Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark was released into theaters in 1981 and created a sensation across the country, much in the same way that Star Wars (1977) and Jaws(1975) did in the mid-to-late seventies. They were revolutionary movies, and helped to usher in a new era of films that borrowed elements of those films - setting, plot, special effects, dialog, soundtrack, actors, that set the stage for the new style of storytelling for the following decades. Each film explored different themes - the very primal concept of man v nature for Jaws, the old saga for the Star Wars trilogy, and Indiana Jones appealed to a theme of high adventure, a variant of the old King Solomon's Mines sort of storytelling with some Nazis mixed in for good measure.
So many films have tried to copy the themes of these three films, with varying degrees of success. Jaws bred a veritable cornucopia of giant animal related knockoffs, from giant snakes (Anaconda) to giant alligators (Lake Placid) and more, most of which are singularly awful. Star Wars made sci-fi cool in a way that Trek never did or ever would (sorry Trekkies) and spawned an immense number of space-themed films in its wake. Raiders spawned several high adventure themed films - High Road to China, for instance, but I think that most people missed the charm of Harrison Ford's everyman in Raiders. I attribute most of the action hero films of the 80s to the success of Raiders, even though Jones is no Rambo. Action films generally are forgettable.
At least all of these knock-off films made some attempt to distinguish themselves from the films they tried to imitate; it seems that people are less interested in coming up with something new these days; they'd rather take an old film or television show and make it new again.
It seems as though we're plagued with films and shows that are remakes of older original ideas. Battlestar Galactica was rehashed on the Sci-Fi channel, we've just seen a remake of The A-Team hit theaters in the past couple months, as well as a do-over of Clash of the Titans. Ang Li's Hulk had barely made it to video before producers were calling for a mulligan, and a retooled Hulk came out five years later starring Ed Norton. This winter we'll be feasting our eyes on the not-awaited-at-all sequel to Tron, a curious film to remake considering how far computers have advanced since the original came out in 1982.
Okay, so the Kraken looks better than it used to...
Is it just pure laziness that prompts people to not seek out an original story to tell? Or is the film industry just cynically squeezing big bucks out of a new Knight Rider movie because people of my generation have a special desire to see our childhoods redone on the screen? Age eight, mark 2.0, still starring David Hasselhoff? I know the truly original story is rare, but I also don't remember a remake of The Howdy-Doody Show coming out in the past twenty or thirty years, so I'm guessing it has something to do with people of my age group, rather than those of my father's.
Or... are we as the consumers so lazy that remakes are what we demand? Have we given up on investing our time and thought on something new? Or are we so stung by being charged $8 for a ticket and $795 for popcorn in a film that we instinctively dodge new themes as dangerous and rather stick with what we know will at least be marginally entertaining? Clearly, it's easier to chuckle at the antics of Faceman and B.A. Baracas than to invest our time and psyche on becoming attached to new characters - is the cost of investment in something new too high to chance it these days? If so, we're never going to see the a groundbreaking sensation the likes of Raiders again.
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