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What old media would be the most terrifying if rebooted?
I am not against reboots or remakes as a concept. The TV show version of Buffy was actually a reboot. A lot of good fanfic is a remake on some level, especially the AU/fusion trend. That said, some concepts would not work in the hands of today's film makers and show runners. Some concepts would not fly with today's fannish spaces. Some concepts only work within the the context of the era they are from.
What show (or movie or whatevers) would you be most horrifyied to see a reboot announcement for?




The Star Wars OT.
I like what they did with VII and am looking forward to VIII. I don't want to see IV, V, and VI redone (even with the issues I have with ROTJ) Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer (RIP) and Harrison Ford will always be the original trio to me.
I second this.
I second this. I've loved every Star Wars movie, and none of them need to be remade.
The MacGyver reboot is kind of terrifying already.
There are Highlander reboot rumors that make me cringe.
I'd prefer that if writers want to do something like a reboot, instead, take a concept from an older show, polish it up, change a few things, give it a brand new name so it has some originality and launch from there with a pitch of 'it's like [x], with a twist!' Instead of 'here's our really garbage attempt at rebooting [x]'.
I watched the first couple of eps of the Macgyver reboot, as it just started airing here, and it's really not what I wanted st all, nothing like the original.
That's a good way of looking at it, I think a reboot can work well if it goes with the spirit or central theme of the original, more than if it gets bogged down in specifics
The biggest issue with the MacGyver reboot is that they stripped away all of the nuance that made it 'MacGyver'. They're convinced that if they just have a blond guy who doesn't use guns tinker with some stuff, they have MacGyver, but that's not all the show was. The current show is 'Mac does a tinkering thing, they chase the bad guy, Mac does another thing, then Jack and friends roll in w/ their guns to save the day'. Way to miss the point, writer/producer peeps.
I completely agree with you that we need more shows use concepts like 'immortals in modern day' or 'paranormal investigators' that isn't a reboot, just it's own thing. Too often it's a 'reboot' just for name recognition and the creators are trying to do with own thing. I've written many long rambly paragraphs on this in my livejournal :)
The name recognition is exactly the thing they're doing. The first incarnation of the 'MacGyver' reboot was even LESS MacGyver than the current show... if that tells you anything.
I'm 100% for snagging an existing idea and giving it a twist, as long as they also slap a brand spanking new name on it and not grab an old name out of a hat.
I'm watching Riverdale and while I am not an expert on the comics, I feel like the attempts to tie it to the comics canon are it's weakest points as a show. That's more of an adaptation problem, if the show is even linked enough to the comics to count as an adaptation, but same idea still stands.
I don't know if they could do a Remington Steele reboot and make it work believably. A huge key to that show is the sexism and the whole fact that Laura has to hide behind a man, which somehow made way more sense in the 1980s than it does now. I seem to recall they wanted to do a sequel where it was Laura's daughter trying to reboot her mother's agency - not sure if it made it past pilot season.
I think comedies are especially hard to reboot. The BBC keeps trying to reboot various beloved old comedies from the 70s and 80s, and the only time it ever works is when original cast members (and preferably also writers) are still on board.
I feel like with comedy a lot of it is in the actor's delivery, so it's very hard to accept anyone else in the role unless they're doing a very close impression (in which case what's the point?). Same with the writing: if you remake an old script word-for-word, it's a pointless copy that people won't like as much as the original; if you try to write new scripts that match the style of the old, it runs a big risk of feeling dated and old-fashioned; if you update the humour, it loses a lot of the character that drew people to the original.
I guess the problem is that with comedy, the concept and plot are way, way down the list in terms of priorities; it's the characters and dialogue that make the show, and that's what's hardest to recreate in a reboot without just making it an exact copy. I honestly can't think of any comedy reboots that have worked for me, aside from the kind that are "members of the original cast get together twenty years later to make Where Are They Now? type episodes".
I tried to watch those sitcom reboots that the BBC did, as I loved most of the originals, but they just didn't work for me at all, they were almost painful to watch.
I think that comedy is so linked to the attitudes and concerns of the time that it's hard to revisit at a different time. Attempts to update comedy shows are up against this very thing. A comic idea might work specifically because of the social attitudes and conditions of the time. Remove it from that context and what's left? Some of the old comedy shows that were developed in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s would be cringeworthy now. Leaving aside our more sophisticated expectations of staging and presentation and thinking of the content, a lot of stuff that was pushing the boundaries back then would just look and sound gauche today - because attitudes in society have moved on. I really think that comedy has to be of its time and attempts to 'update it' are most likely to destroy it. There are, no doubt, exceptions. Someone said to me that Mr Bean will live longer than most comedy because it's mostly visual.
There's been almost perpetual rumours and proposed Blake's 7 reboot rumours for years, but they never seem to come to anything, and I'm mostly happy about that.
I don't think reboots are bad by default, but sometimes there's a flattening out of things that made the originals popular, like they take the edginess out to make something more mainstream.
One type of reboot I do like is the pattern of pre or post original canon shows, Endeavour for instance does a good job of keeping the feel of Morse while still being it's own thing, I'm hoping the new Prime Suspect with young Jane Tennyson that starts this week is as good.
I would not characterize BtVS as a reboot. It is the concept as Whedon intended it to be. The movie was not.
Going back to an older post... but The Princess Bride.
I just don't think it would do well in 2017. It worked in the eighties because there wasn't much fantasy out there and well, it was all very camp as far as effects go.
Now after we've had Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and with the Wheel of Time possibly coming, people are going to expect more from Fantasy.
We'd get a darker gritter Princess Bride. The princess would get a tragic backstory, we'd get flashbacks if Inigo Montoya's father's death, Buttercup and Westly's childhood would look miserable. Buttercup would become an action girl, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I just feel that they'd hammer it in too hard. (look she's a strong female character! Check out this strong female character! Wow what a strong female character! Look at her being all strong!") We'd get extended footage of Kevin Arnold before his grandfather came over to read the story, Westly and Buttercups childhood would go on forever... it just wouldn't be as fun as the original.
And well, personal bias, but I'd feel sad to see anyone other than Andre the Giant playing Fezzik.
I feel the same way about the Labyrinth but that ones obvious why it wouldn't work today.