Saturday

A book could be written (and perhaps has been) about the relationship between the audience, the producer, and the director. Simplistically, I suppose, the producer will try to give the audience what they want. His goal is to make money. The director, however, will try to give the audience what they don't know they want. He'll try to surprise them, to innovate, and challenge. This is the essential tension at the heart of the film-making process. It becomes complicated when you begin to analyze what exactly an audience wants, whether they actually comprehend it themselves, and whether anyone else could either. Somewhere in this muddle is the answer to the question of why so many remakes and sequels are being produced. I agree with Alex in that Hollywood has never been particularly original. I believe, however, there are degrees of originality. Jaws and Jurassic Park were both made from books, but I think they transformed and transcended that material so much that they can be called 'original' films. On the other hand, The Da Vinci Code, also derived from a book, failed to do so. Therefore, I'd maintain we do see more unoriginal films nowadays than previously. Anyway, the question is 'why?'. I was going to postulate that the current climate of fear induced by terrorist attacks and a war in Iraq that seems unwinnable and unending might have something to do with it. We might be attempting to escape into sequels and remakes, into the comfortable and reassuring, the safe experiences of the past. But this is entirely random guesswork with no basis in psychological theory. We may only know the answer once we've escaped the question.