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Does a story cliché have a shelf life of 20 years before it becomes reusable? I don't know if it's always been this way or if its a case of suddenly realizing the same things people have been groaning about for years. After seeing several recent (very bad) attempts at reusable themes at the movies, and several more really terrible blunders in TV, one has to wonder if the whole process of story development has secretly gone the way of manatees with aquatic magnetic poetry, or some lame quotations database that while useful as a guide to what not to do again, has been turned on its head as a copy-paste substitute for anything remotely moving or innovative. Just because the original source material wasn't cited in research, it doesn't quite make for fresh dining if it's already been a catch and release a few times around the pond.

The results as far as I can see are cinematic disasters but to someone in desperate need of a writer who doesn't argue or do anything untested from prior investments, the results make an easy path from concept pitch to test screening.

In his Tribeca Talks Discussion in May, director Mike Figgis delves into this territory with no sugar coating, citing his own friction with Hollywood and the need for many in the business to try and milk investors for every penny first, and then look at the realistic market for the initial idea, but only as an afterthought to padded salaries and thinly planned production realities. He blames this mentality for the resulting films so common in the big budget category that screen like Frankenstein collections of so-so pitch ideas sprinkled around a small budget idea, without the glue needed to present a strong story as a whole.

Unlike the usual panel discussion which generally has guests spinning a harsh lit question into a diplomatically phrased truism while smiling to the camera, Figgis was refreshing in his honesty and his historic gripe about what he sees as an investment business that has taken over a creative process. He views the nostalgia of more recent generations for the golden age of film not with the expected purist's approach, but as a sign of industry lameness and cultural dysfunction in the inability to hold a candle in public consciousness to the old films and pop culture of the past. It's an interesting theory.

In most respects mainstream movies like music and other high-cost consumer entertainment have a target audience of affluent kids and young teens who will spend $20 on a video game, movie date, or CD/DVD to get low-maintenance entertainment without the guilt of anyone who's lived through a recession or has a memory that goes far enough back to know what good cinema looks like. In addition due to the lack of backstory younger generations have at their disposal, it's plausible that a long time cliché that lacks context now might just be a funny, if meaningless homage to that audience. Maybe this has always been the case.

Still, when you hear searing reviews like "this sorry sequel is so boring, so unimaginative, and so blandly by-the-numbers that it's almost like... [an affront] to the very audience members who made the original a worldwide hit" (Mike McGranaghan of Aisle Seat) and the original film in the comparison wasn't at all decent to begin with, you have to nod at least a little bit at people like Figgis who rant on the money pumped into big budget films that more often than not is never actually seen by the crews or concept people in charge of basic planning and operations. Instead another McMansion is born in the hills.

Hijacking characters and whole plot devices isn't new and in fact was done once with an open wink and nod, drawing the odd tense moment into a quick comedic effect to spice up the beat pattern of a darker content. Recently it seems the whole punch line quality of homage has been missed, and we get films that are openly stealing direct dialog word-for-word from the classics without so much as a batting of the eyelashes. There really is no punch line, and people really don't know the difference. How sad.

When a producer of a children's film says "there are creatures you've never seen before who can do things you've never seen before" about a film that's an obvious brew of every top-grossing film in the genre over the last five years, and yet has one of the best parody films in history in their pedigree, one has to wonder if the outright ripping was the result of a suggested homage by someone who knew what they were doing gone simply misunderstood and horribly awry by the end of the process. The elevator pitch "do something like 'Princess Bride' meets 'Harry Potter'" becomes steal Mandy Patinkin, insert Dumbledore and add in the flying scene with some gryphons with kung-fu dialog every ten seconds to liven the mindless CGI duplicated battling creatures that substitute trained (paid) actor voiceovers and cancel out the lack of legitimate scene turning. (Note: you can never gloss over the lack of dialog. When will focus groups stop being the point at which the emotional payoff considered?)

The shift seems to reflect a bigger industry problem where the difference between inspiration and lifting is no longer respected and so the whole formula relying on the understanding that a homage is meant to be funny no longer works. Whether it's a lack of basic understanding in how to respectfully cite source material in the research, or a simple effect of a tribe of us blogging before bedtime, or even a dose of outright laziness by full time journalists-turned-writers who are increasingly picking up AP wires and regurgitating them with one or two words tweaked to get back to their more favored projects as quickly as possible, the end result is a lack of any real commentary either in the films themselves or in articles about them.

So how is it done? To break out of wallowing in old characterizations without losing the inspiration of what made those old stories great, dozens of great writers and directors have all suggested again and again a step back and incorporate less preconception about the synopsis and more interpretation. Many great filmmakers display a versatility and willingness to impart personal experience into the content rather than inverting their ideas for content in order to fit prior molds. Is it harder? Yes. Is it worth it?

Figgis quoted another director which he cited in his Tribeca Talks discussion in May, where he notes the key to loving old films of the past was often in the theater experience. Good films were rich in metaphor where upon a single viewing, the audience took away not the playbook of the film, but an experience as a theater goer that was richly applicable to their own life experiences. In time those experiences and the actual reality of the film would merge together in the mind of the audience. The characters represented so much more meaning than the actual film, behaving more as myth than entertainment devices. You cannot cut the characterization from the context and expect the same return.

Still, for all the rumbling that sales are hurt by all the additional competition that's out there now, the correction away from blatant lifting back to classic story design will never come from culling the field down to just a handful of vetted studios The technology culture simply won't accept it. Instead, as the filmmaking privilege opens up to more opportunities at the artisan level with cheaper and faster digital prospects and more ability of lateral networking via targeted, genre-based niche social networking, a reassessment of how we tell stories on film will continue. Such change is already beckoning a wide series of topics and discussions on how to bridge the classic independent mindset of "story first" to all the high-end stunts and aggressive effects blanketing the twitchy industry releases that stare wide eyed every time down the barrel of a good yarn.