Has our entertainment become too nostalgic?

Between all the new reboots/sequels to old film franchises coming out and all the games getting kickstarted because they are spiritual successors to older games, I'm starting to resent how revival projects have taken center stage.

Don't get me wrong, I'm plenty excited for a few nostalgic romps (Star Wars, Mad Max, IGA's new game) but I am not particularly happy about how they seem to be the only things to get excited about lately. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing, but they could be stealing attention away from new projects.

What do you think?

It's been a terrible trend for a long time. It's why I can't stand JJ Abrams. Everything he does is based on terrible fanboy nostalgia.

Hollywood and the games industry are risk adverse.

I think consumers are too, we don't jump on new ideas, we want more of what we already enjoy. So I think there's room for growth in niche markets where people can try making very specific types of games/movies that haven't been done in long time (In games: Pillars of eternity, axiom verge...) while trying a few new things. Those smaller projects also have small groups of consumers who will definitely pay for stuff they used to enjoy and will put up with some small steps forward.

New ideas are happening, just across a wider range of areas at a slower rate. There are no more COD4's that come out and change games forever. But there are a billion indie games that all do things a bit different and submit some new ideas with each iteration, and that's exciting.

I enjoy some of the reboots/remakes, like the upcoming Poltergeist remake, because they're things I grew up with my kids can now enjoy with contemporary presentation standards. But then again they liked the original Alien and Aliens just fine. Original Disney's The Black Hole was a big hit. These films and others like them hold up amazingly well even when I haul them out and rewatch them. Plus my son is nuts for WiiU ports of NES and SNES titles. Star Wars is kind of a different beast since it's continuing a story with films that were originally intended to be made. If a broad range of older media remains available via home video products and game ports to current hardware, I think, yeah, revisit the past as it was but new projects focus on new stories and new ideas. Think about in console gaming how we've recently got all this fancy new hardware loaded up with remasters of games barely a year or two old. Not many BioShocks running around. And by that I mean not BioShock sequels, but innovative new projects that take advantage of the hardware, sure, but more importantly become future classics.

@claybrez said:

For a recent sci-fi movie to get excited about, what about Ex Machina? It's been getting great reviews. I saw it and loved it.

As for an action movie, what about John Wick? I thought it had really good action scenes. It did well enough to warrant a sequel.

My opinion is that the mainstream perspective for properties will always be the most risk averse options. It just has to be that way. In order to afford to spend as much as they do on certain projects industries have to aim it in such a way to receive a large return. That will result in going after large demographics. Niche projects don't make as much money and so can't afford the same level of advertising. If you want to see things not like that you will need to look into less advertised options.

@officer_falcon: Ex Machina was indeed great but then Alex Garland is just a unique talent. I'd have been surprised if his directorial debut was anything but strong and engaging.

I don't so much mind it. But it does make me curious as to what will be a source of nostalgia in the next 30 years. So much of pop culture today heavily relies on hankering back to existing franchises and brands, that I wonder if the future generations will grow up with reverence for essentially the same thing their elders cared about. Or will we simply be stuck in a perpetual state of sequelizing everything? Surely they won't be making Star Wars and Marvel films in a few decades time. I'd hope not, anyway.

I think the rate at which good entirely original content comes out is still more than any working person can reasonably keep up with.

@sunbrozak: We've been doing it forever, though. The Will Smith movie I Am Legend is based on an adaptation of a Richard Martheson novel that's been filmed three times, starting in the 1960s. The first film is the only one the plot bore much resemblance to the novel, and the Smith movie is the only one to use the novel's title. And Hitchcock's classic Stewart and Day version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is not only a remake of an earlier film, it's a remake of Hitchcock's own movie. He'd made a different version of the film far earlier in his career. It's amazing how much has been recycled, remade and reinterpreted in the last 100 years. But through unique titling, vastly different locations, plot rewrites, etc., we often don't realize they're remakes. Even in novels, he's never said so, but if you've read both, Cormac McCarthy's wildly popular The Road is essentially a retelling of his own decades-old Outer Dark, although few people familiar with The Road and No Country For Old Men and maybe All The Pretty Horses have ever heard of Outer Dark, let alone read it.

Yeah risk adverse like Mike said. When this first started happening I remember a lot of people saying that it's because of the economy. Studios can't afford to take risks.

If you don't like seeing rehashes then never read about Jungian archetypes or The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

@claybrez: I think it's down to two factors.

On the one hand, you have artists, directors and developers who grew up with the insane explosion of pop culture in the last 30 years and absolutely love it. They show that love by highlighting the stuff they grew up with and basically saying "Hey, I grew with this stuff and I love it! You should really take a look at this!". Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

On the other hand: Everyone who grew up in that explosion of pop culture in the last 30 years is now hopefully a functional member of society with a fair amount of disposable income. Maybe they even have some kids that they want to expose to what they enjoyed in their own youth. That makes them a prime demographic to target.

There's probably something incredibly post-modern or cynical about this...

As Reggie said once We want something new but familliar.

@izzygraze: It's all risky, though. The Carrie remake was based on the strength of Chloe Moretz's performance in Let Me In, the remade Swedish movie Let The Right One In adapted from the Swedish novel of the same name. Let Me In suffered critically from being a Hollywood remake of a foreign film, and movie critics have a special place in hell for those. It didn't do very well at the box office, either. But almost everyone agreed Moretz was had become a young actress to watch, especially in dark roles. Her celebrity had only grown in the interim, but Carrie remade still tanked even pushed back from a spring to Halloween-window release.

@thatpinguino: Ha. No doubt. Reminds me about the debate flares up now and again, over whether or not Lewis's Narnia novels, particularly Wardrobe, are Christ stories. Does it matter? Christ stories abound. They're everywhere.

well, it's the kinda thing that goes both ways right? if you're into the thing, than you're happy there is more. otherwise, it seems like a mindless cash grab. a lot of it does have to do with being creatively bankrupt but it also makes complete financial sense.

that said, whether it's with games, movies, music or anything really, if you only see sequels and derivatives, than you're really not looking far or wide enough, you're just consuming what's being fed to you. if you wanna experience the good stuff, you really have to at least meet it half way because they usually don't have the marketing power to get to you.

@sanfordmay: I personally can't wait until someone calls The Matrix a Narnia ripoff. Or until the next Christ story is compared to the Matrix.

My general answer would be that maybe you aren't looking hard enough. Theres always original things hidden away somewhere. All the things you have mentioned are popular, familiar things. They're going to get all the press because there is already an audience for them.

It appears you're speaking primarily about hype for upcoming projects. I think the answer to your question is no, entertainment hasn't become too nostalgic, we are just more willing to commit to hype for flavors we already know we like. I could get hyped for an upcoming game using unusual new gameplay mechanics, but I know better than to commit myself in full to expectations for something I haven't yet 'tasted', so to speak. Games, in particular, are an industry repeatedly burned by crushed hope and false promises. On the other hand, the team who made Banjo-Kazooie is making a new Banjo-Kazooie, a game I loved by the people who made it. I am willing to commit to that hype.

I think the hype you resent is more a product of knowing what we like and wanting more, than it is a death knell for creativity.

@thatpinguino: I'd fall out of my chair over either of those, too. The original source material becomes obscured by its progeny, though it's still the wellspring for millions of stories. Alas, something else we've lost with the downfall of a good liberal arts education in addition to specific technical training: people's window on the history of human culture gets far smaller and a lot more opaque. Eventually technical innovation will also suffer from that gap in education.

+1 I love/hate horror movies, and only recently got around to seeing "It Follows". Then I hit up a website that I frequent for horror movie reviews, and found that a *billion* new horror movies came out just about the same time.

I guess if you're only into huge, blockbuster films, and huge, blockbuster games, then maybe there are too many remakes? But if you're willing to step a tier down, there are so many good, new entertainment products, it's ridiculous.

@mikemcn: "averse," not "adverse."

@dusker: I can't believe the volume of horror movies coming out recently. It Follows, I'm going to have to wait for DVD release. I blew it on the iTunes rental: My wife and I figured we'd wait and rent it a little later, then the movie really took off and was no longer available for rent as long as they usually are while also in theaters.

YES.

@demoskinos: I bet you've never gotten a TL;DR in your life!

Name recognition baby. Since the studios were bought out by larger, non-entertainment corporations, executives are under increased pressure to keep their jobs by delivering the least risky ventures. "Hey, remember that thing you liked." is the safest option.

We're importing a lot of international content for fresher material these days, too. Either remade Hollywood style, or in the case of most of the TV programming, just released over here, subtitled as necessary.

i think these 2 have it right. specifically the "hollywood blockbuster" and AAA games perpetually rehash old ideas, as they operate at such a budgetary scale that they HAVE to play to the lowest-common-denominator.

look at any indie scene- be it film, music, games or even comics for that matter- and you'll find interesting new voices doing interesting new things. but don't expect the scope and scale of 'avengers 2' or 'star wars.' innovative stuff is RARELY ready for primetime.

@mellotronrules: And, fairly, there are plenty of times innovative content is so poorly executed it's awful, and derivitative, low-risk material is so well executed, it's highly entertaining no matter you've seen it all before a dozen times.

Either that or the next generation will just get tired of whatever their parents are crazy about and they'll make their own thing. If the teens and twenty somethings of the next decade or the next aren't blowing all of their hard-earned minimum wage cash (or their parent's money) on remakes, reimaginings, and rehashes, then they'll stop being funded.

In the meantime, it seems like if you want a new property, you have to go looking for it, which leads me to...

...this. And doubly so if you enjoy going back to watch/read/play older things to see if they still hold up or if you can figure out what was so great about them back then.

Where is that a debate? CS Lewis was a pretty devout Christian, those books are pretty clearly inspired by his religious beliefs. I mean, it might not be so clear if you've never read any significant portions of the New Testament, but I don't think you can read The Last Battle or The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe without being reminded of the New Testament.

And oh God, I should probably stop writing, that's way off topic.

If you were to ask a question along the lines of "What game would you like to see?", I guarantee the majority of the answers would be "A new version of..." or "A sequel to..." It happens every time.

With how Jupiter Ascending, Prince of Persia, John Carter of Mars, and the Lone Ranger went you can see why studios might be a little more hesitant to back something that isn't a sure fire thing. Holy smokes three of those films I just realized were Disney studios.

There's nothing wrong with nostalgia. The problem is not adding new ideas on top of that nostalgia.

And three of the four projects you listed were existing licenses with extensive back catalogues in various forms.

@believer258: Influenced, of course. Intent is the debate. Lewis is reported to have denied setting out to intentionally write Narnia as a Christian parable. He was very close to his youngest stepson and his stepson said the same thing, that he and Lewis had discussed it purely privately and Lewis insisted he set out only to write the books as children's fantasy stories without any particular intent to imply a Christian message. They were, as Lewis apparently insisted, distinct from and unrelated to his theological writing. The debate started when some Christians began to sort of co-opt the Narnia novels to religious purpose, which, again apparently, put Lewis's nose out of joint a bit. And later his stepson took up the banner of defending his stepfather's original intent for the novels. It gets sort of heated because the Narnia novels are darlings of both agnostic and atheist fantasy fans and of the fundamentalist Christian community. Two groups that don't often see eye to eye. And they both want it their way.

I'm Episcopalian so it doesn't exactly bug me if the Narnia books were written with religious intent. But the most credible accounts relate Lewis said they were not and I figure we have to take the author at his word.

I'm sorry, too, for the OT, too. But it's kind of an interesting story.

@kcin: And specific to John Carter, Michael Chabon is an exceptionally talented and durable novelist. But he can't write a screenplay to save his life.

@sanfordmay: Narnia novels are the darling of agnostic and atheist fantasy fans? Learn something new every day.

...still from a neutral perspective I can't see how you could see Narnia as not an allegory of the Bible, when you can clearly compare characters and motifs in Narnia to ones in the Bible, and that line in the Dawn Treader about learning Aslan's name in the real world.

@belegorm: I should say a darling rather than the darling, and from childhood before concepts of religion and its ramifications are well formed. But childhood passions die hard.

Oh I'm not debating either side. Your comparison points are perfectly valid. I'm just saying the only one who could know Lewis's intent was Lewis, and by the most credible reports he said, no, it was not his intent. He could have lied. But I don't know why he would. As mentioned elsewhere, though raised a Christian he became an atheist but for most of his adult life he returned to his faith, and devoutly so. He wrote widely in theology: allegories, opinion, analysis and personal memoir. Certainly at the time children's books with an overt Christian foundation would have been well received in his native UK. So he could've lied but he had no clear reason to lie. Perhaps he meant more that the Narnia novels meant what the reader wished them to mean, and that, for him, did not require an interpretation of a Christian message. Maybe he was too close to the work to see how influenced he was. Who knows. But, again, he said no, I didn't mean it that way.

I'd say the entertainment business is too nostalgia driven, but that audiences (because they are ever-changing) tend to crave new and interesting entertainment to consume, just as much as they want entertainment that hearkens back to the things they have already experienced.

Read books. It's where the most innovation is happening. Literature has been ahead of the pop culture curve for a long time now. Writing and publishing a book is nowhere near the investment a movie, video game or even producing music is, so people are more willing to take risks. New ideas are also generally more easily expressed in writing than in less mature mediums.

The most expensive stuff sure beats this drum, but go look at most movies up for Oscars any year and tell me there aren't cool and interesting stories being told. They just don't have 'splosions.

Big budget movies are in such a weird place these days that it's a different animal.

As far as games, those kickstarters are bringing back old genres that may not have AAA audience, but have a real one and that's showing. And some of those games have been outstanding. I'm thrilled with it. It's not nostalgia, it's just catering to ignored, more niche, audiences, to me. Not that it can't play a factor certainly. But Pillars of Etenrity is just a good RPG in an abandoned style. I don't feel nostalgia while playing it. It's just quality.

Nostalgia gave us Shovel Knight and Boards of Canada. Nostalgia is awesome.

It's like asking people what invention they want to see 5 years from now. If they knew what they were going to want, they would be inventing it themselves.

Even most the stuff we would hail as truly original creations in any medium, are in reality a variation on something that existed already, modifying it in some way. At there core, there are only so many types of stories to tell.

Thinking of some of my favorite games of the last 5 years, I would have never have said I wanted to see the following:

-An insanely violent top-down shooter with a modern soundtrack, but visuals that evoke the 80s and a Tarantino-esque narrative

-What is effectively an interactive animated TV show based on a comic book

-An esoteric, punishing Japanese game set generally in the fantasy genre with a story you can only slightly decipher, with some items or skill components that have unknown uses

-A cartoony 2D platformer where all of your progress is reset every time you die, and you only have 1 life.

The bottom line is that we largely don't know what we want until we experience it, especially in artistic mediums. It's why we are drawn to sequels and stuff - we're trying to recreate experiences we already know we liked. Unfortunately there is usually a huge degree of diminishing returns.