The Struggle of Hollywood Doesn't Exist

How many times have someone said originality in Hollywood is dead? People have said that everything in Hollywood these days is nothing more than a rehash of something else and that creativity & originality is dead. And I am here to call bullshit on that statement because that is not true, Hollywood is not dead, because it was never even alive.

Quickly looking at the IMDB's top 10 rated movies do you know how many on there were actually original stories? Two, Pulp Fiction & 12 Angry Men. Hell let's look at the top 50, only 22 of which are original stories, less than half. Films like The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight, Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, Apocalypse Now, Die Hard, all based on pre-existing source material. So you see? Hollywood was never dead because it was never alive, I mean sure there have been attempts to breath life into Hollywood like Alien and Back to the Future, but then they get sequels and suddenly those franchises die along with the rest of Hollywood.

And those original movies were just gems in a sea of rehashed stories, and even then, they were inspired by other stories, Star Wars & Indiana Jones were homages to serial adventure stories from the 1940's even ripping off the text crawl at the start of the movie. The Matrix was an homage to Hong Kong action movies and used the same cinematography and choreography. Everything is ripping off something, the difference being whether or not it is a direct rip-off, or a spiritual rip-off.

And today we still have a lot of great original stories that only exist as gems the same way they did back in the old days, such as Inception or Spirited Away or Hot Fuzz. These are movies that will live forever as classics along with movies such as Goodfella's or Rear Window. And as for all those shitty movies that are being released well that doesn't mean Hollywood is getting shittier, Hollywood has always been releasing shitty movies since back in the days of Ed Wood, the difference between now & then is that we forgot about all those shitty movies. Sure some shitty movies survive the test of time just from how bad they are, but most of the time, the shitty movies will eventually disappear into the abyss, and all that remains are the greats. You think anyone 30 years from now is going to give a shit about Twilight? Hell making fun of it now is already starting to seem like a dated joke and eventually it'll be forgotten along with all the Rob Schneider and Jaden Smith movies.

Yes we may be in a trend of making remake after remake but that's what it is, a trend, yes most of us film buffs are at the end of our rope with this trend but the public isn't yet, but don't worry, they will, just like Jake Lloyd, Brittany Spears or American Idol, eventually, no one gives a shit.

And by the way Scarface, The Thing and Wizard of Oz were all remakes.

-Danny