Everybody Recycles Movies; Nobody Creates Anything New

“Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels.” - Ricky Gervais, at the 2020 Golden Globes

Recycling is good - or so we’re told. In the environmental sense, there can be no opposition to the pure merits of recycling. However, bring this into the context of the film industry, and things are no longer that obvious. Regardless of whether you view the status quo positively or negatively, it is true that the current entertainment industry is infested with remakes, reboots, sequels, prequels, spinoffs, drama adaptations, theater adaptations, or pretty much anything of that sort. Previously used characters, subjects, topics, and plots are being recycled to make “new” content.

It is not easy to determine whether this phenomenon is good or bad; such a dichotomy is not applicable. There are no particular good-at-making-reboot studios. Take Marvel Studios for example. There are films like Spider-Man: No Way Home in which Spider-man characters of the past were revived by the same actors, which efficiently used nostalgia to boost its success. On the other hand, there are also movies like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that used the same method of bringing together characters of the past, but failed miserably in every aspect. The matter is not dependent on the actors either. Keanu Reeves played the main role in both sequel movies John Wick: Chapter 4 and The Matrix Resurrections, and the result was that the former stuck to the wall while the latter plummeted to the ground. At the end of the day, it all comes down to writing - not the funding, nor the acting, but writing. This is not at all counterintuitive if you think about it. After all, it is the writers that choose to not create new worlds but borrow previously made ones. Hence, the quality of the result of content recycling varies a lot depending on how well it was written.

Rather than debating the pros and cons of this recycling, it is more productive to think about why this happens so often - now, of all times. Cinema has existed for over a century and there has not been a more recycling-dependent industry before. One theory we can blurt out is that just the right amount of time - long enough for people to develop a strong nostalgia and short enough for people to not forget about it entirely - has passed since the golden age of cinema in the late 20th century. However, if we consider how there are even remakes of movies that premiered within a decade, that does not seem convincing. This phenomenon is not happening in relevance to yesterday; this happens solely because of today. Maybe there are just so many movies coming out these days that sequels and remakes feel chokingly plenty too. This is quite true, but still a weak theory on its own. My belief is that movies have become too easy to make nowadays. Do not get me wrong - I am not detesting technological advancements that enabled normal people to also record and edit videos. I am discussing the way the system works. The film industry has become so big now that it is no longer about the film anymore. To me, it sometimes even feels like a financial business the way movies are being produced at high-speed just like factory products on a conveyor belt. Content creators do not care about the audience anymore; they no longer take the time to worry about whether their creation will actually be enjoyable. They just take a previously successful material off the shelf, mix it up with some rising stars, throw in a pinch of modernity here, a drip of political correctness there, and just distribute it right away. The public, financially better off than before and more than ready to soak themselves in entertainment, blindly consume this unfiltered mess of movies put out carelessly by gigantic studios.

I am not against studios making sequels or remakes. Well-made sequels can transform a one-time entertainment into a lifetime experience and can provide thirsty fans with the opportunity to see more of the fictional world they are so curious about. Still, let me make this clear: the way the film industry is basically vomiting out a bunch of badly-written sequels must stop. I like to think that movies that are so popular that they continue through sequels are similar to evolving animals that survive the changing conditions of nature. The tale of Batman, for instance. There is something about that story that captures the audience even though decades have passed since it first came out and we are now all familiar with it. Those kinds of valuable stories, they have proven their power over the years and deserve to last. Now, think about series like Star Wars or Saw, whose ratings go down sequel after sequel, for whom there is no demand but it still somehow sells well once supplied. Those franchises should have ended a long time ago, when it was still good. Guess what? Their sequels are still being made. The film industry has lost its ability to weed out the weak and only let the strong live. It is like an ecosystem where no species ever go extinct, regardless of how horribly bad they are. I deeply regret this current state as a member of the audience that loves and cares about movies.