If you were to take a brief glance over your TV listings, scroll through your favourite streaming site, or pick up the latest edition of those celebrity gossip magazines we all obsessed over as a teenager, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we had some how been transported back in time to the 2000s. Bennifer are back together, the number one film on Netflix today is a reimagining of the 1999 rom-com She's All That, and if you turned on RTÉ 2 last night, you were greeted with the first episode of the Gossip Girl reboot. These, combined with yet another Ghostbusters reboot coming this Autumn, the rebooted ICarly series targeted for a more adult demographic, and James Gunn's The Suicide Squad giving the DC antiheroes another shot at glory just under 5 years after their first critically panned outing; it feels like there is hardly any new and exciting stories being told on the big and small screens these days.
Before we get into it, lets talk a bit about the differences between reboots, reimaginings and retellings. Out of all of these terms we are arguably most familiar with the reboot. To reboot a franchise is to bring it back after a period of absence. Often the name and format remain the same, with stories, plots and/or characters updated for a more modern audience. Examples of this include ICarly (same format and characters rebooted and updated for an older and more mature audience), Gossip Girl (rebooted with new characters targeted for today's teens) and The Connors (a reboot of the 90s series Roseanne).
A reimagining or a retelling is more like providing audiences with a well known, often popular story or franchise and changing one major aspect of the plot or characters. These reimaginings are often telling the same story, just from a different angle. Some examples of this include changing the gender or racial ethnicity of the main cast and telling the same story from a different characters perspective. In recent years reimaginings of popular franchises with an all female cast have become popular, like Ghostbusters (2016) and Ocean's 8 (2018). He's All That, the Addison Rae led Netflix reimagining of the 90s classic She's All That, employs a similar gender flip, having the attractive, popular girl make over the unpopular guy.
For film and television studios, the appeal of reboots or reimaginings is clear. By rebooting a beloved franchise or remaking a well known film from a different character's perspective, it is likely that original fans will return eager for more from their favourite stories. Similarly by keeping a format that has a proven track record of being successful, it is entirely possible that this will continue with the reboot even if it is targeted for a different demographic. So I get it, film and television studios see what works, what audiences respond to most positively and take that idea and run with it. The entertainment industry is an industry at the end of the day and runs on profits and returns as much as any other business.
Now, all this is not to say that I'm utterly against reboots or reimaginings of any kind. One of my all time favourite films is the third adaptation of a much beloved book in 25 years; and almost all of the television shows I rewatch over and over again are variantions of the same format. But what has bothered me about the influx of reboots and reimaginings at the minute is that for the last number of years we have enjoyed a resurgence of great, original and unique films and television shows. The term "TVs Second Golden Age" is one that has been thrown around a lot in recent years in reference to the sheer number of universally acclaimed series that have been released. Additionally, we've seen unique and original concepts in films across a wide range of genres. The feeling of being in the cinema and watching something like Get Out, Jojo Rabbit, Knives Out, and thinking "woah, this is insanely clever" has become all too common. So, I don't have anything against reboots and reimagines in particular, but it just feels like a bit of a regression from all of the great films and tv shows we've enjoyed the last few years.
As I've said, all this is coming from someone who very openly loves superhero films; someone who is currently watching (and rewatching) three different shows about firefighters. I mean, there is only so many ways that something can go on fire, so there's rarely anything new or groundbreaking in their stories or formats. I fully understand the comfort we can get from things that are repetitive in nature, and that we all have formats that we prefer over others. Nevertheless I think that the sheer number of reboots and reimaginings we are seeing these days is tethering on nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. Sure, its great when that show or film series you loved as a kid gets rebooted, and yes sometimes they can be great, but they can also not live up to our expectations and potentially ruin something which we had previously loved. And because we've been so spoiled with such great and original films and tv shows these last few years, you can't help but feel slightly disappointed by the sheer number of reboots and reimaginings cropping up on our screens.
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