By Blake Whitmore, RMU Student!
Sitting in the movie theater with my jumbo popcorn and my Coca-Cola I prepare for my favorite part of going to the movies, the trailers. I absolutely love the trailers. Every time I 
hear “No Church in the Wild” by Jay-Z and Kanye West I can picture that old 1920s car pulling up to a dramatic stop in The Great Gatsby trailer. Trailers get me excited and pumped up to see a much anticipated film, but lately I have been noticing something about movies coming out; they aren’t original. Even though I cannot wait to see a dapper Leonardo DiCaprio portray one of my all-time favorite characters, the story is not original to film. It is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of the same title.
With much anticipated flicks like Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover: Part III, Man of Steel, Monsters University, Lone Ranger, Kick- Ass 2 and countless other films scheduled to come out this summer, very few are original stories. Sequels, adaptations, and remakes litter the theaters. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely excited to see some of these films, but I miss the days of Toy Story, Indiana Jones, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, and The Iron Giant to name a few. Granted original films these days are still around: Django Unchained, Argo, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. They are just rare beauties.
At the 2011 US Box office, the top 9 grossing films were all sequels, the 10th film was Thor, which is an adaptation of a comic book. Not until number 14 on the list do we get to an original screenplay, Bridesmaids. This has been an ongoing trend though and now Hollywood has reached a new all-time low, rereleasing films in 3D. I was disgusted to see that now we are seeing films that were released years ago in 3D, when the films were never originally intended to be viewed in 3D.
The film business is just that though, a business, and like many businesses history suggests that cinema is cyclical and the industry is just waiting for someone to nudge it in the right direction and take a chance. Despite the summer of sequels I mentioned, 2013 could be a great year for big budget original cinema, the first in quite a few years. This year three sci-fi flicks our coming to theaters including Oblivion starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman, Elysium starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, and Gravity with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Also the exciting new Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman thriller Now You See Me will be in theaters in May. Unfortunately that just means that in 2020 we will probably be sitting down to watch Oblivion 3 or the Now You See Me franchise, but don’t worry cinema will always come back around, so save me a seat.
The Flâneur's Turtle 