Artwork by Michael DiMilo
Since 2002, including sequels, remakes, and reboots, there have been a total of seven Spiderman movies featuring three different actors in the titular role: Toby McGuire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland. Since 1989, there have also been a total of seven Batman movies featuring Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian Bale as the Dark Knight. Beyond these mainstays, these two superheroes have appeared many other films in the DC or Marvel Universe.
In the last few years, Disney Studios has also been rebooting some of their animated classics as live-action features: Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, The Lion King, and Aladdin are presently all in release. Mulan and The Little Mermaid are in production, and I fear even more will be flooding the market shortly. I understand some of these films feature significant changes from their animated predecessors, but Beauty and the Beast was nearly a carbon copy of the original. Which begs the question—why? The answer, as it nearly always is, is money.
It costs millions of dollars to make a feature-length motion picture and counting on them to make a profit is, at best, a risky business. It must be reassuring to the producers at these monster studios that a pre-existing audience is out there eagerly anticipating the latest version of their favorite superhero fables. And there is the nostalgia factor. Many millennials, who were children when the original Disney versions came out, now have children of their own, and seem to be embracing the chance to see the reboots with their own progeny or to relive a bit of their own childhoods. According to Matthew Katz in Fortune, the two biggest demographics who saw Beauty and the Beast were kids under twelve and millennials between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-four. This may also explain the reinvigoration of the Star Wars franchise, which reaches not only back to the millennial generation but which also includes a significant number of boomers, too. And on top of the remakes, we have the sequels: Frozen 2, Toy Story 4,and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, among others.
Disney is not the only copycat. There have been (and will be) remakes of Ocean’s 11, Rambo, The Magnificent Seven, The Karate Kid, Planet of the Apes, The Thing, The Blob, and many, many more. All of these original films—to one degree or another—were critically or financially successful. While they are updated in order to be hip or slick enough for today’s audience (with the exception of the original Ocean’s 11, which was way too hip to begin with), these are the same stories. There is nothing new under this sun.
So, why, in a filmmaking age that brings us astoundingly original films like Pan’s Labyrinth, Amelie, Us, Get Out, The Favorite, and Moonlight, do we, as paying audience members, make the hand-me-downs the most popular films out there? Are we really that nostalgic for Rambo, Cornelius, or Dr. Zaius? Or do we look at films more as comfort food than as more substantial fare?
Of course this also raises the issue of the value of art in a capitalist society. When movies, and other artistic media, are run as businesses, we end up with not a work, but a product. Sometime we’re lucky enough to find a work which can transcend the formulaic codes of twenty-first century filmmaking and stand as an artistic work in its own right. Films, for example, like Saving Private Ryan, Black Panther, Goodfellas, The Godfather, or A Fish Called Wanda. There’s nothing wrong with cuddling up to Woody or Buzz or any of our other old friends, but there’s something missing if that’s all we, as audience members, demand of a film.
Watching Us, Jordan Peele’s edge-of-your-seat thriller, and then being able to discuss aspects of the multi-layered film as social criticism over a couple of beers is an example of what good cinema should be about. Understanding the social importance of superhero flick Black Panther is another example of work a good film should be able to do in a society. But if can’t make money, meh…
We can see this same tendency of recidivism in the music industry, where the majority of pop songs produced today are written by two men, Lukasz Gottwalkd (Dr. Luke) and Max Martin. Between the two of them, they’ve written hit songs for Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Jessie J., KE$HA, Miley Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Maroon 5, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, and many, many others.
Of course, from an artistic standpoint, the danger here is that when only two minds—brilliant though they may be—mass-produce this music, the windows for new musical ideas never grows; in fact, it probably gets narrower. When we do hear striking new voices like Billie Eilish or Lizzo, they seem like aberrations from the norm, when, in fact, the norm should be reversed: individuality and artistic integrity, not mass-produced profit, should be the qualities that are championed.
Seeing, or making, the same film over and over is just as dangerous. Art is necessary to open our minds, widen our horizons, and lay open the soul. When we do not encourage individual and unique artists, then we, as an open and democratic society, have failed.
While the big movie studios and record companies will do what they do to turn a profit, it’s up to us to keep individual artistic voices alive. Comfort zones are comfortable; the truth is not.
See Dr. Zaius or Danny Ocean another day. Meet someone new today.