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While I agree that Hollywodd has found a goldmine of forgotten treasure in old television shows, and I would also agree that some of the tv show to movie adaptations have been good-The Fugitive, some of the Star Trek Movies, the Adams Family movies, Maverick-but I would ask Hollywood to stop adapting old television shows to movies. I ask this in the interest of originality. Come on you people in the moviemaking business! You are supposed to be creative. You work in a creative environment. There is nothing creative about taking an old show and making a movie out of it, unless of course you call having that idea in the first place creative, which I don't.

And sure, some of these films make money-that is the bottom line after all, cash over creativity-and it is easier to steal an idea than to come up with one of your own. But when I hear that Jerry Bruckheimer is producing a movie based on the old Lone Ranger serials, starring Johnny Depp as Tonto I groan. I groan for several reasons.

One, Tonto is an American Indian, Depp is a white man. Sure he claims that he has Cherokee blood in him, but then again half of America claims to have some kind of Indian blood in them.

I also groan because Bruckheimer is producing it, which means it will look nice, have lots of flash and action, and absolutely no substance. For those of you who don't know, this is the guy that gave us Pirates of the Carribean-a movie based, not on an old television show, but on a ride at an amusement park. Granted, the first Pirates movie was entertaining, but it was all style, no substance, and yet it somehow still managed to have more substance than the two sequels (which were terrible).

Three: does anyone even remember the Lone Ranger? Hollywood executrives will say that this new project will be a way to bring the classic to a whole new generation. This is true, in a sense, because kids will become familiar with the name: The Lone Ranger. But it will not be the classic Ranger. It will be a modern take on something that was made in the forties and fifties. It will be revisionist, at best, and at worst it will be a completely different entity that just happens to be called The Lone Ranger.

This last point applies across the board to tv shows made into movies. Creators cannot help but be influenced by the context of their times, and our times are much different than those of the 40's 50's and 60's. The world is a different place. Sure some of the things are the same, like our basic wants and desires, but overall we live in a different world, like it or not.

So please, Hollywood, stop making television shows into movies, and get some ideas of your own.

Learn more about this author, Ian W..
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