The Stagnation of Content in the Making of Movies Essay

The Stagnation of Content in the Making of Movies - Essay Example While some of these films are successful, others are box office failures. Motives for releasing a remake runs the gamut of saving money, exploiting a popular plot or theme, or capitalizing on the current cultural trends. However, they saturate the movie market and drown the public in a stagnant pool of rehashed content. We, as a society, need to break outside our own self-inflicted monotony, and let our imagination run rampant once again, or else our society may forever be caught in the endless miasma of mediocre entertainment, and with it, our future forced into dull drudgery. The propensity of the Hollywood studios to remake a foreign film is exemplified with the cashing in on the pop culture's current cult buzz. A prime example of this phenomenon is the Japanese movie The Ring (1998), which is one of the most horrifying and the highest grossing films ever to be released in Japan. Its success spawned a series of remakes such as in Korea as The Ring Virus (1999) and in the United States as The Ring (2002). The studios did not have to take the risk of inventing new characters, setting, or plot. They simply moved forward on a tried and true formula that had previously been successful. ... The studio's attempt to save money by reproducing more of the same actually resulted in heavy losses. While the original Ring grossed $129 million, the sequel The Ring Two pulled in a paltry final figure of $75 million in the United States ("Japanese Horror Remake"). This is evidence that the viewing public can get tired of their fond memories, as movie producers fail to deliver on their promises of enhancing and tastefully paying homage to the previous films by taking short cuts and recycling old ideas. Watching a well-made film repeatedly may be far more enjoyable than seeing it repackaged with unfamiliar actors and different production values. A good example of this is the Hitchcock film Psycho (1960). This film is so tense and well crafted that the remake has had great difficulty in living up to its expectations. When a remake is released, the public and the critics will naturally compare it to the original version. The critics at Moviefone called Invasion (2007), Nicole Kidman's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), "ridiculous, overwrought ... and worst of all, boring" ("Worst Movie Remakes of all Time"). Other films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of Wax, and the planned Evil Dead suffer from the audience's high standards when comparing then to the original. The financial effort to save money on a remake almost assures the public that they will see nothing new, and probably the best they can hope for is some enhanced technology in the special effects. The remake of the highly acclaimed Alfie (1966) was remade starring Jude Law, and was panned by critics as, "a hollow, cynical shell of the charming