For a great example of creativity vs creative bankruptcy, watch Star Wars episode 5, and then watch episode 9. I’ll wait. Or you can just continue reading too because I’ll extrapolate.
While only a minor Star Wars nerd, I can attest to how great and imaginative episode 5 is. Filled with great characters, a gripping story, iconic moments, memorable lines, Muppets, and an immediate need to watch more of the series. It inspired so many people, and has changed movies forever.
Episode 9, on the other hand, to put it kindly, is the same exact safe, formulaic shit we’re currently getting from most other big movies and even TV shows now.
When asked the main quality separating the two–I mean aside from a much better writer handling the former–a common answer is “originality.” And while it’s true that Star Wars was way more fresh in 1977 than it was in 2019, you could still make the case that Empire Strike Back wasn’t entirely original. I mean, it was a sequel with a lot of returning characters, based heavily on of westerns, borrowing heavily from other movies.
An answer that I think gets a bit more to the biggest cause of the disparities between the two films is something I believe is an underrated element of creativity: risk.
Risk often separates some of the greatest, most inventive pieces of art from art that feels hacky and stale.
While Empire Strikes Back might have borrowed and recycled some things, it’s still a movie that takes so many risks: new characters, a different story structure from the original, practical effects, the deepening of characters and relationships, twists we never would have guessed, a dark ending.
Rise of Skywalker, on the other hand, takes a much more safe route. Following a much riskier and (I know this is controversial) better movie, it chooses security instead, following traditional Star Wars tropes, mimicking the same type of actions and effects that are in every other contemporary action movie, and also eliminating every interesting thing that Episode 8 had set up.
This lack of risk is one of the major components that makes the last Star Wars movie so much less interesting than the second (for those unaware the second is ep 5–long story).
And this lack of risk is also one of the biggest issues negatively affecting movies and television today.
Creativity of the Past
The history of filmmaking was full of risks. Part of this is the fact that there wasn’t much safety when movies began since safe formulas weren’t a thing yet. Movies like Intolerance, Battleship Potemkin, and Gone with the Wind were all pushing some sorts of envelopes.
At a certain point people figured out how to make movies safely, but it was always the ones doing something different, like Citizen Kane or Midnight Cowboy that stood out.
This trend would continue on, year after year, generation after generations. Safe movies were created because safe movie would usually safely make a return. Why risk doing a Days of Heaven when you could safely make a Down to You instead?
No risk guaranteed that they were going to keep doing what’s done. No creativity needed. Just plug in the numbers, and you’re done.
Risk, and coloring outside of the lines, takes the chance that everybody might hate the thing that you’re making. It might flop, and instead of being forgettable and boring, it might instead be known as a colossal folly. For those in the movie business, when movies cost so so much money to make, that would be a huge daunting obstacle.
Still creative risky movies like Back to Future, Dead Man, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind continued on regularly through the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s.
But then, at some point, the risk became less worth it.
Staleness of Today
The turn of movies becoming less interesting happened right around the time TV became more interesting. Sure there were some interesting TV shows that would come along and change things, shows like I Love Lucy or Twin Peaks. But for the most part TV shows took much safer routes than movies, and usually imitated what was working elsewhere.
Then, when HBO started to get into the game and make different, risky shows like Oz and The Sopranos, and AMC came soon after with shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, did people start seeing television as a vehicle for art.
This meant fewer people started going o movies. This meant movies could not take as big of risks. This meant movies that were following safe formulas guaranteed to make money back became preferred over movies that were trying new things.
This problem became exasperated when streaming began. With Netflix and then others making original series, there became fewer and fewer reasons for people to go to the movies.
And I’ll take that, and raise you a pandemic.
Now look at the trailers before almost any movie, and you’ll see how almost every single thing is a sequel or a remake or based off of a video game.
Even many streaming services, especially Disney+, is trying to avoid anything that’s not an existing IP.
But, like the even more original Star Wars would suggest, there is a New Hope.
A Future of Risks
The aforementioned Episode 8 of Star Wars did take risks. It did try new things. It did break conventions.
And it was the most divisive Star Wars movie of all time.
Looking at rankings of all the movies, some people will rate it as high as their favorite Star Wars movie, and others will rate it as low as their least favorite. I once heard a conversation where two people were debating if it’s a great Star Wars movie but a bad movie or if it’s a bad Star Wars movie but a great movie.
However you feel, we all can agree upon this: it was taking risks.
And as media becomes more and more specialized to taste and less mainstream, something I’ll write about in a future article, there becomes more opportunities for these types of risks.
An overabundance of content can be exhausting but it can also be the way out of this lack of risk. With so much, it’s only the risky endeavors that’lill be able to cut through the noise. Value will shift again from safe bets to artistic choices.
So let’s keep the streaming revolution going.
And you know, I know a little streaming service, that’s all about creating and finding digital series that will take these kinds of risks.
Thanks for reading!
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