Has Hollywood Run Out of Ideas?

In a time when most movies are sequels and remakes of old movies, it is easy to think that Hollywood has just plain and simply run out of ideas. In fact, when I started writing this, I was on my way to agreeing with that statement, until I realized that Hollywood hasn't run out of ideas, they're just not trying hard enough because greed is stifling creativity.

Movie-making is a business and when they bring a comic book superhero to the silver screen and make hundreds of millions of dollars, production companies capitalize on that. That is why we have seen so many sequels which each tend to considerably worse than its predecessor. But it works just like the supply and demand curve in economics and business. If people watch, movie studios will keep producing.

When it comes to remakes, there's been a surge in them recently. But remakes have been around forever. When they make a really bad one, that is when it becomes salient. But often, a good enough remake might go completely unknown. Ocean's Eleven is an example of a good remake. So is, unbeknownst to most people, the critically acclaimed 3:10 to Yuma. There are also some trilogies that are worth the extra movies like the Bourne movies and the timeless Star Wars series.

It is natural in creative realms for people to try their hand at something that's been done. Sometimes it fails miserably and you have The Pink Panther, and sometimes the remake is so good that you forget the first one even existed. But it is those examples of the really failed remakes and overdone sequels that give the impression that Hollywood is really scraping the barrel for movie ideas.

The fact that most of the other movies that come out are mindless action flicks or vapid romantic comedies adds to this. But this, again, has to do with money-making. Unfortunately, great movies like No Country For Old Men, are rarely a blip on the theatre radar but people go in droves to see Will Ferrell's new movie. It leads to more bad movies being made because surprisingly, a lot of people watch.

In 20 years, we will look back on this time and realize that a lot of good movies came out of these last few years. It makes sense to think that the average movie is repetitive and just plain bad because we compare it to the old classics we know and love- classics that stand the test of time like Casablanca and The Godfather. But just think, for every movie from 1950 that people still talk about there are hundreds upon hundreds that were worse than Anchorman. And that was way back when Hollywood still had tons of new ideas. Even though, we take them for granted at times, we've had some pretty great films and innovative directors in our time and those are the people still cranking out good ideas in a sea of recycled ones.