The problem is, it's REALLY hard to come up with something truly, genuinely new. Try all you want, once you're finished, someone WILL be able to point out how your completed work is similar to something else. Unless you're the RIDICULOUSLY rare exception to that rule, which you probably arent, whoever you are.
This is something the gaming industry has shown me over so many years (though this stuff absolutely applies to all forms of creative media). Yeah, I always hear about and often talk about how the Big Guys, the AAA companies as they're often called, only retread things and repeat the same things over and over. Now, this is absolutely true, and of course in their case, it's done because it makes easy money.
Jump over to the indie side of things, then. Where creativity abounds, unrestricted. It doesnt matter what screwball ideas you have: You can do them, and you can sell them (or give the game away for free, it's up to you).
But no matter how creative someone is.... your game is going to fit into an already established genre. There will always be already-existing tropes associated with it. Always. As it is, one site I like alot is TVTropes. Funny place. Whether it's a TV show, movie, book, game, or whatever, it will end up there, and they'll list every conceivable trope that it uses, and cite an example for every one. While I like the site, I strongly recommend NOT going there if you even remotely value your free time. Why? Attempt to spend only 10 minutes there, and you'll find out.
But yeah, when looking at each work's list of tropes, there is nothing... NOTHING.... that does not contain a ton of these. The only things that could be called truly original are the exceptionally rare games/whatever that will be called the "trope namer/codifier" for a given trope. Yet even that game, doing something truly new, will then also do a bazillion already existing things. Whether the developers/writers/producers are aware of this during the creation process is irrelevant.
Thing is, worrying about trying to make everything "unique" doesnt really help. Instead, simply worry about making something GOOD. There's nothing wrong with using an idea that has been done many times before. It's all about HOW you use it.
Now, that being said, when it comes to things like Hollywood, that experiences problems not because there's nothing "unique", but because there's very little EFFORT. Again, it's fine to follow all sorts of tropes. It's less fine to just fling a paintcan at a canvas and call it "art" simply so you can sell it that much faster.
If you want things that do use all these tropes in interesting, fun, involving ways.... maybe stop focusing on only what "major" productions do. If you listen to me talk about gaming for any length of time, well, I'll tend to rant on and on about indie games for a reason. Of course, getting people to peel themselves away from the AAA stuff for the first time is always very hard. I still cant get my friends to do it. They're too busy playing (whining about) the latest big AAA "hit". Not that all major productions are bad, mind you. But with all the lazy greed flying around, good ones are very rare.
