Delightfully, both the Internet Archive and IMDb are venerable enough that we can see how IMDb’s top 250 looked 13 years ago. That lets us do a rough test of whether sequel ‘n’ adaptation spam clogging the chart is a new phenomenon.
IMDb’s top 10, as of June 6, 2004:
Godfather, The (1972)
Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
Casablanca (1942)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
Star Wars (1977)
Of these, I think 8 are sequels or adaptations (the original two are Shichinin no samurai and Star Wars).
Adding the next 15 films, things are slightly more complicated: Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, and Amélie look pretty clearly original, but Raiders of the Lost Ark is more arguable, ’cause apparently it’s an uncredited ripoff of Secret of the Incas. That makes 7½ originals out of 25.
Comparing to now, we’ve gone from 2⁄10 and 7½/25 originals to 1⁄10 and 5⁄25. That does suggest a recent trend towards more sequels and adaptations, but there were already a lot in ’04.
Edit, 4 days later: see below for some corrections.
Good thinking! I agree this is evidence that the phenomenon is stronger today than in the past.
I think the 2004 numbers are actually higher than you suggest. Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo is the third in the Man With No Name trilogy, but North by Northwest and Memento seem to be original. I’m also not sure how to count Casablanca, which apparently was based on an unproduced play.
I think the 2004 numbers are actually higher than you suggest. Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo is the third in the Man With No Name trilogy, but North by Northwest and Memento seem to be original.
Oops, thanks for picking me up on those. You’re correct about IBIBIC and North by Northwest (maybe I mixed up the second with Psycho?). I’m not sure about Memento. On first Google it looked like Jonathan Nolan had written a short story with a similar premise, and that his brother Christopher had developed the film from the same premise, but without adapting the short story in the usual sense. Further reading convinced me that, actually, Christopher had adapted the film loosely from the short story, so I counted it as an adaptation.
Now I look a third time, I see from some guy’s student paper that the film [edit: allegedly] wasn’t adapted from the short story after all:
However, in an interview on the DVD, Chris Nolan reveals an interesting fact: the short story was not completed until well after filming of the movie had started. His brother Jonathan explained the idea to him on a cross-country roadtrip and granted him permission to extend it into a film. Here we see that “Memento Mori” is not the primary, hypotext we have been assuming. Instead, both the short story and the film are different readings or interpretations of Jonathan Nolan’s original idea, as explained during that car ride.
Maybe I’ll just give Memento a half point!
[Edit: forgot to acknowledge you on Casablanca. I decided it wasn’t original because of the unproduced play you mention, but since the play wasn’t produced my decision is kind of arguable.]
Delightfully, both the Internet Archive and IMDb are venerable enough that we can see how IMDb’s top 250 looked 13 years ago. That lets us do a rough test of whether sequel ‘n’ adaptation spam clogging the chart is a new phenomenon.
IMDb’s top 10, as of June 6, 2004:
Godfather, The (1972)
Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
Casablanca (1942)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
Star Wars (1977)
Of these, I think 8 are sequels or adaptations (the original two are Shichinin no samurai and Star Wars).
Adding the next 15 films, things are slightly more complicated: Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, and Amélie look pretty clearly original, but Raiders of the Lost Ark is more arguable, ’cause apparently it’s an uncredited ripoff of Secret of the Incas. That makes 7½ originals out of 25.
Comparing to now, we’ve gone from 2⁄10 and 7½/25 originals to 1⁄10 and 5⁄25. That does suggest a recent trend towards more sequels and adaptations, but there were already a lot in ’04.
Edit, 4 days later: see below for some corrections.
Good thinking! I agree this is evidence that the phenomenon is stronger today than in the past.
I think the 2004 numbers are actually higher than you suggest. Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo is the third in the Man With No Name trilogy, but North by Northwest and Memento seem to be original. I’m also not sure how to count Casablanca, which apparently was based on an unproduced play.
Oops, thanks for picking me up on those. You’re correct about IBIBIC and North by Northwest (maybe I mixed up the second with Psycho?). I’m not sure about Memento. On first Google it looked like Jonathan Nolan had written a short story with a similar premise, and that his brother Christopher had developed the film from the same premise, but without adapting the short story in the usual sense. Further reading convinced me that, actually, Christopher had adapted the film loosely from the short story, so I counted it as an adaptation.
Now I look a third time, I see from some guy’s student paper that the film [edit: allegedly] wasn’t adapted from the short story after all:
Maybe I’ll just give Memento a half point!
[Edit: forgot to acknowledge you on Casablanca. I decided it wasn’t original because of the unproduced play you mention, but since the play wasn’t produced my decision is kind of arguable.]