In this day and age of booming box office numbers, billion dollar profits, and international fan fare you would assume that the creative end of Hollywood is at an all time high. That in today's market, us as movie goers, must be getting the crème de la crème of creative ideas in what we see. But in reality we are getting quite the contrary. In today’s Hollywood, outside of indies where all the originality usually seems to lie, movies like The Matrix, or Inception, or Dark City are a rarity. What we as fans get from H-Wood is not a plethora of original ideas, oh no no no, what we get are the movies termed (or as I like to term them) the RE-Movies. You all know, those lovely marketing phrases like Re-Boot, Re-Make, Re-Tooled, Re-Do, and (my personal favorite) Re-Imagining. Also let’s not forget, Prequels, which has the RE in it as well. Oh you clever marketing so and so’s trying to get one by us with your fancy phrases.
See the thing about it that’s frustrating to a fan like me, and call me an old fashioned homer of my favorites, I can't stand this stuff. For a billion dollar industry that can really pick and choose the most artistic and creative minds in the world to come up with fresh and interesting ideas, the best thing they can come up with is taking someone else’s good idea from decades past, or from a foreign country, or giving old sit-coms the movie treatment. I mean did we really need a Brady Bunch movie? Let alone a sequel? Really? REALLY? (also let me thank the gods for sending the proposed Dallas movie that was in the works to development hell. Thank you movie gods, thank you). Now I can easily throw comic book movies into the pile of stealing others ideas but really chances are the people reading this are like me, a total fanboy nerd, and are happy those great stories got to see the light of day to a wide audience, that they deserved. Though, they can be lumped in with my point of fresh ideas lacking in today’s Hollywood.
I’m a product of the 80’s where movies were over the top, corny, colorful yet down right fun and original. Classics like Alien, Predator, Legend, The Dark Crystals, just out there fun stuff. You just rarely see movies like this any more where you watch them twenty years later and they stand the test of time. As a fan it bothers me to see classics “re-imagined” when it’s not necessary. As a fan I feel it does an injustice to the work the people who went out there and took a chance with something new, and made it great, to just do it over with whoever is the it guy/girl of the moment. It’s as if they are re-writing the history of something I loved for new generations who will never know how awesome the original was. It's disappointing that a new generation won’t know 21 Jump Street as the launching board for Johnny Depp's career. They will know it as the funny movie with Jonah Hill and (it guy of the moment extraordinaire) Channing Tatum. It’s a damn shame that they won't know Footloose made us discover Kevin Bacon, but know some retched overhaul with Kenny Wormald (who?!?).
For the few remakes/re-do’s/re-imaginings done by actual fans that do there best to try and keep it to its core, I shall give those a pass. You are doing it from the heart of a fan. But I recently read Bloodsport is going to be RE’d. Now this was a Freddy Krueger like slash across my heart, because this is my favorite martial arts movie EVER! And a launching board for one Mr. Jean Claude Van Damme (I mean is there anything better then a JCVD spin kick to Chong Li?). To read that it's not going to be similar to the tournament greatness of the original but some all new “concept” with the Bloodsport name slapped on it made me almost seizure with fear and anger. How dare they?!?! But then I remembered it's Hollywood and it's all about the mighty dollar and my meager movie morals and hopes do not matter.
So here is a call to all fans to just pray to the movie gods. Pray that the movie gods will make these Hollywood moguls leave our beloved classics alone and come up with this generation’s version of Bloodsport, Aliens and Predator. And if they can't leave them alone then put the right directors, writers, producers and stars behind it, that care and want to honor how awesome the originals were (not the Channing Tatum it boys of today). Please movie gods spare a poor fanboy's soul from the carnage evil Hollywood has run on our favorites and its terrible RE’s. Let them not ruin a classic like Point Break with a RE, let it be damned and go to development Hades. Don’t let them put baby (fanboys) in the corner! *Movie genuflects, then has seizure as I think about a possible remake Escape from New York*.
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