I have to agree with everyone who says nothing is 100% original, someone somewhere has done it before. Cliches aren't the evil some people make them out to be. The problem lies in what the person does with the cliche. If they truly are following everything to the exact T, then yeah it's going to be boring as heck. But if the author can put their own spin on it then even the cliche foundation can be something special. I have no problem admitting I have a lot of cliches in my books (especially when I follow the chosen one trope. Oh man do I love a good Chosen one story) because they're what I enjoy.
A few years ago I wrote a superhero book where there are pills that give a "normie" (my noon-supers since there's those born with power and those born without) superpowers. I had never heard of anything with that kind of premise for superpowers before and I was talking to a friend about the basic idea right before I was going to start writing it and all of a sudden she's like "Oh you mean like such and such" and lists off a comic series. Now I can't for the life of me remember the name of the comic now, but when I googled it sure enough, it had some of the basic ideas I had come up with. I also believe there is now a Netflix movie that also uses super power giving drugs as the premise (though from my understanding is the pill doesn't give a specific power like my pills do.) So here I was, thinking I had a totally original idea and now there are at least two things that have the same basic idea of superpower giving drugs. Now obviously there aren't enough of them the idea has become cliche, but it still shows you nothing is truly original. Someone, somewhere has done it before. Some will have done it better, some won't.
So if you like a certain cliche either as a reader, writer, artist, then go with it. Just put your own spin on it whenever you can. Don't force yourself out of the box just for the sake of being out of the box. Create what you want and enjoy.
