People say this often and I agree that it does feel that way.
They particularly underline "they are constantly remaking old movies!" which is also true.
However, this is not a new phenomenon. As someone who loves movie trivia, IMDB is full of "this 1980s film was actually a remake of this other 1947 film". An older example: the Victorians (~1837 - ~1901) were obsessed with the ancient Romans. This was during a time when the telegraph was connecting the world and people could talk to humans, instantly, on the other side of the world.
The Thing (the one you know of—though the other had a longer title anyway) was a remake.
The version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland (so, the one with that meme-able image of him pointing toward the camera) was a remake.
(Franchises? There are some from like the 40s that had a dozen or so entries over the next couple decades)
Many remake examples from almost all periods of filmmaking.
There were tons of remakes of silent films after talkies came about, then another wave of remakes of jankier-effects stagier-acting-style movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s when effects got way better and naturalistic acting took over in the 70s (plus some of these were remaking black & white to color).
I'm not sure it's quite fair to call the 1939 film a "remake". It was one in a line of adaptations of the book, and isn't otherwise really related to the other adaptations. It isn't the first, or the last, but it is the most famous.
The Wizard of Oz was a new interpretation of Baum's original story. They put enormous effort into making the new film better than other interpretations, of which there were several. Which is why it's a successful, beloved classic!
The same really can't be said of this week's Marvel/DC remake of whatever they made a few years ago. It's just about being a cash grab and nothing else.
P.S. If you've never heard of the sequel 'Return to Oz', do yourself a favor and watch it without doing any research. Just go in straight blind, it really enhances the experience. If you drink, keep a bottle nearby, you'll need it.
I think it's more accurate to say they're both based off the same 1938 novella: "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. The 1951 movie "The Thing from Another World" is a very loose adaptation because it omits the most important plot point of the shapeshifting alien imitating people. The 1982 movie "The Thing" is a closer adaptation that includes it. This makes it a much better movie even if you ignore the improved special effects, because the drama of the characters not knowing who's really the Thing is a big part of the appeal.
The opposite is also true: there are MANY authors who had entire series of books in the 1920s that were wildly popular yet largely unknown today.
I imagine there are probably also films that everyone saw back then but are unheard of today.
> I imagine there are probably also films that everyone saw back then but are unheard of today.
Even sticking to relatively critically-acclaimed stuff it’s pretty easy to land on films that probably fewer than 1% of people in the Anglosphere (assuming initial popularity in that market) have seen, in the silent era, without going far off the beaten path. Go slightly farther and it’s likely just you and a very small number of other extreme film nerds among the living who’ve ever watched it.
Take DW Griffith, a giant of a director. Got what, 20+ surviving feature films of 40ish made? How many people alive have seen more than three of them? It’s a small number. Hell, it’s not a large number that have watched even one.
"Factorio" type puzzles may have existed, but nothing of that detail until 2016.
Part of the big advancements of the 80-90s was that the technology was advancing insanely quickly, which meant that things that were simply impossible a year ago were commonplace next year.
LEGO still exists, but the Lego of 2026 is not the Lego of the 90s (for good or ill).
Toy cars existed in the 80s, but the Cars franchise started in 2006.
Part of the problem is it's hard to see what will be huge in 20 years that already exists today.
You also have "sideways cannibalization" where something in one area never really expands to another: Harvest Moon never moved to PC/Mac and so there was an opening that Stardew Valley took advantage of, and now has moved way beyond. In a way it's "the same thing locked in time" in another it's not.
What do they say about there being only seven stories?
That's not the opening that Stardew took. It was only on PC because that's the platform that doesn't make you fill out an application to get dev hardware for.
The opening they took was Harvest Moon putting out increasingly uninnovative game after increasingly uninnovative game for years. Rune Factory innovated exactly once and then swore never to do so again (though they managed to produce RF4 so I do give them props for that. even if RF5 walked it so far back.)
Something about these games is very hard to pin down. See also: the millions of SDV clones, some even by huge players with lots of money, that don't make any kind of cultural dent.
Likely part of it was realizing that you could eschew the 3D realism craze that was high at the time, and still succeed.
90s were so different with creative freedom with the media we were exposed to. All those shows had their own art style. Characters were distinct and unmistakable. Brands were cemented as a result.
Marketing executives have lost the hat. They are like those people from the Neutral Planet in Futurama. Somehow they reigned in everything that made them successful in the 80s and 90s.
That's mostly an american thing
You should watch some anime
Just looked up some names I've heard people mention: The My Hero Academia character art is very visually distinct from OG Pokémon, which is very different to the Sun & Moon version of Ash Ketchum.
(Orthogonal to the socioeconomic incubators.)
I _think_ they're from different series, but aesthetically it's impossible for me to figure out one from the other. Trends are still changing, but I think our design sensibilities have definitely found a place to plateau.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVXryEIj8ah/?igsh=MWViMDBvZ3h...
Last summer, I played Pokémon with my neice's kid. I got to relive the pure joy of playing Pokémon with my neice, nephews, and own son. So now three generations are nerding out together. I love it.