With the exceptions of ‘The Empire Strikes Back‘ and ‘The Godfather: Part 2‘ follow-ups, sequels and second acts are rarely as good and even more rarely better than their original. Both these films had the same creative forces driving the project and many if not all of the acting talent from the original (even Sir Alex Guinness returned for his ghost scenes in Empire). Occasionally the thrid movie can return the franchise to the limelight as with ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ and ‘Oceans 13’ but abso-fucking-
Look at the ever increasing train wrecks of one-hit-wonders the music industry forces upon us on what seems like a daily basis.
Originality is a wonderful thing. Its enemy is
Years I ago I was told that Sony Films make 20 movies a year knowing only 10 will make money, but they don’t know which 10. With an investment strategy like that, it is plain to see why they have to be very wary of originality and why we get Footloose Part Fucking 2. I hope the towns folk win this time.
It can be even worse in product development. Every year car companies show their wares at car shows around the world. The most technological advanced, aeronautically designed, fucking awesome machines that make you not care about where petrol comes from, how much it costs and what the environment is all about anyways. Then, after all the excitement we get the same old boring shit year after year. And to illustrate my earlier point about sentimentalism, Chrysler gave us the PT Cruiser and now Ford us delivered the latest iteration of the 1960’s mass market Mustang which it appears has become the new bogun-mobile. Apparently, ownership requires sagging testicles, baldness, zero taste and being OK with spending more than an equivalent Mercedes-Benz with far better build quality. And still, Ford almost went bust a couple of years back.
When I look at great creatives there is very little if any repetition in their work. Sure, they have developed their own style which they then overlay on top of original concepts. For example, JJ Abrams has a penchant for lens flare which he uses liberally in his films and TV shows. The stories are vastly different (with perhaps the exception of the Star Wars v Star Trek crossover). Annie Leibovitz’s photographic style will go down in history as singularly unique yet no two portraits resemble each other. Brett Whiteley always painted the female form from a particularly unflattering angle. No two works are the same.
I have struggled with originality since first stepping into an advertising agency. There’s an unwritten adland rule that says, ‘any ad is original if the idea first appeared 10 years ago or 10,000 kilometres away’. I saw that rule deployed many times. I saw creatives pitch ideas using the original concept in a foreign award annual as the rationale for selling the idea! I’ve also seen a guy fired for doing that so all’s fair in love and advertising. I shared office space for a long time with a painter (not of houses) who only painted from photos. And not his photos. After winning a rather prestigious art award with one of his painting (with some serious cash and kudos as the prize) the well-known judge enquired as to whether the painting had been created from life or photo. When he replied from a photo she said, ‘if I had known that you would not have won.’
Originality matters.