It’s 7 pm and you’re with your partner looking for a movie to watch after a long day. You scroll on Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu but find nothing that seems interesting, it seems like every new movie is just a copy of the classics, saturating the industry with nothing but shabby knockoffs of what once were.
Original movie ideas have been dwindling for decades now and movie studios are pulling at straws for anything, causing movies to have the same plot line reworked to look like a completely “new” film.
Tropes have been used ever since storytelling began. The most famous trope being the star crossed lovers with Romeo & Juliet being a classic interpretation. Tropes help give a base to storytelling and guide the overall plot of any story, but these tropes over time have become repetitive and leaves the story feeling boring.
Twilight was one of the first films to popularize the “human falls in love with the monster” trope in Hollywood. Many more movies and shows followed suit, starting with Vampire Diaries and My Babysitters a Vampire, in which both shows have the main character fall in love with a vampire.
There are not only repetitive plots but some complete rip-offs of childhood classics that try to trick people into watching them instead of the original.
Kung Fu Panda swept the nation with its fun characters and witty humor. But with a good movie comes its bad rip-off, Chop Kick Panda.
Chop Kick Panda was a movie about motivation. Zido is a lazy but loveable panda that yearns to become a master in the martial arts and is forced to become one to defeat Kudo, an evil tiger, who looks to take over the kingdom. With an astounding 2/10 rating on IMDB and 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s easy to tell that this was far from a passion project and more of a cheap movie to make a quick buck off the far-superior original.
Many of the movies serve nothing but the same plot time and time again, rarely getting a movie that takes its own spin on it. With all of these tropes, some films do well, adding a unique spin to the original stories, like Shrek by making the “knight in shining armor” an ogre and turning the “damsel in distress” into a woman who can defend herself. However, these movies are hidden, being covered up by the cheap and repetitive ones made by money hungry crews.
As an avid movie-enjoyer, there have been little to no movies that have caught my attention that don’t have pre-established fandoms or reuse the same plot devices, senior Xavier Martin-Porter shares the same opinion.
“When I see films with the same plot I feel frustrated because of the predictability, the same plot devices, and the character arcs that feel recycled. Movies with interesting plots are important because they engage the audience and spark emotional connections.”
A great example of an engaging film is the movie Here with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. This movie has an amazing gimmick that makes it stand out, it keeps its camera in the same place throughout the entire film. With a very basic plot of family struggles and love, the gimmick makes the movie a worthy watch.
Hollywood has been running out of original ideas for years now and chooses to repeat old tropes than follow through with original ideas and risk the loss of a quick buck.
