The Word 'Reboot' in Relation to Movies

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's not a remake. It's basically just milking a 'franchise' (and if you can call a group of films this, they've already been milked dry creatively) with tenuous regard for the source material/predessecsors. See also 'non-canon'.

[touchingcloth]

There are very few exceptions to that ^ rule of a series of films reaching the point of it being legitimate to call it a franchise meaning the series has also started to stink. Oceans, Fast and Furious - all total dog shit now if they were even sound to begin with.

It's just the Marvel films which break that mould I think, and even then not without that being subject to debate.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The comic stuff has definitely been milked to fuck. 15+ years is a good run, 20 if you want to count X-Men.

[Mister Six]

Well X-Men is what started the craze, so aye best do that.

[Dr Rock]

Superhero films have just started.

[touchingcloth]

Superhero films have just started.

Nah they've been going for five years or so.

[touchingcloth]

The comic stuff has definitely been milked to fuck. 15+ years is a good run, 20 if you want to count X-Men.

Aye, but less so than some franchises. There are still good Marvel films, but a lot of what turned out to be franchises had run out of steam by episode 2.

[JesusAndYourBush]

See also "redux" in film titles.  Ok, fine, for whoever did it first, but can everyone else stop it, it's silly.

[Sebastian Cobb]

See also "redux" in film titles.  Ok, fine, for whoever did it first, but can everyone else stop it, it's silly.

Apocalypse Now was the big 'un I reckon.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It didn't even have any ducks in it.

[QDRPHNC]

Reboot is one of those horrible terms like "lean in" or  "fake news" that some cunt just made up like a year ago and now everyone is saying it like it's not some cunt's thing.

[rue the polywhirl]

The word 'reboot' to me has always meant 'the act of equipping yourself with a new pair of shoes after you have just lost your old pair of shoes'. In relation to movies, this would be the important stage of a movie where the main character loses their shoes during a climactic event and has to spend time shopping for a new pair.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Reboot is one of those horrible terms like "lean in" or  "fake news" that some cunt just made up like a year ago and now everyone is saying it like it's not some cunt's thing.

Optics

[thugler]

You can easily replace word reboot with remake and it makes no real difference.

This sort of reimagining has happened several times in the history of cinema but suddenly it's something completely different. Remakes have always varied massively on the amount they take from their source materials and in telling a different story with roughly the same premise. It's correct that Reboot really only came into vogue when the remakes were coming so thick and fast they needed a new term to distract from the crushing dullness of it all, i think it was particularly apparent when yet another fucking new spiderman film came out not long after the last one.

[Famous Mortimer]

You can easily replace word reboot with remake and it makes no real difference.

Was Batman Begins a remake of Tim Burton's Batman? What word better describes it than reboot?

[Old Nehamkin]

Was Batman Begins a remake of Tim Burton's Batman? What word better describes it than reboot?

"Adaptation"?

[popcorn]

"Adaptation"?

But it's not an adaptation of Tim Burton's Batman, or a sequel to it. It's an adaptation of the Batman character, sure, but that describes different information from "reboot", which means "we are restarting this franchise".

The word reboot is widely understood and contains useful information. At the very least, there's no reason at all to pretend it can merely be substituted with another word with no loss in meaning. It does mean something.

Of course it has been weaponised for marketing purposes, just like terms like "epic" or "event", but that's no reason to hate a perfectly sensible word.

[purlieu]

I'll split the difference here; there's a logical definition but it's not always adhered to which muddies the waters.

I'm going to go with this. On the whole I generally see it to mean 'the start of a new continuity within a series of episodes or films'. This can mean either it's a radically different vision to previous versions (Batman, Battlestar Galactica) or it's the same creative team cleaning the slate for creative and/or commercial reasons (Spider-Man, Craig-era Bond).
It means that while some of the elements or characters may be familiar, they will be different versions, and the actual stories being told will be different - thus not a traditional remake. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people who don't agree that the word 'reboot' describes that pretty well. And as this sort of thing happens a lot more these days than it has done in the past, having a specific word for now seems reasonable to me. I mean, you could say "a fresh adaptation of existing source material" for the comic book stuff, but that seems a daft argument against a word. You could say "a new adaptation of a previously released film" for 'remake' or "previously unseen and original" for 'new', or "the specific item or scenario I was referring to" for 'it', but words are invented and re-defined by a human desire to make language concise. So, utilising a new word for a specific creative decision in film or TV narrative seems natural to me, and complaining about it does seem a little Old Man Yells at Cloud.

The problem, of course, lies in when the word is bandied about to mean anything that's being remade, brought back, or changed in some way or another. The previously discussed 'soft reboot' is one of those: something that may share some continuity with the past (Terminator), or has dramatic cosmetic changes but no massive continuity clashes (Doctor Who). And there are people who will simply refer to these as 'reboots', which begins to make the term difficult to understand. Then you get single film remakes called 'reboot's, and I've even seen the term applied to Dave-era Red Dwarf, despite the fact that that era begins with a "Nine Years Later" caption and continually references the earlier series of the show.

So yes, the memetic nature of social media and the internet has made the use of the word convoluted and confusing, through people simply grabbing it and using to describe anything that isn't a straight, linear one-after-another series of films or episodes. But at the same time, having a word to describe a series or franchise decided to have a fresh start with a clean slate doesn't seem a problem to me, and the word reboot has been chosen for that purpose.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

You can easily replace word reboot with remake and it makes no real difference.

Yes. The word makes no real difference.

[Johnny Textface]

New Star Trek was reboot as fuck

[Jim Bob]

You can easily replace word reboot with remake and it makes no real difference.

This sort of reimagining has happened several times in the history of cinema but suddenly it's something completely different. Remakes have always varied massively on the amount they take from their source materials and in telling a different story with roughly the same premise. It's correct that Reboot really only came into vogue when the remakes were coming so thick and fast they needed a new term to distract from the crushing dullness of it all, i think it was particularly apparent when yet another fucking new spiderman film came out not long after the last one.

This guy/gal gets it.

Yes. The word makes no real difference.

Except that the word 'remake' is significantly less vomit inducing than 'reboot' when it comes to transparent, cynical, corporate undertones.

[Dr Rock]

The word comes from when computers didn't work right? Turn it off then turn it on again and see if that works. It's the same thing. You don't 'remake' your computer.

[touchingcloth]

Old Man Yells at Cloud.

This was a great reboot of the Don Quixote franchise.

[greenman]

I'm going to go with this. On the whole I generally see it to mean 'the start of a new continuity within a series of episodes or films'. This can mean either it's a radically different vision to previous versions (Batman, Battlestar Galactica) or it's the same creative team cleaning the slate for creative and/or commercial reasons (Spider-Man, Craig-era Bond).
It means that while some of the elements or characters may be familiar, they will be different versions, and the actual stories being told will be different - thus not a traditional remake. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people who don't agree that the word 'reboot' describes that pretty well. And as this sort of thing happens a lot more these days than it has done in the past, having a specific word for now seems reasonable to me. I mean, you could say "a fresh adaptation of existing source material" for the comic book stuff, but that seems a daft argument against a word. You could say "a new adaptation of a previously released film" for 'remake' or "previously unseen and original" for 'new', or "the specific item or scenario I was referring to" for 'it', but words are invented and re-defined by a human desire to make language concise. So, utilising a new word for a specific creative decision in film or TV narrative seems natural to me, and complaining about it does seem a little Old Man Yells at Cloud.

The problem, of course, lies in when the word is bandied about to mean anything that's being remade, brought back, or changed in some way or another. The previously discussed 'soft reboot' is one of those: something that may share some continuity with the past (Terminator), or has dramatic cosmetic changes but no massive continuity clashes (Doctor Who). And there are people who will simply refer to these as 'reboots', which begins to make the term difficult to understand. Then you get single film remakes called 'reboot's, and I've even seen the term applied to Dave-era Red Dwarf, despite the fact that that era begins with a "Nine Years Later" caption and continually references the earlier series of the show.

So yes, the memetic nature of social media and the internet has made the use of the word convoluted and confusing, through people simply grabbing it and using to describe anything that isn't a straight, linear one-after-another series of films or episodes. But at the same time, having a word to describe a series or franchise decided to have a fresh start with a clean slate doesn't seem a problem to me, and the word reboot has been chosen for that purpose.

I would actually say the opposite, "remake" has more of the implication that you might be looking at very significantly different works, perhaps a basic story framework shifted in location or time, The Departed for example being a remake of Infernal Affairs or A Fistfull of Dollars being a remake of Yojimbo.

"Reboot" by comparison I think implies more of a sense of continuality, as mentioned it comes from rebooting a computer so I think more of the implication of correcting an error in something continually in use. The idea that there will always be Bond or Batman or Terminator films but that the franchise needs to be corrected somehow removing a mistake from the direct continuity but keeping the same basic setup. Its a word I think more directly linked into franchise cinema as a result.

[touchingcloth]

I would actually say the opposite, "remake" has more of the implication that you might be looking at very significantly different works, perhaps a basic story framework shifted in location or time, The Departed for example being a remake of Infernal Affairs or A Fistfull of Dollars being a remake of Yojimbo.

I always see "remake" as being just that, so something like The Thomas Crown Affair. I don't know if there's a specific word which conjures up the kind of thing you mention in my mind. "Reimagining" or "retelling" maybe, but they're both shite.

[Mister Six]

Reimagining is definitely PR SFC that serves no purpose other than to dress up the more workmanlike "remake".

Unlike reboot, which is a different thing. As any fule kno.

[Panbaams]

Casino Royale (2006) is arguably a reboot and a remake: a reboot of the Eon Bond series, because it's explicitly stated that this is his first mission, and a remake of the piss-poor (non-Eon) version with David Niven.

If that's the kind of thing you argue about.

[purlieu]

Within the Eon continuity, the arrival of Daniel Craig as Bond is a reboot as it clearly cleans the slate from past stories. 'Remake' doesn't make any sense at all in this context (the fact that Casino Royale was made into a semi-spoof Bond film in the '60s is pretty irrelevant), so the idea that the words are interchangeable is bollocks.

[greenman]

I always see "remake" as being just that, so something like The Thomas Crown Affair. I don't know if there's a specific word which conjures up the kind of thing you mention in my mind. "Reimagining" or "retelling" maybe, but they're both shite.

I would say that a remake doesn't implicitly say your carrying over a lot of details of the characters and setting, it could be that your carrying over the plot into a different setting ala say The Seven Samurai into the Magnifcent Seven.

Reboot on the other hand I think implies more of a direct continuity, Nolan's rebooted Batman still has Batman, Alfred, The Joker, Gothham, etc in it. The phase has IMHO risen as the franchise has become more dominant in Hollywood and the implication there will always be Batmans, just some of them will need to be buried.

[Jim Bob]

The word comes from when computers didn't work right? Turn it off then turn it on again and see if that works. It's the same thing. You don't 'remake' your computer.

Indeed.  Just like you don't 'reboot' a movie.