I’d let 80s John Carpenter remake Forbidden Planet
With Kurt Russell and Keith David? I’d pay to see that.
Stranger
Hell yeah!
What was Police Academy but a reboot of the Keystone Cops?
There has not been an original idea since Gilgamesh. The question is not whether something has been done before, but whether the new version is done well or poorly.
It’s all about the money – but not in the way most people think.
Movies and TV shows are expensive. Goddamned expensive. And when things are expensive, investors don’t want to risk money. And a known property is perceived as being less risky than a new one, since some of the audience immediately has an idea of what they’re getting. So sequels and reboots can attract investors more readily than a new film can.
There’s also the influence of TV and video. The one thing Hollywood can do better on a big screen is spectacle. Which means big budgets. Which means known properties.
Independent and foreign films don’t have the same issues, and TV can still do new drama and comedy that fits the small screen. But Hollywood can’t risk the cost of a small film without a lot of explosions.
I don’t think Married with Children should be rebooted. Nor the simpsons. Nor All in the family.
These are cultural icons and a reboot would cheapen them.
Everything’s better with a robot.
I wholeheartedly agree, but apparently they’re doing it, anyway:
They already did a rock musical stage show of it in London over 25 years ago:
Jaws (looking at you The Meg)
** Casablanca** didn’t need a reboot, but that didn’t stop them from trying.
the Day the Earth Stood still didn’t need a reboot. Especially not the Keanu Reeves one.
the Maltese Falcon desperately needed one after the first two disastrous version, but after the John Huston-Humphrey Bogart version, it doesn’t need another.
The Prisoner didn’t need a reboot, but it got one anyway.
They ran out of ideas centuries ago*.
Or maybe you think that we shouldn’t have a newer version of Hamlet or Cinderella or Oliver Twist? Either on stage or at the movies?
And maybe you are actually surprised that I know that James Bond as a character will return after Bond 25**?
Rebooting is just using the same source material again. Sometimes it’s pointless, as it was with the color remake of Psycho, sometimes it turns out horrible, like the latest version of The Mummy. And sometimes it turns out to be great, as it looks like and early buzz is indicating about A Star is Born.
It’s not the rebooting that’s problematic, it’s how it is done.
And why shouldn’t younger generations get a chance to put their marks on older source material?
*The Seven Basic Plots - Wikipedia
** No title available yet.
You wouldn’t mind a re-imagining of Tempest, though?
I’ve had this argument endlessly with English majors. Despite what people say, Forbidden Planet isn’t The Tempest.
It may have been inspired by the setting of Shkespeare’s plays, and uyou can draw one-to-one correspondences between characters, but their motivations are altogether different. Morbius isn’t a deposed ruler abdicating his responsibilities and fleeing into exile – he’s a philologist running into novel situations, exactly as he should be doing. Prospero encourages the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand, Morbius opposes the affair between Altaira and J.J. Adams. Cookie isn’t Stefano and Trinculo, even if he gets drunk with an inhabitant of the planet (and Robby is more like Ariel than Caliban, anyway. Caliban is, if anything, the Id monster). And Cookie isn’t mutinous. And so on and so on.
You can think of modern out-of-place Shakespeare plays as reboots, if you want. I’ve seen modern reboots of The Tempest – the Teller-directed version put on by ART, a version with a ballet dancer as Ariel, even the movie Prospero’s Book. All of these leave the story and motivations intact. Forbidden Planet doesn’t. Whatever its roots, it’s now sui generis.
Personally, I think Forbidden Planet owes more to H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs than to Shakespeare. But, that’s a discussion for another thread.
It is almost certain that a re-boot will suck. But it’s not completely certain.
The reason it’s almost certain a reboot will suck is because it’s almost certain that anything will suck. 90% of everything is crap.