Reboots

                They are a powerful tool for movie franchises that have stagnated or just flat out bombed in the box office. But, it is incredibly dangerous if abused. Reboots, like them or hate them, are here to stay.

New Michael Myers

Old Michael Myers

                A few definitions before we get to the main article. There is a big difference between a Remake and a Reboot. A remake is when a new director/writer takes an existing movie or movie franchise, keeps the same major plot points and script, but makes minor changes. For example, the Halloween movies. The original movie was released in 1978 directed and written by John Carpenter. In it a psychopath escapes a mental institution, travels to his hometown and slaughters people while stalking a young girl. In 2007 Rob Zombie remade the movie, in it the plot is largely the same, psycho escapes and kill’s people, but Zombie expands upon the main monster Michael Myers, showing us his backstory and explaining his obsession with the young babysitter Laurie Strode. Most remakes follow that line of storytelling, retelling what people know but making it bigger. I could make a long list of Remakes that have come out in recent years but I think you could probably name off at least five by yourself so let’s just move on.

Classic Godzilla

                A reboot is what happens when a writer/director takes an existing movie or film franchise but makes no reference to the original films. A decent example of that would be the Godzilla movies. Back in 1998 director Roland Emmerich took the iconic Japanize movie monster, changed everything about it from the creature’s origins to the city it attacked, and made a movie out of it. The monster is the same but it doesn’t related back to previous movies, and exists in a universe where no one had heard of or conceived the notion of a colossal lizard destroying a major city. I guess in that universe the biggest Japanize film exports are anime. 1998’s Godzilla is a bit of an extreme case however. Most reboots do keep a number of major characters and plot elements, they just tweak them in a variety of ways. Take for example Superman Returns, released in 2006, and The Man of Steel, released 2013. Both have Clark Kent/Superman, Lois Lane, Perry White, and Metropolis, but the films do not exist in the same timeline/universe.

"modern" Godzilla...so is the new one Post Modern?

                A reboot is more favorable to a Comic book movie because they have a wider range of source material. Rob Zombie and Roland Emmerich only had the existing franchises to work with. Comic books have multiple forms and source materials. For example, Marvel has its main comic book universe that has existed in a “floating time” since the 1960’s.  The environment updates around the characters but the characters themselves don’t age or change too much. But they also have their “Ultimate” universe, which is a sort of comic book universe reboot. They took existing characters, updated everything, change ages, and eventually replaced some existing characters with new ones. The Ultimate stories are darker and grittier, arguably more realistic form of the source material. They also have a number of “What if?” and alternate histories in circulation. I’ll go into details about those in a later post. It is a wide pool to fish from, so rather than be compared directly to previous films by reusing old storylines and whatnot, many prefer to reimagine things to keep it fresh.

So. Many. Puns.

                When reboots are good, they are celebrated. The best example being the Chris Nolan reboot of the Batman franchise. For those who haven’t seen it, the movie ‘Batman and Robin’ directed by Joel Schumacher in 1997 killed the Batman franchises and even the superhero movie for a number of years. Batman and Robin had a number of problems from costume designs, strange story elements, disregarding characters comic book origins, too much campiness, and so on. But Bat-nipples, Bat-Credit Card, and spitting on Bane’s face aside, the Nolan reboots brought Batman back to his roots. It was dark, it was gritty, and it was awesome. The first two movies found the groove that Batman and Robin threw out the window. It was a good reboot that help revitalized the public’s interest in Batman and the superhero film in general.

                One example of an okay reboot would be the recent Spider-man films. There were a number of reasons why the movie was rebooted only five years after the awful third Spider-man film in 2007. I’ll include links to my sources at the end of this review but here’s a quick breakdown. One, money. Director Sam Raimi, and Actors like Tobey Maguire wanted incredible sums to stay with the film franchise. 50 million big ones if the numbers I read were accurate, and that was just for Maguire. Furthermore, Raimi allegedly wanted more creative control after Sony added so many notes to his film that bloated it into oblivion. Second, which connects to the first, was the film rights. According to one reviewer, Maguire and Raimi were up to make a fourth movie, but were already tied up with other projects. Waiting would push Sony toward the deadline dictated in their contract with Marvel. For those that don’t know, the contract that Sony has with Marvel states that they need to be making a Spider-man film every few years or else the film rights revert back to Marvel. Given Spider-man’s popularity, Marvel undoubtedly is chomping at the bit to get the film rights back and of course wouldn’t give any extensions if it came to that. So, rather than risk losing their biggest cash cow, a reboot was the next logical step.

                No the general suckiness of the movie didn’t factor into the reboot. As much as critics and fans hated it, the movie was a financial success and a sequel would have undoubtedly make a hell of a lot of cash. Amazing Spider-man has shown to have its pluses and minuses, as stated in my previous post. Amazing Spider-man would be the example of an okay reboot made for the wrong reasons.

                While there are a number of bad superhero films, and bad reboots, I personally can’t think of any specific superhero film that’s reboot was god awful. Some would say that Superman Returns falls under that category but I’d argue that that was as much a sequel as it was a reboot. It was a reboot in that it overwrote the bad Superman sequels but it was still tied to the old movies. I've actually heard a few arguments that the film would have been better as a complete reboot. We would have had Kevin Spacey play Lex Luthor, instead of Kevin Spacey playing Gene Hackman playing Lex Luthor as an example. But I digress.

                The reboot is a powerful tool when used wisely. I truly hope we don’t see a time when it becomes a predictable, inevitable part of a long running film franchise. At least with the creation of the Avengers, and the possible Justice League film, it will make it difficult for Marvel and DC to do a reboot for no good reason.

http://screenrant.com/spider-man-movies-reboot-comic-book-retcon-kofi-155955/2/

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/blockbuster-buster/blockbuster-buster/42380-the-amazing-spider-man

http://wiki.halloweenmovies.com/index.php?title=Michael_Myers_%282007_Remake_Timeline%29

http://horror.wikia.com/wiki/Michael_Myers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_%281954_film%29

http://the-american-godzilla.wikia.com/wiki/File:Godzilla_1998_-_2.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_%26_Robin_%28film%29

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/