Hollywood: From Dream Factory to Dream Recycling Plant

The average person produces anywhere from seven to ten original ideas every week, upwards of 520 ideas in a single year.  Few people ever consider the impact that all of these ideas are having on the global infosphere and sadly, while thousands of people are using home tap water filters to reduce the number of plastic bottles in our landfills, Britta has yet to create an effective thought filtration system that can do the same for ideas.

Fortunately, one town is doing its part to minimize thought pollution by giving new life to old ideas - Hollywood.  The film industry was once one of the largest producers of mind-clouding idea production, regularly creating original characters, plots, and dialog in an alleged "Golden Age" for the business.  The sheer volume of production only increased in the decades that followed, eventually culminating in a cacophony of concepts with several new pictures being released each week.  But this once indifferent industry is now fast becoming a prime example of reform, reusing and recycling the original intellectual artifacts of yesteryear (or in some cases, even yesterday) in a slew of sequels, prequels, franchise resurrections, adaptations, remakes, and re-imaginings.

Of course, without personal accountability such movements cannot be expected to take hold.  Big-Time Hollywood  players like Eddie Murphy are largely responsible for bringing the cause to the forefront.  Murphy pushed the envelope by making the first-ever sequel to a remake of re-imagined adaptation.  That is: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde begot The Nutty Professor [1963] begot The Nutty Professor [1996] begot The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.  Whew. Herc-uh-leeees, indeed.  Mr. Murphy also accomplished a similar feat with the Dr. Doolittle franchise annnnnd has announced plans for - drumroll please - both a THIRD installment in the Nutty Professor saga as well as a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie.  

Some would argue that supporting this admirable trend encourages the creation of inferior products, similar to the way that some paper and plastics tend to degrade after being recycled.  Opponents of Hollywood's recycling program may not be entirely unjustified in their complaints.  They often cite such outstanding examples as Blues Brothers 2000, Grease 2, and the Joel Schumacher travesty, Batman & Robin.  While these examples of poorly recycled materials cannot be ignored, one must also consider the hope that constant advances in technology will help bring about sustainability just as more traditional means of recycling have for aluminum and drinking water.  

One prime example of the exciting things to come is the new 3-D film, Resident Evil: Afterlife.  This thrilling update of the "Parent Trap," franchise has shattered the perceived limitations of film recycling.  In the film, Milla Jovovich steps into the role (or rather roles) originally filled by Hayley Mills, and later by Lindsay Lohan.  Mila and her doubles fight throngs of the undead and various other monsters for the attention of the "parent" company, the Umbrella Corporation.  While the special effects haven't become much more convincing since the 1961 original, the addition of the undead ironically breathes new life into a franchise that few would have thought to be worth reviving only a few years ago.  If this is what audiences have to look forward to, then I hope to see a lot more of this in the near future.

p.s. -  I made that logo. I was pretty proud.