Nothing new under the sun? Not on my watch!

Sorry I’m late on today’s entry. I have been waiting for my coffee to take effect;) I was thinking today about the concept of originality. There are a few things that brought this to mind. Yesterday the first issue of a comic mini-series ‘Infinite Crisis’ came out by one of my favourite comic book writers, Geoff Johns and true to his style, you are never quite sure what is going to come up next. I am also trying to get a bit further along in my screenplay that I believe I mentioned in another entry and finally I had a discussion about how there seem to be a plethora of movies based on old TV shows.

I realize that in some manner or other that almost everything has been done at some point in the past so actual originality is near impossible but it shouldn’t keep us from trying to be original in things. This has been very evident to me since I started writing my aforementioned screenplay. I am trying to avoid all the movie clichés and in doing so, end up using others I didn’t realize until I wrote it. Even at that I try to put my spin on things. For example, it is a emotional movie with action that is performed for the most part by a woman (she even gets to take a swing at me). In ‘Infinite Crisis’ which is DC Comics big event for the end of this year and the beginning of next, the story deals with the heroes dealing with the concept of what brought us to this point. It’s been done before but part of the twist this time is that Wonder Woman killed another character who was mind controlling Superman into killing Batman. As to the movie thing, the one that pops to mind is ‘Bewitched’ which, if you ask me was one of the most racist TV series in the subtext. Think about it, the wife has to hide her heritage from the world because her husband is opposed to it and he can’t stand her family because they don’t bother to do the same. I think I would have occasionally turned him into a chimpanzee myself if I had been in their place. The movie however dealt with them making a movie based on the TV series and the actress happens to be a witch. Again, an old idea with a personal twist. I feel this trend towards trying to be original should be rewarded and applauded. I have no problem with a back to basics approach to stuff but you have to have left square one at some time to be able to go BACK to it.