Originality and Its Echoes: The Goonies, Super 8, and Stranger Things
- Scott Barnard
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 7 minutes ago
How True Creativity Builds on the Past, Not Copies It
Originality is often mistaken for total invention, but in reality, the best stories are echoes — not replicas — of what came before. Criticisms abound about originality orating, “Why can’t they make something original?” Originality is a mirage in a desert of replicas, in a world of memes mass-produced in an endless regurgitation of videos from TikTok's 1.6 billion monthly users remaking the same video of the same dance of the same song of the same jokes; an endless echo of sheep bleating that have found meaning in mimicry. In a technological age where people are permanently teathered to phones, devouring and reproducing recycled content, pursuing original movies leaves little monetary motivation in this market built on mimicry. Hollywood today often feels like a Xerox machine: copy after copy, with each remake fading a little more from the vividness of the original. Acknowledging our memetic disposition and the myth of originality, does not validate the film industry’s rubbish remakes, television's adaptations of movies, or its parade of cookie-cutter characters, photocopied plots, and tired tropes.
Adding to the media’s originality obstacle is the ever-present specter of plagiarism. While more frequently seen in music — notably Dua Lipa’s recent plagiarism lawsuits, some resulting in retroactive writing credits once the thefts were exposed — it also haunts the film world. Although it’s harder to plagiarise across a 90-minute film than a three-minute song, it happens: Shia LaBeouf blatantly plagiarised his short film Howard Cantour.com from a Dan Clowes comic. Worse, when LaBeouf apologised for the theft, his apology itself was plagiarised. More commonly than outright plagiarism, we see “twin films”: films with strikingly similar plots and characters released around the same time. These movie posters alone illustrate a few examples twin cinema.
Immaculate and The First Omen both released in 2024 and both films are about young American nuns who travel to Rome and become unexpectedly pregnant with a demonic baby.
The Pope's Exorcist (2023) and The Exorcism (2024) both star Russell Crowe as an exorcist.
Antz and A Bug's Life both released in 1988 and both are computer-animated films about insects, starring a non-conformist ant who falls in love with an ant princess, leaves the mound, and eventually returns and is hailed as a hero.
Pinocchio (2022) and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022). And there were two others released!
Turner & Hooch and K-9 both released in 1989 and both are buddy cop-dog films.
Platoon (1986) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) are both made by famous directors and are raw and depressing depictions of the Vietnam War.
Television is not exempt from this issue having various shows released around the same time period with similar aesthetics, plots, and premisses such as:
In television, particularly in comedy, plagiarism is almost a tradition. Woody Allen’s early jokes were lifted and recycled by TV writers; ‘comedian’ Amy Schumer’s stand-up and sketches from her television show have been widely accused of theft (with YouTube compilations documenting 26 minutes of alleged theft); and most recently, James Corden for his Late Late Show stole a joke verbatim from Ricky Gervais’ special Humanity. Mimicry isn’t art — it’s laziness, and audiences can sense the difference. Copying itself isn’t inherently bad; artists often learn by imitation, and sometimes their version even improves on the original. Homage, influence, and appropriation are part of the creative process. But blatant plagiarism isn’t the answer to the challenges of making compelling films or television.
Beyond the issues of imitation and theft, another hurdle choking originality is the politicisation of representation undoubtedly contributing to absent audiences who are tired — tired of black-washing, white-washing, forced diversity, tokenism, and casting that feels performative rather than authentic. They’re tired of actors preaching political views, studios pandering to trending ideologies, and characters written to check marketing boxes rather than tell meaningful stories. Ironically, these same factors alienating audiences are often the reasons certain films and shows are produced in the first place.
Film, TV, and New Media are also inherently limited by their own codes and conventions: lighting, sound, colour schemes, narrative structures — predominantly Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or variations like Dan Harmon’s Story Embryo for TV. These limitations should fuel kinetic creative energy but the advent and adoption of streaming services, the fall of free-to-air television, and cadaverous cinema has fostered the rise of the uninspired avaricious producer and the artist in absentia resulting in sterile streaming and colourless cinema.
Director Tim Burton loves his reimaginings
Instead of endlessly remaking and reimagining the past — especially with the added burdens of strained representation politics — why doesn’t Hollywood take inspiration from previous films and create something truly new? The challenge for artists today isn’t inventing from a vacuum, but finding originality in a culture of remakes and reboots. Great filmmakers don’t photocopy the films they love; they steal the spirit, not the script, reimagining the essence in new forms.
Back in 2010, rumours circulated about a Goonies remake, striking fear in the hearts of fans who still adore its themes of friendship, loyalty, adventure and discovery. For fans who still quote the movie to this day, nothing could be worse than a remake. So when Super 8 was released the following year, a sigh of relief settled round the world because Steven Spielberg didn’t remake The Goonies, instead he harnessed its essence into a new movie.
Both films center around a group of kids living in small towns who stumble into a dangerous adventure far bigger than themselves. Both use nostalgia for childhood friendships and the spirit of discovery. They utilise similar character tropes; there's a leader, a wise one, a funny one, and a romantic interest, all of which contribute to the film's sense of youthful adventure. But Super 8 reinterprets that formula through a lens of grief, paranoia, and the alienation of suburban America. It pays homage to The Goonies (and Spielberg’s other film with kids on bikes a government cover-up, and supernatural character - E.T.) without simply rehashing it. There’s a freshness in Super 8’s emotional depth and cinematic style, even though its DNA is clearly traceable to the earlier film. It’s not The Goonies - no one could ever replace memorable characters like, Chunk, Data, Mickey, Mouth, Brand, Andy and Stef and no one will ever forget Sloth! - but Super 8 was still a fun and heartfelt film.
The legacy of The Goonies continues to this day, evident in Stranger Things (2016), which is clearly also influenced by Super 8. Stranger Things borrows the camaraderie of kids-on-bikes, the 1980s setting in a small American town, a mysterious event, a supernatural monster, evil government agents and government cover-up, funeral and wake scenes, kids in underground tunnels, young girl driving a car, themes of loss and uncertainty, the power of friendship in the face of adversity, and despite all these similarities Stranger Things builds an expansive mythology all its own. It layers science-fiction, horror, coming-of-age drama, and emotional storytelling in a way that feels nostalgic yet new. The main difference between the two is the form-factor, being serialised television and the timeframes it grants, has provided the writers opportunities to develop deeper characters.
The value in inspiration is evident with Stranger Things - it's a cultural phenomenon and has billions of hours viewed on Netflix. These works prove that originality doesn’t require abandoning the past. True originality embraces inspiration, extracts the spirit of what worked, and builds something new from it — rather than lazily photocopying what’s already been done. If Hollywood wants to reclaim creative vitality, it must stop chasing remakes and start rediscovering the transformative power of inspiration.
