Funny, I Feel Like I've Seen This Before

This past weekend I went to see Surrogates at the theater since the trailer caught my interest and I was curious to see what they were making Bruce Willis beat up nowadays. And he's got that godawful wig on. The movie itself was decent, I give it 6/10 stars.
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But be warned: there is a whole lot of déjà vu in this movie. That's probably because I, like most people, saw it the first time around when it was called

Yup. Pretty much. The premise is that people can buy robots (overtones of I, Robot) that they can make look however they want (like the Matrix characters do when they're plugged into the Matrix)and sent out into the world as a proxy to do pretty much whatever they want while they themselves are plugged into a machine (getting pretty blatant, here). There's also a rebel group that hates the machines and eventually someone that wants to wipe them all (the machines in this case) out. His name isn't Smith, though. Too bad, we were almost 5 for 5 there.

Does anyone else notice that movies lately tend to be shameless ripoffs of other movies (see here), shameless remakes (Black Christmas, The Omen, I Am Legend), or shameless capitalizing on books (the Harry Potter franchise, The Road, Narnia movies, and the unfortunate reality that is Twilight)? How does this keep happening? When did it become ok to constantly recycle older ideas? Isn't that considered plagiarism? Isn't plagiarism bad?

And the real shame is that the several original ideas that make their way to the cinemas each year are usually pretty terrible. Maybe I'm just hard to please, but when I see previews for Saw VI, 2012, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, my faith in the movie industry hits rock bottom, and I really really hope that it's not just me.

I guess we can only hope for the best, and watch our DVDs of better movies from better times. Here're some of my recommendations (90's themed, of course):

• American Pie (1999) Sexy comedy
• Jurassic Park (1993) Dinosaurs and Jeff Goldblum (and Colonel Sanders)!
• The Matrix (1999) Ted Theodore Logan, post-Alaskan military school
• Scream (1996) Ghostface!
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - for the Burton fans
• Titanic (1997) - for the girls
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Arnold is back, just like he said he'd be back!
• Home Alone (1990) Every kids' how-to guide to boobytrap your house and piss off your parents
• Tommy Boy (1995) or Black Sheep (1996) It's really the same movie either way
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) Disturbingly hairy Mike Myers works mojo and bad teeth
• Back to the Future, part 3 (1990) DeLorean and hoverboard awesomeness in the Old West.