I saw a post on a social media site the other day. It was a photo of multiple Disney princesses, each with captions representing their characters in modern meme form. The caption for Belle (from Beauty and the Beast – fun fact: “belle” is French for “beautiful”) was, “I read that book before it was a movie.” It occurred to me, when I read this, that this is becoming increasingly difficult to do. After it came out, for instance, I had a vague intention of reading The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), but if I were to read the series now, I could not claim the above quote… even though the first book only came out four years ago. This rapid transition from page to screen is surprising, at least to me.

Perhaps the most common complaint I have heard about Hollywood (at least, within my social circle) is that it’s unoriginal. This is not untrue. The recent “Batman” movies are a reboot of the earlier film series which was itself an adaptation of a comic book. The “Superman” reboot, same story. The “Spiderman” reboot, again. Not that it has to be a reboot – the “X-Men” films, “The Avengers,” “Iron Man,” and so on – all adaptations of comic books. Meanwhile, we have “The Hunger Games,” “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Game of Thrones,” and more, adapting novels. Remakes of old and not-so-old films (each based on something else), like “Clash of the Titans” and “Total Recall.” There are even board game adaptations, which I seriously thought was a joke when I first heard about it. And let’s not forget the video game adaptations – “Resident Evil,” “Doom,” and others.

So the question is: Why doesn’t Hollywood put out anything original anymore? Well, for one thing, the “indie film” department has “original” pretty darn well covered. A lot of those films are so off-the-wall that they could hardly be anything but original. Not that I’m a big indie film guy, except for a spare few. Just not my cup of tea, as they say.

But why else? What drives this oddity of “unoriginality”?

I’m going to go ahead and argue: human nature. Look at entertainment throughout history. “Originality” is a relatively recent concept. Look at Greek epic poetry, like Homer – the tales of myth woven in a particular way. Latin poetry (Vergil and Ovid, especially) was much the same way. Nordic sagas, too, told the tales most people already knew. When theater came along, it followed suit, especially in Greece. More of the same myths, stories from ye olden days of  yore – most people had gotten the gist of these stories long before. But the plays were retellings as much as they were anything. I doubt that the original story of Medea had quite the same “womyn rock!” message that Euripides’ version had. I’m sure Sophocles had his reasons for telling the stories of Oedipus and his daughters the way he did. It’s the same story… but it isn’t.

And this wasn’t just an ancient thing. Shakespeare wrote few, if any, truly original stories. Instead, he told stories that everyone knew. Why? Because it made laying the groundwork easy. If there’s something I am learning as an author, it’s that laying the groundwork can be one of the most difficult things to do in a story. It must be done subtly, carefully, slowly, but clearly; if you move too quickly, you end up like “The Da Vinci Code,” which reads like a brick at times and seems to be more exposition than story; if you are too obscure, then you lose your readers in a world they know nothing about. As the author, I know a great deal about the world I’m writing in, but my readers know absolutely nothing – unless, of course, I tell them ahead of time that this is a story they know. Like about that king that died a few years ago, or that old myth from Greece, or that tale of lovers that everyone’s so fond of.

Of course, once the groundwork has been laid, I can go anywhere I want with the story. I can introduce new themes, change the plot, alter the ending, all to offer a very specific message, a point and purpose that was, if not lacking, then misdirected in the original. I can use others’ stories to achieve my own ends. This isn’t plagiarism; it’s art. Plagiarism is taking something that belongs to someone else and claiming it as your own; art is taking something that belongs to someone else and changing it, making it belong to you, before giving it back.

You may have heard that Picasso once said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” In some brief research, I find it increasingly unlikely that Picasso ever said any such thing. However, T. S. Eliot did once write in an essay, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

So don’t blame Hollywood for their repetitive entertainment. Thank them. After all, how would you have known what was going on with that first-person sequence in “Doom” (2005) if you didn’t know it was modeled after a video game from 1993, which was itself inspired by a combination of horror/action genres and Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno,” which was itself inspired by Greco-Roman tales of the underworld (syncretized with Christian ideologies), especially Aeneas and Odysseus, which were based on myths that had been passed down in oral tradition for generations?

By retelling old stories, filmmakers are able to draw us into a story quickly and easily. Now, if they’re good at what they do, they make it just as easy for newcomers to get wrapped up in the tale, but either way, once they have you hooked, they have a chance to tell the story in their own way. Like how Peter Jackson cut out swaths of great stories from “The Lord of the Rings,” resulting in a third film that was occasionally disjointed and had way too many endings. Or how he plans to add in huge chunks of detail to “The Hobbit,” based on Tolkien’s notes on the subject, turning it from one film into three.

He is both able – and allowed – to do this. And I’m not talking about what Tolkien’s family is letting him do – I’m talking about us, the audience. If Jackson tried to tell the story of “The Lord of the Rings” and none of us had ever heard of the “The Lord of the Rings,” it would be a disaster. Like when “Fellowship of the Ring” first came out, and a bunch of people complained because the movie ended, but the story wasn’t over, and wasn’t that ridiculous for what was clearly a single movie standing by itself? Those people were unfamiliar with the story, so they didn’t forgive Jackson for making the film the way he did – but those of us who knew what was going on, we did forgive him. At least mostly.

TL;DR: It’s not Hollywood’s fault that they’re making so many “unoriginal” films. It’s our fault, because we like familiarity, and they’re smart enough to know that.