> The "secondary" film and TV markets are so starved for good new ideas
There's a long list of very good scifi that has never been made into a movie.
Instead, we get the Mandalorean which rehashes every spaghetti western trope. The character even sounds like Clint Eastwood. It has the hero breaking in the horse while the old ranch hand leans on the corral fence, for example. And training the village to defend itself from the bandits. And so on.
In the specific case of Star Wars, that’s exactly how you make something decent within the Star Wars framework: pick a few elements, including characters, plots, shots, scenes, lines, whatever, from a broad set of genre media, mash them together, and apply Star Wars lipstick. The first film basically defined the genre pastiche film, and it’s still the straightest path to making something Ok within Star Wars. Most failures (and there are so many) are creatives failing to appreciate this, or not leaning into it hard enough.
Mandalorean has one episode that’s about 50% The Wages of Fear and I bet the other main element of accidentally finding some officer you’d really like to get revenge on but while in the middle of committing another crime is also from something else, but I’m not sure what. The AT-ST episode is basically a Conan the Barbarian story plus any of a few westerns (the training-the-town-folk thing—even the woman who’s an uncannily good shot for no reason ever explained is lifted from westerns). That show got how to do Star Wars.
More broadly, yes, more original (at least, not based on an existing visual-media franchise) sci fi movies would be cool to see.
I wish I could describe the near physical pain I feel that "Rendezvous with Rama" isn't yet a great Denise Villeneuve movie, and the "Night's Dawn Trilogy" isn't yet a multi-season series on Apple TV.
Planet of The Apes remakes are not movies, they're just a way to reliably turn 200 million dollars into 300 million dollars - similarly to all the American comic book crap. As long as the multiplier stays above 1.0, the process will continue.
In fairness, IMO the latest Dune(s) were the first that weren't deeply flawed. I do agree that The Mote in God's Eye--and perhaps associated shorts would make a fine basis for a series--hopefully one that ignored the sequels.
Rendezvous with Rama is basically a travelogue. I enjoyed it well enough but there are probably 100s of SF books/stories I would choose to adapt to film before that one. But we'll see. I may well be wrong but the necessary adaptations probably won't be loved by fans.
There's a long list of very good scifi that has never been made into a movie.
Instead, we get the Mandalorean which rehashes every spaghetti western trope. The character even sounds like Clint Eastwood. It has the hero breaking in the horse while the old ranch hand leans on the corral fence, for example. And training the village to defend itself from the bandits. And so on.