People say that art reflects history and that history repeats itself, so could this imply that art is secretly duplicated? This is certainly true for movies.

A big problem with movies today is that their writers are lazy, unoriginal, or driven by profit. Recently, there has been an explosion of knock-off horror films, sequels, or random action-explosion movies. Most of these movies are “piggy-backed” ideas, remakes, or adaptations.

Scroll down the chart of the top one hundred domestic grossing films of 2012. There are way too many series adaptations. Who honestly wants to see another Madagascar, Men in Black, Ice Age, or Paranormal Activity? Most of these additions just have the same plot presented in a different manner than the last.

Consider The Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man Three just came out in 2007. At least wait a decade before a re-make.

Many of these movies were book-to-movie adaptations. These movies include Hunger Games, Life Of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, Hobbit, Twilight, The Lorax, and The Lucky One. A common complaint from fans is that the movie never matches the book.

Maybe the budget of the movies was too low, or maybe the producers thought the change would draw a bigger audience. Perhaps the director had a different view on the movie. After all, the director is as much of an artist as the author.

According to ‘5 Hollywood Secrets That Explain Why So Many Movies Suck’ by C. Coville, Maxwell Yezpitelok, and M. Asher Cantrell, “In almost all cases, the initial ideas for movie plots don’t come from screenwriters at all, but from producers.” Clearly, most movies are guided by profit.

In her article ‘Why Are So Many of Today’s Movies So Bad?’, Cary O’Dell said, “To entice audiences back to the theaters, movies have—for better or worse—worked hard to be more ‘adult.’”

Producers and directors aren’t just trying to be different – they’re trying to draw in an audience. If it’s what people will watch, they’ll add it into a movie.

We’ve become too tolerant of all these things being in movies nowadays. Movies lately are the worst they have ever been. As an audience, we’ve all become accustomed to seeing these cheap, corny movies. We can blame producers for their greed. They don’t care what the movie is; if it makes money, they’ll buy into it. We can blame writers for their lack of originality. They just need an idea, whether it’s theirs or not. Until people stop the greed and use some creativity, we will just have to settle for miserable movies.