It seems that Hollywood has run out of ideas. For quite some time now, all the Hollywood film industry appears to be capable of doing is churning out remake after remake after remake. Either that, or it's a "reboot," which usually occurs after a remake has already been remade a couple of times. And to make matters worse, half the remakes seem to be comic book superhero movies aimed at 10-year-olds who are too young to remember the same comic book superhero movie aimed at 10-year-olds that came out 10 years ago.
There was a time when as well as being an internationally popular mainstream movie-making machine, the Hollywood film industry was also known to come up with plenty of innovative and original ideas. Since the advent of sound cinema in the late 1920s, Hollywood has pioneered exciting genres such as the gangster film, westerns, horror movies, musicals and film noir (crime and detective films with a dark, brooding atmosphere and cynical anti-heroes).
The rigid studio systems of the time still allowed for the emergence of maverick and innovative film directors like Orson Welles, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Don Siegel and countless others. These were film-makers who could get their quirky visions and often startlingly original ideas into mainstream, popular films.
By the late 1960s and early '70s, an even more radical group of directors were making hit films in Hollywood, with people like Dennis Hopper, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah and Roman Polanski making movies that blurred the lines between popular entertainment and the experimental avant-garde.
Since the late 1970s, however, Hollywood has been dominated by the blockbuster — big, expensive films that can't afford to take too many risks, and that allow plenty of opportunities for the marketing of film-related toys and gimmicks.
The blockbuster era has now merged into the era of remakes and reboots, where many of the films being remade are movies originally directed by the kind of film-makers mentioned earlier. The funny thing is, about 99 percent of the time the expensive, slick new remakes aren't as good as the unusual originals.
So if you're interested in movies, I recommend trying to find the original versions of remade films online or on DVD. At cinemas, try to check out work by independent film-makers or films made in different parts of the world. But if you feel like having some fun with big explosions, bombastic plots and old ideas, Hollywood should still be able to do the trick!
Ben Edwards
Editor
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