Reboot!

You know, back when I was a kid (when all we had was Super Nintendo, VHS and CDs, and we had to skate up hill both ways on our Xtreme neon green rollerblades) the word reboot was nothing more than the title to a cheesy computer animated TV show that debuted on Saturday mornings in 1994. The 2000’s, however, have changed all that and the recently released Friday the 13th marks yet another entry in a long line of series reboots, where audiences are treated to a re-imagining of familiar TV shows and films. If you’ve already noticed this trend and gotten tired of it: well too bad, because it isn’t stopping any time soon. If you haven’t noticed it, then you lost your eyesight years ago which makes me wonder how you are reading this column right now.

You see, somewhere along the way, the people who make all the TV shows and movies realized the reboots save everyone a lot of work. I mean, why bother to come up with a new concept when you can just use an old one and spruce up the graphics, make the dialogue hipper, and the haircuts more modern. Sometimes these re-imaginings are even met with a great deal of commercial and critical success because they turn out quite nice. The Dark Knight, anyone? Casino Royale? Battlestar Galactica?

And hey, there’s no denying that reboots are a lot of fun. It’s no secret that the older a movie is, the more off-putting the cheesy special effects become. Not everything can be as well done as classic Star Wars. Yet, at the same time, I can’t help but feel like something is being lost in the translation. Maybe it’s the fact that they cram Shia Labeouf into every frakkin’ movie they can.

On the film front, we’ve had disconcerting efforts like The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Pink Panther, and Planet of the Apes. Released in summer of 2001, Planet of the Apes was one of the first and a particularly disappointing reboot thanks to its penchant for cherry-picking various ideas from the original five Planet of the Apes films and an ending which was as confusing as, well, I don’t know. Is there anything in the world more confusing than an ape-version of the Lincoln memorial?

On the TV show front, audiences have had to suffer Bionic Woman, Flash Gordon, and Knight Rider. Each series was soon cancelled after its debut, with the finale of Knight Rider coming out this month. The creators’ mistake here was thinking that people actually watched the original for the talking car and not the paragon of manliness which is The Hasselhoff.

Then there have been the truly dubious reboots, like The Incredible Hulk, a 2008 reboot of the 2003 Hulk film, and Punisher: War Zone, another 2008 reboot this time for the 2004 Punish film. If a film flops, can we at least allow a decade before a reboot? Back in my day, if you made a bad film, you’d just go ahead and make an equally bad or worse sequel. Did Hollywood start allowing mulligans? It seems that way with 20th Century Fox Executive Tom Rothman expressing interest in a reboot for Daredevil.

Worst of all, you have truly confusing films like Superman Returns, which ignored the events of Superman 3 and 4 but acted like a sequel to Superman and Superman 2 while also attempting to act as a series reboot. This could have been really confusing to audiences if the film had been interesting. Thankfully, it was dreadful and dull.

Yet, despite the bad far outweighing the good, the will to reboot carries on with Freddy Kreuger following in the footsteps of Jason and Michael Meyers in 2009. The film Star Trek, directed by J.J. Abrams of Lost and Cloverfield fame, debuts this year as well. So who’s ready for the inevitable Back to the Future remake staring Shia Labeouf? Yeah, me neither.