We have all seen the trends in movies today: Live action remakes, sequels, and adaptations are thrown at us one after another with an abundance of mediocre storytelling and an absence of any fresh story. It seems that these multi-millionaire companies like Disney or even Hollywood are running out of ideas and are consistently reusing basic plots to formulate their movies. This consistency is not working like it used to and is instead getting tiring to see. What happened to originality in these stories?
The idea of a basic story structure can follow multiple familiar setups such as “the hero’s journey” or simply the premise of an old folktale. An example of this can be the story of “Cinderella,” which has been made into countless movies, sequels, live action adaptations and is still advertised today by Disney. The overuse of this franchise can connect to the overuse of other franchises today. The past successful stories are chosen by a company to remake, all while hoping to receive that same praise and money draw-in. The problem with this, though, is that the goal for profit is surpassing the goal to entertain audiences and provide them with a unique story including complex characters.
With this ineffective technique, live action remakes such as “Pinnochio,” “The Lion King,” and the upcoming “Snow White” are heavily criticized for their inability to satisfy an audience’s expectations. They are either forgotten or remembered as another mediocre film. The term “live action remake” should not even apply because a lot of these movies heavily revolve around CGI, like “Mufasa.” With this, the movie tries to appear more realistic by desaturating the entire film, making it appear emotionless and bland in appearance. Disney’s reasoning behind these hyper realistic CGI films is that the adult audience will like it better since 2D animation is “just for kids.”
These “live action” remakes are such a huge expense since the CGI is extremely expensive, but Disney has decided that they won’t take any adventurous risks like in their films with bringing back 2D animation. 2D is so much cheaper, more expressive, and the artist side of the audience is literally reanimating scenes of Mufasa with 2D, to show how much better the film would be with it.
Disney’s “old classic” films have a nostalgic sparkle that we all grew up on, and Disney is trying to recapture that nostalgia with little success. The big Hollywood company used to feel like it was trying to create stories that would stick with a generation, but now the films feel like just a cash grab. With the way that Hollywood in general is going, it poses the question of how much of the original movies are going to be turned into remakes in just a few years?
When will these companies take a hint that these movies are not as appreciated because of the lack of originality and creativity, and they are making less money than before? The live action “Lion King” from 2019 made over 1.6 Billion dollars, whereas the new “Mufasa” 2024 movie made around 222 million dollars, which is still a very big number but significantly less than what these live action reboots used to make. The companies could instead make a film that is original with original concepts, and they don’t rush the production crew to pump out a movie that didn’t go through all the good parts of the development process.
Additionally, with these extremely expensive movies comes spin-off series, which are just another form of sequels and live actions. These lack originality and instead milk the franchise. Though sometimes they do work and turn out to be creative, like “Dream Productions,” a lot of times they are not even recognized or known to exist. “Moana 2” was going to be a television series on Disney+ before it was rushed into a movie in hopes to receive more profit. These attempts to make more money goes to show that the sad change in intention towards making movies. From focusing on amazing storytelling and relatable characters, we are thrown into the same old stories we have all watched before.
The solution? Instead of watching these movies because of the company or out of pure curiosity, we should be directing our attention towards productions that put effort and quality over quantity. Whether it is a good movie from a lesser known studio or the rise in new indie shows from animators who still do care, this shift in what we watch can possibly give these companies the final and most obvious hint.
