The Devil Wears Prada 2, Toy Story 5, Minions and Monsters, live-action Moana —these are just some of the major film franchise sequels, live-actions, and remakes that are coming out this year.
Audiences are no stranger to lengthy franchises, like the 11 movie Fast and Furious universe or the continually growing Star Wars empire. Yet, complaints have been growing about Hollywood’s love for a safe, copy-and-paste production. These sequels and live-actions have made people begin to wonder: what’s the reason for all these remakes?
English professor James Hodge specializes in digital media, film and critical theory. He’s taken notice of the recent remakes, but he wouldn’t say that the phenomenon is a new one.
JAMES HODGE: There has been a long-term trend for major Hollywood studios to release what are called tent pole movies, uh, big movies that are almost always IP movies.
IPs, or intellectual properties, are pre-existing, copyrighted properties. This includes materials like books, existing shows or movies, and toys, like Barbie. These IP productions provide a safety net for big studios and familiar stories for audiences.
HODGE: And these movies, more and more the studios are relying on them to sustain the entire studio model, ’cause the goal for these movies is to reach like a billion dollars of global box office, right? Tremendous amount. And when they’re banking more and more and more on a huge windfall from one movie, their choice in what gets, you know, what they put a lot of money into, the choices behind those get really conservative.
Though money-focused IP productions aren’t new for major studios, audiences have recently begun to comment on how frequently they’re seeing sequels and remakes produced. Hodge has heard some of these complaints firsthand.
HODGE: I saw the preview for the live action Moana with my 13-year-old son when I went to see the SpongeBob movie with him. So we went to see a piece of IP, right? But his initial reaction to Moana, he was like, ‘Oh, it’s just the same again.’ You know, even my 13-year-old son is sort of sick to death of the recycling of stuff. He’s like, I saw this. Why? Why are they doing it like this?
The source of this fatigue might just be the audience’s desire for a new experience.
HODGE: It feels more exaggerated because we have so many sequels, so many remakes, so many IP projects that we’re already familiar with. Those are projects where if those give people pause, I think it’s because they’re not giving them anything new. And newness is so important for understanding who we are and how we are together. Old stuff sort of makes us remember how we were or how we imagine we were.
That nostalgia is also part of the issue for Radio, Television, and Film second-year Samuel Wong. He believes audience turnout can make all the difference to major film studios.
WONG: It’s clear that they want money and they do make money, so nothing you can do about that unless audiences actually start supporting original films, which a lot of times is not the case.
As original films struggle to get support, certain movie genres are showing up in theaters less and less. Compared to the eighties and nineties, comedy films haven’t been as popular or as frequently produced as they used to. Hodge believes this decline could mean much more for audiences than just less laughs.
HODGE: I think that’s really sad ’cause what we lose when we don’t have comedies in the theater is we don’t laugh with strangers, and laughing with strangers goes a long way towards feeling like we’re a part of something bigger and like we can trust our neighbors and the people we don’t know in our immediate communities. I’ve been thinking about that a lot ’cause of political news in the world and rueing what’s happening, but also thinking about the thing that I’m teaching and writing about, which is movies and what their role is in society, and thinking ‘Wow, we, we need more comedy.’
One substitute for the lack of Rush Hour’s or Austin Powers’s is the increase in Netflix comedy specials. Still, the stand-up routines have something missing.
HODGE: I feel like that’s sort of filled the gap and people find comedy on streaming platforms, but that’s people on their couches watching it with friends or family or loved ones that they already know. It’s not watching it in a movie theater and hearing someone laugh and being like, oh, is it okay to laugh at that? And then learning how to laugh in a slightly different way.
Changes in what’s being produced and how we view it is not just affecting audiences.
HODGE: What I find kind of dispiriting sometimes about these IPs and remakes is the ways that they seem to decrease the overall number of movies that are being made. So there’re just fewer opportunities.
Fans have noted the increasing gaps between TV show seasons and movie sequels. With these longer production times, original ideas are getting smaller chances.
HODGE: We’ve got Barry Jenkins and it’s like, okay, what’s his next movie he’s gonna do after he did If Beale Street Could Talk. And then six years later he does Mufasa: The Lion King. And for me, I love watching young directors, you know, become themselves and seeing the trajectory of their careers. And hopefully they’re doing a movie once every two years or something like that. Not once every six. I would gladly trade in Mufasa the Lion King for three Indie Barry Jenkins movies. Just please give me that.
The IP focus of the industry presents a challenge to these young directors gaining experience. The large sci-fi or superhero franchises create their own unique battles, as they rely heavily on CGI.
HODGE: In a certain way, Marvel movies are animated movies in a large part, a lot of those are already predetermined in what’s called pre-vis or pre pre-visualization. So a lot of sequences will be effectively planned out before a director even comes on board.
Hodge cites Chloé Zhao’s work on Marvel’s Eternals as an example of the battle between the studio’s pre-planned fights and the director’s creative liberties.
HODGE: It’s all mapped out and she’s just sort of doing like filming by numbers or something to sort of map onto that. And you see her real voice in like the dialogue and the characters interacting. But that’s kind of an unfortunate situation too where we have more talented people just being told to sort of follow the computer.
He hopes in the future to be able to see more from these budding creatives.
HODGE: We’re seeing diminished returns on what we can get out of our most powerful voices. I’d like to have more of that. [laughs]
Though IP films continue to dominate the charts, the past year has proved there is space and a market for original pieces.
HODGE: There is some hope ’cause something like Sinners did really well at the box office. One Battle After Another, after a lot of hemming and hawing, did make money, did make box office. So there are some bright spots here or there. What’s troubling is that they feel more like exceptions than the rule.
Wong also has some hope for the future of the industry as he sees his generation heading out to support theaters.
WONG:Gen Zs are going to movie theaters a lot more now. ’cause they went through COVID and they grew up with social media and all those stuff. So if they get tired of spending time by themselves, theater is actually kind of like a great, especially indie theater, is like a great community, and there’s been an increasing demand for more original creative stories.
For anyone overwhelmed by all the seemingly unavoidable IPs, Hodge has one last piece of advice.
HODGE: I wanna encourage everyone to go see more movies in the movie theater. And go see original movies. Go see movies where you don’t really know what you’re in for.
For WNUR News, I’m Olivia Payne.
