Are Hollywood's endless remakes the first nail on cinemas coffin?
We are four months into 2022, and it seems like everything Hollywood pushes out these days are sequels, spin-offs, reboots, and remakes. Every new release of this so-created genre is accompanied by a response criticizing the loss of creativity and cinema's progressive decline.
Does this attachment to unoriginal ideas affect the Hollywood creativity that once existed? Are we to blame when Spider-Man sequels pop out annually, and we are the ones who fill the seats?
When, and for what reason, did Hollywood start replicating ideas—until the original idea became overdone?
According to an interview done with Steven Speilberg on Insider.com, with many forms of entertainment fighting for attention, studios would rather spend $250 million on a single picture than develop multiple personal, eccentric ventures, according to Mr. Spielberg. Ironically, Mr. Speilberg directed 2021s remake of West Side Story. Even he would stifle Hollywood's declining unique movies to make a guaranteed box office hit.
In the 1950s, 9% of households had TVs, and by the 60s, that percentage increased to 90%, according to Britanicca.com. Families were buying televisions and moving to the suburbs, which in turn, resulted in fewer movies being able to produce crowds in theaters. This affected major motion picture brands, and left Hollywood scrambling to attract crowds to theaters, all within the social upheaval of white flight, and the new novelty of colored TV. The movie industry marketed color, better sound, big screens, and the emotional value of the theater experience to try to win back audiences from television.
As soon as big screens were introduced, they demanded amazing pictures that captivated audiences. In the following years, Disney released the bulk of its now classic films, such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Peter Pan, etc. Western movies (Westerns) also attracted crowds because they targeted rural Americans’ views. As specified by an article titled “Cowboys as Cold Warriors” by tupress.temple.edu, Westerns evoked themes of good versus evil for audiences, which reflected sentiments about the Cold War during the time. Much like they do now, movies reflected politics and social changes. Nowadays, Hollywood doesn't usually react to social change—instead, they react by reshaping ideas instead of creating ones.
“I think the ‘70s had the absolute best movies ever. There was the Birth of big budget franchises, and so many movies that are so important were birthed from the 70s. At the same time, the 70s kind of killed movies,” Gabe Holt, 10 said. Studios learned that viewers would repeatedly see films like Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), ushering in the contemporary blockbuster period of sequels—the first nail on the coffin. This commenced Hollywood to begin remaking popular blockbusters.
“Money will be made in blockbuster movies, but the actual movies are going to be made outside of that. Possibly in streaming services,” Gabe continued. Essentially, the box office needs to make remakes to survive. According to Comscore, revenue for 2021 was nearly 60 percent behind 2019 ($11.4 billion). The pandemic greatly affected in-person cinema because most theaters were closed; in turn people watched movies from home on streaming services. According to Buzz Movies, due to the ‘streaming wars’, Hollywood is making more movies than ever before for these services.
Multiplicities aren't just used in the film industry to guarantee profits. They’re present in most forms of art. Self-expression used to be the point of art, but money has been the extinguisher of creativity, accelerated in recent times. Profits have defined the movie industry in particular, but that doesn’t mean the end is near—at least, not yet.