Mini Thought - Do reboots need the boot? * Re-Upload*

(Written and published Jun 20, 2015)
 
Fantastic 4’s soon return is causing many divided opinions, yet this is far from the only reboot scheduled to arrive soon, even 60’s childhood classic The Clangers will will return to British television this week. Reboots are running wrought through this generation’s media but why is this the case? Is it laziness, Or a genius use of nostalgia?
The announcement of the Ghostbusters reboot, despite the originals already expansive continuing story via video games and comics, made many question the need of such remakes. The fact that countless films such as these are being announced with each passing day could be seen as a massive indicator of the draining creativity of Hollywood today.
Is their inability to create revolutionary new intellectual property being made up for via the recycling of anything that made even the slightest impact upon the cinematic scene in previous times?

The major issue of these retellings is that they lose the emotion of the initial experience, often becoming mediocre attempts to recapture excitement on rather outdated concepts. A prime illustration of this would be Total Recall, the 2012 reimagining being a rather bland experience for all involved.
The modern day special effects, bland acting – not having the extremely entertaining magic of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s amazing overreacting – and the 90’s quality of special effects made it a perfect example of this era of action movie, thus far more entertaining than the modern day film’s less than impactful debut.

Old films aren’t like food, they don’t go off overtime. If anything they are more like a time capsule of their era, ready to be reopened, should one want to be taken back.
However, despite my distaste of remakes I can appreciate their good points. Some remakes being of films so long forgotten the only way they are drawn to light is via these retelling. Another key factor is that of nostalgia. Parents are able to share the adventures they remember from childhood with their children, something the recent return of the Thunderbirds to ITV allowed for in spades.
Jurassic World was a very good example of positive reintroduction, being connected to the originals yet distancing itself enough to be a fresh insight into the franchise. Connective successors are far more appealing than that of reboots as they allow for years of content to still feel relevant.

This is something that the new Ghostbusters film – in its yet announced connection to the originals – lacks, feeling somewhat lacklustre in its payoff. A return off the remainders of the old team would have been a much more exciting premise.
People find comfort in familiarity, myself included, but reboots needn’t be the answer. new ideas should be top priority over any kind of remake.
Some films just need to be left in peace, they aren’t going anywhere and are just as exciting as ever.

Mini Thought - Is sex all there is in the music industry today? *Re-Upload*

(Written and published Jun 17, 2015)

As Blurred Lines comes on the radio for the umpteenth time I begin to think to myself: “is this all there is?”
Music today seems to be a restricted industry of songs limited to mindless sex to eternal love, with few without focus on these seemingly all important issues taking much hold within this world of endless streams of shallow sex based media and coitus fixated culture.
A mere glance at the charts would seem to support my worries. As I write this the top 20 singles containing 17 relationship based songs, varying vastly, from Carly Rae Jepsen’s really liking someone to the lyrics of Hey Mama discussing the “dirty rhythm” as they want it in the “worst way”.
Some may claim that music is about the art, but the fact that such songs as Blurred lines are doing so amazingly well continues to fuel this unrelenting torrent of generic similar trash – as the McDonalds of music – it is easy to churn out and even easier to consume without thought for quality or taste, clearly shown with this track from Thicke being the third highest selling singles of this millennium.
However, one could never deny there is enjoyment to be found in songs of love and sex, there are some truly great songs of this now all encompassing genre; Pulp’s “Common People” was both a protest of the class system and an amusing little romantic tale; “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric, managing to be heart-warming yet feel original in its styling.
The over sexualised packaging that today’s music comes in seems to be taking an ever increasing hold on today’s society, the ever decreasing amount of clothing employed in today’s music videos being often seen as necessary to sell, yet think back to the then ground breaking extravaganza employed by Queen in their eternal success of Bohemian Rhapsody, despite the lack of sexual content it was mind-blowingly successful, their amazing music combined with the artistic visual being paramount to their legendary status.
So next time you tune in and listen to the latest heart throbbing sensation, take a minute and think about whether you are bored of hearing the same ideas over and over again, or whether you think music should be exploring more areas, like the classic Bohemian Rhapsody, and remember that music should be about quality and not rhythmic beats to club and gyrate to.

Mini Thought- Has gritty grown mediocre and monotonous in the film industry? *Re-Upload*

(Written  Jul 30, 2015)

“Gritty” seems to be the word of the day in Hollywood. In the modern world of media, company after company is attempting to revamp their image to something “dark and “edgy” in order to appeal to the oh so important youth market, blatant examples being found on the silver screen.
Titles such as Man of Steel or Christopher Nolan’s imagining of the Batman franchise work because much of their appeal is the dark heavy realistic tone that is employed, allowing for the viewer to relate on an extra level to the world before their eyes, however is this really something that should be abused on the level that today’s cinema seems to be sitting at?
As the massive decline in appreciation for Tim Burton’s works shows; creating a dark and distorted world for the sake of being dark is not the way to go, as this results in cliche environments and static character development. For example his telling of the tale Alice in Wonderland just recycling old themes of excessive violence and a bland element of threat to make up for the inability to capture the escapism and wonderment that Lewis Carroll’s original tale conveyed.
This brings to question the need of these stereotypical “mature” films to appeal to anyone over the age of five, sometimes brighter is better! Sometimes some of the most fun films to this date are the colourful and engaging, such classics as The Mask‘s awesome and maddening action being able to juggle the dark themes of violence under possession with the funny dialogue and witty banter.
Marvel’s cinematic universe has also made use of a relatively lighter universe to that of DC’s, while this has made some call it wish-washy it has allowed viewers young and old to engage and interact with this phenomenon. Being light also allows for the escapism that cinema so gives to those whom need it most, averting their gaze from their own private issues and allowing focus upon a world more magical and manageable in their hearts, removing the gritty elements that make their own hardships worse in reality.
While I feel that grit is overdone I still feel it has a significant place in our media library. Such bleak hopeless films often giving directors a chance to truly show their inspirational views on our society, however the over saturation of the industry with these angst ridden titles should be carefully monitored as its growing excessively out of control, and limits the creativity being sold to us.

Mini Thought- Teen fiction and the art of the addiction *Re-Upload*

(Written and Published  Jun 16, 2015)


With the boom of Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games trilogy, books and films alike, teen fiction seems to be more popular than ever.
There are countless volumes of angst-ridden adventurers emerging from the wood work receiving both praise and condemnation both. Prominent examples being that of The Fault In Our Stars, The Maze Runner and Divergence respectively, taking queue from Collins’ success to leap from the page to the silver screen.
However, are these books any good? Or are they more generic clap-trap cycled out on the incredibly formulaic conveyor belt of young-adult story telling?

These have such cliché tendencies many must wonder why people are still wasting their hard earned money on them, and the answer is simple, these writers have mastered the art of the addictive read, employing a great number of techniques in order to make their shallow plots seem like the next Shakespearean masterpiece.
Impressions go a long way. Sometimes the idea of a book being a certain genre or having a certain concept allow the reader’s own imagination to fill over any gaps in plot the author neglects or the skilled writing they do not posses.
For example the incredibly ominous nature established in the premise of The Hunger Games, being that of a gladiatorial child death match over food, makes one’s brain ignore the fact that the games themselves do not begin for eleven chapters, and the fact that Collins’ poor descriptive skills can possibly do justice to such a spectacle is easily overlooked by the mind due to the ten chapters of build-up that specifically state that these games are an abomination of unimaginable horror. It is almost as if her creation of an unimaginably disgusting concept is used as an excuse for her to be unimaginative in her execution of said premise.
 Romance is a massively cheap reason to keep reading, the more contrived the better. The abuse of the “love triangle” in modern media is near astronomical. From Twilight to City Of Bones, all an author needs do to is add an element of reader-community interaction is slap a massive romantic choice in the first or middle book in their series, either as an initial establishing premise or to revitalise a dying plot.
People enjoy arguing and fighting, and thus allowing for any kind of division instantly allows for increased publicity to ones book, the peak of this probably being the enormous Team Jacob versus Team Edward campaigns being established.
Even simple romance is vital in the addictive nature of such books. The romantic pairing will be established within the first few chapters or lines, yet the writer will find any number of reasons as to reduce their time together, so as to only allow for tiny amounts of romantic development per chapter. This trickle effect makes the reader feel inclined to keep reading, even if not to the end of the book at least until the romance is either confirmed or abolished. Yet again the writer will never fully establish any kind of permanent arrangement until the final text in their series in almost all cases.
However, this alone would lead to readership feeling cheated, or like they are only getting half a story, this is solved with careful expansion of scale.
Scale is one of the most important tools to any page turner, and is a prominent feature of almost all teen fiction series. The expression “bigger is better” springs to mind, as a key means to draw people into any story is to up the stakes. Did the hero save the city? Well now he is saving the world! Did he save the world? Well now he is saving the universe! This shallow change allows for the plot to repeat once more, yet this time on a galactic stage, clearly shown in such texts as Anthony Horowitz’s the Power of Five series, growing from a tale in Yorkshire, to a global race to the ends of the earth to fight strange evil gods, or that of Twilight’s escalation from its cliché love triangle to that of an all out wars in the later books.
This increased size of the adventure, normally along with a slight increase in size with each volume – for example that of J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter – make the reader feel more gratification with each completed book, with the simple consistent writing making it an easy triumph, thus dragging a poor innocent reader into this addictive world of the so called page-turner.
This malevolent entity known as teen fiction knows its boundaries, as if the plot becomes too vast they will lose the final spell that drains the everyday reader’s pocket, relation to the characters. The easiest way for a writer to get away with terrible writing is for the employment of first person points of view in their teen fiction, major players in this field being James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series or that of the ever expanding mythological based books emanating from Rick Riordan.
This allows for clever dialogue to be replaced with pop culture references and youth slang, along with being able to clearly outline the main character’s thoughts and feelings. This easily allows for the reader to gain the impression of their having a deep understanding of the book, while this is impossible as all interpretation is clearly present on the surface with little to no depth to even explore.
Many prefer to use a third person point of view, but to the same effect in the majority of cases, despite the external viewer status this narration will almost always have narrow focus on the single main character in their struggles etc. The only real advantage to this presentation of events is that it escapes the mind numbing repetitive “I”, which drowns many pages of The Hunger Games even mid child blood bath, ruining much of the horror that the authorial intent would desire to convey.
Love them or hate them, teen fiction is far from thoughtless, as shown here it’s a calculated money making machine, playing with our perceptions, the dark concepts of dystopian realities used to create the impression that the reader is highly intelligent for getting through it, while the lax untaxing writing allows universal accessibility and reducing any real reward for their completion.
The repetitive nature of the universal teen fiction plots will continue until the addictive feeling’s effects wear thin, and at that point we will all jump from the recent craze of bleak alternate futures and love triangles for the next great craze to sweep the nation.