I’ve talked about Hollywood’s issue with deviant behavior and their affection for people who have displayed pedophilic tendencies and rapists, like Michael Ian Black, Patton Oswalt, Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein. It’s sick and it doesn’t appear that they are at all interested in getting treatment. This has been discussed ad infinitum, so, on a lighter note, let’s talk about their other YUGE problem. Originality, or lack thereof.
This week, there was talk of rebooting Frasier, the Cheers spinoff that ran from 1993 to 2004. It was funny enough I guess, but I didn’t watch it regularly. If nothing else was on or if I walked in to a room where someone was watching it, it was fine. But this is on the heels of the Will and Grace revival and news of a Murphy Brown reboot as well. After seeing this story, I started digging because it seems like most of the content Hollywood is producing either is a remake, a reboot or based on someone else’s original work. Hawaii 5-0 and MacGyver are current reboots of shows I grew up watching and didn’t really want to like them when they came out, but, they got me. I’m not saying these shows and movies can’t be quality entertainment, or at least a decent escape from the madness for an hour or two. I know that there is a market for bringing books to the screen, but is it too much to ask for some new ideas that can be presented to us for our entertainment? Probably. Let me explain why.
The last truly original movie I can remember enjoying is The Matrix. Of course they ruined it with two bad sequels, each worse than the last, but that’s a whole other discussion. Inception was also an original work, but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I did The Matrix. I’m fairly certain there are others and if you bring them to my attention, I might check them out at some point. Nevertheless, originality is not something on which the entertainment industry places a lot of importance. When I watched NFL football, I used to hear all the time that it is a copycat league. When a team was successful at something, it wasn’t long before most teams in the league tried to duplicate the formula. The same is true in baseball and basketball. I think that extends in to the TV and film industry as well. How many singing competition shows have been spun up since American Idol? How many reality shows where they put a bunch of people from different backgrounds together for extended periods of time have there been since The Real World was introduced? Vampires, zombies, aliens, etc. are all popular archetypes that constantly get recycled. They get recycled because we spend the money that makes it worth the studios while to keep producing them.
This is not a new phenomenon. Some of our favorite movies growing up were actually remakes. The Wizard of Oz, The Magnificent 7, A Fistful of Dollars, The Departed and Scarface just to name a few. Some popular TV shows are also remakes, such as The Killing, Shameless, House of Cards, Ugly Betty as well as the two I mentioned earlier. I get remaking some movies and TV shows as technology advances and a remake/reboot can convey the stories better with the advanced technology and effects, to a certain extent, it makes sense. Star Trek Discovery is a prime example of that, even though I would argue that it more of an extension of the canon rather than a reboot. But Cagney and Lacey? Mad About You? The Greatest American Hero? What advances have there been to make it worth the time and effort to reboot those shows? And Murphy Brown? It was a left leaning show 30 years ago; can you imagine the anti-Trump propaganda fest it will be with Candace Bergen back in front of the camera? At least Last Man Standing will be on air to counter that.
I don’t have a solution other than to suggest that more conservatives like Tim Allen and James Woods start production companies and studios, but who is to say people like that wouldn’t fall in to the same cycle. Obviously, this is not a pressing issue worth spending much more time talking about, but I do find it interesting. Too bad that strike threat by Hollywood celebrities turned out to be a hoax. That may have solved the problem. Then again, most of them threaten to leave the country whenever a republican is elected president, yet they are all still here. Given that track record on following through with threats, I think most of us knew that was never gonna happen.