What/when was the first reboot?

Cafe Society
1

I guess this is two questions:

  1. When was the term “reboot” first used, in its modern pop-culture sense of starting over with a series/franchise? and
  2. If the phenomenon predates the term, what was the first thing actually to be rebooted (in this sense), even if it wasn’t called that at the time?
2

Well 1 & 2 Chronicles is a revision of parts of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 &2 Kings, so that’s pretty far back…

3

The Iliad and The Odyssey were just two examples that were written down and survived of the Greek oral tradition of their legends, and The Epic of Gilgamesh is just one version of the Sumerian oral tradition that was written down and happened to survive.

4

I’m considering a reboot as distinct from a remake or just multiple adaptations of the same source material.

5

Wikipedia says, “The first known use of reboot applied to an entertainment franchise was in a 1994 Usenet posting.”

I agree that a reboot has a much more specific connotation: the owner of the franchise has decided to start the history of the character (or the entire universe containing many characters) over again. That’s the usage from comic books, which has now slopped over into movies and other media.

IOW, the change has to come internally. Merely writing independently isn’t a reboot. And the story needs to go back to zero. Changing the actor playing a character isn’t a reboot of that character. And sequels, prequels, and revisitings are definitely not reboots.

So none of the Sherlock Holmes adaptations are reboots. I stopped watching James Bond movies a long time ago, so I don’t know whether, say, Daniel Craig was a reboot of the movie franchise or just a continuation.

I took a quick look at a list of 1994 movies, but none of them jumped out at me as a reboot to justify the 1994 usenet usage. I don’t remember what comics were doing either. However, I know that DC’s 1986 Crisis on Infinite Earths was definitely a reboot and so precedes the naming.*

*The 1956 creation of the Silver Age heroes wasn’t a true reboot because the Flash and Green Lantern and Atom were new characters. Stan Lee brought back Captain America and the Sub-Mariner in the early 60s *but didn’t give them new origins.

6

Yep, a lot of ancient stories were possibly rewritten to fit a local population. Hercules and Sampson are possibly reboots of Gilgamesh.

7

Definitely a reboot. Craig’s Bond is at the beginning of his career, having just gained his 00 status, and is distinctly different than any previous movie Bond (although more faithful to the Bond of the books).

8

They may be referring to DC’s Zero Hour, which was specifically announced as a way to fix the continuity. It came out in 1994.

9

The Atra-Hasis flood story being rebooted in that of Utnapishtim’s flood story in the Gilgamesh epic. Which was subsequently re-rebooted to Noah’s story.