Hollywood

Why oh why does Hollywood have to make the same movies year after year ?

The other evening I watched about 10 minutes of a movie entitled " Two Weeks Notice " with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant , it didn't take me long to figure out it was just another version of the same movie Hollywood makes every year ........ Pretty Woman , Maid in Manhattan , Sleepless in Seattle etc . Where's the originality gone ?
If it's not that movie rehashed every year , it's a movie about a group of misfits who go on to win some title or another by bonding together and beating the odds , it doesn't matter if its " The Mighty Ducks " or " Dodgeball " ............ they're all the same .
Trying to find a movie with a new story is becoming increasingly difficult these days , I find that I have to look for independant movies more and more , Hollywood has given up , it doesn't even bother anymore to try and bring something new to the screen , re-makes of old movies and TV shows seems to be the easier option , its bad enough that TV itself is dumbing down ... now we get the same with the movie industry .................... thank God for books.
The problem that Hollywood has with books is that they want happy endings and so change these fabulous stories and in the process ... ruin them . One of my favorite books of recent years was " Hannibal " . the third ( and final ) in the Hannibal Lecter series ........ the ending was beautiful and fitted the completion of the story so well ......... but when Hollywood got hold of it they ruined it , presumeably to leave the door open for another sequel ....... shame .
Trying to sanitize wonderful works of fiction should not be allowed , Hollywood should only be allowed the rights to books if they are going to be faithful to the story, sometimes the book and the movie bear no relationship to one another as is the case with Hannibal .
As a fan of The Lord of the Rings for thirty odd years I was dissappointed with some of the omisions from the original book , I understand that the story is so vast that to put everything in would have meant a forth movie , but some characters and storylines are so important to the overall tale that they should have been included , I refer to Tom Bombadil and the destruction of the shire at the end of the tale , dont get me wrong ... I enjoyed the Trilogy very much and never thought I'd see the day when this story would be so beautifully brought to the screen ....... and yet ...... to leave out such crucial parts and to change other crucial parts however minutely was a strange decision in my view . It was my version of Star Wars or Harry Potter and I didn't want it changed just for the sake of it . I still prefer to read the book to get the complete story and maybe thats not such a bad thing , but I wonder how many people feel that they now know the story having seen the movies .
I often say to people who have seen the movies but not read the books that they should never enter a LOTR's quiz ..... the two are very different , I'm still glad that Peter jackson made the movies , the amazing scenery puts pictures to the words I've read at least a half a dozen times over thirty years .

Here's hoping that a new generation of film maker will be faithful to the words created by the authors in modern fiction , I know that " Life of Pi " and " The Time Travellers Wife " are being brought to the screen soon ......... I have read both and am very fond of them , I will be very dissappointed if they are changed for some sort of dumbing-downess by the time they arrive on the screen , Hollywood shouldn't always make something simpler to make sure that a mass audience " gets it " .......... sometimes its more important to be faithful to the words and if some movie goers dont get it ........ perhaps they should read more !