The common complaint about Hollywood is that "there are no new ideas." Generally there are new ideas, but most of Hollywood is just updating old ideas in new packages. Movie studios are more interested in making money than making stories, which is why there is a plethora of sequels, remakes and movies based on famous books (the forthcoming Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig takes two of these). The studios know that these are bankable as they are already commercial successes. Why take a chance and lose money when you can just cash in on the gravy train that is already established.
As for new ideas, I was watching Person of Interest -- I like this show and its premise -- when I thought "He's kind of like a modern day Lone Ranger." Then I thought about it some more and that's exactly what it is. The main character, Reese, played by Jim Caviezel, is a wanted man, former special forces military man with a heart of gold who's done some bad things in his career. Fitz, his partner, created a machine for the government that can predict terrorist activities by monitoring ALL communications -- email, cell phone calls, text messages, security cameras -- and then collating the data in context and predicting terrorist activity. Sometimes it spits out numbers (Social Security numbers of people involved in some way) of more "mundane" crimes: murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, etc. The government agency Fitz was reporting to didn't care about these numbers, but Fitz did for reasons as of yet (through episode 5 anyway) unexplained. Fitz, as seen in the flashbacks where he was still working on the machine, is a normal, healthy man. Now he has a pronounced limp, maybe an artificial leg, back problems and has trouble turning his head on his neck. His story hasn't been told yet, but I'm sure it's coming. Whatever had happened to him is the catalyst that pushed him to find Reese and hire him to help the people involved in the "mundane" crimes.
It's not so much a retelling of the Lone Ranger in modern day (even though, if I remember right, Reese was an Army Ranger) or an update to the character, but let's call him an archetype. The wanted man who is actually helping people while working outside the law to do it. If Fitz and Reese ever get caught with what they are doing, they would probably be charged with treason and crimes against the country, as well as violating national security, but I digress. And while Reese doesn't wear a mask or leave silver bullets, his reasons and methods for helping others are very similar to the Masked Man.
Another archetype that's made it to the small screen again, once I started thinking about this, is Robin Hood, and I don't mean the BBC's version from a couple years ago. I mean Leverage. Timothy Hutton's show where they are kind of a revenge organization. A client contacts them because someone stole like a family heirloom from them and they have no legal recourse to gain it back (lack of evidence, etc.). Hutton's team do a Mission Impossible type operation, using quasi-legal and sometimes illegal means, to avenge their client. It is very much a Robin Hood type archetype as he has his band of "merry men" (and women), and their clients are usually poor, the people they are going up against usually rich (having more money to hire expensive lawyers to keep it out of courts, etc).
I don't plan on analyzing all shows out there for more of these archetypes, but these kind of jumped out at me today. I don't think Person of Interest has the popularity to sustain itself right now, as I think the Lone Ranger archetype has been overdone to varying degrees the past few years. He has become an anti-hero archetype (outlaw with heart of gold helping people) in a lot of incarnations and it's becoming tiresome. Because Hollywood doesn't like new ideas.
