In recent years the reboots that stand out the most to me are the Spider-man movies, we're on the 3rd iteration now in less than 20 years, 4th if you count Into the Spiderverse, ok there is a massive amount of source material and multiple timelines so it does make some sort of sense, add in the Sony/Marvel copyright battle/deals as well.
I've liked all of them in varying degrees, they've had their good and bad sides, the leads have all added their own styles and it's ultimately been the villains that have been keys to success or failure, Willem Dafoe was brilliant as The Green Goblin.
An even better example is Batman, losing count as to how many different Batmans we've had over the past 30 years, and the funny thing is that Michael Keaton is returning to the role after more than 30 years, which I love as he is one of my favourites.
On the superhero front lets look at a reboot that didn't work, but then again the originals didn't work that well either, Fantastic 4, for some reason one of Marvels best loved series just doesn't seem to work on the big screen, not sure why, the casts of the films have been good, the production teams all have good backgrounds, there's no obvious single cause for their failure.
Another couple of franchises that they keep on trying to reboot, unsuccessfully I might add, are Alien and Terminator, why do they keep doing this to us, they can't recreate the winning formula and just keep on building up our hopes just to dash them on the rocks below, leaving us feeling hollow and unfulfilled.
But it's ok, Disney are going to be rebooting Aliens next, can't wait for that!
There is a couple of reboots I will defend but it wont be popular and that's the Predator reboots Predators and The Predator, I enjoyed both of those and think they were unfairly judged by "fans" and critics, but I do agree that the Alien/Predator films were abominations and a total waste of the potential that they had.
The horror genre are always seeming to reboot their franchises, whether it be Friday the 13th, Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street they very rarely work, most of the time they are lame imitations with added gore and they are trying to revitalise something that has already run it's course.
Some reboots work, and breath a whole new life into a potential new franchise, recently there was a new Tomb Raider released starring Alicia Vikander and I really enjoyed it, in fact I preferred it to the originals and I hope they make a sequel.
Planet of the Apes is another example of how to make a successful reboot, though it was also a bit of a prequel as well but I'm not going to hold that against them.
The new Star Trek movies also prove that reboots can work well, then again there was a little bit of re-imagining in there as well, and Benedict Cumberbatch is no Ricardo Montalban, but overall a job well done.
Finally we can't talk about reboots without mentioning the King of Reboots, the name's Bond, James Bond, 25 official movies, including the new one No Time To Die, and 6 different lead actors.
There is a theory though, to follow up a previous blog, that James Bond is just a code name (along with their 00 status) not their real names, this is done to protect their loved ones.
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