Thoughts from the Shelf

It has been a while since I last went to the cinema, and in fact this year Next with Nicolas Cage has been the only film that I have been to see. This is mainly due to the fact I don’t have the free time, coupled with an unhealthy of buying DVDs on their release date instead.

It is not that I don’t enjoy the cinema, on the contrary, but the crazy logic here is that if I save the cost a cinema ticket, I am only paying half the cost of the film when bought on DVD.

This logic was however swiftly thrown out of the window for my latest cinema outing to watch a film I had been dying to see since rumours emerged that it was to be made. As if that wasn’t enough to wet my appetite, the trailers were themselves some of the best I had ever seen. The film was of course Transformers.

Although Transformers was not the first film based on a childhood cartoon to have been released in recent years, it was the one film that had really appealed to me. The special effects themselves were reason alone to see it, but for me it was something else. As with millions of others it was the childhood nostalgia that Transformers provided that was the selling point.

Because of this it was no surprise that I loved the movie. I would revisit the cinema to watch it again given the chance, and the DVD will be purchased upon day of release too.

How much I wanted to see this particular film surprised me. I have always been an avid film fan but it made me realise first hand how clever the latest crop of cartoon film remakes has been. The making of Spiderman, X-men and the like, with their subsequent box office success, shows that these films do not only appeal to children, but already have a committed fan base in adults who themselves were brought up on the comics or cartoons that the films themselves are based upon.

It is therefore no coincidence that these types of films have ended up dominating the box office over the past decade, followed up with equally successful sequels. After all there is plenty of opportunity for sequels, being that they are based upon super hero characters in worlds where anything can happen to keep the story going.

I just hope that we are not entering the age that consists soley of sequels, where a guaranteed box office success replaces creative new film. Yes they are fun, but it just got me thinking whether the increasing presence of sequels on box office bill boards already reflects a growing lack of creativity throughout the movie industry?