The age of going green has long been upon us, but it’s been recycling that has become a recent phenomenon in Hollywood. I don’t mean recycling as in paper, plastics, and cans; the masses that make up the movie business have been taking ideas that have worked and reworking them to create cinema that we will all want to enjoy. However, as the box office earnings in the past few years have shown, that is not the case.
Think back to the late 1930s, when Hollywood was as glamorous as the stars. Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, and Ingrid Bergman dominated the silver screen in box-office classics such as Casablanca, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gone With The Wind and The African Queen. Movies didn’t need special effects or complicated plot lines to draw the viewer in. The stellar acting techniques of each actor put moviegoers everywhere into a trance and helped create the industry as it is today. Sadly, the business has lost sight of what made the movies great, overloading them with intense effects, complex plot lines, and sometimes massive amounts of obscenity and violence. The acting has become subpar and usually not the focus of the films. But probably the biggest difference of all is in the scripts themselves. Back in the day, the films were almost completely original. Some were based on books or plays (Vivien Leigh brought classic characters from page to screen with Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois), but the majority were brand news ideas.
Almost all the movies hitting theatres this summer are remakes or reworks of previously popular ideas. The start of summer opened with Marvel’s The Avengers, and while wildly successful, the ideas for character and plot were rooted in the different comic books and previous movies of the individual characters. The highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises, though expected to be a brilliantly crafted epic film, is an extension of a trilogy . Marvel’s The Amazing Spider-Man is a revamp of the previous trilogy, introducing an entirely new cast of characters and plotlines while still holding the element of the mutant hero at the core of the film. Tim Burton’s somewhat successful Dark Shadows, starring Johnny Depp, was just a resetting of the sixties’ television show of the same name. The idea behind What to Expect When You’re Expecting originated from the pregnancy education book, and essentially flopped with an earning average of less than ten million a week. This weekend’s anticipated release, Rock of Ages, starring big names Tom Cruise and Alec Baldwin, is a screen version of the highly-successful Broadway musical. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted is also an extension of a series, as is Men In Black III.
Based on the evidence, most of this summer’s movies are just rejuvenated ideas being brought back to the forefront. Though there are only a few, not all the movies this summer are being recycled. Magic Mike is in theatres on June 29th, and it is sure to be a swoon-worthy film starring Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer, and several other hotties. The script is not based on books, movies, or TV shows; the plot lies in Channing Tatum’s past as an escort in Miami before his big break. Disney/Pixar’s new animated feature Brave shoots into theatres on June 22nd and this film is bound to be another score for the legendary pairing. July sees a very slow movie market, with mostly low-buzz films opening. Personally, I wouldn’t want to release my film in the same year, let alone month, as the Dark Knight Rises. The Avengers may be holding on strong to the box-office charts now, but they will be massively defeated by the masked vigilante Batman.
We avid movie-goers can only hope that Hollywood will take a hint and get creative again. Time has shown that, although books and shows are reliable sources of box-office gold, we could all use a dose of the unprecedented every now and then. After all, we go to the movies to see things we normally couldn’t!