Rebooting old movies have now become a strong part of our
media culture. It allows a new, often younger, audience to relive the stories
that others have enjoyed but with the added bonus of better graphics and
usually a much bigger budget.
My personal problem with this is simply, why? Why can’t
people just appreciate the original for what it was? What’s the real point of
rebooting movies? Yes, I understand that in some cases a reboot can only help
it, whether it’s simply improving the story or just raising awareness to a
franchise. For example, I only found out in the last few years that there was a
live-action Spider-Man before Tobey Maguire in 2002. In 1977 we had Nicholas
Hammond who actually did well enough to spawn a television series, The Amazing
Spider-Man in 1978. But I know for a fact that the majority of my friends have
heard of this. The majority of young people think of their first Spider-Man as
being Tobey Maguire because those movies did so well as a reboot. Except the
third movie. We don’t talk about that.
