Earlier last week, the legendary Leonard Nimoy died and fellow Morlock Suzi Doll wrote up a great piece on all the Star Trek actors here shortly after. Now the great producer Harve Bennett has died, the man who signed on to the Star Trek franchise with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and put the series on solid ground after the uneasy outing of the first movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. You’ll forgive me, therefore, if I have Star Trek on the brain. In my ruminations on the series, I begann thinking about how J.J. Abrams reestablished the cinematic Star Trek franchise after none of the post-Next Generation series took off as movies by rebooting the original series rather than remaking it. Instead of continuing the story of the original series, or doing a straight up prequel of it, he inserted Leonard Nimoy as a different timeline version of Spock and thus gave himself free rein to do with the characters as he wanted. People are more forgiving of a reboot than a remake and, as such, it’s a safer path for a filmmaker to trod down when handling a classic.
For the sake of clarity, reboots are generally defined as instances where all the previous continuity of a show or movie series, its guidelines and character details, are tossed aside and everything starts from scratch. Up until Daniel Craig came on board as James Bond, each new movie had been a sequel to the last. That is, the continuity of Bond, who he was and where he came from, was kept intact. In the late Roger Moore entry, For Your Eyes Only, there’s even a pre-credits scene where Bond visits the grave of the woman he married in the George Lazenby Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Bond’s status as a soldier of the Cold War, however, was getting tougher and tougher to maintain by 2006 and so the reboot started everything over. Despite the rather sad entry of Quantum of Solace, I’ve generally liked the rebooting of Bond. I especially like Skyfall but even if I hadn’t, the Craig movies were a breath of fresh air after the cartoonish Pierce Brosnan years (preceded by the much better rough and tumble Timothy Dalton years, themselves preceded by the cartoonish Roger Moore years). Of course, if I had my preference, and I’ve stated this here before, I would have rebooted the series back to the original intent by placing it in the fifties and making Bond the Bond of the books.
Other series are as yet more resistant to reboots. The Indiana Jones series, for instance. I love the original movies and Harrison Ford will always be Indiana Jones to me but that doesn’t stop me from wishing they’d drop him from it and start over. Disney has the franchise now and word is they’ll replace Ford in much the same way that Lazenby and Moore replaced Connery and kept the series going rather than the way Craig replaced Brosnan and started over. And I say, “Start over!” Cast a new actor (as of this writing, the buzz is that it’s Chris Pratt) and take us back to 1936 and let’s redo the whole damn thing. Rebooting it doesn’t mean the original goes away so what are we worried about? Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris and we’ll always have Raiders so can we just move forward on the reboot already?
Earlier in this post I mentioned J. J. Abrams and, of course, he’s now at the helm of the next series of Star Wars movies but in that case, he’s doing sequels. The story continues instead of being flipped on its head. I understand this one a little more as there’s more story to tell and the series somehow doesn’t feel right unless it’s a trilogy of trilogies so let’s do it. But after that, can we go back and do them all over again with the same characters but maybe different motivations and different outcomes? In other words, create a whole new Star Wars Universe that directly competes with the current one. There will be the Original Universe and the Alternate Universe. Viewers and readers can take their pick.
Other series/franchise characters that I wouldn’t mind seeing reboots for include Ripley, Dirty Harry, and Jack Ryan. I’d include some comic book movies but, frankly, they’ve already got this one covered and are teaching everybody else how to do it. Marvel, in particular, seems willing to reboot its characters from the comic books before the first movies even gets made. They decided early on that no character or story was untouchable or unchangeable and that’s made a huge difference in their bottom line. It also keeps the characters fresh for new generations just showing up to the dance. Even DC comics did some minor rebooting with Superman when it made Man of Steel, though they missed their chance for a full reboot when they introduced dorky Clark at the very end. Up until that moment, they were clearly toying with the idea of Superman just being Superman with no secret identity, much like Captain America is just Steve Rogers and everybody knows it. But then they backed down.
Of course, reboots aren’t always welcomed. Many Trekkers can’t stand the rebooted series and especially hate the latest installment, Star Trek: Into Darkness. Eh, I thought it was fine and though the inter-series in-jokes were endless, I thought they were kind of fun. I think I’d take issue to it if it were a continuation of the original characters but it’s not, it’s a whole new series and if you don’t like it, well, the original series is still there for you to watch. And I recommend watching it, and the movies, in tribute to both Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett but also just for a good time at the movies. All this talk of reboots has taken me away from my normal routine of linking the post to a movie on TCM’s schedule. Oh well, what can you do? Tonight on TCM is a host of musicals, including Sweet Charity, with Shirley MacLaine and Ricardo Montalban. If only there was some way to link one of them to this discussion.