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Comment by tourmalinetaco | Hacker News Reader

It’s a symptom of the wider mentality in media production nowadays: why innovate, when you can recreate?

We see this time and time again. Live action X, sequel Y, reboot Z, ad nauseam because once a company reaches a certain point the marketing budgets and brand loyalty can convince anyone to see anything. So, why take on “risky” new ideas when the old ones still work?

We also see what happens to these “new” ideas, even when successful. Cartoons such as “Infinity Train” and “The Owl House” getting canned partway through their run for literally no reason while other shows like “Raven’s Home” and “The Legend of Korra”, both spinoffs of mid-2000s shows, were pushed to extremes with the former still running to this day.

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Some of the thinking appears to be "let's create something that both kids and their parents can relate to" ... this may have started with Popeye (1980 starring Robin Williams) but remaking cartoons or comics into live action TV had started earlier, since at least the 1960s with Batman.

Then there are the familiar story reboots. The Jazz Singer has had multiple remakes since the 1920s (and we're overdue for another one). A Christmas Carol has been redone even more.

> let's create something that both kids and their parents can relate to

There's a fair amount of sly humor in The Wizard of Oz (1939) clearly directed at adults.

This isn’t a new phenomenon though. Think about how much of Shakespeare is retelling older stories.

Coming to a theater near you: Antman, The Wasp, Romeo and Juliet

It’s a bit different when it’s someone coming at it from a totally new angle and doing their own interpretation than the same rightsholder churning out more of the same because it was commercially successful in the past.

Half the theater history is them churning out the new version of the same with not much twist.

Yes, there was lots of forgettable crap in every era but we don’t spend a lot of time admiring it.

Same reason why AI models are popular. They remix what exists, instead of coming back to the source. We can definitely make AI which puts more effort, at more cost, but that's not the point. The point is quick, cheap, seemingly high-quality result, just good enough to fool you in a hurry, so you make money. And the more it works, the more doomed we are.

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