Quote:
Originally Posted by bwind22
Whoever said that lacked an imagination, in my opinion. There's plenty of new ideas out there, they just need to be thought of.
Jeepers Creepers, Idiocracy, Crank, Saw... They are starting to be copied already, but those were all pretty fresh ideas when they came out and those were all in the last few years.
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Not sure who originally said that, but it is oft-quoted in writing circles.
Also, they say that all stories can be categorized as one of the following:
(1) Man against himself
(2) Man against man
(3) Man against nature
In this broad sense of course, you could say there have only been three stories and everything else are variations on one of these three themes. For whatever that's worth--probably not much.
The only one of the four you list that I have seen is "Saw" and I did not think it very original at all. Mostly because I wrote a novel in 1998 that is somewhat similar--a serial killer who captures people, usually using drugs, and then keeps them in his basement. He then plays games with them until he gets to the point where he has two people chained up and he makes them play against each other where the winner will be supposedly allowed to go free. In one game, each person is only allowed to eat body parts of the other. They take turns in choosing parts of the other person to eat.
And if I came up with something that similar, then I'm sure many others have too--they just never reached the exposure that the "Saw" movies have.