In Defense of: Hollywood | Red brick movie

What Bottoms, Saltburn, Ray Lynn And Asteroid city All in common? They’re all original films (as none of them are based on any existing intellectual property – or intellectual property, which is the film’s term for existing material) and they’re also some of my favorite films from the past year. There’s often an argument that Hollywood is dead creatively, with no new ideas or new voices. I don’t think this is true.

I wrote an article for Redbrick earlier this year, selecting eight films to look out for in 2024. It was a tough decision to make, but I intentionally chose two films entirely without IP connections to try and promote them (United And Driving away dolls, for those interested). These films have a lower budget than traditional studio blockbusters, and therefore will receive less promotion and marketing. Some, like Saltburn or Anyone but you (both in 2023), will be caught by the zeitgeist and become very popular. However, many others will simply spend a couple of weeks at the cinema, likely be thrown on the streaming device and then virtually disappear. Basically, my point is that if you’re complaining about a lack of originality in a movie, there’s plenty to be found outside of traditional channels.

Oh, I hear you cry, what about Hollywood’s current love of sequels, reboots and remakes (sequels that act as remakes). The gist of this is: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Hollywood studios need to make a certain amount of money in order to survive and be profitable. They do this by spending a lot of money on a movie that then needs to make a much larger amount to make money. For example, Madame Web (2024) cost $80 million to produce (relatively small for a superhero film). If you’re spending that much money, you need to make sure that as many people as possible watch the movie in order to make money from it. Therefore, studio films are often nice, three-star, and not intended to offend anyone. Studios have gone bankrupt in the past, in part because they let “auteurs” go off and spend huge sums of money in order to produce a movie that wouldn’t sell. Studio films are also often based on intellectual property, operating on the (often correct) assumption that people will go and see a film based on something they already like.

The fact that something is based on an existing property does not mean that it is not original. Bad things (2023) is based on the novel by Alasdair Grey, and no matter what you think of it, it’s definitely one of the most original films you’ve ever seen. Nobody saw Oppenheimer (2023), a three-hour biopic about the father of the nuclear bomb, could be said to be unoriginal. There are also examples of people creating works of art through direct appropriations of intellectual property funds. Spider Man: Defeat And In the spider verse (2018 and 2023) took the Spider-Man mythos and made something new and innovative out of it. Likewise, 2014 Lego movie She took what could have been an unwatchable ad for Lego (which, underneath it all, still is) and created an excellent film about creativity and compliance. Similarly, Barbie (2023), another potential ad for Mattel, has been elevated to art by director Greta Gerwig (whatever you think about that).

Gerwig leads us to another argument about the lack of creativity in Hollywood: that there are no new voices coming. While there is some evidence of this, with old names like Nolan, Anderson (Weiss) and Scorsese directing new films last year, that’s not the full picture. These directors are still innovating and creating new and interesting works, and there is also an influx of new talent coming through. From Gerwig (who made his way as a director just seven years ago and continues to move on to better and better things), to directors who have recently released their sophomore films (Emma Seligman with Bottoms And Emerald Fennell with Saltburn) and even those who recently debuted (Raine Allen-Miller with Ray Lynn) And these are just the people I can name off the top of my head.

In conclusion, of course there are still unoriginal Hollywood movies but the only way to stop them is to stop watching them. I wouldn’t ask anyone to stop watching anything they love, but if you think studio cinema is unoriginal, there’s a whole word out there to discover.

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