Give Reboots the Boot
Here's Hollywood's favorite joke:
Pete and Repeat went down to the lake. Pete fell in and who was left?
As Homer Simpson would say, it's funny because it's true.
I'm talking, of course, about Hollywood's incessant need to mine the past - old movies, old TV shows - and redo them for a new audience.
Except that, recently, instead of calling them what they are - which is remakes - the marketing geniuses have come up with a new term: "reboot." It sounds so high-tech, so of-the-moment - much more so than, say, "do-over." But let's be honest: What's a reboot but just a slick way of avoiding the term "remake"?
Oh, sure, you can sell it as a whole new approach, a reimagining, a re-whatever. But what it comes down to is a lack of imagination, a need to suck the life from an existing idea, apparently out of an inability to come up with anything original. (Sequels? Do I even need to go there?)
So, yes, Batman Begins was a vast improvement over either of the Tim Burton Batman films or their sequels - but it's still a Batman remake. (Don't even get me started on The Dark Knight. We've already had that argument. My side: an overhyped mess. Your side: No, it's a great movie. My side: You're wrong. End of discussion.)
Since the beginning of May, we've had three more so-called reboots. Two of them sucked, big time: X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Terminator Salvation. One didn't: Star Trek. Still to come: Land of the Lost, The Taking of Pelham 123, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
As much as I enjoyed Star Trek, it was a guilty pleasure. Because here was yet another movie - another $100+ million dollars spent - that was devoted to selling us something we already had.
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Hollywood has become so risk averse that they are shooting themselves in the foot. Want to make money? Create some new franchises, if they feel they have to go that way. If they feel they have to do adaptations, there is a huge amount of unmined material out there in the world of SF and Fantasy. Is it just that everyone in Hollywood is that poorly read?
Two words: "niche market." Despite its cultural impact, STAR TREK was never mainstream. The new movie has already outgrossed in domestic release alone what the previously highest-grossing TREK film did in its entire theatrical run both domestic and foreign. And that's getting blasted by the hardcore fanboys, who are slightly less reasonable than the Taliban when it comes to anything resembling broadening the appeal of their prized entertainment. Look at WATCHMEN: they pandered to the fanboys and it suffered for it.
Right on! Finally- a critic willing to tell it like it is.
Do you stick to movies, or do you tread the world of music, too? Talk about unoriginal!
Thank you!
(For all the naysayers- hey, I enjoyed these "new" movies, too. It's just a shame there's nothing new in some of these genres. I mean really! When was the last really good space epic?)
Critics tend to be failed writers/performers who somehow know how to do everything yet lack the ability to put their money where their mouths are. And sci-fi's a dying genre to begin with, since all of that far-out technology is being invented today.
You lost me with your dislike of "The Dark Knight"...
See Scott Mendelson's Profile
90% of the examples given were not reboots in the explicit sense. They are sequels/prequels (Wolverine, Terminator Salvation) or first-time adaptations of properties (GI Joe, Land of the Lost) that originally were from different mediums (TV, cartoons, comics, etc), and a couple out--and-out remakes that aren't inherently franchise material (Taking of Pelham 1 2 3). The only pure reboots that you mentioned (Batman Begins, Star Trek) were the only two you admitted to liking.
Complain all you want about remakes or sequels, or adaptations of old stuff, but don't lump them all into the 'reboot' category so you can criticize several movies you don't like or haven't seen yet under one banner.
I agree with Mr. Fine. Hollywood goes overboard remaking old TV shows, old movies, and old franchises. And it does this because they believe name recognition will lead to big profits. Never mind that it shows a total lack of creativity. Plus, a lot of this recycling leads to poor films. I have no plans to see Land of the Lost, Transformers, or GI Joe. I'd prefer something like Away We Go, which looks like an intelligent indie film.
You liked that Star Trek drek? If you're going to rail against reboots and remakes, how can you exclude one that collectively demolished the material it was based on as much as Star Trek did??
THIS.
I can deal with product placement. After all, how would I know Budweiser wouldn't exist in the 23rd Century? I can deal with uniform redesigns. In fact, the way the uniforms conformed, more or less, to those of the original series was reassuring as I watched this very different Star Trek. It was even refreshing, as New Coke must have been to the focus groups it was tested on prior to rollout. Then Vulcan was destroyed, and the feeling was at the same time that of being punched in the stomach and kicked in the balls. J.J. Abrams had just killed Star Trek, of which I have been a fan since I was eight years old. And then cadet Kirk was made a captain right out of the box, and Spock was the first in line looking for a job under his command. As the real Spock might have said, this was simply not logical.
I couldn't believe that J.J. Abrams felt he needed to chuck 40 years of Star Trek "history" and start completely over in order to make a "Star Trek" film profitable. Surely this was the new New Coke. Not only would Gene Roddenberry not have recognized this "Star Trek" apart from the names of the principal characters, he probably wouldn't have endorsed it if he lived to hear the proposal. "Where are we going with this?" he would have asked before chucking this travesty of a script into the trash.
While I understand that Abrams deviation from official Star Trek history can be explained by "the entire film occurred on a different timeline than TOS," that didn't make me hate it any less. It's a shame, too. Most of the cast wasn't horrible; they seemed to have studied their avatars.
I also can't get past the "let's drill a hole into the molten core of a planet and plant a naked singularity there to destroy it, all without getting sucked in ourselves" plot. Sure, science fiction movies have always played a bit fast and loose with physics. Example? Explosions in space would be neither noisy nor spectacularly fiery. Don't blame me; it's the vacuum. But this? Please!
And don't even get me started on Uhura leaving her post in the middle of a red alert to chase after Spock...an
Also, it should not have been given to Abrams—who admittedly hates the franchise—to direct...a
I will watch the new movie again, if only to confirm my opinion. Frankly, though, I'd rather go back and watch TOS...all three seasons from start to finish. Pass the popcorn.
To play the Devil's Advocate, I have to point out that:
(1) "Originality" is overrated. I mean, c'mon, even the immortal Shakespeare blatantly ripped off other writers; he just did it so well that we forgive him and proclaim his versions to be the definitive ones. In short, proclaiming something better -- or "best" -- just because we believe it to be "original" smacks of snobbishness, pointless nostalgia, or both. (Plus, whatever your age, anti-originals phobia and/or whining adds, "like, omigosh," 10 years to your face. For real. Check the mirror.)
(2) Every generation has the right to "rediscover" for themselves what they've been missing. Telling people to keep their grubby hands off your favorite characters from "Star Trek," "Get Smart," or (in years to come) "The Matrix" makes you sound like the cranky, old (no matter your actual age) bore permanently stationed on his front yard to yell at kids, puppies, and Life. Relax, already. They're young, they're harmless, and they're just playing. (And it wouldn't hurt your lawn to be aerated, now and then, either.)
(3) Finally, watching that accursed "reboot" might show you something you missed the first time around -- something that needed only tweaking to jump out at you and make you laugh, or something familiar but still fresh and fun.
Hey, change happens to the best of us. Those in it for the long haul know to savor the good, discard the bad, and hand some of the popcorn over to the kids.
The problem isn't the incessant reboots or re-imaginings or remakes or whatever you want to call them. Some of the stories are worth telling again in more contemporary settings with modern cinematic techniques and others were good ideas done poorly (Ocean's 11 vs. Ocean's 11, for example).
The problem is the last bunch of years that original ideas have simply not been used in big budget films. I'm all for the new Star Trek and hope they make many sequels...
And there are a plethora of excellent books and book series from which to choose. At the same time, it's got to be done correctly. For example, I'm a huge Heinlein fan, but every movie made from one of his books has sucked the big one.
I'm the ultimate cinephile, but if this is what it's come to, maybe the movie industry ought to just shut down.
GI Joe is not a reboot since they never did a live action film out of the franchise. Not that I know off... It a moot point the movie will probably be crappy anyway! Batman well even the first Tim Burton Batman was not an original. Hollywood just mothballed the franchise after Joel Schumacher got his dirty hands on it and screwed it up big time. I also can give you Land of the Lost and The Taking of Pelham 123 as remake/reboot but Star Trek is just a sequel that involve time travel and alternate time line. Terminator Salvation is a direct sequel to T3 don't lets them fool you it a sequel! Either way we don't have that many original project out there hell even the next Harry Potter is a book adaptation. It all come down to one thing the remake label sounds cheap.
And by the way a reboot is something you do after windows crap out on you that says a lot about the Hollywood exec mindset!
Actually, Schumacher was brought in at the behest of Batman's creator Bob Kane, who felt that Tim Burton's take was too dark and wanted to bring back the lighter side of the franchise that Adam West had embodied.
lolll The Peter principle in action Bob Kane should have stick with comic! loll
Do you think Sophocles was the originator of the Oedipus story? You are aware most of Shakespeare's plays were re-worked, or "reboots" if you will, from literature that was available to him and familiar to at least some of his audience.
Re-boots or re-makes are about finding new ways to tell old stories and the process is as old as narrative art itself. What, exactly, is wrong with that? Surely the point isn't so much 'what subject?' as it is 'how well done?'
Besides, seeming to argue for originality, you actually side with the grumpy old men of art criticism. I mean citing the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, for example? Most filmgoers under 30 (perhaps 40? perhaps even just most filmgoers period) wouldn't even know that there was an earlier film by that name (which wasn't all that great, anyway). As for Wolverine and Terminator, etc, they shine or fizzle on their own merits as movies. Being re-boots is no guarantee for or against.
Agreed. Not that there hasn't been some truly unnecessary, even awful, remakes of better things.
But telling stories is rather like stage magic There are only a handful of tricks, really. It's how they are presented that matters.
Did you know that books tend to go out of print five years after their author dies? They reboot the franchises to entice the current generation into becoming the audience after the previous generation either dies or gives it up for whatever reason. Most comic book characters were created in the 1930s and consequently nobody today can relate to that era. This generation gap even exists with professional sports, the traditional parent/child bonding activity: in Boston there's an entire generation of kids who are growing up in a time period where the "rolling rally" victory parades are practically an annual event, while simutaneously there's an entire generation of kids in New York City who've never seen the Yankees win a World Series.
All these reboots are doing is bringing the same sense of wonder and thrill to the new generation that got us interested in their previous iterations.
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