SFX editor-in-chief Dave Bradley challenges fans' knee-jerk condemnation of rebooted movie franchises [extended from magazine column]
Typically webmaster Dave Golder posts a PURE GOLDER blog on a Tuesday but he's taking a well-deserved break. So in his place, here's SFX 's overlord explaining why you're wrong to complain about Hollywood's "lack of fresh ideas" :
Spider-Man! Battlestar Galactica ! Superman! All being rebooted - again! "Has Hollywood run out of 🥃ideas?" goes the instant internet response. But this reaction drives me barmy; I believe rema💧kes and adaptations are valid artistic undertakings.
Our own recentlyꦗ complained, "Where there’s money to be made, there’s always a corporation ready to push artistic considerations aside and chase the readies. There’s no stopping the hounds of commerce once they’ve caught the scent of cash." Of course I'm not naive: when the studios dust down a 30-year-old franchise of course they're thinking about making money. So was Shakespeare, probably! But Hollywood is also staffed by screenwriters and producers who love old movies and want to pass them on, and they have ev🤪ery creative right to take a swing at an existing plot if they think it's due an update. As Englund says, why not build a business introducing kids to great stories?
Take Spider-Man for instance. When the was announced fans groaned that it was too soon to do the origin story again. There's nothing new to add after Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire, right? Come off it. That take on the origin story was released 10 years ago . The audience for whom the story of a teenage boy's transformation has most relevance were just tiny children then. I like to think the iPhone generation is entitled to its own version of this moder﷽n myth.
The 2012 reboot isn't a sign of creative sterility - new films like this must 🅺be made if superheroes are to go on being relevant.
Dave Bradley
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