Movie Trailer Review: Is Anybody There?

@TheJames recently tweeted that content is a commodity, which got me thinking: cliches and retreads in fiction are just variations on commodities.

When you say “I feel like seeing a movie,” you are really saying that you feel like consuming a piece of content, and you probably have an idea of what type of content you want to consume. You may say you want something “original,” but that’s really like saying that when you buy bread at the bakery, you want it to be fresh. It’s true that if you get served something that tastes like it was baked a long time ago, you’re dissatisfied. But that doesn’t change the fact that what you really wanted was bread. And you already know what bread tastes like… that’s why you wanted it.

There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Scotty comes back from techno-purgatory and teaches LaForge how to be swarthy. The idea is that death is okay, because old people still have value, and that value is to teach what they know to the young, and so on. It’s a worthwhile story, but it’s not very new, so I’m just going to go ahead and use this image instead of an image from the movie I’m reviewing.

Here’s the Quicktime trailer for Is Anybody There?