Friday, July 01, 2016

"Hollywood's run out of ideas!"

That meme annoys me.

There have been six film or TV adaptations of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with a seventh slated to drop next year. Ten of The Jungle Book, with an eleventh coming in 2018.

Nobody goes to the theater and says "Oh, Christ, not Romeo & Juliet again! They've run out of ideas for plays!" Good stuff gets added to our cultural repertoire and enjoyable stories get told over and over again, re-imagined, set to music, or recast in different times and places...

There are only a handful of basic plotlines, when you get down to the nitty gritty, and they're all probably recorded on baked clay tablets someplace.
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