It seems that in recent years the cinematographic world – thinking especially of the Hollywoodian gears – is suffering more and more from a lack of originality. More than half of the new movies are either sequels, prequels, reboots, reenvisionings or whatever other brand that the cashgrabing market uses to pray on the nostalgia factor of specific generations. It is understandable: the appeal of a franchise that already has a more or less dedicated fan base and assures the producers that the “new” movie will sell tickets.
One particular questions pops to mind: how is it that such projects (especially those that have already received an overwhelming negative response based on teaser trailers alone) still get the green-light?
I assume that there is a bigger committee for decision making regarding such things and I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of such immense conglomerates that finance movies – we are speaking after all of millions of dollars in production fees.
And yet, some movies are so poorly made that it is still baffling. It is not sufficient anymore to slap some visual effects as a patchwork for poor quality writing or screenplay (in the sense of pacing and general movie direction). And this may just be me: I realize that I have consumed such a huge amount of cinema that it has become more and more difficult to satisfy my tastes. But surely, I can’t be the only one thinking that many of these sequels are just…well…bad.
Let me give you a brief example of how things can be made better with little to no effort. In 2016 a Ghostbusters reboot was released and at the very least it was not a box office flop (as many others of the movies that I was considering for this article). It was, as such, an acceptable movie but still just didn’t feel right; there was no attempt to justify the all-female cast, reducing them to one-dimensional caricatures. I understand that it may be because of the movie being a ‘reboot’, but let me give you a simple solution for establishing continuity: a one-minute introduction with either the original characters, or their voices or even a close-up of their hands giving the heroines the key to the ghostmobile – or whatever their vehicle was called. This establishes a raison d’être for the protagonists, an intuitive explanation for why they have the same quirks as their predecessors (who in this case could be their fathers) and overall it doesn’t make them feel like mere caricatures of pre-established characters.
Now let me give you another example of a movie that managed to pull off the nostalgia cashgrab. A couple of months ago The Naked Gun came out; I wouldn’t call it a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but at the very least it was decent enough. Within the first ten minutes, continuity is perfectly established: Frank Drebin Jr. (played by Liam Neeson) is in fact Drebin’s son. Various of the sketches pay homage to the original type of Leslie Nielsen’s comedy, between the play on words (such as “Please take a chair”/ “No thanks, I’ve got plenty at home”) or the misleading representations (thinking of the heat camera scene). I did find some of the jokes either cringy or not as fun, but as my taste for cinema in general, I am willing to accept that my funny bone has changed a bit over the years. Again, The Naked Gun (2025) is nothing to write home about, but it still provides a decent-ish watch and doesn’t overstay its welcome (if it’s a one off thing and they won’t decide to make another one in 2027 and a third one by 2029).
This little rant is just to express a concern for an industry that I cherish; in the past years, there have been less and less Holywood productions that have actually managed to grab my attention, to ‘make me feel something’ or to give me an adequate viewing experience. That is also probably why I have created the movie-related column on this very blog. Also, it is partially for the aforementioned reason that I have been consuming more anime movies recently, as well as looking into foreign productions (Korea for instance has some very interesting things to add to the cinematographic industry).