I just recently saw that Cartoon Network was going to revive the famous ’80s cartoon, “Thundercats”, which they have already done once before in 2011, and failed.
Miserably.
This time around, however, they are going to add some humor and a loose drawing style and maybe add some action here and there. You know, what the kids like nowadays!
Earlier in the week, I caught on Facebook what I thought was a parody or a Funny or Die short, a video for “Murphy Brown”.
They are rebooting “Murphy Brown”. And, on top of that, I saw a trailer for a reboot of “Magnum P.I.”!!!
What the fuckity fuck is this?!?! There is a “Lethal Weapon” television series, a “Lost In Space” reboot, a “Teen Wolf” reboot, fucking “Roseanne” came back, “Fuller House” continued on, “Ducktales”, “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, “MacGuyver”, “Cagney and Lacey”, “The Greatest American Hero”, “Charmed”, “Party of “Five”!!!!
This list could literally go on and on.
And it’s not just television. Some of those I named are on streaming services, and there are continual reboots of old properties being made into new properties in cinemas nationwide (I’m looking at you, “Ghostbusters”!)
Have we really hit that point where we cannot come up with any original ideas?! Is the audience settling for rehashed ideas and plot lines?!
I actually don’t watch a lot of television or movies. A good friend of mine let me borrow “Spider-Man: Homecoming” about three months ago. Maybe more. I still have yet to watch it. Part of it is because my daughter is not interested in watching it, and she is around us a lot of the time (single child syndrome), and when it’s just my wife and I spending time together, we actually have a much different “past time”.
NO!!! NOT THAT, YOU SICKOS!!! We prefer to read books. She is reading the Harry Potter series at the moment, and I am currently working through my vast library of Kindle ebooks and paperbacks and hardcovers and graphic novels and digital comics (I have whittled down my Goodreads list, but for a while there, I was showing that I had over five books that I was reading, when actually I have one that is on hold for the moment and one that I am currently reading.) It’s something peaceful and quiet that my wife and I can do together, and it is very relaxing. Plus, I’ve tried to watch the occasional show on Netflix or Prime Video. I get through a few episodes, and then I’m spent. I just don’t have the energy to watch a television show for a long period of time.
I get a daily newsletter in my email called BookBub, and it lists a handful of ebooks that are either on sale or free for the day. I’ve maybe bought one, possibly two books through this service. One of the books I had been waiting for to go on sale some time now (Annalee Newitz’s “Autonomous”), and the other was one that just happen to be part of a series of books that I just acquired (Terry Prachett’s “Discworld Series”.
The reason I don’t go for the other books is because they, just like television shows and movies, are just rehashes of the same idea. One author ripping off another author. It sucks that it has come to this. To give an example:
Woman has something out of the norm happen to her and she comes to realize she is some supernatural force and that she is the only one who can save the world, and her true love, from some other supernatural force.
Or:
Government agent finds murdered person (insert what they mean to that person here) and they unravel a conspiracy that could affect the entire world as we know it. Will they succeed, or die trying?
I hope you can see where I am going here.
Anyway, this is not a new thing.
Different cultures stole from each other on how creation came to be. There are very few ideas out there that have been original.
“The Justice League” from DC Comics is just a re-imagination of the Greek Gods.
I, as an amateur (writer, blogger…you know what? We will just leave it at that. I got way too many hobbies that I am an amateur at!), suffer from coming up with original ideas. For instance, I had an idea for a group of people with psychic abilities. The more I fleshed it out, the more it looked like I was trying to rewrite the book on “Uncanny X-Men”. I had another idea that I had almost gotten to the outlining stage, to then find out that I was rewriting the first “Spider-Man” movie.
I was devastated. I was ripping off stuff that I read or watched at one time, and I had not realized it until I kept working on it, and then once I was prepared to go running with it and write, I was copying someone else’s idea.
We need more original ideas. Original concepts. And if we do go and use a previously used idea, let’s try and change it into something that means something more than rehashing ’80s and ’90s television shows.
I have one idea that I am working on, is a rehash of old concepts. I am currently working on a pulp series for my sister website, Saturday World (not online as of yet), as well as a novel that has some supernatural elements, but also superhero elements to the story too. I have been taking my time with each, mainly because I don’t want to seem like I’m plagiarizing someone else or their ideas. There are very little in the way of tropes that have not been done, but when someone does think outside of the box, it’s one hell of a story.