Dear Hollywood,
Just a few days ago, I found a YouTube video. I didn’t know what it was supposed to be about, but there was a humorous opening text scrawl from Star Wars about a sequel trilogy, a prequel to the sequel, 5 Avatar movies, a Star Trek streaming service… and it went on. At the end, I realized that this was – and I should have seen it coming – a trailer for Spaceballs 2.
In today’s Hollywood, we chase the past like never before. We have devoted much of the storytelling of the 2020s to the 1980s. Yet constant remakes of old movies are not an efficient base for Hollywood to operate off of, and it is time to start creating new franchises and stories again.
I know that I don’t make these movies. I don’t spend years directing them, writing the script, practicing lines and designing costumes. I know I shouldn’t be too quick to judge, when you are all living lives committed to art and I have contributed nothing myself, and I understand the reasoning.
Of course, the reason everybody cites is that the artists of Hollywood are trying to make a lot of money. While many mean this critically, it’s reasonable, and movies have always existed to be watched by the audience. Recycling popular franchises should be a surefire way to be financially effective on your side.
Moreover, the fact that so many online communities like ScreenRant exist to do nothing but debate the obscure lore of these franchises is evidence of fan demand for more of these worlds. With that in mind, it’s financially worth it for them, too, to pay for what they have genuine interest in. So when you bring stories back, it is an effective choice and audiences pay for something everything indicates they actually want; everybody wins.
Beyond just the economic aspect of it, I know you are also trying to do a kindness by brushing the dust off these old stories. Modern audiences have changed – by rebooting stories, you let new generations see them in a way tailored to them, and give their parents the surreal experience of partaking in a treasured childhood saga once again with their children. That is an attempt to give people’s lives magic, and it’s worth doing.
As another example, the Avatar re-release gave people another chance to see the movie in 3D, an experience closed to them since 2009. While they could see the movie on streaming, that original experience was gone, and Hollywood gave it back to them. This became a magical moment for many people my age who suddenly saw this movie in a new light.
So yes, I know why it is being done. And I do respect it.
Still, there are a couple of consequences of building Hollywood on a foundation of reused ideas that I think are sometimes overlooked – and I would like to respectfully suggest that they may be relevant.
When people reuse ideas, whatever the motivation, the natural consequence is that the garden gets so overcrowded that new plants cannot grow. Yet there are clearly other seeds planted in the soil that have just as much right to flourish as Men in Black or The Little Mermaid. Consider the TV show Severance, which was written by an average man from outside Hollywood, and features a mind-bending and intricate plot unlike anything else.
If Hollywood deflects attention away from new geniuses like this with old stories, they will remain undiscovered. The world will be lessened for that, and fans may start becoming disillusioned by the lack of originality these people would have contributed.
I also mentioned before that these movies are your source of income. The trouble is that when people do become disillusioned, this source becomes treacherous.
When a movie hits the screen nowadays, people have seen its type before. There is a reason the likes of Solo and The Marvels have flopped in the last decade – those movies are from massive franchises, and people have had their fill. If capitalizing on nostalgia is the criteria for a movie to be successful, reboots, sequels, and remakes are not actually a successful way to achieve this end. At one point they were – but by now, it has been done too many times; people are not going to keep paying for the same stories.
In contrast, some of the most well-known TV shows of the last few years have been Stranger Things and Black Mirror, which started from scratch with new worlds. Their success illustrates something very clear – there is a market for new ideas. At the same time, the old ideas have existed for too long; they are not as financially worthwhile.
That brings us back to where I started.
What if you launched new franchises? What if you created new worlds for people to explore, new protagonists to relate to? What if the real magic isn’t in repeating a moment from the past, but in forging a new path into the future? It takes guts to be the first, to show the world something that people can honestly say they have never seen before. It’s also what Hollywood needs to return to the treasured place in people’s hearts with which it was once synonymous.
In recent years, Hollywood magic has begun to falter, but by creating new franchises, a) the world will be able to witness the birth of new stories instead of a formula losing its entertainment value, and b) Hollywood would likely find this more financially lucrative and find itself returned to a place of praise in the hearts of many who had begun to lose interest. While some benefits of remakes are absolutely valid, like exposing new generations to old stories in more relatable ways, having these old flicks play alongside new worlds instead of alone is almost certainly going to be more wholesome for Hollywood.
Regardless of your decision, thank you for your contributions to storytelling.
