In our society, we have an industry entirely devoted to providing us respite from daily woes through entertainment. The facets of this industry include sports, television, movies, video games, books, etc. With such variety, it should be easy for us to fill our free time and avoid boredom. But why is it that I find myself incredibly disinterested in a majority of the latest offerings in the world of entertainment? I’ll tell you why: The industry has found itself in a dearth of creative and innovative ideas.
Among the top grossing movies of the year are the eighth Harry Potter, the fifth Fast and Furious, the third Transformers, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, a slew of other sequels, and the prequel to Planet of the Apes. It appears as though production companies are now only concerned with selling a name instead of with the quality of the films they produce.
The Harry Potter movies are a great example of good movies that gave up trying to be good. The first four in the HP series did a fantastic job of creating the world of wizardry that we all read about as children. They put effort into the writing, set creation, costumes, and acting to make the audience feel the threat of Voldemort , smell the sweet aroma of butter beer, and believe that the magic was real. The magic ended with the fifth movie. The substance of the writing deteriorated, and the acting worsened, despite a fairly strong cast. Furthermore, whoever was responsible for adapting the sixth book either didn’t read the whole book or forgot that it actually had a good ending.
While bad magic is, well, bad, the Halloween movies that come out every year are even worse. This year, the biggest offender of unoriginality was Paranormal Activity Three. The first Paranormal Activity was sold as the scariest movie of all time. It wasn’t. The main characters were annoying and unrealistic, and they made horrible decisions. As did the demon, who never really did anything but run up the air conditioning bill with his opening windows and doors all over the house. The sequel failed to improve on anything, with another cast of B-list actors and uninspired writing. If you throw in the third movie, we get a handful of films that all wish they were the Blair Witch Project, which wasn’t even a great movie, but at least it was original.
Movie makers, your job is to create art. Don’t compromise your work just to make more money. If you come up with a legitimately good film, then you’ll make what you deserve from the revenues of the box office. And other entertainment producers should take note of this as well. The plots and setups of video games, social media sites, TV shows, and even books are all starting to homogenize, and consumers and viewers are beginning to lose interest. Dear entertainment industry: I am not entertained. I can only hope that this is a dry spell and that it’s just a matter of time before we see some more creative genius appear.
