Top Gun: Maverick has raked in more than a billion dollars at the box office. Photo / Supplied
Top Gun: Maverick has raked in more than a billion dollars at the box office. Photo / Supplied
The most popular movie in the world right now is Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the original film from 1986.
The most popular TV show at the moment is Stranger Things, a production so heaped in 80s nostalgia it's sometimes difficult to keep track of all the films it borrows from.
This all begs the question of whether nostalgia is slowly eating the fabric of cinematic creativity to ultimately feed us experiences that make us feel comfortable.
Professor Lorna Piatti-Farnell, an expert in film, media and pop culture studies at the Auckland University of Technology, tells the Front Page podcast that the idea of "originality" can sometimes be complex.
"Just because a film recalls something that's been done before or draws inspiration, it doesn't mean it's not putting forward its own interpretation, which does feel original," she says.
"Even if you look at Stranger Things, you may be recalling the narratives of the eighties but it's not the eighties and never will be."
"Even though there is a sense of nostalgia and some feelings of unoriginality in current popular culture, there is always a desire to write, a desire to produce and a desire to make. So in that sense, everything we do is original because we're doing it for the first time."
Any changes to traditional casting moulds have a tendency to rile up some members of the fanbase, who then take their outrage online. Movie producers and writers thereby walk a thin line in evoking nostalgia - and then pulling away from all its familiar comforts.
"When you revisit something that has a very strong and vocal fan base, you need to take those fans into account," says Piatti-Farnell.
"Sometimes because of that nostalgic attachment, the revisited narrative will fail when compared to the old one. It will never be able to measure up. So whenever we have a remake, a sequel or even a prequel, we need to be very careful to balance updating the narrative and making it attuned to our contemporary context, while at the same time taking into account the expectations and feelings of the pre-existing audience."
The genre of cinema perhaps most gratuitous in the roll-out of remakes and sequels based on existing IP (Intellecual Property) can be found in films based on comic book characters.
Martin Scorsese famously referred to Marvel films as "theme park cinema", implying that it served no greater purpose than entertainment.
In a follow-up column for the New York Times, he would go on to explain that reliance on existing IP and the trend of remakes had led to the elimination of risk - which results in work that isn't creatively interesting.
"He was not the only one that said that, but he certainly had very strong opinions about it," says Piatti-Farnell, battling to hold back a chuckle.
"I would say that we need to exercise caution. Just because something is entertaining, it doesn't mean it's not meaningful. It doesn't mean it's not culturally and socially attuned to the time in which it's produced.
"While some people may have their opinions about these very entertainment-based productions, it doesn't mean that they don't have cultural relevance."
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
