Note that this argument is somewhat in a fetal stage -- feel free to poke any parts that seem soft and unprotected. Because, you know, that's what you should always do when you see a fetus. I'm going to drop that metaphor right now.
Anyways, I'm pretty sure Star Wars could never be made today.
The tendancy towards adaptations, whether of books, comics, TV shows, video games, toys, or
board games, transcends genre, as do endless sequels and remakes of existing films. But nowhere is the chokehold so complete as in SF. I've been wracking my brain to think of the last successful, wide-release SF film that was not an adaptation or a sequel, and here's what I've noticed:
It's been a while. The last I can think of that doesn't fall into two broad categories of exception, which I discuss below, would be The Matrix* (itself twice over the victim of the unnecessary sequel).
The first exception is in children's film. Maybe it's because kids haven't had time to grow nostalgic for something they watched/played with as a kid, but we do see occasional originality here. I still argue that
Wall*E is one of the best original SF film of the 2000s.
The other exception are the films that, if they were books, would be called "literary SF" --
Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind immediately come to mind. Although even that category has its share of adaptations, though they tend less towards video games and more towards foreign films (
Abre los Ojos, anyone?)
Both of the above categories include some great films, don't get me wrong. But I don't see there being much room for the original SF adventure film. I doubt that this just means that nobody's writing them. Hollywood's become addicted to the guaranteed opening-night asses that an existing fanbase will put in the seats. It hurts to wonder how many people have sat down and pitched what could have been the next A New Hope and been turned away in favor of the next Transformers 2.
* Feel free to mention any others I didn't think of...::EDIT:: Crap, three seconds after hitting post I remembered Cloverfield. Oh well, I still hold it's much tougher for an original script to break through these days.