If you turn on Netflix, or Amazon Prime, or any of your other streaming services, you’ll be given a handful of movies and TV series to watch—and chances are it’ll be a rerun, spinoff, or adaptation of something from the past. There’s nothing wrong with a good adaptation, but it seems as though they’re becoming a lot more common than ever before. This begs the question: is modern storytelling going through a crisis?
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The abundance of spinoffs makes us wonder whether or not there’s a major lack of creativity in the industry today. Naysayers to this argument may reason that there are people with creative ideas, but it’s simply the fact that popular franchises have already “proven to sell”. If that’s true, then it opens a new question: are movies and TV shows about inspiring people through great storytelling or simply about making money?
Even when there are new movies and TV series that come out, they often feel trite and derivative of something that came before. So are screenwriters simply running out of stories to tell? Perhaps this suggests that the creative departments in entertainment industries are going through a long weak spell, and have been for a while.
If you’d like a more optimistic take, this may suggest that we’re on the brink of a cultural revolution, where a fresh, new tone of voice will get established for years to come.