"Why bother if it's already been done?"
Not to be overly critical but this phrase has rubbed me the wrong way every time I've heard it. I don't understand the obsession with wanting to create new, novel, and mind-blowing art. In my opinion, striving to only create first word art, or seeing first word art as the only true art, will bring a great deal of turmoil and suffering upon the artist.
Categorizing everything that is an iteration or inspired from existing work as "merely entertainment, not art" is pretty pretentious. It insinuates that entertainment and art can't coexist within a piece, as if art can't be entertaining, or something entertaining can't be art. If we forever strive to make only first word art, then where is the substance? First word art is a proposal for the future. Without further iterations and deep dives into what that art could become, it remains quite useless. And at the same time, last word art can't exist without first word art.
I guess I just don't understand the need to categorize art in this way at all. First and last word art can't exist without each other, and they can't exist without everything that comes in between, so why bother with the distinction? Why try to create black and white borders where there don't need to be any?