6 Annoyingly Repetitive Movie Trends Ruining Modern Hollywood

6. Biopic Award Bait

Not a new concept by any means, but in recent years the €˜awards corridor€™ has spiralled out of all reasonable control. Never a winter goes past without a flurry of historical figures re-enacted on the silver screen, with a big name actor or actress waiting with baited breath and gritted teeth come the announcement of the Oscar nominations. Produced, often, with the sole purpose of scooping up awards (some films more successfully than others, think Mandela and Diana€™s failed acclaim-grasping), the winter is as much a home to biopics as the summer is to superheroes. Not to say that biopics are not often very worthy cinematic entries. Rather, that the problem lies in the over-exposure of the medium. The 2014/15 season alone brought us re-enactments on the lives of Professor Stephen Hawking, war veteran Louis Zamperini, Enigma code cracker Alan Turing, funk musician James Brown, and several others. It is a diverse range of characters, of course, yet biopics very rarely seem to stray from an established formula of safe, controversy-free re-enactment. Playing to established cultural knowledge, many biopics come across as unnecessary €“ a bland, basic retelling that somewhat contradicts the €˜unknown€™ magic of cinematic storytelling. With biopics framed almost exclusively as best actor/actress vehicles, it is very often the case that the film itself loses something of its memorability in the years that follow. Recent Examples: The Theory of Everything (2014), The Imitation Game (2014), Unbroken (2014), American Sniper (2014), Mr. Turner (2014), Get on Up (2014), Grace of Monaco (2014) Diana (2013), Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013), The Railway Man (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013)