This week it was announced that Transformers 4 had been given the go ahead. It is not yet clear for certain whether this is a sequel or a reboot but either way it will certainly be something we have seen before. This can be said for other films hitting the screens this summer: The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, G.I. Joe and at the end of last year we had Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Mission Impossible 4. In the pipeline we have more Bond, a reboot of The Fantastic Four and the two sequels to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So many of Hollywood’s products nowadays comes from comic books, novels or foreign films that it seems like Hollywood has lost it’s originality.

Sure, everyone loves a sequel to one of their favourite films, getting to see their favourite characters on another adventure (if it is done correctly) and there is no doubt that the big wigs in Hollywood know this. But don’t we, as paying members of the audience, deserve something new and refreshing for a change? Okay, so not every film being brought out is based on something else but the big ones that are really pushed by studios are and at the minute the trend seems to be comic book films.

You could argue that turning a novel or a comic book into a film really opens up the audience for that product, but it is not original! If someone has come up with the original story for the novel in question then why is it so difficult for a writer hired by some big Hollywood studio to come up with an equally original idea? And why remake films that have already been made? There has recently been a rise of international films being remade in Hollywood that only saw release a couple of years before: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Internal Affairs (which Hollywood turned into The Departed) are a couple of examples. Yes, both of these films turned out to be huge successes but was there really any need for them? Have movie audiences really become too lazy to deal with subtitles?

Maybe it is not a case of Hollywood running out of ideas, though. It could be that Hollywood studios are just happy to cash in on products they KNOW will earn money. It has become clear to studio executives that if something contains the name ‘X-Men’, ‘Bourne’ or ‘Bond’ that audiences will go and see that film, they would argue they are giving the public what they want. But with the ever increasing amount of movies being made based on other works, is originality dying out?

Let’s hope not.