Hollywood’s Originality Problem

Just a few hours before I sat down to write this, I was sitting down for another very good reason: I was watching the just-released Martin McDonagh film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. A slew of technical difficulties threatened to ruin the experience for me and my fellow film-goers, from the screen going blank, to the lights coming up in the middle of the movie, to the curtains partially closing and covering the farthest right and left parts of the screen. However, I left the theater without collecting the eight dollar refund I was offered for the failings of the theater’s equipment. Despite all that had gone wrong, I still felt that I had received more than my money’s worth. And this was primarily for the reason that the film felt entirely new. The premise takes a missing person’s case as the setting event, and then spends almost no time attempting to solve the mystery, very little time dealing with the survivors’ healing, and no answers to the thematic questions it raises. As I pondered these unique offerings, I was struck with this though: why doesn’t Hollywood make movies as original as this one?

    Playing at the theater where I saw Three Billboards… is a total of 14 movies. Of these 14, five are sequels, six are based on books, and three are adaptations of true stories. Only four of the movies were original stories: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Coco, Lady Bird,and Roman J Israel, Esq. You’ll notice that adds up to more than 14 altogether, but there is some overlap. I was surprised at these findings, not because there are so few original stories, but because there were more than I expected. 29% of the films showing in that theater today are films that are going to introduce us to stories and characters that you can’t find by googling them. (Well, unless you’re googling the film in question.) Simply put, Hollywood is obsessed with the familiar.

    Why is that? The answer to this is simple: familiarity sells and Hollywood wants to make money. But why is familiarity a selling point, and is this a good thing? Should I, as a Christian, be in favor of the familiar or against it?

    The familiar is a comforting thing. The familiar makes sense to us, it soothes us, it gives us peace of mind and makes us feel like we have some sort of control, or at least understanding, of our surroundings. Victims of trauma can sometimes have even more adverse effects if the trauma occurred in a place which was familiar to them. Case in point: my mother passed away very suddenly in my home a few years back. My dad and my sister were both in the house at the time, but I was not. A few months later, they both moved out, but I wasn’t ready to move on from the house and continued to live there awhile longer. We were all deeply affected by the horror of losing a family member, but since I was not in the home when the traumatizing event took place, I ran to the recognizable location for comfort, while my father now experienced the feeling that the familiar was no longer familiar to him, and thus it was time to find a new familiar.

    That which is recognizable is comforting, and that can be a good thing. However, a search for the familiar can be a vain endeavor and a dangerous trap. If you only eat at places you know, you might find yourself at large chain restaurants, supporting giant corporations, while the family-owned diner down the street is left to go out of business, and then its owners have to look for a new livelihood. The person who jumps into a lake or an ocean to save a child from drowning is doubtless going outside their comfort zone, but without their willingness to do so, a youth would be left to perish.

On a spiritual level, comfort is a thing which Christians often seek that is never commanded in the Bible. Matthew 25: 14-30 tells the story of three men who are entrusted with money by their master. The two who take a risk and invest it are rewarded upon their master’s return, while the third servant, who buried his portion of money so it would be safe until his master got back is reprimanded harshly, and is then cast “into the outer darkness”. This is one parable about which the disciples do not have to inquire for its meaning. The message is clear: risk reaps reward, while doing whatever is easiest reaps nothing.

Christian films typically follow the same, very basic formula: protagonist is not nice to people and things don’t go their way, then they become a Christian and suddenly they are nice to everyone and everything goes their way. Not only is this a very cliche story, but it’s poorly-done cliche, as the conversion scene usually happens halfway through the movie, meaning we have to sit through almost an hour of things going well for our heroes. There’s no conflict. No tension. And then there’s no resolution, because there was no real conflict to resolve. Imagine if Christian films aimed to teach Hollywood how to make good, original films? But instead we choose to make films that are mocked, and deservedly so.

I hope that at some point, Hollywood begins to release more original films and fewer adaptations, sequels, and remakes. But I know that Hollywood will not change. Not really. They will always care most about what puts the most money in their pockets. It is up to us, the viewer, to show them that we will put more money into originality than the familiar. Just this year, America told Hollywood that she would not support projects which were giving work to sexual offenders, and since then, many of those projects have been pulled from release schedules or removed from online streaming, and at least one director has even gone so far as to reshoot portions of his film late in its production simply to replace one actor who had been accused of sexual misconduct with another deemed more respectable.

But these changes would not have happened if there wasn’t such a public outcry for them. Now, I am not seeking to compare inappropriate sexual behavior to a lack of originality in Hollywood, as those two things are clearly on a different spectrum. However, it’s important to remember that we, as the audience, hold the power of deciding which films make money and which are financial flops. Let’s make wise decisions, shall we?