Remake vs. Reboot
So This Reboot of Ghostbusters just did OK this weekend most likely because of it’s negative reviews (from people who did not actually see the movie I bet). It’s actually a good sign of how timeless a movie can be that no one wants to see it get remade.
But I wonder, would it matter if all the geeks were using the phrase incorrectly?
Not much of a difference between a remake and a reboot theoretically but The Ghostbusters of 2016 is a reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise not a remake of the 1984 film
What is the bare difference of the remake vs. the reboot.
A remake is when you take one movie and..remake it. It’s that simple. Sometimes you update the movie for the era in which you make it, but it’s basically the same flick.
Ben-Hur starring Charleston Heston is a stellar movie in my opinion. A fact that only got stronger when I discovered that this 1959 MGM production was actually the third time the film had been made . All three movies keep close with the story adapted from a stage play of the same name and each on of them was actually a brilliant storytelling piece of Cinema, with the 1959 version having a slight advantage due to it being in color and the other two being silent motion pictures. the forth remake of this timeless tale is coming out this summer and has not only one pair but three pair of big shoes to fill.
Best remake ever is Scarface cause most people most likely don’t known it’s a remake of a Howard Hawks film, which it overshadows.
Writer Oliver Stone took the core of the 1932 movie and re-imagined what the same type of character would be like if he lived in the 1980s when drugs was the big money crime.
Scarface is hands town testament that all remakes are not bad. Whenever someone tells me a movie should not be remade I always point to Scarface (This works really well if that person is into Hip Hop, the Brian DePalma film works like a bible to the music genre (Too bad DePalma hates rap)
A reboot is when you… Reboot a franchise. So your not trying to remake the first film just refresh or reset a franchise. A reboot usually does indicate that the original film was followed by a ton of sequels that got crappier and crappier till it became stale. Either that or it should indicate a shit load of time as past since the last sequel (This is the number one reason that The Spider-Man reboot did not do as well as they hoped)
My favorite roboot is Star Trek. Not only did The JJ Abrams 2009 reboot, refresh the franchise but it also works perfectly as Star Trek 11. Rather than just starting from scratch altogether the movie inserted a time traveling plot in which the main villain came back in time and inadvertently changed the time line of the original Star Trek allowing the filmmakers more leg room to come up with an interesting story within the universe.
Of course this plan of attack backfired a little with Star Trek Into Darkness, which followed up the 2009 reboot. It was a cool concept to literally remake The Wrath of Khan, which was the sequel to the original Star Trek: the motion picture, but it totally undermines the cleaver way the 2009 movie gave the rebooted franchise space to explore new directions. So while Into Darkness introduced america to Benedict Cumberbatch in a great way, I still wished they did something else.
I would say most people would agree that Batman Begins is the greatest reboot of all time. It certainly updated Batman for a new era by making him less comic book and more real to what a man with lots of money and a fucked up childhood could do. It was a refresh that breathed new life into a franchise that needed it. Batman and Robin was stale, and so bad that we could not go down that direction anymore, so Christopher Nolan literally cooked up another Dark Knight rather than just heat up the old cape crusader that had been in the fridge for a while, and the re-telling of the story worked beautifully
The all female Ghostbusters purpose was to reboot the franchise so the studio can make more money off it. I think the reason why some people think of it as a remake is because we forget that there was a Ghostbusters two (not saying that it deserves to be forgotten but seriously, if you want to be chronological about movies that should have not been made, let’s be fair)
Ghostbuster 2016 works better for me by keeping in mind it’s a reboot and not a remake. I mean the girls in the film do not even have the last names of the dudes in the 1984 version, so it’s complete different characters with the same title, and same premise.
It should be pointed out that the 1984 Ghostbusters technically rips off a 1975 TV show of the same name (Most of us are probability more familiar with the 80s cartoon that show was “remade” into,you know, it was two dudes who hung out with an ape?)
If the 2016 movie was under another name we probably would like it better as a movie that’s ripping off Ghostbusters allowing it a better opening weekend
