There are rumors swirling around Hollywood over an Indiana Jones reboot with Chris Pratt in contention for the leading role. While this may sound like great news to some, I can’t help but question whether Hollywood is going too far. I know that they simply want to make money; but have they completely run out of ideas?
First we have the Star Trek Reboots, then Star Wars, now Indiana Jones. Clearly not enough new scripts are being produced, well not enough good ones. So we have the reboots, what about the sequels? Any film that does well now seems to get an instant sequel. The Taken films are my main example. The first was a groundbreaking work of cinema that had people talking for months after. The second was a lot worse with many saying that it shouldn’t have even been made. Now? Now we’ve just seen the release of Taken 3 (did you all know it was out?).
The Pirates of The Caribbean films are another example of this Hollywood debacle, illustrating their need to claw for as much money as possible, these classics will no longer remain classic. Soon we’ll just remember the worst films, the sequels that never should have been, and the acting that doesn’t reach their eyes.
My next example is Maleficent. Disney were having a stellar time after the release of Frozen and thus went on to make a live-action retelling of Sleeping Beauty that talks for the villain. At least this latest film, inspired by something that had already proven to make money (Disney and Angelina Jolie), had an original twist. Now though comes the introduction of live remakes of Disney Princess films. (Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast). I love this but can we keep them as classics? Disney is about the animation, the movies were grew up with as children.
I suppose though it’s true that ‘nothing is ever knew’, it is said that all films and books are now inspired or based upon something that already exists. There is no such thing as originality anymore.
The end to this long, and seemingly useless rant is that can we not keep our classics as that? Must we constantly have to revitalized ones as we know that people will flock to see them?