Same as we reconcile that Bart Simpson should be about 34 by now, which is pretty close to Homer’s age (Homer has ranged from 36-40 over the course of the show). Floating Timeline.
I watched Knight Rider for at least a year before realizing that KITT was an acronym of Knight Industries Two-Thousand. In my defense, I was like ten at the time.
Despite the band members saying otherwise, “Pearl Jam” refers to male ejaculate.
:eek:
It doesn’t say “They’ve given you a name / And taken away your other name.” 007 is the number. And if it’s a song that has nothing to do with Bond, why are you even bringing it up?
It’s a series of reboots, just like many other series (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Batman, Superman). It happens a lot in comics, too, especially long-running ones.
Well, it’s hereby resolved in my mind that “reboots” are symptom of disease afflicting our popular culture and I hereby wash my hands of any lazy-ass entertainment that can’t stretch for a consistent back story. Comics especially are garbage.
So you think that any series should only go on for as long as its main character’s actor can reasonably portray the role? Let me know how that works out for you.
I suspect it will work out just fine, and save me a lot of time. And we’re not talking about the actor, we’re talking about the character. James Bond portrayed in the world of the 60s by three different actors is fine by me. But I can’t buy the same one guy surviving (or “rebooting”) from the 60s all the way to the 2010’s portrayed by a dozen different actors, unless he’s a Time Lord.
Well that’s kind of the point of “rebooting”. It is ridiculous to expect the backstory to remain consistent when a guy who was 20- or 30-something in the 1960s would be 60- or 70-something now. You either A) “reboot” and jump the timeline forward so that the character is 20- or 30-something in the here-and-now, fighting here-and-now threats, B) leave him a 20- or 30-something in the 1960s fighting 1960s threats that modern audiences can’t “relate” to, or C) keep the timeline the same from the 1960s to the present and have the ridiculous situation of a 70-something guy performing all manner of feats and stunts that would be highly unlikely for somebody that age. I’ll choose option “A”.
I mean, c’mon. Superman would be more than 100 years old by now.
Understand, and I don’t mean to go on too long about it, but my point is that it’s better from my perspective simply to go on to something else outside of James Bond or Batman or whatever, and it’d be better (but highly unlikely, I know) that Hollywood try to come up with something new rather than going back to try to squeeze yet more cash out of limited number of “franchises” (another sick term afflicting our entertainment culture).
That’s it. I’m done. Carry on!
So, basically, they should have stopped putting on Romeo and Juliet in the 1600s?
See, that’s what watching movies these days does to one’s reading comprehension…
There is a lot to be said for that. It would have saved us from Gnomeo and Juliet!
Romeo and Juliet is a story on its own. There aren’t any sequels. Every production is a reboot.
Except for that TV pilot where the ghosts of Romeo and Juliet offer advice to the only person who can see them, a woman writing the romance column for a New York newspaper.
I think you have an overly narrow, literal view of this subject, one which probably conflicts with your views on other similar things (such as E-Sabbath’s excellent theater example). It is incomprehensible to me why you’re having such a problem wrapping your mind around the idea of adapting a character in different ways in the same medium. You obviously have no problem with it cross-media: for example, you’re not confused because James Bond in the films isn’t words on a page, as he was in his original incarnation as a character in a series of books.
Really? Or is it a whoosh?
They could have kept Bond in the same time-line but that would eventually make every film a period piece, and that would make what are already expensive films that much more expensive. It’s cheaper to just make each film current.
I was thinking of how people repeatedly and consistently re-adapt Romeo and Juliet. From simple costume updates to complete rewrites like West Side Story, R+J and, yes, even Gnomeo and Juliet.
Each is a reboot, but each is a reboot with a reinterpretation for the character of the times.
That’s why I said the 1600s… when styles changed enough for the original casting, with young boys as girls and all that, would have no longer been appropriate.
And this was the problem with the new Superman Returns movie from a couple years ago. It tried to somehow present a 30 year gap of technology and societal change as a ~9 year gap of Superman being gone. (How old was Lois’s kid?) They simultaneously have the characters of the first 2 Superman movies (and ignore the later sequels) and project them a few years into the future, but set them in a Metropolis that looks like late 2000s. It didn’t work for me.
Actually, I think this is something we are all struggling with, to some degree. Look how many reboots get stuck in trying to match the cast from the original, or their portrayal of the characters.
Part of the problem is also trying to recapture some element that societal change has made irrelevant. Like “Charlie’s Angels”, which made some sense in the late 70s of making women into private detectives. When they rebooted in 2000, there was no way they could make the same premise presentable straight up and still be relevant, so they had to go over the top.
I’d say there’s a difference between “how do we update this series without alienating the fanbase or turning off new viewers” and “I refuse to believe that the same character can be portrayed by multiple actors, so I am going to insist that it must be different characters with the same name.”