We’ve all been quite aware of the perhaps twenty-years long era where Hollywood and other top forces of capitalist media have lost their sense of creativity, where studios have been more likely to copy each other or remake old or foreign ideas than come up with something original.

But within that creative failure, there are trends worth picking up, revealing moments where we can see how far society has come since the last screen adaptation of that book or cover of that song. Unfortunately, I’ve often found that those differences signal that we’re often in a worse place than we once were.

I noticed this once with Jill Sobule’s relatively liberating song “I Kissed a Girl,” followed ten years later by Katy Perry’s girls-gone-wild style “I Kissed a Girl.” Likewise, there has been any number of zombie movies in the past decade that depleted the genre of the satire and critiques of capitalism, militarism and consumerism that had been its driving force in the 1970s.

Now, two movies this summer (at least) bring this easy bit of pop sociology to my attention. First, there’s “Horrible Bosses,” which several critics contrasted unfavorably to the feminist and workers classic “9 to 5.” Vilifying and killing your boss went from a desire of working class, harassed women, to a question of defending the masculinity of middle class white heterosexual men, including from Blacks, women and gays. Now we’re moving somewhere dangerous.

And with the second remake or reboot or whatever Hollywood likes to call it of the Planet of the Apes series, many are harkening it as a politically radical blockbuster. A star-studded supposition of revolution as satisfying as Machete and an attack on animal testing even more poignant than “28 Days Later.”

Unfortunately, the movie chooses to shift into some different territory. The original series, and “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” in particular, took into its sights questions of class exploitation, racism (albeit problematically), environmental degradation, and nuclear proliferation, beyond the apparent question of animal abuse. And the apes, for better or for worse (watch the entire series to judge), used violence against the exploiting class- humanity.

In the new movie, however, issues of class, race, ecology, and nuclear power are all essentially absent. In the place of some of our society’s most fundamental original sins is a less-than-allegorical retread of the problems of testing upon animals. Seriously? A critique of our entire society and how we function as human beings has been whittled down to an issues film. And the proceeds of the movie don’t even go to banning experimentation on apes. So, there’s no real point, is there?

And when the apes in the new film take time for action against their oppressors, in stark contrast to the original, they attempt to observe a code of not killing humans- even armed cops who are firing upon them. In the original, there is an honest appreciation of the dirty job that is radical social change. The original series wrestles with the dual questions of revolutionary violence and the morality of hating the class that has oppressed one’s own, and there is some evidence in the fifth film (yep, I’ve seen all five) that the apes, with the foresight of knowing one possible future, attempt to shift gears and offer a future without hatred once the counterrevolutionaries are vanquished.

Like it or not, that is how radical change comes, and it is those kinds of questions which people are faced with. Rise of the Planet of the Apes sidesteps the very sincere problems we have to deal with in changing the world, offering a clean and happy solution. Of course, there are plans for sequels, and I may very well be proven wrong when the next movies roll out. But time and time again, Hollywood advances along the same old formulas.

PS: On race, of course, both movies tread on thin ice, with the original series taking very unsubtle approaches. But science fiction is always fine to do allegory, and there’s no reason to approach class without clear references to the system of (white) racial supremacy. The problem today is that Hollywood still prefers to banish all violent confrontations over questions of white supremacy to, as one tweeter calls it, stand-ins for Brown people that include blue anorexicats, vomit-mouthed aliens, and apes. Or else, as Danny Glover is well aware, as long as the audience can watch the film through the eyes of a sympathetic white.