Hollywood, please stop digging up the dead

Once upon a time, before Hollywood took the green initiative of making sequels and live-action remakes of (almost) every good movie, screenwriting and filmmaking was a very enriching process. It was like Bob Ross striking the smoothest brush strokes you have ever seen. 

Sequels used to be the continuation of a storyline that we could dream of after watching a movie. They lived up to the standard.

But then came the dark times. 

Suddenly Karl Marx’s vision of a capitalist society took over what used to be a creative, risk-taking movie industry and became a stage for making moolah. What used to be fairytales of characters meant to inspire the young generation to do good became puppets of corporate masters, whose main goal was money. 

The ultimate cost of making those kinds of movies? Our nostalgia from watching them for the first time. (Also, millions of dollars spent on CGI. I still cannot recover from the live-action adaptation of Death Note — they did my boy Ryuk dirty with that one!) 

Sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

It’s also a bit confusing, so I came up with a quick recap of what happened to the movie industry. 

Once upon a time … wait, scratch that, I did that already. Let us start from a fantasy novel-esque transitional shot. 

In a world where originality was too risky and creativity had died, in the name of promoting modern values through decades old characters, one industry made the ultimate sacrifice: storytelling.

Gone were the days of cinematic artistry and left behind were the coffee-stained scripts of writers murmuring, “Let’s take a chance with a teenage boy, who the young ones can relate to, and give him super powers and teach the audience a lesson on goodness.”

Movie magic was replaced by cinematic universe(s). Bob Ross’s brush strokes were replaced by green screens and visual effects. Instead of losing everything, the teenager is given high-tech accessories by a billionaire to complete his hero arch. 

Films no longer ended with a moral conclusion, but left room for a trilogy, a spin-off series, and Lego versions on Disney+. Sequels weren’t dreams anymore — they were obligations. 

So here we are living in the remake renaissance, where once iconic characters are hollowed out for box office bait, sequels are stitched together with recycled plotlines, and original storytelling is treated like a dangerous disease to be avoided at all costs. 

And yes, let’s expand on computer-generated imagery — AKA the pesky CGI. 

CGI used to be a tool for spicing things up. It was best used to evoke emotions in a surreal way like for 2012’s Life of Pi. But — not suddenly — it has become the entire meal. An overcooked one, too.

As a self-proclaimed artist, I do not want to say names of movies with bad CGI, as it would be disrespectful to the entire team (*cough, cough* Green Lantern suit).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-technology. I’m anti-emotionless lions singing “Hakuna Matata” with the dead faces in a hyper-realistic movie that looks a lot like an animal documentary. There’s a difference.

So where does that leave us? Stuck in a never-ending multiverse of mediocrity, waiting for something fresh while studios reboot things we haven’t even had time to forget. I’m fully expecting a gritty reboot of Shrek any day now. 

But not all hope is lost. Every now and then, a filmmaker breaks through the algorithm and someone comes through with a weird idea, a wild, risky film that makes you feel something again, as was the case with Everything Everywhere All at Once. 

So dear Hollywood, if you’re reading, here’s my message: stop digging up the dead. Let icons rest in peace. Take a chance on something new. And for the love of film, please do not make live-action remakes of anime.