Like many others, I’ve had plenty of time during the pandemic lockdown to watch way too many movies. On the bright side, all or most of this streaming can be written off as “research.” What worked and what didn’t?
Some of the films I watched were good, some were bad and some were very close to just awful. OK, awful is a pretty strong word, but many I skipped through using the magic jump ahead button.
After perhaps several hundred hours of sitting in front of my tiny screen, I realized most of what I was watching was not NEW. Most was a re-telling or rehash of old storylines I’d seen or heard before. Let’s get real, how much really NEW stuff is out there? NEW, as in “Wow, I didn’t see that coming!”
Few things can actually be called fresh and non-derivative. As an easily recognizable example of spinoffs, we have all things Zombie.
Other often retold stories include H.G. Wells’ War of the Wars which was first serialized in 1897. I’ve never heard the 1938 Orson Wells radio broadcast which caused riots, but I’ve seen at least three or four variants including the movie done in 1953…How many have you seen?
My list of orginal and fresh films is short: Tom of Your Life, Little Forest, The Royal Tailor and Red Snow.
I'm sure there are others I missed...So what non-derivative unicorns did you come across during the lockdown?
There are tons. While it's true, for blockbusters type of movies, most are based on known IP, that's how they make money. But if you look for independent hidden gems, you'll find a lot. Netflix has a whole category called hidden gems. However, hidden gems tend to be outside of comfortable happy dramas. So it really depends on your genre preference.