Does anybody claim that ideas of the past can't be used as building blocks for ideas of the future? Should we feel ashamed to hammer a nail knowing its inventor receives no royalty from our use of her idea? I believe in intellectual property rights, but at some point important creations must become the heritage of all mankind, with no restrictions on their use. And I believe that the masterpieces of the past are perfectly valid source material for future art, including collages, parodies, and sequels.
Can you imagine how empty the last three centuries of poetry would be if poets couldn't refer to certain fictional characters simply because they "belonged" to Homer? Was Homer made obsolete by such references, or did the opposite occur? Isn't it obvious that all publicity is good publicity in literature just as much as in Hollywood?
When I was a boy I read all the sequels to Treasure Island I could find — none of which were written by R. L. Stevenson. Most of the OZ classics were penned by successors to Frank Baum. Twenty-first century people thirsting for freshly-popped corn have every right to latch onto such genre-busting historical fantasies as and .
In music, borrowing has been endemic for centuries. Bach has been an especially favorite source, since his music seems pure and timeless and ripe for rebirth. Handel's Messiah saw a spectacularly convincing reimagining in 1992 with Mervyn Warren's .
In art, not only are commentaries like Bacon's common, but art forgery houses are thriving. You really love the Mona Lisa? Then, rather than stealing it, why not hire a starving artist to produce a "pretty good" copy you can hang on your wall for $1,000? Everybody wins.
When it comes to movie classics, we've been remaking those for decades. The colorization of black & white films added more viewing options without harming Release 1.0. And with 3D in vogue, and holographic entertainment on the horizon, anybody who says "that will never happen" is never going to be right. If you have any imagination, or have read even a little science fiction, it will be obvious that our Humphrey Bogart database will soon allow him to star in future movies. And perhaps immersive movies, too — in which you walk into the set and interact with the actors, changing the story from that point onwards.
In fact, we are already bringing the dead back to life. The 1992 Grammy Song of the Year was a duet by Natalie Cole and her dad, Nat King Cole — who had died in 1965. In 2000, Nancy Marchand, the actress who played Tony Soprano's mother, died before her last scenes were filmed, so her part was simulated by computer-generated imagery. And in 2004, Laurence Olivier co-starred in — 15 years after his death.
People of Earth: The future is yours.
Let the games begin. Andrew Motion, author of the 2012 sequel, , defended sequels in the when he said [Stevenson] was certainly interested in sequels, and wrote one to another of his best-selling novels, Kidnapped, which is called Catriona. Furthermore, he knew very well that all story-making is a combination of original plot-making and the assimilation of existing elements. To produce Treasure Island, he took details from Washington Irving, WHG Kingston, Daniel Defoe, Captain Marryat and others, and cheerfully admitted in his essay "My First Story" that in completing the book "plagiarism was rarely carried further." According to , "After the second season, a storyline was planned where Livia would be called to testify against her son in court, giving evidence on stolen airline tickets she had received from him, but Marchand died in 2000 before it could be filmed. Existing footage and computer-generated imagery was used to create a final scene between Tony and Livia in the episode 'Proshai, Livushka' in Season Three before the character too passed on."