Originality, please (a rant)

I just went back and watched Merlin Season 1, Episode 7, Gates of Avalon, thanks to a heads-up from a friend who wondered what I thought of it. Dear one, I agree with you. Completely. This was a much longer rant, but I edited some of it out in favor of making my point a little more quickly.

Suffice it to say that even in folklore, fae of various ilk are not always the bad guys just by dint of being fae, any more than humans are all bad just by dint of being human. And yet, in so many TV shows and movies, people seem to use the same characters or races as villains time and again. It's the same problem I have with crows typically showing up in scenes with the bad guys, or heralding the arrival of same. What's with the stereotypes? Where's the original thinking? Just once I want to see the crows herald the arrival of the good guys--I dare someone to do this.

People have turned the vampire and werewolf stereotypes on their ears in plenty of TV and movies before now, and suddenly a whole bunch of people think vamps and weres are dead sexy (or in the case of vamps, sometimes dead and sexy.) I'd pay top dollar to see a movie with a human bad guy, a Sidhe hero and/or heroine who saves the day, and a whole flock of crows heralding the arrival of the Sidhe.