It's not that Hollywood's out of ideas -- they've never had a ton to begin with. It's that we've simply hit our saturation point. I said I was excited about Looper, earlier -- but I've seen Goodfellas, The Professional and Back to the Future a billion times each. I'm so up on its source material that everything is probably going to feel mind-numbingly familiar. I watched Brave this weekend, but I saw Mulan when I was younger -- I didn't get much out of the Scottish reboot.
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I mean, an inappropriate erection in front of some children, sure, but not much else.
It used to be fine to create along the lines of your influences, because most people didn't share the same influences. But now we're growing up connected, watching and reading and listening to the same things -- because we're all watching and reading and listening to everything. I mentioned earlier that movies are using niche markets like a crutch, and you've probably never seen a Madea movie -- but I bet if you did, you'd catch elements of Soul Food and Mrs. Doubtfire, a little Friday and just a touch of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
If you've heard all of the songs a million times before, even the most talented musician in the world can only issue remixes.
Hey, I don't mean to be preaching the end times here. If you're not this jaded yet, great! Go out and enjoy things (your time will come, you rotten little bastards). But if the luster seems to be flaking off movies these days, maybe the problem isn't with Hollywood. Maybe it's because, with people our age, with our knowledge and our backgrounds, all Hollywood can do is pull a nervous Chris Farley routine and mutter "Hey, remember that time with the thing? You do? Yeah ... that was awesome!"
Hey look, there's another little reference that we can all get.
Yaaayyyy.

Get the first episode of Robert's Sci-Fi Serial Novel, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, right here, or buy Robert's other book, Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead. Follow him on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.
For more from Brockway, check out The 5 Most Mind-Blowing Moments from Indian Action Movies and 5 Movie Martial Artists That Lost a Deathmatch to Dignity.