Disney to Remake/ Reboot The Rocketeer

[Captaindemotion]

http://www.vulture.com/2012/08/disneys-the-rocketeer-being-reloaded.html

Now that Disney’s troubled movie studio is under new management, our spies tells us that, curiously, one of the first properties to be developed for a feature film is a reboot of 1991’s thirties-set adventure film, The Rocketeer.

We’re told the studio will soon be meeting with various writers to come up with a take.

I don't know about the rest of you but this is one reboot or remake which I would not only be relaxed about but would actively welcome. The original is a fun little under-rated movie but not an out-and-out classic. I would certainly have gone to see a sequel had they made it but the odds of one being made 22 years later are slim in the extreme (Tron Legacy being the exception, not the rule in such cases).

The original is of course based on a comic strip from the early 1980s which owed a debt to the 1930s serial King of the Rocketmen. And there are similarities with the Marvelverse - director Joe Johnston went on to make the similarly pulptastic Captain America, while Howard Hughes, a on whom Tony and Howard Stark were loosely based, appears as the inventor of the rocket pack. Timothy Dalton, who topped many wishlists for casting Tony Stark for a long time, played the bad guy, based on Errol Flynn.

The original Rocketeer has lots of charm and a wonderfully busty Jennifer Connolly but some of Johnston's more ambitious ideas were nixed due to budgetary issues. That hopefully won't be a problem in today's age of CGI.

I've seen some queries raised about whether a man with a rocketpack can really entertain audiences accustomed to the hi-tech equipment of Iron Man or Batman. But then again, a man with a shield and a super serum managed to entertain us quite capably last year!

Stretching it a bit, but with this being a Disney property, could they conceivably link it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?!

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Kirkman1987]

This is a fantastic idea and a perfect property for Disney. I will be thrilled to see The Rocketeer back on the screen.

 

[Dream]

The original was perfectly fine, but I guess everything has to be remade these days. Whatever.

 

[Captaindemotion]

The original was perfectly fine, but I guess everything has to be remade these days. Whatever.

Is it technically a remake or just another adaptation of the comic strip though?

I mean, it came out the year after Tim Burton's Batman and since then we've had a further 6 Batman movies. We've also had a Spider-man trilogy and another origin movie. We've had one Superman movie and another on its way. Etc etc. So it's not like this character is over-exposed.

But yes, the original was definitely perfectly fine.

 

[AvBaur]

I'd rather have a sequel than a remake, but I'll take a good remake/reboot, too.

The original still rocks!

 

[Gaith]

Well, one obvious step would be to not start off with the boy and the girl in a relationship. The "become a hero while getting the girl" trope is the cinematic norm for good reason.

Also, between The Aviator and the Starks, the whole Howard Hughes thing might be a bit overdone at this point; might be best to come up with a different origin for the jet pack. Emmet Brown, Sr., anyone?

Stretching it a bit, but with this being a Disney property, could they conceivably link it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?!

That could be interesting. A Cap cameo, maybe?


If this were to happen, it'd be nice to make it more international than the Johnston movie.

 

[Balrog]

The original was a fine movie with a great James Horner score. But it came out in 1990, a dreadful year for Hollywood.

I can see them doing a remake. It's solid material, and comic book movies have traction right now.

 

[Captaindemotion]

The original ...came out in 1990, a dreadful year for Hollywood.

Do you mean creatively or financially? That year saw Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Ghost, Total Recall, Back to the Future III, Dances With Wolves, Goodfellas, Reversal of Fortune, Misery, Arachnophobia, Edward Scissorhands, The Grifters, Home Alone, The Hunt For Red October. Internal Affairs, Miller's Crossing, King of New York, Presumed Innocent and others.

I'm sure there were plenty of duds, but the movies I've just listed represent a good mix of commercial and critical successes.

 

[Dream]

It'll probably be best if Disney lets Marvel Studios handle the remake.

Remember that we got John Carter from Disney and Avengers from Marvel Studios this year.

 

[Christopher]

The Rocketeer was a creator-owned comic book by the late Dave Stevens, not a comic strip. As it happens, IDW Comics has also recently revived The Rocketeer with a couple of anthology miniseries plus an upcoming single-story miniseries.

I haven't read the original comics, but from what I've read about them, they differed from the movie in some significant respects. Cliff's girlfriend in the comics wasn't a wholesome aspiring actress named Jenny, but a pinup/cheesecake model named Betty who was a roman a clef and lookalike for real-life pinup queen Bettie Page. (Ohh, if only we could've seen Jennifer Connelly acting out some of Betty's most memorable scenes from the comics...) And the emphasis of the comic was more on Cliff and Betty's romance (and his discomfort with her nude modeling and her status as a sex symbol for millions) than on the action. It would be nice if a movie remake adapted the Betty character faithfully instead of toning her down as the original did, but given that it's still from Disney, I doubt that will happen.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, there was a time when The Black Hole, rated PG from Disney, was a big deal.

 

[Icemizer]

If its still a period piece where he is involved with and battling Nazi's I am all for a reboot of this property. Anything else and I am out.

 

[sojourner]

I think the fact that this is a licensed property based on the comic book might prevent Disney from setting it in the Marvel Universe.

 

[Christopher]

Well, there was a time when The Black Hole, rated PG from Disney, was a big deal.

Yes, Disney did attempt to branch out into more adult filmmaking with TBH, Tron, The Devil and Max Devlin, and the like. But their box-office performance was impeded by the conflict between audience expectations for the Disney name and what they were trying to do in those films. So they started releasing their more adult-oriented films (starting with Splash) under a separate label, Touchstone Films (now Touchstone Pictures). If this Rocketeer reboot is under the Disney label rather than Touchstone, that means it'll probably be family-oriented and won't embrace the sexier, more adult side of Stevens's creation. (Although the Pirates of the Caribbean films were PG-13-rated and released under the Disney label, so it's hard to be sure.)

If its still a period piece where he is involved with and battling Nazi's I am all for a reboot of this property. Anything else and I am out.

Given how thoroughly immersed the premise is in 1930s culture and history, it's hard to see how it could be done any other way.

 

[Captaindemotion]

The Rocketeer was a creator-owned comic book by the late Dave Stevens, not a comic strip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book

A comic book or comicbook,[1] also called comic paper or comic magazine (often shortened to simply comic or comics) is a magazine made up of "comics" —narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog (usually in word balloons, emblematic of the comic book art form) as well as including brief descriptive prose. The first comic book appeared in the United States in 1933, reprinting the earlier newspaper comic strips, which established many of the story-telling devices used in comics. The term "comic book" arose because the first comic books reprinted humor comic strips.

You seriously felt the need to make that correction? Like there's any discernible distinction?

 

[Harvey]

Hopefully this will mean a decent Blu-Ray release of the original with some extras.

 

[DigificWriter]

I have just one question: why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's absolutely no reason to do this unless they plan on making it significantly different from the original.

 

[Christopher]

You seriously felt the need to make that correction? Like there's any discernible distinction?

There's a very clear distinction. A comic strip is something like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes, a series of short cartoons published daily or weekly in a newspaper or periodical (or, these days, online). A comic book is a magazine or digest comprising a full-length sequential-art narrative, generally published monthly. A comic strip is either a series of standalone gags or a narrative told in 2- or 3-panel chunks per day (more on Sundays), while a comic book is typically 22-24 pages telling a single story or part of one (or sometimes two shorter stories). A comic strip is contained within another publication, while a comic book is a self-contained publication.

The distinction has often been meaningful when referring to characters who appeared in both formats. For instance, Stan Lee stopped writing the Amazing Spider-Man comic book in 1972, but he's been writing the daily Spider-Man comic strip syndicated in newspapers from 1977 to the present. Various comics publishers over the decades have published Flash Gordon comic books while King Features Syndicate continued to produce and distribute a Flash Gordon comic strip. And so on. They are two different formats. And The Rocketeer has only ever appeared in the comic book format (and the motion picture format).

I have just one question: why? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's absolutely no reason to do this unless they plan on making it significantly different from the original.

I could just as well ask, why not? If it worked the first time, why not do more with it? The success of Joe Johnston's Captain America has probably created new interest in the original film, and the comic has been successfully revived by IDW, so this seems like a natural time to look into revitalizing the character for the big screen. And obviously Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, and Alan Arkin are too old to reprise their roles in the same period setting, so the only way to do more with the character and concept onscreen is by recasting, starting fresh.

And I'm not sure I'd agree that there's nothing to fix. The original film was good, but it wasn't perfect. And as I've said, it changed or glossed over aspects that were very important to the original comics.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ I don't see what the impetus is behind messing with what I think many would consider to be a 'cult classic', though.

The only way I think you could justify doing a new Rockeeter movie and avoid people questioning the impetus behind the project would be to make the new cinematic Rocketeer character part of the MCU, but I don't know how much leeway Disney has in terms of adapting the characters and concepts from the Rocketeer comics.

 

[JD]

But would they be even able to include a character who belongs to somebody else in the MCU? I just don't see them being able to do that, unless the character was from Icon or one of Marvel's other imprints.