I have been hearing a whole lot lately about how there are no more new ideas, that it’s pointless to try and be truly creative, but this notion is wrong all the way through.

If you look at trends in the movie industry, it is easy to see how one could come up with a conclusion like this. The majority of movies being released now or in the past few years have been sequels, reboots, prequels, or based off of other properties. At a cursory glance it seems like nothing new is being made.

Surely this must be because the idea well is running dry?

The corporate executive idea well maybe, but just chip below the surface and you will see films with new ideas and premises being made all the time. Get Out is the most recent that comes to mind. We just tend not to get all worked up about films based on nothing, because there is no precedent to pay attention, but once a new good idea breaks through it becomes part of that precedent.

As college students, most of us are supposed to be on the cutting of new ideas, after all we are supposed to be the next generation to run the world. But for some reason many of us have been demoralized into a position of thinking we bring nothing new to the table.

Let me tell you the secret about new ideas: they are never thoroughly 100% original. Since early humans we have been building off of each other to create new things. The modern artist is essentially building off of the first cave painting, the businessman expanding upon the first merchants trade, the inventor moving forward from the creator of the wheel. Every new work can be traced directly to the past. If we look at it this way, even the cash grab parade of sequels mentioned above in some ways are similar to seemingly original ideas.

Don’t be discouraged if you feel that something you are doing seems similar to something else. Keep building on it, and it might just end up better than what you afraid of resembling. If you keep working at it, you too can add onto the huge collaborative project that is humanity.