren says to audience pretty much "Let the past die, kill if you have to", which is the director pretty much sticking his middle finger up to the fans. Yes in the scene he was speaking to whoever the main character is that doesn't seem to have a personality, but it was really a message from the director to the fans. They also attacked the fan base (not a good move) because they didn't like a terrible movie. While the movies made money, they have tarnished the brand in the long term. Disney bought Lucas Film because of Star Wars and monetising the fan base. Lucas Film under Kathleen Kennedy have tried driving away their a dedicated fan base. This strategy is madness. 2) The Hollywood Elite (and they are Elite) have forgotten they are actors and actively show distain for the audience. I don't really want to get into a political commentary, but they literally had The Avengers do an online piece of activism where they told the Electoral college to defy the 2016 Presidential Election result. This doesn't go unnoticed by the average movie goer. Just under half of the Country voted for the current president and then they do an advert where they are pretty much putting a middle finger up at the people who voted for Trump. A lot of those people took their kids to see those movies or saw went to see them themselves. Audiences will forgive actors for quite a lot of things, but if they continually keep on pushing this audiences will associate them with their politics and not what roles they played. They are actors. I want them to pretend to be Black Widow, not lecture me about Politics. I will go and listen to a political commentator if I wanted that. 3) Bollywood and the rest of Asia are making their own movies which kick ass. Take "The Raid 2". It has plenty of brutal fight scenes, but it also has a top quality plot about gangs, undercover cops etc. It is amazing to watch. A lot of guys are looking at overseas cinema because Hollywood isn't catering to them. 4) User generated content. I think the only movie I've watched recently was John Wick 1, 2 and 3. I recently listened to a recorded lecture series of the History of Islam on Youtube made by some guy who lives in Azerbaijan. I can listen for effectively nothing 1000s of hours of interviews of Joe Rogan and a Guest just talking for 3 hours about sometimes absolute nonsense or talking about say Leaving a Cult (Megan Phelps interview). I recently watched a series of lectures about the database as a filesystem from some Linux conference. There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s. 5) Longer stories. Game of Thrones, The Wire and other shows that have very long running stories, lots of characters and complicated plots with lots of Lore have proven that audiences want more complicated stories. There is a guy called Alt-Shift-X on Youtube and he has huge number of people watching him and he just explains the Game of Thrones Lore of the Book vs the TV-series. Most Hollywood movies are pretty simple affairs in comparison.
B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
> Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. There you go, that's one better than the alleged Lenin witticism "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." (Well researched, as usual, here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/) Disintermediation strikes again.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  Interesting. I wasn't aware of that, but maybe it slipped into my consciousness from somewhere.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
    Might, might not, I was just amused at revolutionaries becoming unemployed through DIY. Comrade Karl did not know half of it when he penned "The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part." (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m... - it's a good free verse poem, actually, what with the "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned" line, among others. 'Tis pity the slaughter it drove.)
gamblor956 7y ago
Hollywood's doing just fine. While people bemoan the constant blockbuster remakes, they forget the dozens and hundreds of other movies that Hollywood also makes which people don't watch...because they don't want to. Hollywood pushes blockbusters because they're the surest bets for making lots of money. But they also make lots of artsy films because many of the folks want to do something more rewarding than a vapid blockbuster. (BTW, Netflix is part of Hollywood now. Arguably, the most Hollywood of the modern studios, as they're actually the only major media company to have studios physically located in Hollywood.)
- cladari 7y ago
  Unless you live in or near a fairly large urban center, or some large college towns, you won't find movie theaters showing small films.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Why are you blaming Hollywood for the lack of local distribution? Hollywood made the movies. It's up to the local theater to actually show them. They generally don't because it's not worth the money to do so outside of big cities and college towns. (Hollywood hasn't controlled the theater industry since 1948, when the courts ruled that studios owning theaters was a violation of antitrust law. See United States v. Paramount.)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - sien 7y ago
    On the other hand they are easier than ever to stream. Legal streaming has more movies than a good video shop had 20 years ago. Less legal distribution has even more.
hello_moto 7y ago
> He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again with actors to make more money On-point... next one on the pipeline is "MULAN" Cartoon to Real Human.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  News flash, all major motion pictures are created "just to make money". I like the Disney animations and rather enjoy the live action remakes. I also enjoy remakes of classic movies. It doesn't appear that I am alone. But what is the criticism really? That they are making something they know lots of people will like? It's not like a remake is any less effort than an original. Even the script has to be rewritten and I would guess it takes even more effort to come up with a rewrite that doesn't stray too far from the original.
- Double_a_92 7y ago
  The new Mulan is going to be closer the original story, not a 1:1 remake.
paulddraper 7y ago
> He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again Interestingly, the original Aladdin is no longer available for sale. Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, Walmart....whatever. You either need to buy a disc from a garage sale, or pirate it.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Not just an Aladdin thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault > The "Disney Vault" was a term used by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment for its policy of putting home video releases of Walt Disney Animation Studios's animated features on moratorium. Each Disney film was available for purchase for a limited time, after which it is put "in the vault" and not made available in stores for several years until its re-release. With the announcement of Disney's forthcoming streaming service Disney+—scheduled for launch in the United States on November 12, 2019—Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that the service will contain Disney's entire film library, which would de facto retire the concept of the Disney Vault for good.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    Except "Song of the South." Disney doesn't talk about that one.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
sytelus 7y ago
> This won't work for them forever You are under estimating the power of formula. Disney had a huge run with prince-princess stories for kids and they only recently toned it down because of huge negative effects on kids. They can easily go on forever on this theme if they want to. Vast majority of movies made in Indian cinema (aka Bollywood) are information-less and even story-less movies that just revolves around one thing: Two people fall in love and there is some problem. You can literally find identical story lines in other 100s of Bollywood movies. Very very few people there has given thought to making movies on something else. This has been going on for about 50 years there and no signs of stopping.
- Animats 7y ago
  Yes. Pixar has a template: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. Pixar movies are "nobody becomes somebody due to external event". That's a common pattern, beaten to death in the Star Wars franchise. But it's not the only pattern. It's not Game of Thrones. It's not Star Trek. It's not even most winners of "Best Picture" Oscars.
  - parasubvert 7y ago
    This is completely nonsensical. Toy Story? Cars? Inside Out? Up? Coco? None of these follow that template. Sure, some like a Bugs Life and Rattatouille follow this, but in quirky ways. All conventional narrative structure involves an external incident. That sets up the central conflict of the narrative. Disney movies like Big Hero 6, Moana or Frozen are more likely to follow it, though again, there’s a lot more craft in the story and surrounding context than the base structure suggests.
    - sytelus 7y ago
      Many of these were Pixar movies, not Disney. Pixar almost always insisted doing things differently (guess who was it’s CEO). Disney on the other hand almost always insisted in serving “sugar”. There is even a phrase for this, it’s called Disney Effect: https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/family/disney-princesses-study https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/family/disney-princesse...
m463 7y ago
I would posit if you want new original programming you might want to watch documentaries. Then again, I have a backlog of many many 5-star documentary movies to watch, but I rarely watch them... in favor of much more formulaic hollywood movies.
scarface74 7y ago
This won't work for them forever, and I think everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. Not according to the numbers.... https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?view2=ytdcompare https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?view2=ytdcompare
robomartin 7y ago
Yup. My kids are sick of what Disney has done to the Star Wars franchise. They, we, have less than zero interest of seeing any new contrived episodes and even less interest in going to Disneyland to see Star Wars land.

goto11 7y ago

> everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc. "catching on to the fact" suggest that this is some secret insight which undermines the enjoyment of the movie. But I'm pretty sure most people who goes to the Disney remakes go because it is remakes of movies they already know and love. They want to see the same thing in a new way. According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. Hollywood does have problem, but it is not due to lack of originality. Hollywood produces plenty of original stories still, but it is the remakes and franchises which grosses the most. Because the consumers likes this stuff.

magduf 7y ago
>But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. Yes, but I think it's safe to say that there were a lot more original movies a few decades ago than there are now. Hollywood used to take more risks. >According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. Exactly. People are bemoaning the current state of Hollywood, but it's extremely profitable, and that's all that really matters to them. There's no shortage of paying customers willing to see the latest sequel/prequel/remake/reboot. Sure, they might lose a few ticket sales from people like me and this OP and his nephew, but it's more than made up for by countless others who just don't care and want entertainment. And yes, they might make more profit on a really great original movie (like the original Star Wars in 1977), but that's also a big risk and it might flop and be a giant loss, so they tend to shy away from such things now and make safer movies that have an almost guaranteed profit, even if it isn't as much.
- BurningCycles 7y ago
  Just to be clear, out of the gross $920 million, Disney get ~50%, and the production budget of $180 million does not include advertising/promotion which is reportedly in the range of $50-100 million for big releases such as this. That said it's still making good money and will make even more after the box office run.
- liber8 7y ago
  "Hollywood" has never, ever taken more risks than they are taking today. Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content in 2018. They expect to spend $15 billion in 2019, and expect this to hit almost $18 billion in 2020.[1] There is more new, original content being produced than anyone could ever expect to watch in one lifetime. Compare this to a few decades ago when you had 3 or 4 networks on TV each making a dozen or so shows each year, and a handful of studios producing movies (many of them remakes from the 30s, 40s, and 50s). Everyone seems to view "Hollywood" with rose colored glasses. The medium through which people consume entertainment certainly seems like it is starting to change, but that doesn't mean "Hollywood" is dead or dying. The exact opposite is happening. [1] https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spending-2019-15-billion-1203112090/ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spendi...
l33tbro 7y ago
>Hollywood produces plenty of original stories still I'd love to see you back this up with data in comparison to previous years. Even a cursory glance at opening weekends over the years on Box Office Mojo tells me you're misinformed.
- patrick5415 7y ago
  You’ve asked for hard data, and then make a contrary assertion for which you have no data either. No, glancing at a website periodically doesn’t count.
  - l33tbro 7y ago
    Conversely, you made a broad claim that runs contrary to popular consensus. Cursory glance or not, the onus is on you to back up your initial wild claim with a source. Regardless, are you really going to double-down on Hollywood producing more original stories than ever? Hollywood studios today are in the business of SASOR (sequels, adaptations, Spin-offs, Remakes). That is their primary business model. They may buy up an original productions at festivals like Sundance & SXSW, but that is only for distribution and a light spend on P&A.
    - patrick5415 7y ago
      I’m not the op. But I see you doubling down on your own claim, still without providing any data. What makes the op’s claim any more wild than your own? Why is the onus them, rather than you? You have presented no data to back up you claim that greater than 50% of people (popular consensus) believe Hollywood produces less original content than at some time in the past. Even if you did, the fact that most people believe something is distinct from that thing actually being true. For what it’s worth, my intuition says you’re right. But intuition is not data. Confirmation bias is real...
    - goto11 7y ago
      To even discuss this quantitatively, we have do define what "original" means. Is a movie based on a book, play, or comic original? What about a sequel with an original story but existing characters/universe?
closeparen 7y ago
An old story in a new telling and interpretation is a different thing from a remake.
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
I can’t watch the original stuff they are making if it doesn’t come to my theater. My theater is a bunch of sequels and remakes, the Hollywood you are describing seems completely foreign to me in this era.
luckydata 7y ago
> But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc. Not to this degree. The last good year for movies was 1999. This is the list of major releases that year: The Matrix Fight Club The Sixth Sense Toy Story 2 The Green Mile American Beauty Being John Malkovic Office Space The Iron Giant Magnolia Austin Powers American Pie The Talented Mr. Ripley Eyes Wide Shut Dogma Galaxy Quest The Insider Notting Hill Man on the Moon Analyze This Detroit Rock City Mystery Men Bicentennial Man This is not even the entire list, just the ones I enjoyed and I'm bothering to type. You can't look at that list and honestly say nothing has changed, because it's just not true. The energy and creativity has clearly moved somewhere else, to TV and streaming services. This year alone there's two FANTASTIC shows, Chernobyl and Stranger Things S3 that definitely deserve praise.
- webwanderings 7y ago
  Good point. I think “Hollywood” got eaten up by globalization (China) and easy route of super hero movies all-the-time. The Disney’s and big studios alike have no patience to make money off of creativity. Why do we even need Toy Story 4 to begin with? And how many super hero movies one need to drive same points again and again?
- nappy 7y ago
  This is anecdotal to the point of being noise. How about comparing the top X grossing movies of 1999 vs. last year? Still subjective, but a step forward from "just the ones I enjoyed and I'm bothering to type" and two Netflix releases.
- fouc 7y ago
  That's almost 20 good new movies in 1 year. I feel like I have trouble finding 20 good new movies for the recent years.
- goto11 7y ago
  Why did you exclude the highest grossing film that year from the list? It seems you just selected the movies you thought helped you point. Movies among the top ten grossing which you left out of the list: - Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace - Tarzan - Big Daddy - The Mummy - Runaway Bride - The World Is Not Enough - The Blair Witch Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1999_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States#cite_note-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1999_box_office_number... I do agree Hollywood is different today, but rehashing ideas is nothing new. The Godfather was a book. Twelve Angry Men was a play. Ben Hur (1956) was remake of Ben Hur (1925). All the songs in Singing in the Rain was recycled from previous movies. The Lion King was the first Disney animated movie with an original story (and even then people say it was plagiarized from Kimba). As for TV shows and made-for-streaming, do you exclude this from Hollywood? It is increasingly the same talent writing producing and acting, so it is more a question of format and distribution.
Retra 7y ago
>According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK. That's not an objective way to look at things. If there were only 1 model of car being sold this year, you can bet it will sell with record numbers and produce more profit than any other vehicle in the past. The fact that records are being broken so rapidly is a bad thing; it means there's very few films worth watching, so everyone is going out to see the same thing.
- goto11 7y ago
  But the number of movies released has been steadily growing, not shrinking.
  - Retra 7y ago
    "Released" isn't really important; "marketed and/or advertised" is.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Originality? Hah! Even remaking Frankenstein every 20 years or so brought a new take to it, whether Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Robert de Nero, they all brought something new. More than any point I can remember before Hollywood now turn every movie and remake into the exact same movie. There was always some degree of fashion, but there's no contrast any more - it's all highlight, so it drags and drags by being boring and samey (but loud). Highlight is now just the dull background. The loudness wars, movie edition. Doesn't matter what it is, a current film (or Netflix high budget, Game of Thrones etc) will have: + An absurdly overblown inspirational speech inspiring the troops (or children, or escapees, or office colleagues)! This will take 5-10 ear-bleeding, cringing minutes. If unlucky, you'll get two or three of these in one show! + An absurdly artificial, but highly 3D friendly chase scene with no production value other than hype. This will take 5-15 minutes. It stopped being interesting after Blues Brothers' piss take of chase scenes! + Ditto, ditto fight scene. Super slow motion. I always think of Adam West's TV Batman, complete with music - Zap! Pow! OWWW! Biff! 300 enemies die, town levelled, 342,000 rounds of ammunition spent, hero hasn't broken sweat. Just about the only recent exceptions I can think of are Deadpool and Sin City. Damn, the sequels were disappointing. + Ditto, ditto villain's death or capture. I wait for them to land on Netflix, then go make tea, tidy the kitchen or watch some paint dry in all those "highlights". Independents with next to no budget can still do original though.
- goto11 7y ago
  This is getting close to "all the new music is crap and sounds alike, the music when I was young and impressive was much better". Every generation says that, regardless of when they were born. Maybe those older movies just didn't seem so derivative to you because it was new to you then?
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    It was interesting from 50+ years before I was born, through B&W B movies of the 50s, to maybe early 00s. Independent movies don't have the same absurd tendencies, and often still have lots of contrasts. Sure, some of those are just poor too. Independents have changed too, but haven't magically ended up with the same framework every time. Hollywood didn't used to. There were always derivatives, themes, fashions, but without dull homogeneity. Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, but it seems to have reached self parody with succession of predictable remakes that add the standards and take away what made the original interesting in the first place. e.g. Total Recall I still regularly find new bands and music. shrug.

dragonwriter 7y ago

Recycling culture nakedly has always been Disney's thing, the familiarity of the stories has always been a selling point with much of the market (and the “its just recycling what I've already experienced” has always been the refrain of another part of the market.) That's also true of Hollywood more generally. To the extent Hollywood is dying it's because new media (that are no less enthusiastic about recycling culture) is displacing old, but the same corporate Giants (and even moreso the same moneyed interests behind them) control much of new media as dominate the old, so ultimately the difference it makes is pretty minimal.

notfromhere 7y ago
Recycling concepts is one thing. Recycling a movie thats still popular only with slightly different acting is quite another.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  It’s been well over a decade since the original Aladdin was released. This isn’t exactly complaining that people keep on staging Macbeth instead of newly written plays but it’s in the same direction. Critics and connoisseurs care far more about originality than casuals, who are always all about competent execution. Is the movie any good when judged as a singular work? Is it good if you’re not jaded by having watched a movie a day for years?
- astura 7y ago
  But the original Aladdin isn't even an original story, it's just on of the many adaptations of a middle eastern folk tale.
davesmith1983 7y ago
It is partly due to new media however lets consider some other things which are really important. 1) The problem is that a lot of the remakes/sequels and reboots are quite frankly crap. I don't care too much about Disney. But other remakes and sequels are generally awful. So lets take some case studies: * Robocop (2013). The movie except for on 2 minute scene was dire. It was a PG-13 remake of what was at the time a shockingly violent film (the effects look awful now, but they were quite convincing back in the mid-90s still) that completely missed the point of the original movie. * Ghostbusters (2016) was another movie that not only looked completely awful in the trailer, it completely again misunderstood the original movie, added nothing much new and they outright attacked the fandom after they said to the studio "What the hell are you doing". The original Ghostbusters movie wasn't really a comedy movie, it was a Action Horror with some Jokes. The new movie was just a comedy movie, which looked like a Spoof along the lines of "Scary Movie". I have no idea who they were marketing it towards. Lets take sequels: * They have also totally squandered two solid Sci-fi Action Movie franchises (Alien and Predator) to the point where the previous low points of the franchises look good (Alien vs Predator and Alien 3 & Alien 4: Resurrection). * Star Wars has been completely ruined from a fan's perspective. The prequels (in the 2000s) has some terrible acting, iffy CGI now but I can at least appreciate what they were attempting to do and it was an honest attempt by Lucas to flesh out Star Wars universe. However the new Sequels go from "This is Okay, but it is the 1977 movie retold essentially" to terrible (The Last Jedi). The Last Jedi doesn't make any sense on quite a number of levels. It also ruins one of beloved characters on screen and it was probably intentionally written to not only upset the fans but also kill the franchise i.e. there is at least one scene where Kylo Ren says to audience pretty much "Let the past die, kill if you have to", which is the director pretty much sticking his middle finger up to the fans. Yes in the scene he was speaking to whoever the main character is that doesn't seem to have a personality, but it was really a message from the director to the fans. They also attacked the fan base (not a good move) because they didn't like a terrible movie. While the movies made money, they have tarnished the brand in the long term. Disney bought Lucas Film because of Star Wars and monetising the fan base. Lucas Film under Kathleen Kennedy have tried driving away their a dedicated fan base. This strategy is madness. 2) The Hollywood Elite (and they are Elite) have forgotten they are actors and actively show distain for the audience. I don't really want to get into a political commentary, but they literally had The Avengers do an online piece of activism where they told the Electoral college to defy the 2016 Presidential Election result. This doesn't go unnoticed by the average movie goer. Just under half of the Country voted for the current president and then they do an advert where they are pretty much putting a middle finger up at the people who voted for Trump. A lot of those people took their kids to see those movies or saw went to see them themselves. Audiences will forgive actors for quite a lot of things, but if they continually keep on pushing this audiences will associate them with their politics and not what roles they played. They are actors. I want them to pretend to be Black Widow, not lecture me about Politics. I will go and listen to a political commentator if I wanted that. 3) Bollywood and the rest of Asia are making their own movies which kick ass. Take "The Raid 2". It has plenty of brutal fight scenes, but it also has a top quality plot about gangs, undercover cops etc. It is amazing to watch. A lot of guys are looking at overseas cinema because Hollywood isn't catering to them. 4) User generated content. I think the only movie I've watched recently was John Wick 1, 2 and 3. I recently listened to a recorded lecture series of the History of Islam on Youtube made by some guy who lives in Azerbaijan. I can listen for effectively nothing 1000s of hours of interviews of Joe Rogan and a Guest just talking for 3 hours about sometimes absolute nonsense or talking about say Leaving a Cult (Megan Phelps interview). I recently watched a series of lectures about the database as a filesystem from some Linux conference. There is a guy who made loads of mini-documentaries about old defunct computers systems and the quality now is on par with the Discovery Channel shows of the late 1990s. 5) Longer stories. Game of Thrones, The Wire and other shows that have very long running stories, lots of characters and complicated plots with lots of Lore have proven that audiences want more complicated stories. There is a guy called Alt-Shift-X on Youtube and he has huge number of people watching him and he just explains the Game of Thrones Lore of the Book vs the TV-series. Most Hollywood movies are pretty simple affairs in comparison.

B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago

> Hollywood is hanging itself by its own velvet rope. There you go, that's one better than the alleged Lenin witticism "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." (Well researched, as usual, here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/) Disintermediation strikes again.

ravenstine 7y ago
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that, but maybe it slipped into my consciousness from somewhere.
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
  Might, might not, I was just amused at revolutionaries becoming unemployed through DIY. Comrade Karl did not know half of it when he penned "The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part." (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m... - it's a good free verse poem, actually, what with the "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned" line, among others. 'Tis pity the slaughter it drove.)

gamblor956 7y ago

Hollywood's doing just fine. While people bemoan the constant blockbuster remakes, they forget the dozens and hundreds of other movies that Hollywood also makes which people don't watch...because they don't want to. Hollywood pushes blockbusters because they're the surest bets for making lots of money. But they also make lots of artsy films because many of the folks want to do something more rewarding than a vapid blockbuster. (BTW, Netflix is part of Hollywood now. Arguably, the most Hollywood of the modern studios, as they're actually the only major media company to have studios physically located in Hollywood.)

cladari 7y ago
Unless you live in or near a fairly large urban center, or some large college towns, you won't find movie theaters showing small films.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Why are you blaming Hollywood for the lack of local distribution? Hollywood made the movies. It's up to the local theater to actually show them. They generally don't because it's not worth the money to do so outside of big cities and college towns. (Hollywood hasn't controlled the theater industry since 1948, when the courts ruled that studios owning theaters was a violation of antitrust law. See United States v. Paramount.)
  - deleted 7y ago
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- sien 7y ago
  On the other hand they are easier than ever to stream. Legal streaming has more movies than a good video shop had 20 years ago. Less legal distribution has even more.

hello_moto 7y ago

> He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again with actors to make more money On-point... next one on the pipeline is "MULAN" Cartoon to Real Human.

jjeaff 7y ago
News flash, all major motion pictures are created "just to make money". I like the Disney animations and rather enjoy the live action remakes. I also enjoy remakes of classic movies. It doesn't appear that I am alone. But what is the criticism really? That they are making something they know lots of people will like? It's not like a remake is any less effort than an original. Even the script has to be rewritten and I would guess it takes even more effort to come up with a rewrite that doesn't stray too far from the original.
Double_a_92 7y ago
The new Mulan is going to be closer the original story, not a 1:1 remake.

paulddraper 7y ago

> He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again Interestingly, the original Aladdin is no longer available for sale. Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, Walmart....whatever. You either need to buy a disc from a garage sale, or pirate it.

barry-cotter 7y ago
Not just an Aladdin thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault > The "Disney Vault" was a term used by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment for its policy of putting home video releases of Walt Disney Animation Studios's animated features on moratorium. Each Disney film was available for purchase for a limited time, after which it is put "in the vault" and not made available in stores for several years until its re-release. With the announcement of Disney's forthcoming streaming service Disney+—scheduled for launch in the United States on November 12, 2019—Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that the service will contain Disney's entire film library, which would de facto retire the concept of the Disney Vault for good.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  Except "Song of the South." Disney doesn't talk about that one.
- deleted 7y ago
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sytelus 7y ago

> This won't work for them forever You are under estimating the power of formula. Disney had a huge run with prince-princess stories for kids and they only recently toned it down because of huge negative effects on kids. They can easily go on forever on this theme if they want to. Vast majority of movies made in Indian cinema (aka Bollywood) are information-less and even story-less movies that just revolves around one thing: Two people fall in love and there is some problem. You can literally find identical story lines in other 100s of Bollywood movies. Very very few people there has given thought to making movies on something else. This has been going on for about 50 years there and no signs of stopping.

Animats 7y ago
Yes. Pixar has a template: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. Pixar movies are "nobody becomes somebody due to external event". That's a common pattern, beaten to death in the Star Wars franchise. But it's not the only pattern. It's not Game of Thrones. It's not Star Trek. It's not even most winners of "Best Picture" Oscars.
- parasubvert 7y ago
  This is completely nonsensical. Toy Story? Cars? Inside Out? Up? Coco? None of these follow that template. Sure, some like a Bugs Life and Rattatouille follow this, but in quirky ways. All conventional narrative structure involves an external incident. That sets up the central conflict of the narrative. Disney movies like Big Hero 6, Moana or Frozen are more likely to follow it, though again, there’s a lot more craft in the story and surrounding context than the base structure suggests.
  - sytelus 7y ago
    Many of these were Pixar movies, not Disney. Pixar almost always insisted doing things differently (guess who was it’s CEO). Disney on the other hand almost always insisted in serving “sugar”. There is even a phrase for this, it’s called Disney Effect: https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/family/disney-princesses-study https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/family/disney-princesse...

m463 7y ago

I would posit if you want new original programming you might want to watch documentaries. Then again, I have a backlog of many many 5-star documentary movies to watch, but I rarely watch them... in favor of much more formulaic hollywood movies.

scarface74 7y ago

This won't work for them forever, and I think everyday people are catching on to the fact that they're just being resold the same stuff they've already bought. Not according to the numbers.... https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?view2=ytdcompare https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?view2=ytdcompare

robomartin 7y ago

Yup. My kids are sick of what Disney has done to the Star Wars franchise. They, we, have less than zero interest of seeing any new contrived episodes and even less interest in going to Disneyland to see Star Wars land.