Anyway, the reboot of "Footloose" came out a couple weeks ago. You've already had '80s movies like "The Karate Kid" and "Conan the Barbarian" rebooted, with mixed results. And you hear of more in the pipeline all the time, even some like "Short Circuit" that are better left forgotten.
It's gotten to the point anymore where I can't watch a movie from the '80s without wondering how and when it will be rebooted. A couple months ago I went up north to Traverse City on vacation. After checking into the motel I flipped through the channels and left it on AMC, which was showing "Top Gun." I watched the last half of it and the whole time I kept thinking about how to reboot the thing. Which I realized the hardest part is that you don't have two-seat fighter jets on aircraft carriers anymore. The F-18s the Navy uses and the F-35s they'll probably use in the future both only have one seat because modern avionics eliminated the need to have a guy navigate and operate the radar. So how do you handle the whole Maverick/Goose thing? As far as I could figure you'd probably have to make them both pilots so that Goose is Maverick's wingman and then Goose somehow dies and the rest works out all right.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. It's not just Hollywood. It's fashion, music, toys, pretty much everything from when I grew up being ripped off. I mean a kid nowadays can put down his Star Wars and Transformers action figures and then go watch "Footloose" in the theater, like I could have done in 1984 or '85 or whenever it was that "Footloose" came out had my parents been irresponsible enough to let me go watch it.
I think what bugs me the most besides the blatant unoriginality of our society, is sometimes it feels like they're trying to overwrite the past. If you think about it, if you mention "Footloose" or "The Karate Kid" to a kid growing up now, they'll think of the new version because they probably haven't seen the old one. Or if you mention Optimus Prime, they'll think of the toys from the Bay movies and not the old die cast one with the rubber tires and stuff. Or if you mention Star Wars they'll think you're talking about the prequels or Clone Wars stuff. Of course 20 years from now there'll be even newer versions of all that stuff. And by then we'll probably have 5 more Spider-Man reboots and 400 versions of "Hallelujah."
That's the Leonard Cohen version, the Rufus Wainwright version for "Shrek," and the Jeff Buckley version of the song.
(And I could on and on...)
I think the best analogy is that it's like if you were one of those Indian tribes when the white man moved in. You had your whole set of gods for the sun and moon and your creation story and everything. Then Whitey moves in and says, "No, that's all wrong. From now on God (our God) created all that stuff and runs everything. So there." And you say, "Screw you guys. I'm happy with things the way they are." And Whitey says, "Too freaking bad. If you don't do it, God (through us) will smite you." And you say, "Well then, Praise Jesus, Hallelujah!"
No one's probably going to smite me if I never watch the new "Footloose" or the new "Top Gun" whenever someone gets around to making it. Still, there's the same feeling of helplessness as what I knew is overwritten by someone else. In this case just to make a few extra bucks.
Though some reboots wind up being better, the problem is the trend seems to be getting out of hand. What happens after Hollywood's rebooted every movie? They reboot them all again ad nauseum? Probably. I can hardly wait for the "Citizen Kane" reboot! Wait, that was "The Social Network."
I think I remember reading an entry like this on your old blog. Is this entry a... reboot?
ReplyDeleteI'm getting sick of reboots. Especially in the horror genre. You didn't bring any of those up but in horror...movies made three years ago get rebooted.
ReplyDeleteI started watching the "Nightmare on Elm Street" reboot on HBO2 the other night and fell asleep. That's how scary it is.
ReplyDeleteI understand the rebooting of old movies with new technology, but the 1980's is way too soon to reboot.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how I feel about the whole thing, honestly. Really, if they're well done, I'm okay with it. Except Spider-Man. I'm pissed that Sony is rebooting Spider-Man just because they didn't want to pay Rami/McGuire/Dunst. I don't care if it's the most awesome movie ever, they shouldn't have done it. They should have carried the story further. And I see a Batman re-boot coming up, too, since Nolan (and probably Bale) will be leaving Batman after this next one.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm tired of is that everything is just what they perceive to be the safe bet. I'm tired of the safe bet. Not just in movies. At least Marvel has been going in new directions with their movies.
Just FYI, Top Gun is coming back in 3D within the next year or so. That will probably stave off a re-boot for at least a little while. Which is good, because I didn't like it the first time.
I can understand why Sony is rebooting Spider-Man. The actors got too old and expensive. And sure it will be five years since the last one, but it still seems so shameless, not that studios have ever had shame to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, some of the movies and songs I grew up thinking were original were themselves, reboots of stuff from the 50's or 60's. I suppose once folks are old enough to reminisce about their youth and they have the power to do something about they'll either collect it, like toys and comics and cards, or they'll reboot it, should they become famous musical acts or movie producers.
ReplyDeleteI dread the day when they are making big budget, live action Pokemon vs Power Rangers movies. It will get worse, much worse.
I think you're mingling your concepts here. There's "reboots" and then "remakes."
ReplyDeleteA reboot is supposed to take an old concept and spin it in a new direction, or, as the DC reinventions recently tried, get rid of all the complicated backstory that may scare off new eyes. So the Nolan/Bale Batman reboots took the old, comic-booky Batman and transposed them into a magical realist world: How Batman would have to exist if he really did exist.
(And most people are happy with them because it had been years since the old ones and the new ones were really good.)
A remake, on the other hand, just updates the same idea without much changing -- like Cheap Trick covering "Don't Be Cruel," it's a version that puts maybe a slight spin on the original, usually to bad effect.
Or not. "The Thing," which was recently remade (only not, because the "remake" is in fact a prequel) and everyone's upset about that except that "The Thing" everyone loves was actually the third version of that movie, after a book and a movie in the 1950s. So everyone's upset that they're remaking a movie that was itself a remake, because they preferred the FIRST remake over the original and the SECOND remake.
Where I'm going with this is that most remakes appear to me to be cynical attempts to cash in on a name; "Footloose" has name recognition among people, whereas "Untitled Dancing Movie" doesn't. Just like we have "Mountain Dew This That And The Other Thing", franchises have value, and filmmakers I think are trying to not only capture kids who would see a dance movie, but kids who've heard about "Footloose" and want to see THIS "Footloose" and also parents who maybe are nostalgic for their Footloose and so they'll go see this one, whereas if you just released "Untitled Dane Movie" those latter two groups (they think) will stay home.
If THIS Footloose had something new to say or was remarkably well done, I expect most people would be okay with it, the way most people were okay with the Batman reboot and Cheap Trick's "Don't Be Cruel," because they were done pretty well.
I just want to see something that's well done. If you're going to reboot Harry Potter, fine, just make it worth my while and make the storyline enjoyable. All those "Han Solo At Star's End" stories that I loved as a kid were of the same ilk people say they hate, but I enjoyed them.
As far as movies go pretty much everything is a reboot with the exception of something like Gus Van Zant's shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho." Generally speaking no one wants to pay to see different actors doing the exact same script unless it's a play.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes "The Thing" and also "The Fly" in the '80s were both reboots in the truest sense in that they took the original concept of the '50s movie and took it in entirely different directions.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the point I should have made was some things just belong in the time period they were made in. Every generation has its own version of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" and "King Kong" but some things like "Top Gun" and "Footloose" I associate with the '80s and really have no interest then in seeing a reboot/remake/update/whatever in the 2010s. Because despite what Hollywood thinks, not everything is a franchise. Sometimes a movie is just A movie.
I can't understand why Sony is re-booting. Even if you switch actors, there's no reason to re-boot and start over from the beginning. They could have just carried on teh continuity of the story rather then doing the origin -again-. There's no need for that.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of re-makes, I hated, loathed, the re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And, oddly enough, it wasn't because of Keanu. I thought he was actually really great in that part. He really had that whole emotionless alien thing down. However, they murdered the story, and it was abvious they only attached the name to the movie because it was that name. To me, that's just wrong. Dishonest.
However, I thought they did a great job with, say, The A-Team movie. It was clearly paying homage to the TV show without being trapped exactly in the TV show. It deserved to do better.
The A-Team might have been a decent movie but it's one of those things like The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, or Pee Wee's Playhouse that can just stay in the past.
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