What's the scientific explanation for a reboot ?

So they make a string of successful films based on a character and just as we're getting comfortable looking forward to more films, they take the whole cast, have them shot, buried in a landfill in Mexico and start all over again, new cast, new director, and we're back to square one with another origins story ... I guess it has to do with with the fact that every 8 years you have another generation of teens who achieve semi-sentience and refuse to watch "old films about old people, doing stupid old stuff" But if you have a better explanation, please tell me !

greedy hollywood corporations

EyeofSauron said:

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greedy hollywood corporations

Or... they lack the vision and smarts to actually go further than they've gone before and get scared and revert back to the comfortable starting point.

They are just being lazy.

(Audience with short attention span and no "institutional memory" of film + well-known brand name + fresh new cast) / risk-averse suits = $$$

From a marketing standpoint, movies are competing with broader and much more convenient entertainment options than ever before. Movies with name recognition are more likely to make money and much less risky than a new properties. It's really a no-brainer for them.

scientific explanation

movie² = $

There's a number of factors involved:

• Appeal to a younger audience.
• Ego of the director/producer/studio to say "I can do it BETTER than the original people did.
• Money - they can keep milking successful things until they're no longer successful (same reasoning with sequals).
• Fear to try an unknown concept - leads back to money, but they don't know if a 'new' movie will make money, but they can usually guarentee SOME kind of profit for a reboot.

In the end, there's nothing related to "The audience wants this" (except for "The audience will pay to see this").

The multiverse theory works. The reboot is in a slightly different universe than the original film.

You guys are way over thinking this. Its PURE economics. Usually, the folks involved sign on for three movies. If the first one makes a bazillion dollars, the principles involved want to re-negotiate their contracts to get more money. by the time the third one comes out, the main players are making so much money that it's just not financially attractive for a studio to keep going down that path, especially considering they are going to want to renegotiate again for even MORE money.

So they start again with a fresh batch of people, who are willing to accept smaller salaries just to get on the band wagon.

Not to put a damper on the rampant blaming of money and money only, but another factor has to be "do our leads really feel like playing the same role over and over and over again?". Does anyone really think RDJ wants to keep playing IM indefinetly, or would any actor with any respect for their own craft get bored eventually? Patrick Stewart by the end was saying "BS - there's nothing interesting for me to do as Picard". Also, 'can our leads continue to convincingly play the same characters who never age?'. Can Spiderman age into a thirty-forty something guy, or is he stuck as a late-teen, early twenty-something? Do we want to see Indy at 70?

I think it all goes back to branding, myself.

Setting aside the "Do we want to see a 70 year-old Indy" (PS many do -- or at least think they do) or "Does this actor want to keep playing the role" or "Can we afford the actor," ask yourself the following:

If the answer to any of those questions is "no" then why does the reboot/remake get made at all?


I'll tell you why.


Branding.


Ok, so, Patrick Stewart says "Bugger this. I'm not doing Picard anymore. I'm off to play King Lear in the West End." And Shatner's already "dead" in canonical terms (sorry Bill -- your novels don't count). And, let's be honest, NOBODY wants to see a Voyager or Enterprise or DS-9 film.

What now?

Well....they COULD produce an entirely new franchise about some crazed alien who uses a hyper powerful ancient artifact to destroy the universe because his homeworld was accidentally nuked, and which features a fresh-faced young cast buzzing about the universe in a spaceship where they fight said alien and other badguys....or......

They could just reboot Star Trek altogether. Just, 100% reboot the thing. Retcon everything that came before, too, just to give the writers freedom to do what they please. Basically, we'll keep some of the graphical trappings, maybe a few bits and bobs of lore, the same character names, and that's about it. Everything else, you can do what you like. BUT you keep the name and the veneer of Star Trek! Yay! We'll make a FORTUNE!

Obviously, you can see which way they went.

This applies to any "optioned" property. I can rattle off several films that were "optioned" properties which had precious little to do with their source material, and were basically just craptastic films whose prestige was boosted PURELY by attaching an established IP to them.


If you strip out Peter Cullen's voice and the names of the robots in Transformers, and call it Clash of the Robolords, how many people here think we'd have gotten three such films?

If you change the names of the organizations and characters ALONE, and call it "American Commandos" instead of "G.I. Joe," does ANYONE AT ALL think that that movie would've made even 1/3 of the box office it did, LET ALONE spawn a bloody sequel?!

OF COURSE NOT. THESE FILMS ARE CRAP. You know they're crap. Hollywood knows they're crap. Even their fans know they're crap and simply call them "popcorn movies" to disguise one very simple fact:

Branding WORKS.

Strip the branding out of any of those films and ALL they are is crap. Add the branding back in, and suddenly you've got a $1.8 BILLION box office world wide.

THAT is the science behind reboots, remakes, and any other IP-slathered property. They do it because it WORKS.

Solo4114 said:

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I think it all goes back to branding, myself.

Setting aside the "Do we want to see a 70 year-old Indy" (PS many do -- or at least think they do) or "Does this actor want to keep playing the role" or "Can we afford the actor," ask yourself the following:

If the answer to any of those questions is "no" then why does the reboot/remake get made at all?


I'll tell you why.


Branding.


Ok, so, Patrick Stewart says "Bugger this. I'm not doing Picard anymore. I'm off to play King Lear in the West End." And Shatner's already "dead" in canonical terms (sorry Bill -- your novels don't count). And, let's be honest, NOBODY wants to see a Voyager or Enterprise or DS-9 film.

What now?

Well....they COULD produce an entirely new franchise about some crazed alien who uses a hyper powerful ancient artifact to destroy the universe because his homeworld was accidentally nuked, and which features a fresh-faced young cast buzzing about the universe in a spaceship where they fight said alien and other badguys....or......

They could just reboot Star Trek altogether. Just, 100% reboot the thing. Retcon everything that came before, too, just to give the writers freedom to do what they please. Basically, we'll keep some of the graphical trappings, maybe a few bits and bobs of lore, the same character names, and that's about it. Everything else, you can do what you like. BUT you keep the name and the veneer of Star Trek! Yay! We'll make a FORTUNE!

Obviously, you can see which way they went.

This applies to any "optioned" property. I can rattle off several films that were "optioned" properties which had precious little to do with their source material, and were basically just craptastic films whose prestige was boosted PURELY by attaching an established IP to them.


If you strip out Peter Cullen's voice and the names of the robots in Transformers, and call it Clash of the Robolords, how many people here think we'd have gotten three such films?

If you change the names of the organizations and characters ALONE, and call it "American Commandos" instead of "G.I. Joe," does ANYONE AT ALL think that that movie would've made even 1/3 of the box office it did, LET ALONE spawn a bloody sequel?!

OF COURSE NOT. THESE FILMS ARE CRAP. You know they're crap. Hollywood knows they're crap. Even their fans know they're crap and simply call them "popcorn movies" to disguise one very simple fact:

Branding WORKS.

Strip the branding out of any of those films and ALL they are is crap. Add the branding back in, and suddenly you've got a $1.8 BILLION box office world wide.

THAT is the science behind reboots, remakes, and any other IP-slathered property. They do it because it WORKS.

^-QFT. It's the branding. Hollywood knows that people will go see movies that are sequels, remakes or adaptations of previous films because they know that if there are fans, they can get money out of them when they go see it. When it comes to it, Hollywood now lacks the stones to release a lot of original films because they fear losing money, where as they know that something that's a remake/sequel/adaptation will surely make some money back because they know fans will pay, even if it doesn't do well in the box office but does well on DVD/Blu-Ray release. When it comes to original works, there's no sure fire way that it will remotely make any money back.

Solo4114 said:

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And, let's be honest, NOBODY wants to see a Voyager or Enterprise or DS-9 film.

Talk for yourself... ahh Enterprise... Hoshi Sato

Some of you are under thinking this: It's a combination of all the above factors. I'm sure Tobey is thinking "I'm getting too old to do another Spider Man and I'm being typecast." and then spits out some ridiculous number to do it. Afterward the studio execs think that these overpriced actors are eating in to their profits and they can barely afford to pay for both stewardesses on their G4's when they travel between Manhattan and LA. So they decide to start over with some actor that nobody has ever heard of for $50 thousand and a hooker in his trailer while they are filming.

Hmm. Some of that makes me sound a bit bitter.

Solo4114 said:

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And, let's be honest, NOBODY wants to see a Voyager or Enterprise or DS-9 film.

BTW, I would like to see an Enterprise film, especially if its a continuation of the Mirror Universe episodes from the Enterprise show. See a bit of the reign of Empress Hoshi Sato.

Ok then, that's two (2) votes. Good luck convincing the powers that be to greenlight it. :P

For those using the fact the same actor may not want to do the same role over and over - that's all well and good, but it does not answer the question.

I give you, Dr. Who.

One continuous story spanning nearly 50 years now. The lead actor, companion, show runner, etc, all get their fill and move on - they cast another actor(s) and/or get a new runner and continue the story.

I don't think anyone is saying RDJ or anyone else should do the same role through 10 movies. However, nothing says they can't recast after someone wants out and move on from there. We don't want to see yet another origin and rehash of the same villain over and over and over.

There are better villains out there for say superman than Zod who's getting in again, better than Luthor with a land scheme. Darksied, Braniac, and on and on. Batman's got a whole gallery of villains, we don't need the Joker yet again in an origin story. There's loads out there to work with from a story standpoint.

Director's may think they can do better than the last guy, but you'd think they'd want to tell a story that hasn't been told before.

No immagination for this generation over grade point average times the square root of over paid Hollywood folk... Solve for R = Reboot

Sean

Remember when "reboots" were called "remakes"?

Sent from my Apple Newton

What's the scientific explanation for a reboot ?

Hollywood brain atrophy.

NormanF said:

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Remember when "reboots" were called "remakes"?

Sent from my Apple Newton

Except that reboots and remakes are subtly different.


A remake takes the existing story, and retells it while retaining a fair portion of what was in the original. For example:



and...




Are there differences between the two? Yes, but it's basically the same story.


A reboot, on the other hand, need not hew as closely to the original material, and may, in fact, intentionally ignore or "overwrite" the original material. For example:



And...




And...




Reboots may still include much of the original material -- or the material on which the original was based -- but aren't as closely tied to the original. So, Batman Begins has basically nothing to do with Batman '89, which itself has nothing to do with >ZOT!< the Adam West Batman from the 60s. By contrast, a remake might have taken the same basic plot and made it "more serious" or something. Instead, we have a total departure from the "original."