Seems like everything is a remake this year, with of course a new twist tossed in to make it seem somewhat new. It’s as though the entertainment industry is as fixated on special effects as our kids are on electrotech. If the property is already written and audience-approved, then all that is needed is the extra gimmick that will catch and hold the attention of the younger generation.
Kind of seems lazy to me, but what do I know? I would imagine the time writers and actors take perfecting their skills is minor to the number of hours needed to effect a big smashup, blowup scene that screams and rumbles across the screen at tornadic velocity every third second of the every new ‘old’ movie. I should be impressed.
Oddly, after the first few ‘special effects’ movies we’ve all seen and were awed by, these newer repeats are real yawners. Been there done that, sort of a thing. It’s how the human brain works. Can’t be helped.
They have brought back 3-D. When 3-D first came out, half a century or so ago, we were all awed and amazed and a little intimidated by it. Of course, this new 3-D beats it by ten thousand percent, because it is supposed to mimic (or probably be the precursor to) a mass audience virtual reality/holographic sort of a thing. OK, that’s the downside of all of this: Everything impressive has to be topped. Every success must not only be duplicated, but it must be bettered. And here's the rub:
They run out of ideas. They run out of places to go from here. They start remaking movies that were successes and doping them with stuff from their own recent successes, usually in the special effects category. We've seen them. Both. The old movie (or what’s semi-recognizable as such, usually in the characters’ names and occupations) and the WOW visual effects of things blowing up or crashing into each other. That old, easily bored human brain again. "So now what?" it seems to say, repeatedly.
Innovators, not to be daunted, start throwing inventions together and calling them state-of-the-art: The telephone became boring, the computer became stale, the TV was just plain nothing and so they tossed all the tech into one phat piece and called it IPod, then Blackberry with Apps! And so on.
That being said, I’m going to find the nearest showing of the new Sherlock Holmes Movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and that will be my Christmas treat this year. Hey, we all want to be entertained sometimes, even us old H’Art of Zen Grinches. Blessings for the holidays.
Om Mani Padme Hum
