Casey Comerford

1. 0:00 So today I kind of wanted to talk about the role of nostalgia and how it's sort of started to dominate the entertainment industry.
2. 0:08 You see it both in, you know, stuff we're consuming, video games, movies, all that kind of stuff.
3. 0:15 Um it's kind of what big companies are falling back on because they know that it will drive a certain amount of revenue and revenue growth as compared to taking on riskier original content.
4. 0:26 Um and I kind of wanted to talk about how this is starting to you know lead to a lack of creativity, like I said, a lack of creativity and a lack of original content, especially in Hollywood, um in any any sort of you know, industry that's been dominated and has a lot of classics per se.
5. 0:46 Um and for example, I just want to take if you look at the biggest movies that have been coming out recently, um you think about you know, the Spider-Man movie where they brought back um and relied heavily on nostalgia nostalgia in the previous movies.
6. 1:00 Um I think about Star Wars, um, I think about Disney doing all these remakes, um, because they know it's guaranteed money when in reality they're not producing any new original content.
7. 1:10 And I think this is harmful, uh, especially for I want to focus on Hollywood, especially for Hollywood.
8. 1:15 Um because that is an industry that is supposed to be an escape for people, an escape to, you know, new places, um, take their minds off of you know anything busy in their life.
9. 1:24 And that's what made people, you know, fall in love with film, fall in love with the industry, Hollywood in general.
10. 1:30 And I think there was a period where you were seeing um, you know, from I'd say the eighties to you know early 2000s was where you were seeing, you know, probably the best original content coming out that we've ever seen.
11. 1:41 Um, and you know, big movies weren't ever really relying on nostalgia in those.
12. 1:46 I mean, they may use nostalgia in the fact that the movie may be set in a previous time period to draw people back to their childhoods.
13. 1:53 But I'm talking more nostalgia in the sense to where, you know, movies are are just copy and paste of a movie from a while ago because it's so beloved, and they know people will go to rewatch that.
14. 2:03 Um I think that is one of the major reasons why you see the movie industry, especially uh movie theaters, box office, you see that it's all starting to decline.
15. 2:12 I mean, one one major factor is obviously streaming services.
16. 2:16 Um, I think it's just a lack of new good original content.
17. 2:21 People want to go to movies to see something new, something good.
18. 2:24 Um, and that's just not happening.
19. 2:26 I mean, you see the biggest movies projected for next year is Toy Story 5, which I mean, I guess you could say is original, um, but at the end of the day, that's just a rehash off of you know the other four because they know it's gonna make a lot of money.
20. 2:40 Um you see a new Avengers movie that's bringing back nostalgia, bringing back all these previous um characters, because Marvel has been kind of you know flopping at the box office recently, so this next Avengers movie has the largest cast of superheroes ever, you know, it's building off that nostalgia.
21. 2:55 Um I don't know.
22. 2:57 The reason I was thinking about this is you know, I was watching a movie that departed the other day, and before that, um the usual suspects.
23. 3:05 And you know, movies like that, people say it all the time, movies like that aren't being made anymore.
24. 3:09 It's because these corporations are chasing money, not chasing greatness.
25. 3:12 Um, you know, hopefully we'll see a shift in that, but you know, I doubt it because nostalgia drives money.