Are Movies Getting Lazy?

Are movies getting lazy? That’s the question. While we might think movies will be around forever we have to accept the fact that there are only so many plotlines to go around and only so many stories to be told. In my opinion there are only three plotlines that encompass most (if not all) stories. They are as follows:

1) A man (or woman) comes to town
2) A man (or woman) leaves town
3) Man falls in love with woman

While slightly simplistic, I hold this more or less true. So you can imagine my surpirse when I saw the trailer for Nicholas Cage’s newest film “Knowing“. According to IMDB, “A teacher (Cage) opens a time capsule that has been dug up at his son’s elementary school; in it are some chilling predictions — some that have already occurred and others that are about to — that lead him to believe his family plays a role in the events that are about to unfold.”

Here is the trailer below:

Now it doesn’t seem so bad. A seemingly apocalyptic film about a man who can see the future. And putting aside Nicholas Cage’s propensity for bad films in recent years, this movie should gain some box office profits. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized I’d already seen this film before. Next (2007) was released two years ago and not only does it have a similar plot as Knowing but it also stars Nicholas Cage.

Here its the trailer below:

Now I don’t want to call studio execs lazy, but I fear that a lot of them are greatly unaware of the larger outside world around them. Nevertheless, I’m seeing instances like this crop up in Hollywood more and more these days. Honestly, how stupid do they think we are?