Rules for Reboot

Now that (500)
Days of Summer director Marc Webb has been slated to do a new Spider-Man reboot, it occurred to me that perhaps a few rules are in order before this new buzz word gets ground into dust.

1. Give it a rest.
   

   Whatever the new Spidey flick ends up being called, it won't be the fastest turn-around ever seen between the time a franchise dies and is resurrected (that award goes to Hulk and its hybrid reboot/sequel five years later). But seriously, it took decades and rumors of countless other directors before Sam Raimi got the first one on the screen, and that one won't be ten years old before this superhero-in-high-school rethinking gets put upon us. There's a life cycle to these things: box office wonder, decline, obsolescence or kitch (or sometimes both), and then exile to oblivion where it should stay for a while. After all, how can we miss a franchise if it's always around?
   

2. 
   Stop it with the prodigy catapult. You're not fooling anybody.
   
   

   Someone made a really smart decision when they picked Christopher Nolan to reboot the dead-as-a-doornail Batman franchise. Nolan, at the time, had only two major features to his credit: the indie-smash Memento and the Pacino cop drama Insomnia. Both of these movies were deep-minder psychological set pieces and neither would lead one to think that Nolan was the perfect person to make a superhero blockbuster. So when he was picked, it all seemed so subversive. Young blood, uncorrupted by Hollywood success, and an actor's director to boot. Of course, this serious-mindedness is exactly what we got and is what turned Batman Begins and The Dark Knight into such great movies. So why is it that repeats of this model seemed doomed to fail? Look at poor Gavin Hood, the South African director who got noticed with his Iraq war drama Rendition, but ended up producing a stuttering (and stuttered) mess when asked to reboot the X-Men franchise (or at least the Wolverine part of it)? The difference is that Nolan was given the keys to his films and allowed to shape them with minimal interference. However, this trend of favoring inexperienced directors who are hungry for one big film is more often about picking a name who's eager to sign on and doesn't have the clout to push back when suits try running the show. If, let's say, that reboot of The Terminator happens, do you really think producers would look toward, say, Ridley Scott who has over thirty years of experience to ride on? At least the refurbished Bond movies have stuck a roster of qualified (if a bit odd) names for their films.
   

3. If you're not doing anything new, it's a remake, not a reboot.
   

   Stephen Norrington (Mr. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) may "reboot" The Crow. A Darren Aronofsky reboot of the Robocop series has become almost urban legend. And The Terminator is the latest name to be thrown into play. While an Aronofsky take on Mr. Tin Cop sounds cool, every single one of these sounds more like dredging up the originals with different names and a bit better effects in order to cash on the craze that everything that is old must be new again. What all of them lack is what Batman, Bond, and Star Trek all had- a new angle. Batman and Casino Royale both dumped the campy baggage their characters had built up over the decades and went for gritty realism. JJ Abrams took a franchise that had been strangled to death by its own over-wrought mythology and gave a gleeful FU to fans who insisted on strict adherence to cannon. If they make another The Crow, what's going to be different? Another dead guy beats the stuffing out of a different set of interchangeable bad guys while wearing slightly different face paint? Don't waste our time.
   

4. We know things are hard all around…
   

   ...but don't turn reboots into just a chance to squeeze blood from a stone. The scariest thing about the new Spider-Man is how high its sets the bar before people start scrambling towards the familiar. Ok, not very many people liked Spider Man 3, but it did follow two certified blockbusters. One hiccup and its not back to the drawing board, but back in time? Follow this reasoning to its (ill)logical conclusion and if Iron Man 2 underperforms, we may see a reboot of that by 2013. Think back to Star Trek. That original film series made a run of 23 years and ten films, and more than a couple of them were dogs (cough- Star Trek V). By the time Nemesis came around it had probably been long overdue to put it out of its misery, but scrapping one successful franchise due to a stumble caused by getting in the director's way (see rule #2) may mean we'll be on a never-ending carousel of refitted and failing old ideas.