One of the more common complaints about modern Hollywood is the so-called death of imagination and ideas. Proof positive of this is the sheer number of remakes, sequels, and reboots that come out every year. While this may seem irritating, the fact is that none of the three are particularly new ideas to Hollywood. In fact, all three have essentially been done for decades.
Reboots seem to be one of the biggest bugaboos for people nowadays. This seems to come from that fact that certain series end up getting rebooted within a few years of the last sequel to the first franchise. Reboots became fashionable when Christopher Nolan did Batman Begins as a completely fresh start to the Batman franchise. Since then we've been or will be treated to reboots of James Bond, Robocop, Godzilla, Spider-Man, X-Men, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, The Terminator, Superman, Star Trek, The Pink Panther, and quite a few more. That's an awful lot of reboots and would certainly support the idea of Hollywood being out of ideas. People tend to think of reboots as being a new trend due to Batman Begins, but actually it's not.
Let's take Godzilla for example. While the film coming out this May is indeed a reboot of the series, it's not the first time Godzilla has gone to this well. Godzilla, as a character, has been rebooted no less than three times previously. The first reboot was released in America as Godzilla 1985, but in Japan it was simply Godzilla (or Gojira if you prefer). It ignored the existence of every sequel to the 1954 original there was. That series went on to 1996 with Godzilla Vs. Destroyah, which seemed to bring an end to the franchise when the big guy melted. 1998 gave us the infamous American reboot, again simply called Godzilla, a film nobody--not even die hard Godzilla fans--wants to acknowledge exists. Then came Godzilla 2000, which again ignored the previous series and which again came to an end with Godzilla Final Wars. What makes each series a reboot is the fact that Godzilla is always fighting a new version of old monsters. For instance, the MechaGodzilla in the second series--the one from the 1980s and 1990s--is completely different from the MechaGodzilla of the first series. That MechaGodzilla was created by aliens, while the newer one is a weapon the Japanese army devised to defeat Big G. Both series have their own version of Godzilla's kid.
I'm not arguing that reboots are a good or bad thing, mind you. I'm just saying that they're nothing new. One can argue that Universal rebooted the Sherlock Holmes series in 1942 when they took it over from Fox. While they kept the same basic cast, they put it in an entirely different time period than the Fox films. The reason they seem such a hot topic now is because there seem to be so many of them. At this point virtually every 70s & 80s horror franchise has been rebooted and now the comic book movies are doing the same.
The thing is not every reboot is bad or a bad idea. Batman definitively needed the reboot, if only to give us proper representations of the villains. While the Joker and Catwoman haven't faired too awfully in past movies, what was done to Two Face and Bane in the 1990s was pretty criminal in itself. We needed The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises to show us better versions of those two villains. Batman Begins itself was a far better and more proper version of the origin story, too. The fact that Tim Burton had to make the Joker the killer of Batman's parents in his 1989 movie was always a mistake. The use of Joe Chill in Batman Begins fit a lot better.
It can also be argued that Superman didn't a reboot, too, if only to wipe out Superkid. It's not that Superman Returns was an especially bad movie, it's that Superman's son was a poor idea. Woefully, Man of Steel didn't live up to it's promise and you can pretty much argue which of the two Superman movies was worse.
The jury is still out on the Bond reboot. It's been handled fairly cleverly in some aspects and Daniel Craig makes for a good James Bond, but the series didn't really need to do a reboot. The argument put forth is that Die Another Day was so horrible, they needed to go back to basics and the only way to do that seemed to be a reboot. I find that logic faulty as Bond has gone way over the top in decades past and then done back to basics the next film without wiping out the entire series that came before. For Your Eyes Only is a pretty grounded film, released after the excesses of Moonraker, and they didn't chuck the whole series to do it. Where the Bond series could end up going wrong with this reboot idea is if they start remaking earlier entries. Hopefully they don't make that deadly mistake.
Which brings me to the most unnecessary reboot of the recent ones: The Amazing Spider-Man. Again, the logic seemed to be that Spider-Man 3 was so awful the only thing to do was chuck the series and start all over again. Please. Spider-Man 3 may not be as good as the first two, but it's not that awful. What was done with Sandman and Venom is no worse--I'll even argue far better-- than what was done with Bane and Two Face in the 1990s Batman films. Raimi gave us a good origin story and excellent versions of two of Spider-Man's primo villains, The Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. Point in fact, Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is one of the all time great movie villains. We don't need a new version of the character. The problem with the reboot is that not only does it have to do a repeat of a story we saw just a decade earlier, it's probably going to reuse villains we already saw done well. Indeed, the Green Goblin is already being set up for this series. The new series finally gave us The Lizard onscreen, but the first series was already setting us up for the character. The likelihood is that we would have gotten him had the first series continued anyway. So tell me again why they had to restart the series
But so it goes. Like I said, reboots have been done for decades now and there's more on the way. Some, like Godzilla, look interesting. Some will no doubt end up being necessary like The Fantastic Four. Some will just plain make people shake their heads. But, like it or not, with so many successful reboots like Batman Begins and Casino Royale, it's a trend that's likely going to stay for quite a while.
Well put.
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