Reboot Mania!

Hollywood goes in waves of popularity. For the longest time the big fad were remakes, followed by the adaptation sensation starting with films like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, eventually carrying over into the sequel obsession where every movie ever made that was semi-successful was getting a sequel, from Cheaper by the Dozen 2 to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Live Free or Die Hard. Now of course of all of these different types of things have always been around, even back to the start of the film industry films have been remade, been sequelized, and adapted from other source materials, but it seems within the past two decades or so Hollywood has become more obsessed with catering to the public, so they purely mimic what the other studios are doing. It now seems as if Hollywood is venturing into the newest fad full on, the fad of the reboot.

What's really funny is when I think of the word reboot, I think of the old Cartoon Network show of the same title that featured early CG-animation, but that is beside the point. A reboot is essentially a fancy name for remake if you wanna get technical. All a reboot is, is taking an old film or TV Show and "re-imagining" it for a modern day audience. Sounds a lot like a remake, doesn't it? Of course, if you point that out, the studios will rap you in the mouth for saying it, even though it's the truth.

These fads in Hollywood are always brought on, as I said earlier, when another studio finds success in that particular area. After Harry Potter, every studio tried to find the next big children's book to turn into a movie and we got Eragon, The Chronicles of Narnia, and more recently Percy Jackson. After the success of stuff like Spider-man 2 and X-men 2, every studio tried to transform every successful movie they've ever made into a sequel. Then came stuff like Live Free or Die Hard causing the studios to try and convince us Rocky should return to the big screen or Indiana Jones. So what has spurred this recent obsession with the reboot?

Over the past few years there have been a great number of so-called "reboots" from the horrendous (Bewitched) to the marvelous (Star Trek). I do think the lynch pin of this current wave was J.J. Abrams's Star Trek and all of the success it has had. Now, every studio is in a rush to reboot something to try and make a quick buck. This summer we're getting The A-Team, and down the line are reboots of other shows like Hawaii Five-O, The Green Hornet, and T.J. Hooker. Following this trend, many studios are also trying to reinvigorate franchises that have kind of run to a stand still, like the recent reboot announcements of Spider-man, Daredevil, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (goodness, gracious!).

Now I will give reboots the benefit of the doubt, if it were not for this little word, there wouldn't have been a Batman Begins or a Dark Knight, or Star Trek, but my point is, is it seems like the studios are letting this fascination with the reboot get out of hand. Does Spider-man need a fresh slate? I don't think so, but does Daredevil? Yeah, it's been long enough, and the first one was enough of a flop to where it is warranted, but not Spidey. As I said, in some cases it is warranted, but as I pointed out, Spider-man doesn't need to be rebooted, and as for The A-Team, or any of those other old TV Shows being turned into films (Dallas anyone?) do the studios really think there's a need for such a thing? Or what about Mr. & Mrs. Smith? My bets are they couldn't get Brad and Angelina to return and produce box office gold for a sequel so the studio rather decided to just reboot instead of trying to do something new and different, and dare I say it, original.

O.K. I'm going to wrap this up before I get cynical and too lost in my tirade, but I will say this. Hollywood goes in trends, and perhaps with the success of stuff like Avatar and the potential success of this summer's Inception, we could possibly see the next fad come to fruition and the studios will focus on original stories written for the screen rather than adaptations, sequels, or reboots. Maybe I'm just putting too much stock into it, but I see it being a possibility. Here's hoping the studios do as well.