Reboots: Love 'em or Leave 'em ??

[c0rnedfr0g]

Seems like rebooting franchises is the name of the game these days: Batman, Superman, Battlestar, James Bond... oh, and Star Trek.

Are you in favor of reboots? Which work, and which don't? Will the Star Trek reboot fly or flop?

 

[Jax]

Like anything, some work and some don't but I think the Bond and Batman reboots have been more than succseful so far and I am happy with what I know about Trek XI.

Bond and Batman weren't total reboots they kept the core basic's but deliever a more realistic story, which goes well with fans than what we used to get from both franchises. As for failured ones like Superman and Hulk, I don't think they were bad ones and failed more to do with how those sorts of stories and revieced in this day n age and wonder if they have a place anymore.

ST could go either way knowning my luck it will be a good movie but a flop in terms of $$$.

 

[Harvey]

Reboot tends to get thrown around more than it should, I think. Neither Superman Returns nor the new Star Trek movie really deserve the label. I thought Casino Royale was the perfect re-start to the fatigued franchise, as was Batman Begins. But, on the other hand, The Punisher: War Zone looks horrible (I feel sorry for Dominic West). And, as much as I liked it, The Incredible Hulk wasn't as successful as it could have been.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Most reboots are good because most stuff is garbage and needs to be rebooted as hard as possible.

Star Trek, however, is one of the few things that is not garbage (no, not even ENT and VOY, not when you compare them to the real garbage out there) and requires more along the lines of tweaking than rebooting.

And by "reboot," because we always have to define these terms, I mean "Starbuck is a woman, Spock is a Klingon." Not that Romulans have warp drive a few years before they "should."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Reboot tends to get thrown around more than it should, I think. Neither Superman Returns nor the new Star Trek movie really deserve the label.

I don't look on either of those films as reboots. Not even ST XI. I don't care how different it looks; everyone knew it would be different anyway. I don't think anyone seriously expected it would look like TOS; that just wouldn't work on the big screen.

In any case, I view the look of the film as irrelevant; it's still the same Trek continuity as always. The visual style is simply a way of interpreting the action. Different 'staging' but still the same play; different lens, same camera; etc. Everything that happened in TOS, with the old look, happened here with this one. And you can imagine TOS novels as happening with either.

Bond? Casino Royale is no more, or less, a reboot than any other new Bond. Every new Bond recasting is a reboot, in a sense. This is no different.

 

[Harvey]

Bond? Casino Royale is no more, or less, a reboot than any other new Bond. Every new Bond recasting is a reboot, in a sense. This is no different.

I'd argue that every Bond film through Brosnan was a sort of soft-reboot. A new actor, yes, and updated to the era it was in, but still in the same sort of continuity.

Moneypenney, for example, was played by the same actress through both the Connery and Moore eras (and Lazenby, I suppose). The character was interpreted the same as well. Q, once Desmond Llewelyn played him, stayed the same throughout. Each transition of Ms acknowledged the previous M's passing. Roger Moore's Bond mourns the loss of his wife, which happened in a movie with Lazenby's Bond. Connery's Bond carries out his vengeance against Blofield in Diamonds are Forever, a vengeance that is the result of events in Lazenby's film. Dalton's Bond references his wife's death, and Felix is played by the actor who also played him in a Moore film. The Russian General (whose name I forget) also appears in both the Moore and Dalton eras.

Craig's Bond, on the other hand, casts all this aside. It goes back to the very beginnings of James Bond's career. Even Judi Dench's M, the only element to remain constant, is played with a much harder edge, as if a different character.

 

[slappy]

The Punisher: War Zone looks horrible (I feel sorry for Dominic West).

No it doesn't. It looks like what the Punisher ought to be unlike that piece of crap first film (2nd technically). Maybe it's a niche audience, but that's the way it's supposed to be in the first place.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I agree that neither Star Trek XI nor Superman Returns are actual reboots. Star Trek has already done recasting. Robin Curtis replaced Kirstie Alley as Lt. Saavik in Star Trek III. An actor other than Mark Lenard played young Sarek when Spock has a flashback to his birth in Star Trek V. Star Trek XI is simply an extreme version of that same recasting. Certainly, the fact that Leonard Nimoy is in the film as old Spock implies that all of these guys will eventually grow up to become the actors that we know & love from The Original Series & the 1st 6 movies.

Superman Returns is somewhat more of a reboot but not really. The whole thing is a lengthy homage to the Richard Donner films but all of the roles are recast except for Marlon Brando as Jor-El (and I think maybe there's a photo of Glen Ford as Pa Kent somewhere in there). The timeline is somewhat different. Superman: The Movie was clearly set in the 1970s but 2006 tech abounds in Superman Returns. Lex Luthor is far more menacing in 2006 than he was in 1978.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Superman Returns. I think it succeeded not because it was or wasn't a reboot but because Bryan Singer is just a flippin' brilliant director. However, I think it did help that it felt free to draw on the legacy & backstory of the Richard Donner films. (If only they had gone with more of a post-Crisis Lex Luthor, I think it would have been perfect.)

I'm a big fan of the current Battlestar Galactica but I've never really seen the original, so I've got no basis for comparison. But if I were a fan of the original series, I think I would be up in arms over the reboot. For one thing, it stifles opportunities. Why rebuild when you can build upon what has come before that made it popular in the first place. After all, the idea to add on to the continuity instead of rebooting it was how we got Star Trek: The Next Generation. The new Doctor Who has also proved that you don't need to get rid of what has come before.

Batman is a slightly different animal. There have already been so many different iterations of Batman in the comics & TV shows. Even the continuity between the Burton & Schumacher movies was pretty loose. The only consistencies between all 4 films were Michael Gough as Alfred & Pat Hingle as Comissioner Gordon. Chris O'Donnell played Robin in both Batman Forever and Batman & Robin but there were 3 different Batmans-- Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, & George Clooney. There were also 2 different Harvey Dents-- Billy Dee Williams & Tommy Lee Jones. Christopher Nolan's take on the character is yet another take on a character that has been interpreted a wide variety of ways. I loved the Tim Burton movies. I love Batman Begins & The Dark Knight too but in very different ways. I also loved the 1990s animated series. When I was a kid, I loved the 1960s Adam West TV show. And I suspect I'll love the next big screen incarnation of Batman as well (unless it super sucks, like Batman & Robin did).

Even Judi Dench's M, the only element to remain constant, is played with a much harder edge, as if a different character.

I don't get where you're getting this. Certainly I think Dench's M was just as harsh in Goldeneye as she was in Casino Royale.

My feeling about Casino Royale is that it could be a reboot but in some ways it's just a prequel to the 1st 20 films. It just so happens that, considering time never seems to actually pass in the James Bond series, every era that Bond is in is automatically the present, even if we are witnessing his past. Bond's existence is a non-linear existence. (The Cold War prologue of Goldeneye is the one time this theory doesn't really fit.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Bond is a Prophet! I knew it!

 

[Supervisor 194]

"Reboot" as a buzzword has taken on a peculiar life of its own. The concept of tweaking, changing, recasting, etc has been done to movie and TV franchise heroes for decades mostly unheralded as an event unto itself--Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Bond, and so on.

I think there also is an internet mob mentality that has taken root to an extent and decided that since Batman Begins and Casino Royale were good films, every franchise should be rebooted to fit whatever their specific notion of said franchise. They see "reboot" as automatically good because they assume it will conform to whatever their standard is.

Personally, I simply prefer a good story, well told--and in the case of most franchises, I see no reason to automatically throw everything out to get there. Use what works, and ignore the rest--and you'll more than likely have a good product.

 

[SalvorHardin]

I'm not against reboots or reimaginings or whatever they are called...

If I will like or dislike one depends on each movie separately and I decide If and when I see it.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I don't mind reboots, if a series has dropped in quality sometimes the best thing you can do for it is reboot the franchise with a new creative staff and storyline.

 

[The Evil Dead]

The original work won't disappear so if the new version sucks no harm done, I say bring 'em on.

 

[Unicron]

I'm kind of mixed, because I think it depends on the status of the existing series. I don't think anything should ever be rebooted lightly, or that a reboot should be made just to be made. If you either can't or don't want to capture the essential essence of the series, whatever it might be, then there's no point in keeping the same name on the new program.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I'm sick of this term "reboot." Just because both Olivier and Branagh assayed Hamlet doesn't make the latter a "reboot" of the former. It's not a computer; it's a movie. People need to not be so fucking literal and devoted to concepts of "canon."

 

[The Wormhole]

Reboot? I loved that show. Loved it when it first came out when I was a kid, and even as an adult I can still sit back and enjoy the show.

Oh, wait, that's not what we're talking about, is it?

 

[suarezguy]

Not a fan of them. I thought Batman Begins was pretty good but a continuation of the old series could have been also, IMO the point of making new films to old properties is to further develop and build on the past installments (a new Batman, or one with 1 year of experience, is almost contradictory and disappointing when the character has been around, even in contemporary film, for so long), and this applies even more with series that already have a lot of material-Spider-Man, Star Trek, Bond. With Ultimate SM I thought the changes were pretty much for the sake of change and not as good as the original, and if you throw out the previous events and styles (as with Bond and what could happen to ST), just come up with a new character/universe.

 

[crouteru]

Reboots should only happen if something new can be brought to the table. Batman was good because a. the previous movies never really told the origin story and b. the story is being told in a more serious and realistic light. Similarly, the Battlestar Galactica reboot was a more serious take on a concept that had a more light-hearted original run. The new Bonds have also succeeded in removing a number of the cliches that plagued the franchise in more recent outings.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

As for The Incredible Hulk, there are a few points about it.

1.) Other than the origin flashback scenes, there's not a lot about it that contradicts Hulk (2003).

2.) Stylistically, Hulk & The Incredible Hulk are very close to each other. Hulk is the much more artsy of the 2 but there's not a huge gap in styles like there was between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins.

3.) I think that Hulk was better than The Incredible Hulk but that doesn't really have anything to do with rebooting. It was simply the studio overcorrecting the mistakes of Hulk. They wanted to make a movie with more action but ended up creating a movie with no soul.

4.) The only major aspect of the movie that was "rebooted" was the cast. I think those changes were about 50-50. Edward Norton is a much better Bruce Banner than Eric Bana was. Sam Elliott was a far better General Ross than William Hurt. (Hurt just seemed to be doing his best Sam Elliott impression.) Jennifer Connolly was better than Liv Tyler but I don't know how much of that has to do with Connolly just getting better, richer, deeper material to work with. Tyler's Betty Ross was just kinda there.

 

[I am not Spock]

I don't really like 'reboots' 'remakes' reimaginings' 're-dos' or whatever they're called.

Batman and James Bond were proper reboots. Nolan's movies ignore Burton's and Schumacher's; and CR throws away all aspects of the previous twenty films (except for Judi Dench). But both of these are good examples.

Just because it worked for Batman and Bond, why should every major franchise be rebooted? It seems like jumping on the bandwagon, to me. Superman Returns isn't a proper reboot. It acknowledges Donner's films. The jury is still out on Trek XI. It doesn't seem like Abrams and his team have changed anything seriously enough from TOS to classify it as a reboot (except the visual changes).