Originality ‘Not Welcome’

Of all the American industries whose soft power dominated the Global Landscape is undeniably Hollywood. It gave us fictional characters like James Bond, Darth Vader and Indiana Jones who entered into our hearts and household diction. They were a beacon of originality and countless were they as a source inspirations, imitations and total rip offs to other vernacular production houses. A quick Fast Forward to the 21st century and Originality was no longer a factor. The industry now thrives purely on reboots, sequels or remakes. If not they attempt to make large screen adaptations of comic books, video games or TV series to parasite out box office receipts. To elucidate the following take a look at the box office receipts of the Top grossing films of 2017. Ref: http://www.boxofficemojo.com Rank Title Worldwide gross Type 1 Beauty and the Beast $1,263,521,126 Live Action Remake 2 The Fate of the Furious $1,239,078,381 Eighth installment in Fast and Furious franchise 3 Despicable Me 3 $1,030,475,635 Third installment in Despicable Me franchise 4 Spider-Man: Homecoming $879,934,802 Second reboot 16th installment in Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise 5 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 $863,416,141 Second installment is series 15th installment in Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise 6 Wonder Woman $821,749,588 First installment in series 3rd installment in DC universe 7 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales $794,762,434 Fifth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise 8 It $671,253,226 Remake 9 Logan $616,792,957 Third installment in series 10th installment in X men franchise 10 Transformers: The Last Knight $605,425,157 Fifth installment in Transformers franchise   This mentality of backing the few fancy ponies is found in all facets of American life today. It must be noted that American exceptionalism was forged in the crucible of the free market capitalism. In the late 20th century there were 20+ companies in the telecom industry, 10+ companies in the airline industry etc. Most of them today have consolidated through takeovers and mergers to less than 4 or less majors players today in each sector. In fact the term Big Four or Big Three have entered into corporate lingo to signify the same. Additionally they have cartelised themselves with under the table agreements to raise prices ,levy additional fees, lobby the government for legislation favourable to them, etc. These practices have broken every tenet of american capitalism which seeded the growth of many global economic powerhouses like Japan, West germany, South Korea,etc. It is time America went back to its fundamentals and embraced competition and originality.