As I sat in the movie theater at the end of Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Although it was a beautiful display of cinematography, I wondered why an accomplished director like Spielberg would use his directorial abilities to create a remake that didn’t even live up to the original movie.
I thought that this could be attributed to Spielberg challenging himself to bring a musical to the big screen, his desire for a more diverse cast or to subtly show the dangers of division in a politically heated time. Regardless of his intentions, it is reflective of the underlying philosophy of Hollywood in the past five years: to find the movies that make the most money at the expense of original ideas.
Cinema is the least original of all the arts in the past five years. The overabundance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and live-action remakes of animated movies are bringing great profit to Hollywood. Still, they fail to provide new and exciting storylines that give viewers a new insight or emotional connection, something that remakes cannot provide.
In the digital age, endless resources are at our fingertips, making producing movies easier than ever. So why is it that Hollywood executives are incapable of producing original ideas?
The answer lies in the priorities of Hollywood. Hollywood has produced its own formula: brightly colored plotlines that are easy to follow and star-studded casts full of mediocre acting. This combination yields huge box office results, but I often leave movie theatres uninspired. Even in comedies, the jokes have resorted to either politically correct humor or watered-down jokes that don’t contribute to the plot.
Hollywood has shifted its priorities from producing quality movies to movies with great economic potential. To show the extent to which Hollywood has perpetrated high-grossing and predictable movies, the highest-grossing movies of 2022 were Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World Dominion, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Minions: The Rise of Gru, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, according to IMDb. None of these movies holds a new revolutionary idea, as they are all spin-offs of previous successful franchises.
People watch these movies because people know what they are getting out of the movie, and as humans we like familiarity. While Hollywood might be profitable in the short term, the long term looks bleak, as producers will inevitably run out of movies to remake.
But what does creating an excellent movie mean? Possibly it is the clever screenplay and the underlying social commentary in Disney’s “Toy Story.” Maybe it is creating the extraordinary out of the ordinary, with “Good Will Hunting” a fantastic example. Perhaps it is a glimpse into human nature told through stories that bring a new emotional depth to an issue, as Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” does.
Regardless, if Hollywood continues to prioritize money-making instead of creating art, society will be cursed with societal banality that extends much farther than just the realm of cinema.
