It’s a common observation:
Hollywood has run out of creativity. Every new project, so it seems, is a sequel or an adaptation.
Why can’t anyone think of new ideas any more?
The first explanation is both correct and generous:
Movies are expensive gambles. They can’t just do well – unless they have a very modest budget, they have to sell a lot of tickets to turn a profit.
That was hard enough even during the heyday of cinema. Now, it’s a taller ask.
Sequels and adaptations are more likely to do well. They’re safer bets, so movie studios make more of them.
Simple enough.
But a new problem has emerged recently.
I got to thinking about this with recent rumours of a remake of one of the greatest movies in cinema history:
Fight Club.
The plan to make it an all-girl reboot is beyond insane. The movie is an exploration into the primal side of the male psyche, one that festers in darkness in a modern, civilised and suffocating society.
But it doesn’t matter.
The reboot could be all men and it would still miss the point because Hollywood doesn’t know how to write for or about men anymore. Modern script writers would churn out a bad joke.
The irony is that Hollywood was part of the problem the original Fight Club rallied against. It was part of the culture that strips men of their masculinity and then wonders why they seek it from dangerous places.
Fight Club was a criticism and celebration of itself.
It’s complex, smart and layered.
It’s well beyond anything a studio would greenlight today.
Oh well, we’ll always have the original. Maybe we’re all due for a rewatch.
And maybe it’s time we explored the hidden corners of our masculinity together.
This, in its own small way, will help: