Originality?

Jackpot.  Footloose was on HBO as I was re-organizing my closet this morning.  Footloose is a classic, when it came out in 1984, I was 9 years old.  My aunt recorded it on her Betamax recorder, and every time we visited (quite often), my sister and I watched it, rapt every time, as if this time they just might give up and not have the dance.  But Kevin Bacon always pulled through, and SJP pre-Sex & the City, still fabulous in her teens.  And John Lithgow was the consummate minister, ever pious, but growing his heart three sizes by the end. 

I heard a disturbing rumor that Footloose was being remade.  Sadly, it's not a rumor.  The remake is in post-production.  I don't know about you, my fellow Gen X'er, but I am more than a little disenchanted with our successor generation.  It seems like all the big blockbusters are remakes of classics we watched growing up.  Sure, imitation is the finest form of flattery, but come on - can someone in their 20's not come up with something original?  Willy Wonka was remade, I refused to watch it, Gene Wilder IS Willy Wonka, you don't mess with that.  The Karate Kid without Mr. Miagyi?  Now I'm reading that other classics, like Red Dawn, Weird Science, Top Gun, are being considered for prime remakes.  These movies were relevant in our time, growing up in the 80's, and into the early 90's, we had different challenges, different successes, and you can't remake that.  I don't doubt that today's adolescents and young adults go through many hardships that I didn't have to, school violence, a young, scary life in a post-9/11 world, but they need to make their own relevant films to help us understand their times.

Growing up Gen X meant that we had very few role models.  The teens on the screen were it.  We lived in a time of scandal (not that we don't now), but few people were idolized in the media during that time.  We admired Molly Ringwald, the entire Brat Pack, for saying publicly what we all felt.  Watching old movies (yep, I'm old enough to watch "old" movies from my childhood - and proud of it!), I see the gritty reality in them.  Watch Footloose, are their teeth abnormally white?  Anyone, other than Lori Singer (who probably was anorexic) unreasonably thin, and with large breasts (again, other than Lori Singer)?  Anyone drive a BMW, a Mercedes, an Escalade at age 16?  Anyone wearing $200 pairs of jeans?  No, because it's real.  It represented the times.  The imperfections of the actors and the filming itself made it relevant.  I admit, I have given up on watching many new movies because they seem so fake, so insincere, so unlike the experiences you have growing up.  I don't get Harry Potter, I refuse to even try understanding this Twilight thing.  This is not teenager-hood, it's not the raw emotion of the 80's films I grew up with. 

I know, we're all pretty biased on the stuff we experienced during those formative years, all I'm asking for the next generation is that you show some originality - and some reality.  Hmmm, as I write this, I wonder how many of my favorites from my day were remade ... perhaps I'd better some more research!  ...

Thanks, Wikipedia, for confirming that my favorite movies of the 80's, Top Gun, Footloose, Road House, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, the Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl, and many others - all originals.