If the 2010s will be known for anything it will be known for literally taking everything from the past and rebooting it. That and superhero movies. When I mean everything I literally mean everything. I mean fucking everything. They made a new version of White Men Can't Jump a movie only I and other sad weirdos remember. It's a forgotten dusty old movie. I have not seen a single person on the internet ever talk about White Men Can't Jump except for like it's letterboxd page since 1997 when I joined the internet. So I have to talk about reboots.
Reboots and remakes and all that do in fact go back to the earliest days of Hollywood. The movie The Maltese Falcon, you know the famous one. That's a remake of an earlier film. This is not to trash the concept of remakes, there are a LARGE amount of incredibly great films that are remakes. There are a large amount of pretty darn good remakes. A lot of stuff remade from foreign films because the idea was good but who the hell wants to watch some French wieners try to be funny when you can just get Michael Caine and Steve Martin to do it in an a funny non-French way. It's just that well you'll see the issues I have because I have several of them.
4.) Most things are of their time. Okay, let's go back to White Men Can't Jump. That movie is probably rewatched by two people, people who want to see every movie that either Woodrow Harrelson or Wesleyton Snipes were in. And yes those are their actual birth names, don't ask me how I know that. Or people just wanting to enjoy something very 1990s. I mean I haven't rewatched White Men Can't Jump but I'm going to assume It's very 1990s. Seriously just look at the damn name. It's 1993 to its core. I don't think you could get a more 1993 thing if you tried. It was a product of its time, It does and will not work in any other time. Unless you somehow want to get great writers and actors to make it something completely different and well that will just bring us to my second point.
3.) a lot of these are just horse shit: A good number of these reboots are just thrown together as cheaply and quickly as possible to get money on a name, the PERFECT example is the Live Action Disney Remake of Pinocchio. The original movie, well, I can't really talk about because I have not seen it in probably almost 30 years but I will tell you this. I'm sure it does what it sets out to do better than the lazy ass remake. It's got Tom Hanks just not giving a shit. It's got poor CGI. It literally fucks up the theme of the original movie in so many fucking ways. Pinocchio seems like he's watching the movie WITH us instead of being a character IN the movie. He doesn't even turn into a boy at the end! What a fucking load of shit that movie was and the majority of them are like that. Just poor material.
2.) The vast majority of this stuff holds up fine. Maybe I am just a biased because of my age (seriously it seems like the 1990s were the last time that they would show tons of stuff from the 1960s and 1970s on television) and the fact I'm stuck in the past but the vast majority of stuff they want to remake is just stuff that holds up fine and hell LOOKS AND WORKS better than any of these sequels or remakes or reboots or anything. They don't need to be remade. I don't even care about the whole "hey let's remake something "bad" " because that bad thing probably has more of a cool 70s or 80s o 90s feel than the bland 10s/20s feel a lot of movies today have.
1.) I'm not going to lie and say that I didn't enjoy some reboots or requels or long outdated sequels but the majority of this stuff just feels like they are grabbing a name and going YEAH WELL GET THE PEOPLE. They are rebooting Matlock of all things with Kathy Bates. I think it's not even going to be a lawyer character. I dunno. I mean I'm all for changing some things with a reboot but when you change everything why the hell use the name? To get the fans of the original to watch. I uh, hate to tell you but Matlock was a show people my grandparents age would have watched and that group of human beings is dwindling each day. A whole hell of a lot of them have already passed away. It's literally trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. You can't just make something popular. I don't think the people who DID watch Matlock and are still alive would want to watch it. They'd probably just rather watch the original show and remember when they were a spry 45-65 year old man or woman and not like 70 to 130 now. Like what the hell.
Seriously if you are going to reboot things, try to find things that one were so terrible that not even I can give any love to it (I am a forgiving man towards this stuff) and people actually still care about in the present day, but no you won't. You'll probably just remake Misfits of Science because you have the rights and get pissed when no one watches it.
Can we reboot claw and have him be a rad 90s skateboarder from Newfoundland? Wait I guess that would technically be Lanny. Nevermind.
ReplyDeleteAll of this is to make brainless studio executives feel better about whatever they are greenlighting. If it's not THE GOONIES WITH ROBOTS, then the easier solution is it's literally Goonies. Member berries are a terrible thing when abused.