Whilst the occurrence of the movie reboot isn’t anything close to new, I feel that just lately, it’s everywhere I look.
Heathers is on telly (don’t watch it), Tomb Raider at the flicks (probably won’t watch it), Death Wish (sorry but I will watch it), Flatliners, Lethal Weapon, IT, Robocop, Judge Dredd, Overboard, Total Recall, the 30 different Spider Man films no one asked for, DYNASTY for fucks sake. Training Day is a TV series (I’m sorry, Bill Paxton), MacGuyver, Lost In Space (maybe I’ll try), From Dusk Til Dawn (I watched it all, don’t be stupid like me). Mates, they are bringing back THE FUCKING MUPPET BABIES. The Grudge. Again. Masters of the Universe. Sister Act. These are all real by the way, it’s not just me listing literally any old film.
Mostly, I’ll accept it. What else can you do? The people holding the wallet were bound to run out of ideas sooner or later. The cynics amongst us/within me would argue that everything is a re-imagining anyway. A late-stage facsimile. A long distance regurgitation. Joseph Campbell tells us that the number of journeys made by any hero being written are finite, so really, there’s only so far anyone writing this shite is able to go without someone saying “Oh this is like that Western from the ‘50s�.
On rare occasions it may not be such a bad thing. Let’s not pretend we won’t all enjoy watching this new Jumanji starring The Rock with a Chinese takeaway and a Cornetto come the next Bank Holiday. It’s what Robin Williams would have wanted. And I know for a fact at least a few of you have given those new Indiana Jones movies a crack.
But sometimes, sometimes they go too far. They push their luck. They dig their greedy, piggy trotters into something that means something to me, and I wanna turn into one of those bad Reddit bastards and leave all their films one star iTunes reviews without watching them.
And so with that in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity to get angry about 5 reboots. They aren’t even with us yet and I’m already pissed. 5 isn’t close to the whole list, but maybe we could just start a recurring series of me shaking my fist at the Hollywood sign every 3 weeks for taking the crusty old things I loved and drowning them in a sink with gold taps.
The Craft
I don’t want this. NOBODY wants this. Unless Diablo Cody is writing it. And as far as I know it isn’t her, but the guy who wrote 10 Cloverfield Lane. No mate. Such was the struggle to create this as a reboot, they’ve actually changed tack and decided it’s going to be a SEQUEL. A 20 years later affair. Again, I say no thank you. Whilst The Craft did poxy numbers at the box office, and the cult following it amassed at the time is likely only people like me (girls who were fledgling teens in the 90s, loved a friendship bracelet, customising their school uniform, and trying to cultivate just the right amount of Courtney Love roots on an unnatural hair colour you achieved by staining your mum’s bath navy blue/orange/maroon/teal), rebooting The Craft in 2018 is dangerous bordering on irresponsible. With 50% of teenage girls on Instagram posting photos of The Satanic Bible, their burning church belly tattoos, Black Sabbath tshirts they got down Primark, and cosplaying as something between Morticia Adams and Alex Mack, this movie is going to give them even more “alternative” culture to pretend to be into. Whilst I myself am not a witch, if any one of you has found yourself here and reading this, please know I am only doing my best to save you from an impending future of charlatans and imposters ruining your fun. Aside from that, I don’t want to know what any character in The Craft is doing 20 years later. Except maybe Nancy. Let’s just pretend she grew up to be Jessica Jones. It’s much easier that way.
I bind you, movie industry, from doing harm – harm against other people and harm against yourself.”
Drop Dead Fred
Blasphemy. Pure and simple. Absolute sacrilege. How dare you not only step over the grave of our beloved Rik Mayall to remake this film anything less than 300 years after his death, but replace him with one RUSSELL BRAND? Why don’t you just get Adam Sandler to do a British accent and go full arsehole? What the fuck are you trying to do to me?! There is no film like Drop Dead Fred in our current cinematic landscape (Is there? Not that isn’t animated I don’t reckon), and maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe that weird 90s genre of grown up slapstick based on the premise of a childish concept such as having an imaginary friend is over. Maybe it’s not gonna fly in the current social/online climate where, although I assure you that I/we take the issue of mental health extremely seriously, some virtue-signalling motherfucker is absolutely gonna complain that Lizzie may well be envisioning an imaginary clown person as a reaction to deep seated trauma, and that this simply shouldn’t be allowed to fly. As a person with a questionable grasp of my own mental health who watches this film to feel better; I can assure you I do not need that sort of talk, or this reboot, in my life.
The Crow
This one isn’t so much anger, as fear. The Crow is a movie I know is much enjoyed by quite a number of those present here, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that we don’t know exactly how closely it straddles the line between garbage and perfection and for what reasons. Owing to the tragic death of Brandon Lee during the making of the original, with a run time to fill, the thing has more slow motion than a particularly vicious episode of You’ve Been Framed. How will this translate in 2019? Just how much bullet time can we take? Another concern is that Jason Momoa, now confirmed for Eric Draven, is built like a brick shed. How are we supposed to root for the underdog, when the underdog has 30 inch pythons? What is he gonna do? Go on a Machinist diet? Wear a really fucking baggy trench coat? These are questions I want answered, but don’t necessarily want to know the answers to. Frankly I’d find the whole thing a lot less stressful if it just got called off altogether. Again. Maybe by next Halloween I’ll feel differently. Or maybe it’ll have given me a heart attack. At the very least James O’Barr is involved, so maybe that’s a good thing? Maaaaaybe?
Aquacrow.
Starship Troopers
Please, I beg of you. Don’t do this. Don’t let the men who wrote the Baywatch movie take it from us. Apparently this has been on the drawing board for some time now and may never see the light of day. But let’s all cross our fingers just in case. I am. Even Paul Verhoeven who directed the original (well, original reboot) is advising against it, stating that the last thing the current Trump infested society needs is a movie about spreading the human disease across the galaxy, leaving a trail of ignorance, segregation, and destruction in it’s wake. And seeing as how ham-faced Donald appears to be getting all his ideas from old episodes of Star Trek viewed through a 70 year old white supremacist filter, I’m inclined to agree. If they go ahead and make this movie, Hollywood will have given the President pretty much everything he needs to present in his next board meeting about “Space Force�. Fucking hell, when is he gonna die? Aside from having to worry about putting ideas in a deluded megalomaniac’s head, apparently no one from the original film is involved, and I’m not interested in seeing a version of Starship Troopers with no Busey, thank you very much.
Someone is still watching these.
Bloodsport
This has been floating around for years, taking years off my life every time it gets mentioned. At least the questionable Kickboxer sequels had Jean Claude Van Damme in them, and whilst I don’t know that we can forgive anyone for casting Dave Bautista with a mop on his head as Tong Po, at least they’ve been trying. Having the guy who wrote Taken 2 as the only person who’s so far remained on board for a full Kickboxer reboot which is more “character based� than it’s original doesn’t exactly fill me with hope. Why are they assuming we care about the characters? I don’t. You don’t. Do you? I need you to clear up for me who’s the bad guy, have him not really speak. Who’s the good guy, have him be impossibly naive and accidentally charming. Get him an ignorant yankee blue jeans type sidekick, someone loyal but dumb. Get a nosy woman with no concern for her own safety. I don’t need to know any more than these things about them. Take all the money you would have wasted having someone write emotional and in-depth back stories for these characters and split it between a JCVD cameo, some decent choreography, and maybe a few explosions. Or better yet, don’t bother at all and save me the grey hairs.
*In order to prove that I am not in fact a total joy sponge, please note this incomplete list of remakes I actually quite enjoyed – The Amityville Horror, Dawn of The Dead, The Birdcage, Total Recall (calm down), IT, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Evil Dead, Rise of the/Dawn of the/War For The Planet of The Apes, Cape Fear, House of Wax, all those Scandi crime TV serials they made American.