Opinion: Nostalgia and Capitalism are stifling creative voices.

There’s no escaping it, the world is kind of a hot mess right now. And I mean that literally - our wasteful ways as a species mean our rubbish is littering the whole planet, and our emissions have temperatures rising and not in a sexy way. And on top of the sense of impending doom that comes with the climate crisis and the 2030 deadline, there’s the whole increasingly prominent rise of far right and fascist politics, widespread government and police corruption happening in plain sight, and a global pandemic. Also, apparently polio is back and monkeypox is on the rise, women have less rights than a gun in the good ol’ US of A, the UK decided Human Rights are an optional extra, and Mr Putin is trying to start another World War.

So I get it. 2022 is the bad place. We would all like to go back to a simpler time. Somewhere between 1980 and 2005 when we all had hope, and 10 year plans were a thing. I can’t tell you how much I have rewatched the MKACU (Mary-Kate and Ashley Cinematic Universe) to soothe the soul. Nostalgia feels good when the future feels unimaginable. The past is safe. It’s steady. It can’t be changed and we cling to it for comfort.

But something else happens when times are tumultuous - creatives come to life. World War 2 led to stories like Catch 22, The Chronicles of Narnia and Put Out More Flags. The Great Depression gave voice to poets like Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens, and Blues musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington got into full swing. Most of the western world was hit by an economic crisis between 1973-1975, but it didn’t stop innovative cinema from happening. Murder on the Orient Express, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jaws, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Perhaps it’s because these times didn’t have any periods of relative peace to look back on fondly, but the creativity we got to benefit from then? It’s sincerely lacking now. And I think it’s because nostalgia in audiences and capitalist greed from production companies in combination have created an environment that doesn’t encourage new voices, new stories, creative ideas.

Think about it - you’ve got $20million to make a movie. Option 1 is from an unknown writer, it’s a new idea, it sounds pretty thought-provoking, it makes you laugh in the right places, and cry too. But option 2 is a sequel to a family favourite from 1989. It sold big at box office at the time, it starred a small time actor who now lives on the A-list, the teenagers that loved it then now have teenagers of their own to bring to a sequel, you can recycle the original soundtrack and maybe add a few remixes, or get a current artist to do a version. It’s a guaranteed box office hit, profit is as close to a certainty as you can get. Which one are you putting your money into?

And it’s not just the sequels that play into it, though they are making their mark -Top Gun: Maverick has taken over $1bn at box office in 1 month. Nostalgia movies are everywhere. Remakes of classics - West Side Story, Charlie’s Angels, A Star is Born, Annie. Disney’s animations being remade into live action films - Cinderella, Maleficent, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast to name just a few. Older franchises being added onto - Star Wars, Star Trek, Jurassic Park and Harry Potter have all had multiple new films or remakes in the last 10 years. Even the sheer size of the Marvel Cinematic Universe plays into this. Because the adults that went to see the films in 2008 were often people who had loved comics when they were growing up in the 1980s, and the younger adults who love the franchise now, love it because they’re the films and characters we grew up with. Biopics too play on this nostalgia - Elvis just knocked Top Gun: Maverick off the weekly number 1 spot at the Box Office.

One of the big problems I have with this, is that this way of making films doesn’t give a huge amount of room for diverse voices to make a name for themselves in this industry. Remaking films, or adding to franchises from pre 2000, means lots of already rich and famous white people are getting even more rich and famous. Jurassic Park? White guys. Star Wars? White guy. Harry Potter? White woman. Star Trek? A whole bunch of white folk. Top Gun? White guys. And listen, before people get mad, I’m not saying we should stop letting straight white men make movies. They make great movies. You can claw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Goonies from my cold dead hands actually.

But the thing is, cinema’s only have a finite number of screens, and people only have a finite amount of money to spend. So even when these new, creative, unheard, diverse voices are reaching producers who choose option 1 and not option 2, these new voices are often drowned out by the dazzle of the past. How many people, if they can only see one are going to choose the new film they know nothing about and has hardly been marketed, when they could go and see the next Toy Story movie, or the remake of that film they loved as a teenager?

I do think there’s a place for this content in the world of film. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that seeing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home wasn’t the most serotonin I’ve felt in years. I’m fuelled by nostalgia, I’m 25 and my favourite radio stations are Heart 80s, 90s and 00s, and I listen to The Boy Who Knew Too Much by Mika from 2009 more than any other album.

But I think by the people pulling the strings over there in Hollywood allowing “Nostalgia” to not just become a genre, but to become the genre, the juciest portion of the film industry pie, they are doing a disservice to new voices. They are doing a disservice to the film industry as a whole. They are doing a disservice to us as an audience. And they are doing a disservice to future generations.

Because after all, what would we have to look back on fondly if the producers of the 80s and 90s hadn’t said yes to something new?