First post ahoy!

Well, time to come up with my first ever post. The anticipation and nerve-crumpling fear I should be feeling isn't there, primarily because I know I'm likely going to be my entire audience. I don't even have as much of a crowd as Fozzie Bear.

So, what shall be discussed today?

The Risk of movies (A.K.A. Why there is no originality left)

Recently hollywood seems to have entered a major slump, with little or no originality in major movies being released. Think back to the last couple of years, all the MAJOR, big name movies being released. The vast, vast majority of them were:

• Adaptions from comics
• Adaptions from novels
• Reinvigorations of past franchises
• Parodies of concepts already in place
• Sequels

Let's just think about this for a second. I enjoy a good adaptation as much as the next man, Hellboy rates up with my favourite movies and I happen to think Transformers was a good, fun movie, but I don't want these adaptations to come at the cost of original products.

Still, it is somewhat understandable why movie studios are doing this. A big, major hollywood production can cost upwards of one hundred million dollars. That could buy you ALOT of hookers, hotel rooms, and coke. Hellboy was made with 70 million dollars. Transformers, if I remember right, was 110 million dollars or so. I could check IMDB, but... It's too early and I'm freezing, so screw that with an iron bar.

That's a hell of an investment (even if on a long enough time line most movies DO make money. Hell, from DVD sales Waterworld has finally made a profit) for an untested product. So, what's the best way to sell something to movie producers?

"It's based on this already successful product"

Be it comic, previous movie, novel, cartoon, computer game, animal, vegetable or mineral, if you base a product on something that is already shown to have been successful, you have a much greater chance of getting it off the ground.

The grand tragedy of all this is that there are now no new products being delivered. With the American Economy not doing so crash-hot, movie producers don't want to dump too much money into products that have a slightly higher risk of not doing well.

And before people point to all the 'original comedy movies', personally, I don't think they count. I love comedy flicks, a good comedy will make me pass out from laughter, but... let's be perfectly frank here, the vast vast majority of them are a wave of unlinked gags that have little or nothing to do with any real story, and any emotional moments are 90% likely to be an afterthought. I never saw 'Knocked Up', I've heard it's incredible, but I next-to-guarantee you that it doesn't have a story that could stand on its own as anything other then a Straight-to-TV-no-DVD-release movie.

Final note: WHAT THE FUCK was the point of 'High School Musical', and did it REALLY warrant a sequel?