I’ve got news for you, bro: everything is unoriginal. The concept of originality is sort of moot by now. Me, saying this, is not even an original thought. I’ve been informed on this argument by Kirby Ferguson and his famous “Everything Is A Remix” video series, which makes the compelling case that nothing is actually original but a combination of elements that came before, every idea, thought, concept—it’s all built upon previous ideas, thoughts and concepts.
But that’s just one reason I find this classic objection uninteresting. Another is that while even the movies that seem original are well-veiled mishmashes of previous ideas, movies that don’t hide aspects they borrowed from those that came before them should not be held in shame. Remakes and sequels are not bad in and of themselves; this gets lost in the fact that often they are poorly made. Continuing stories that already exist is a valid storytelling mechanism, and is really as old as human narratives themselves. That’s the nature of myth.
I’m sure Oedipus was a rip-off of something that came before but we just don’t know about it. The worst part is that when people get caught up with plot originality they tend to overlook real innovations (synthesized from earlier influences of course) in storytelling, be it visual, tonal, thematic, or what have you. This occurred most recently with The Amazing Spider-Man, which is a brilliantly told origin story but people dismissed it because they already had an origin story on film that they deemed authoritative. Similarly with Avatar, people called it cartoon Dances with Wolves or futuristic Ferngully but its similarities to these and other movies that retell a story that America seems to really need to deal with pale in comparison to its technological and artistic merit. There’s more going on in the movie than a tribeswoman teaching a dude her language.
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