Is anyone else getting bored of parody films, Movies based on books you have never heard of, or remakes of far away nations’ films. It has become appallingly clear that the Motion Picture Industry has lost significant creativity. With the writers’ strike over it would be expected that new ideas would be put into screen plays, however filmmakers have resulted to previous published literature, un-Americanized foreign films, or even video games to make their new motion pictures. Of course these films sell, but why must the current movie world redefine its standards. Three most popular trends in the current movie industry are Parody films, Americanized Remakes of Japanese horror films, and movies based on video games.
Parody movies, such as The Scary Movie Series, and Epic Movie, which were made most popular by Airplane back in 1980, used to have a release of maybe one every two years, now there have been two released just in the first quarter of the 2008. In January Twentieth Century Fox released the spinoff Meet the Spartans. It has been only two months and now Dimension’s which has brought you such other favorites as Scream and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, along with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will release Superhero Movie. Both movies spoof popular culture in American Entertainment. Meet the Spartans focused primarily on the 2007 war epic 300, as well as added satires of reality TV shows such as American Idol and Deal or No Deal, American celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and of course other blockbusters such as Step Up, Transformers, and Spiderman 3. Superhero movie in the same fashion will burlesque the Superhero Genre, including such comics and major motion pictures as X-Men, Fantastic 4, and Batman. Spoofs are always popular as they bring humor to all entertainment fields, current events, and everyday life in general.
Everyone is familiar with the popular horrors The Ring, The Grudge, and Dark Water. All these along with many current horror/ thrillers are American remakes of already released Aian Horror Movies. The Ring (2002) was indeed the remake of Japanese mystery Ringu (1998), while The Grudge (2004) is fully based on the J-Horror Ju-on. This trend has picked up as for every month of 2008, there has been one of these Americanized-Japanese Horror Remakes, in order to share the fictitious fright of Japanese filmmakers in the fashion which American filmgoers can comprehend. On January 4th One Missed Call inspired by Chakushin Ari hit theaters, followed by Hong Kong-Singaporean-Thai feature The Eye, Hollywood Production Remake of the same name on February 1st, and on March 21st, 20th Century Fox released Shutter, which was a remake of the Thai Horror Thriller also of the same name. Shutter was also executive produced by the same producers as The Grudge and The Ring.
It is obvious that popular blockbusters such as James Bond films Golden-Eye and Tomorrow Never Dies or Harry Potter major motion pictures Sorcerer’s Stone or The Goblet of Fire have sprung a wide array of video games in order to put the player in the movie. It has seemed that recently the Motion Picture Industry has resorted to producing screenplays adapted from already released Playstation and Xbox games. Just in November Twentieth Century Fox released “Hitman” suggested by the game of the same name. The movie did fine at the box office, but was criticized for a lack of stealth action, which was an intricate part of Hitman’s gameplay. In September of the past year the third installment of the “Resident Evil” Motion Pictures titled Resident Evil: The Extinction opened to high expectations, which were met quickly as the picture was given a general array of positive reviews. Dou to the trilogy’s success a sequel has moved into the pre-production phase.
In mine and many other people’s opinions the only media crossover that should be done is when a book is turned into a motion picture, as book lovers enjoy watching the words they read played out by their favorite Hollywood Stars. Popular tendencies of major bestsellers going to film in the new millennium are “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Kite Runner.” Perhaps the most recent accepted book to movie feature was “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who.” Like “The Grinch” before it this live action taking on Dr. Seuss’ classic told the passionate lesson which the book’s author conveyed into a wonderful entertaining hour and a half. Of course the Seuss movies would sell as who has not grown up with one of the 20th Century’s beloved children’s offer.

With all these trends in the modern motion picture industry it has come apparently obvious that filmmakers care more about making another hundred million to put in their pocket as opposed to making good movies. Screenwriters cannot come up with their ideas, and must remedy to all ready released forms of media. Greed has also become an issue as any form of media which is making money, must be turned into a movie, so that it can make more money.