Are Reboots Worth It

Image via WikipedToday there is a drought of creativity, or maybe I should say originality. It feels like every movie or tv show made today is a reboot or re-imagining of an earlier story. We have seen a good share of them:

• Battlestar Galactica

• Flash Gordon

• Star Trek

• V

… just to name a few. The question facing us is not the one I see all over the net, “What should be rebooted next?” but “Are these reboots worth it?”

Have they paid off?

I am not sure why Battlestar Galactica was a reboot and not a new series. It is so different from the original, the purpose of this reboot was merely to collect the nostalgia from the original series. Honestly, I can see no reason they had to call the robots Cylons, or any of the other terminology. Honestly, I took me a couple years for me to get over the fact that it was so different before I could get into the series.

Flash Gordon was a flop, and it didn’t have to be. If they had gone back to the original comic strip they could have avoided most of the oddities of the new series, and without the need to rehash old stories. Just pick up the world and move forward.

Star Trek… The reboot would have worked better if they had chosen someone with talent and ideas to do it. I enjoyed the movie, but found it to be an anomaly like the animated series.

V took the idea of the original, and took it in a new way. I am really curious what it would have looked like if it had stayed a miniseries. Since they transformed the miniseries into a series, a lot of fans are confused about why so much of the storyline was shorthanded in the first couple episodes. Only after they understand the production hurdles could we go forward talking about the merits of the series.

Your turn

So what do you think? Are reboots worth it? Or should creators focus their efforts on producing original content or if they have to should they pick up a world as is and move forward on it.