"There is nothing new in cinema" discuss:.
No one film can be truly original, although some audiences may regard what they are watching is new and hasn't been done before, it has. All film ideas have to grow from something already in the producers mind, usually from other films or non-visual texts. Producers then use current events and the values and attitudes of society to determine how they can make their movie appeal to a large audience under the pretence of being original.
The two films that I have viewed are Aliens (1986 staring Sigourney Weaver) and Gattaca (1997 staring Ethan Hawke). Both films have their own interesting and exciting element that makes them stand out from the other films available but they can still be traced back to other texts. To make the films different from other on the market, the director of Aliens, James Cameron used a strong female protagonist which reflected the feminist views of society at the time. Andrew Niccol however, the director of Gattaca, took our rapidly developing technological world to the extreme, into a world where DNA is used as a form of discrimination and people are labeled as valids and invalids. Nothing is new in cinema, it is only how it is presented that makes it different.
The idea of Gattaca as being in the genetically perfect world and humans being bred artificially to be supreme has come across many times in both history and other texts. In history, it was Adolf Hitler's determination to breed the perfect German citizen, an Aryan, that drove him to discriminate against the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and many others. Hitler wanted an elitist Germany society that contained only the finest of what Germany could offer, the rest were either killed or put to work in menial job. Gattaca can also be traced back to The Handmaids Tale, a world in where women become controlled due to a changing society, one which is propelled by the fear of a dying race and the need for healthy rebirth.
