Reboots and remakes
I’m not sure where the habit for using the word ‘reboot’ came from but when people use it when they mean ‘remake’, I start getting angry in the same way I get angry when people spell it ‘loose’ when they mean ‘lose’.
Look, it’s perfectly fucking simple; you reboot a franchise. You don’t reboot single films. When you reboot a single film, you’re remaking it, not rebooting it. Thus, Christopher Nolan rebooted the Batman franchise. He didn’t remake Tim Burton’s Batman or any of the others, he started again from scratch, discarding all that came before him. Similarly, JJ Abrams did not remake any particular Star Trek film, but he did reboot the series, giving it a new direction and reshaping the character origins and all that jazz.
Total Recall and Barbarella are both due to be remade, but they can’t be rebooted because they were both standalone films. On the other hand, Robert Rodriguez is perfectly able to reboot the Predator franchise (two films) and Darren Aronofsky can reboot the Robocop franchise (several films and a TV series). Everybody thought that Bryan Singer was going to reboot Superman but what he actually did was neither reboot nor remake — instead, Superman Returns is basically a sequel to Superman II.
So, a sequel is a sequel and a reboot is not a remake, just as a remake is not necessarily a reboot. Furthermore, a prequel is neither a reboot nor a remake; it is what it is, a prequel. Thus, the Alien franchise is not due to be rebooted by the recently-announced, Scott brother-endorsed prequel story. Nor are any of the existing films being remade — the prequel is just another film set in the same universe.
Am I being petty? Possibly so, but to me this rubs against exactly the same bit of my brain that is able to distinguish when people are using ‘less’ when they should be using ‘fewer’, so there you are.
This is a good post, and I don’t think you’re being petty. It seems that the Film Roster has written a similar post Movie Remakes, Reboots and Reimaginings: What’s The Difference?
Remakes are usually a sore point to many film fans, but affect me in different ways. I don’t mind remakes of obscure or old (pre 1980s, hey I’m only 26!) movies because the newer version will be easier to watch, less dated (obviously) and usually better directed/edited (well, it least to a better standard generally). I don’t mind foreign movie remakes either, because it usually means the standard was good in the first place. It also means I know of the movie and will go find the foreign version.
For any remake, it gives me the oppotunity to learn about and watch the original, be it old or foreign – many people won’t bother. Most of the time I see remakes as a win-win situation. I get to see the original and the remake, meaning I can compare their similarities, differences and mistakes. Those who don’t bother with the original will still know the story.
However, remakes of movies from within the last twenty years (unless foreign) is just lazy. I’m sure there are plenty of interesting and original stories which can be brought to the big-screen, without remaking those so soon.
But, like with anyone, I have my childhood era (mid80s) which I don’t want to see destroyed, but unfortunately will be. Expectations will be way too high and memories so distored that they’ll never be good in my eyes. But this is what is happening now, with remakes such as Short Circuit and The Karate (KungFu) Kid… grrr
I hate the term. And the reboot analogy doesn’t actually work in most cases. A reboot consists of turning something off and then on again, therefore resetting it to its original values and allowing work to begin afresh. In the examples of Batman and Star Trek — both originating from endlessly episodic series in those most episodic of media, comics and TV — this is a valid idea. There are stock characters to employ and build upon, new adventures to be had, which rely on the audience knowing the baseline ideas which are being referred to. But in most cases of franchise rebooting what’s actually occurring is a rewrite. Going back to the original idea and reconstructing it, or re-imagining it. Hollywood doesn’t like this idea as it makes the writer sound much too powerful and influential, and the marketers don’t like it because it sounds old-fashioned and, well, boring. So rebooting it is.
Worse, in the case of something like RoboCop, rebooting is really just revisionism, negating years of tawdry, money-spinning straight-to-video sequels to get back to the original germ of an idea. Let’s see what they come up with, but if it’s the same story as the original, it’s a remake; if it relies on any of the storyline from the original, it’s a sequel; f it is neither of these but does feature a cop who gets killed and turned into a super-human cyborg, it’s a REWRITE.
Having said that, here’s the franchise I’d would most like to see rebooted: Police Academy. And I want Kevin Smith to reboot it.