Movie industry needs a little reinvention

Media and all of its respective forms have really come a long way. Do you think anybody 20 years ago, let alone 10, thought we would be able to have so many forms of entertainment at our fingertips?

One of these forms in particular, the movie industry, has been growing and evolving since its advent around the turn of the 20th century. This lucrative industry has gone from dimly lit rooms with loud crank projectors to the digital cinemas we know today. While technological evolution is not in question, I believe another important facet is. This would be the content of these movies, more so the plots and creative processes.

It seems more and more today that Hollywood and all of its constituents have been running out of creative ways to handle films. Instead of comedies being smart and subtle, it seems as if they're just crude and profane. Now, I know movies like this have been made for a long time – there's nothing new in the world, history repeats itself, etc. It just seems like a deluge of hard-R rated comedies have been coming upon us recently. I do remember the phase of PG-13 movies that happened some time ago, but even these films still held crudities in their arsenal. I guess it's easier to assault the senses than it is to be funny and restrained.

Comedy isn't the only genre that has seemingly taken a hit. The horror genre has also seemed to dip in quality recently. It's a problem similar to that of comedies. Horror movies assault the senses with violence, blood and gore. Creating a chilling atmosphere and building up tension with the pay-off being well-executed scares now seems to be an outdated way of drawing an audience in. Instead, we're introduced to paper-thin, one-dimensional characters whose only purposes are to die or get tortured in increasingly violent ways. When did gross-outs through violence equate to something being scary?

No matter what genre you're into, there's one trend that seems to be picking up with increasing speed. That would be remaking classic and sometimes not even quality films in order to cash in on ideas and concepts that were already used in the past. Now, this has been done for years, and a decent amount of time it works. For example, the ‘80s crime-thriller "Scarface" was a remake of a classic 1932 film of the same name. But now there are talks of remaking the movie again. For every one successful remake, you can probably name about four to five unsuccessful ones. A great example of this would be the 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Psycho." This film was poorly received and heavily questioned. Was it really necessary to update a film that is considered as monumental as it is?

I can go on. There are so many different horror movies made in the US that are remakes of Japanese horror films. From "The Ring" to "The Grudge" countless successful Japanese horror movies are brought to the U.S. in an attempt create revenue. Even U.S. horror movies, such as "When a Stranger Calls" (1979), aren't safe from being remade. Most of these remakes actually do bring in large amounts of money at the box office. This creates very little motivation for studios to invest more time in original and thought-provoking films as opposed to cashing in on already treaded concepts and ideas.

I love movies. Ever since I was a kid, I've always enjoyed going to the cinema to see newly released movies and escape reality for a good two hours. It was something to do. Get out of the house, grab a bite to eat and enjoy the fiction displayed on the screen. Recently it just seems as if movies don't have the same creative fire behind them as they had before. This could be a perspective issue or a matter of me just not being old enough to truly see the rises and dips in the industry.

Despite this, from where I stand it seems that in order to keep eyes glued to the screen, the movie industry will need to renovate and reinvent itself.