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'The Matrix' Reboot: It's Finally Happened. Hollywood Has Run Out of All the Ideas (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: In our hearts, we all knew this day would come. Warner Bros. is planning a reboot of The Matrix just 18 years after the iconic sci-fi action film dazzled audiences around the world, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Matrix films were lauded for their creativity, special effects, and distinct cyberpunk and manga influences. In total, the trilogy grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide. The Matrix will join other famous film properties -- Star Wars, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, and Terminator among them -- receiving a recent franchise reboot or "reimagining." Others include RoboCop, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, reboots of Indiana Jones, Predator, Jumanji, and every superhero movie that's ever existed, are scheduled to hit theaters soon. And TV, for its part, is a dystopian wasteland of bland prequels to famous action movies. Hollywood relying on tentpole franchises, instead of taking risks on original ideas, is not new or surprising. But many believed that certain properties like The Matrix were off limits -- at least so soon after originally being made. It's clear now, though, that the major film studios can't afford to wait. They have no other ideas. This puts the studios in a precarious situation, because the once tried-and-true strategy of inundating cinemas with popular franchise extensions no longer looks as foolproof as it used to.
remake 2 & 3. They were garbage.
Whoa.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They'll screw it up as they did with Point Break
I think the submitter meant Star Trek not Star Wars. Star Trek got the re-imagining, Star Wars has merely had more delivered of the pre-envisaged canon.
I wonder how long we'll have to wait before a proper new and original franchise star up. I'd like to see Elric or the Ian M. Banks Culture stories
It's good luck to be superstitious
NOW you perceive the film industry has run out of ideas? In 2017? More likely, those who voted this to the front page just happen to be in the 35 to 40 year old zone where the banality of popular entertainment starts to become intuitively obvious even to those with no critical thinking skills. Not news. Status quo.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
not as made due to divorce issues, then I might actually look forward to this.
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As I understand it, it isn't a reboot per se. Rather, it will be another story set in "The Matrix Universe." So rather than the story of the Nebuchadnezzar, it will center on the crew of, say, the Ganesha. Make it a prequel.
Think something like "Star Wars: Rogue One" or something similar.
Maybe go with the original this time? Get William Gibson to adapt it for them?
and when movies try to go beyond that, like Star Trek The Motion Picture, people complain endlessly.
Well, many would say that was just the 2001: A Space Odyssey idea.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Just make proper sequels
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I don't believe they have run out of ideas. They don't want to take on the risk of launching a movie with no history given the costs associated with creating a major sci-fi/fantasy movie.
It's actually rather sad, between the comic book universe and the "remaking" of existing franchises, there's a ton of really great stories that fail to make it to the big screen as a result.
John Wick 3: The Matrix
On the run from fellow assassins, John decides to change his identity, and become Neo. Neo then encounters a group of terrorists, and is offered a chance to see the truth. The world, as it really is. After some stuff Neo/John returns and fights a bunch of terminators.
The End.
Ideas are plentiful. I can come up with ideas. Some might even be decent movies.
But ideas are risky. Making a movie is expensive, especially a big-title blockbuster. Tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars for the very biggest. $63,000,000 for the Matrix. Of course studios aren't going to gamble that kind of money on new, unproven ideas. They will spend it on things that they know have a proven history of financial success. Franchises, sequals, spin-offs. Things the market has assessed, and judged worthy. Stars with a track record of drawing in the crowds. Stories that are packed with cliches, but cliches that audiences have always responded positively to.
This assures hollywood of profits, but it also means all movies start to look the same after a while. If you want new material you will have to look to independent productions, where they can take risks - but be warned, Sturgeon's law holds, and you will have to wade through a lot of horrible B-movies and obscure review websites to find the hidden gems.
Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Hollywood business is currently driven by metrics that put incredible emphasis on the immediate payout over the long-term health of franchises and eventual returns that used to come with home video sales. Part of this has been driven by the digitization of movies and music and part of it is the marketing of instant gratification.
Much of this has to do with Wall Street's insistence for quarterly returns since this is where movie studios have to go to if they want the cash to make them. It's also why you've seen movie budgets both explode and shrink at the same time. The banks want their money at a return rate which would make most mobsters blush. If you're not going to produce a hit that will, at minimum, return triple its costs then you'll not get financed. On the other hand if you can keep the costs down in the single digit millions, then plain curiosity during opening weekend will likely see profit.
The stuff in the middle doesn't return fast enough for anyone to care about getting it made. Forty million for a movie these days? Forget it. Hollywood can't make the guarantees it can with a budget of two-hundred million. You want the movie to grow an audience through word of mouth? Forget it. Hollywood doesn't have the patience for that to happen. It needs the numbers to come up in the black inside of the next twelve weeks, not in the next two years.
I really hate to say this, but it could technically work.
In the original matrix movies, the matrix and zion kept getting rebuild and they were already on their 6th generation or something.
So this could be the generation after
That said, I still think they shouldn't do it.
A faithful BTTF set in 20151985 could have been rather amusing.
Of course, a faithful reboot of anything is rarer than anything else.
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Films? There is only one Matrix film. There were never any sequels.
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if you only watch non-original remakes. TV is not "a dystopian wasteland of bland prequels to famous action movies". If you count Netflix, Amazon, Cable channels like HBO and the BBC (and you should), there are tons of original stories being told. I'm in the middle of season one of Taboo and absolutely blown away by the depth and grit of this story (and Tom Hardy's acting is awesome in it).
Yes, there is tons of dreck on TV and in the movies, but you don't have to watch it. If you don't want a world of rehashes and reboots and generally unnecessary exploitation of stories already told, change the channel / don't buy the ticket.
There's hundreds of movies that come out each year, maybe 10% of which are prequels or re-makes. If I go to AV Club and look up their reviews of recent movies, I see:
After The Storm, Taipei Story, Frantz, The Sense Of An Ending, Raw, Personal Shopper, My Scientology Movie, Actor Martinez, Kong: Skull Island, The Last Word, The Shack, Table 19, Catfight, Before I Fall, Wolves, Donald Cried, Logan, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Collide, Rock Dog, Ash Brannon
20 movies, only two of which are big re-makes/sequels of well-known action movies. So what's the problem? If you don't like franchise movies, the large majority of movies being created aren't re-makes/sequels.
It's like saying all music today is terrible because you hate country...just listen to something else!
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Hollywood has made more money from abroad than in the US for a while now. It's now to the point that they are making movies primarily for foreign consumption and merely showing them here.
That is also why a lot of movies are full of explosions, and don't have much confusing plot (woohoo transformers!), because that is easy to translate into any language and culture. Seriously, check out these numbers.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
hey, we're giving you Ghost in the Shell, you nerds love that one, quit yer whining!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They've been out of ideas since at least Rocky II.
Yeah, that Rock 1 idea of a young guy finding a wise old mentor, preparing well, and overcoming great odds was original at the time. ;-)
Hollywood can't help but do this now. It's all that's left to them.
Every film nowadays has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly thanks to Hollywood accounting practices. To invest that kind of money you have to be able to show the principals an expected return on that investment. You need to do market analysis and show that you have an audience large enough to get that return.
The only way to do that is to copy older blockbusters and assume the returns will be in the ballpark. Hence, reboots.
Look at Deadpool if you want to know about risk aversion. The studio did NOT want to make that movie. It was "risky". Imagine living in a world where you would think that a Deadpool movie was too risky. That's why they're going for The Matrix. The two sequels were garbage but still made bank. So they know that this reboot will too.
It's the beginning of the end for Hollywood, IMO. Their model can only support smash blockbusters, and now they're out of them.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Episode 4 was ok. Episode 5 made me angry. Episode 6 went right off the rails, but the 20TB data-crystal VR holo-release had some decent extras, and the AI simulation of Michael J Fox playing Marty McFly was spot on. If you weren't a fan of ep 4, just rent ep 6 from RedBox Drone.
On the Beeb, at least something original (to the screen) is coming.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Fuck me.
I'm old.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
it's really about a dozen ideas but the matrix is your cookie cutter hero story with a bunch of old names thrown in to make dummies think how deep it is
I'm guessing that if you have a VHS Tape or DVD of a movie which is being "rebooted" or "reimagined" then you could be a target of big film-maker lawyers because you have a competing work which could hurt the value of the new product.
Hopefully I'm not giving any studio suits any ideas - I'd hate to go to the clink because I owned a copy of the Matrix part 3.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
They'll screw it up as they did with Point Break
I think the problem is that there isn't an asshole shortage in Hollywood.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Amber Chronicles is a swashbuckling matrix with infinite universes between Amber and the Courts of Chaos. Do that.
I dunno. They do a Three Musketeers for every new generation, and that's always in the year 1625. Remaking Back to the Future every thirty years or so actually seems like a pretty good idea, because you can slide the window forward and have a whole fresh set of gags.
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Hollywood ran out of ideas at least as far back as the 1990's. That's one of the reasons The Matrix was as popular as it was: It was, in many ways, an original thought.
I agree with others on this; leave The Matrix alone. It doesn't need to be 'rebooted', it doesn't need a 'remake'. Leave it be.
Can we stop with this reinventing of the language and stick with the words that really describe what they're doing? They're doing remakes. The only reboot I've seen is Star Trek, where they used time travel to radically change the universe, but it's technically the same universe (or multiverse) as everything that had preceded it. The new Battlestar Galactica pushed the term "reImagining" to stress that they were changing the story and doing it differently, but it was still a remake (a fantastic one).
Movies in a franchise are generally either a remake or a sequel (or prequel). I'm not sure I would use the term "sequel" for the James Bond movies, where each one tends to be an independent storyline with few sequential aspects, but loosely speaking they fit the definition.
they are about as good at coming up with new ideas for films as there at coming up with new distribution methods.
I thought it would lead to layered realities, and that it would expose that many people are perfectly content in the baseline Matrix, some people's minds rebel. These people are identified and hooked to a 2nd Matrix in which they are made aware of the baseline Matrix, can interact with it, pursue their hero fantasies each to their own level necessary (Neo needed to be the One, Trinity need to be in love with the One, Morpheus had to be the one to find the One...) and steered into the whole Zion mythos.
A few might, like Neo, once exposed to he baseline Matrix, realize that they could be in a 2nd-level Matrix and find themselves able to manipulate it as well. At that point a 3rd..N+1 level matrix would be unnecessary. Those unlucky few would just be lobotomized by the machines and put back in the soup. The effort to entertain the chosen ones with Matrix 2 is justified only by the notion that the undamaged brains allow more wetware computing power to be utilized (i.e., humans not just batteries).
Neo getting a big needle in his brain may have been an unpleasant ending. Perhaps once the battle of Zion happened, the 3rd movie would end with a "reset" back to Neo first waking up in Scene 1 of the first matrix. They can just keep Groundhog Daying the hell out of Zion.
That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of creativity's death.
The studios primarily care about profits reaped with minimal risk. The glut of prequels, sequels, reboots, and adaptations is happening because those properties are already known among the population and have a built-in audience.
Consequently, original material gets shoved aside. Hollywood writers should be pissed because they're not being utilized to their fullest extent. At this rate, Avatar may be the last original property to originate in Hollywood.
after all that was a bit of a fresh idea.
Both the Wachowskis are sisters now, so that sounds about right.
Whoa.
LOL, brilliant. This is a terribly written article, for the simple reason that it fails to identify if the studios are doing a remake, a reboot, or simply adding more stories in the same 'Wachowskverse'. Remakes are usually dimwitted rewrites of old classics, (I challenge anyone here to name a remake that was better than the original.) while adding more stories occasionally yields real gems like Aliens, Empire Strikes Back, and T2. Reboots are somewhere in between where an existing IP is rewritten and started over again, such as thee fucking mess that Sony has been making of the Spider-man franchise for the better part of twenty years now. I might be willing to watch more new stories set in the same world, but I really don't need to see a new Neo movie.
Look Hollywood, if you aren't going to try to write new stories about new IP, at least write new stories about old IP rather than remake and reboot the same old stuff over and over again. We are bored with the same story over and over again.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How come there is no movie adaptation of neuromancer? That's where the matrix name comes from.
It's probably no easy task to adapt it in a way that is both entertaining to a large audience and not disappointing to fans of the book at the same time, but I believe it's doable.
They better get chopping if they're ever going to get Jaws 19 in the theaters!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maybe the "AI"s were actually real people and the people were really "AI"s
Kill an enemy in a game its gone forever.
Die in a game and you always respawn.
Clearly the actual "happenings" within the movie indicate that the agents are real and the "humans" are A.I.
"His name was James Damore."
They haven't rebooted these yet.
But they will soon!
Hollywood ran out ideas long ago. Witness the shot for shot remake of Psycho almost TWO DECADES ago.
The Matrix borrowed heavily from "Ghost in the Shell", which ironically is coming to USA theaters next week(?) as a remake or reimagining of the already decent anime-movie from a zillion years ago.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I think this was Richard Jeni. I don't remember the exact skit, but it was something like:
they told you they were rebooting the Matrix and .... no one showed up.
Spider-man has had three "boots" in 15 years.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
NOW you perceive the film industry has run out of ideas? In 2017?
Well, let's see here.
They started making a movies of video games, such as "Doom", which had very thin plots.
Then they started making movies of video games that had no discernable plot, such as "PacMan".
Then they started making movies of *board* games, such as "Battleship".
(Monopoly (the movie) is apparently in production.)
Battleship? Really?
I'm sure the studios still have a lot of ground to cover. I anxiously look forward to "solitaire, the movie" in the next year or two.
What's with this opinion about TV shows? TV has been getting better ever since networks figured out they could be successful by producing fewer episodes and focusing more on quality. Especially if you count Netflix and Amazon originals as "TV shows." And how many "prequels to famous action movies" are even out there. I only know of Sarah Connor Chronicles, Taken and the two Star Wars cartoon series. That hardly qualifies as a "wasteland". (And the Star Wars cartoons are very good, IMO.)
Look the first one was kind of a twist. But to save it they need to go 'down the rabbit hole'.
The first one was great. Lame acting and dialogue, but an interesting movie that was pretty well done overall. The best thing they can do with the reboot is already a given - cast a better actor than Keanu as the lead.
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At least you're not going to find some good Sci-Fi and screw it up. Don't expect to make any money on Blu-Rays and Streaming when you remake old crap though.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm waiting for Ghostbusters with an all-dog cast, straight to video. But so adorable.
Once Dog Ghostbusters is a hit, we'll see a remake with babies and CGI lip-syncing.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Translation: "I only go see big budget blockbusters and I don't understand why Hollywood would rather bet that money on a proven franchise or remake rather than a riskier original film. Plus I'd rather whine about it than risk going to see smaller, independent films that might be original!"
The Architect
So where's my gritty Quantum Leap reboot? Priorities people!
Matrix will join other famous film properties -- Star Wars,...receiving a recent franchise reboot or "reimagining."
Star wars has had prequels (ep 1,2,3, Rogue One) and a sequel (Ep 7), but there has been no reboot or reimagning.
Can Charlie Sheen play Neo and Leslie Nielsen play Orpheus?
https://xkcd.com/1757/
and of course, the classic
https://xkcd.com/891/
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Only instead of starring Eric Stoltz, this one was filmed with Michael J. Fox in the lead role.
Bottle. Lightning. All 1.21 gigawatts of it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Who got autism after being vaccinated
Though the autist child will save the day...
A while back I wrote a brief synopsis of how I thought the Matrix trilogy should have gone that was kinda similar to your idea except for the ending.
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From Wikipedia
The movie started life as a script called Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine.[2] When similarities, especially the "bugs," were pointed out between this and the novel Starship Troopers, plans were made to license the rights to the book and tweak character names and circumstances to match.
Really? The matrix reboot was the trigger?
I mean, really, there was 4 Sharknado movie. I've found that they run out of ideas a looooooong time ago.
Elok
For me as a long in the tooth trekkie, that was a great homage to the original series with some funny and poignant moments. Sadly II was poor and I didn't bother with III
Its reboot of Survivors was unimpressive. Their reboot of Dr Who is superb.
It is the virtue of their funding model - a poll tax on TV viewers - is that it enables them to be adventurous. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel was excellent although the first episode dragged. Let's hope 'Good Omens' is as good.
I was about to write "WTF are you talking about?" or something along those lines. So I checked them out on Wikipedia, and sure enough, the other one transitioned 1 year ago. Very weird. Not that there's anything wrong with being trans, but two brothers both being trans and transitioning, fairly late in life to boot, is highly unusual.
They're all real. Though the popular thought is that ther is a "real" universe somewhere to which all other universes are fake, but that's absurd and I'll do my best to explain why to anyone who wants to shoot holes in the premise.
Overall attendance is theaters is DOWN. I know a few movie theaters that have closed. Most of the problem, is the over INFLATED prices, not to mention there are more choices today, but, for me anyway, the lack of CREATIVITY in the movies they do release. When a movie becomes "a hit" what do they typically do? Part 2,3,4,5,6,7 and on. The story line is nothing more than blowing stuff up, explosions, CGI with NO SCRIPT. Get it Hollyweird? NO SCRIPT. The only thing Hollyweird knows how to do these days, is recycle something that is 20,30 years old. If a "typical family of four" goes to a first run movie, just in ticket prices, they are looking at usually 30-50 bucks and at least that amount for drinks/popcorn, not to mention the fuel to get to the movies and back, the hassle with parking. Or you can WAIT a month or two and see it on redbox for a buck if you really want to see it. The so called golden era of Hollywood ended, in the 2000's.
The future industry has gotten really bland lately and nobody can come up with any ideas because global warming ate the future. To have a vision of the future where there is not a for certain global warming apocalypse is considered politically incorrect. Thus, nobody can write anything interesting about the future that is not an eco-doom disaster movie remake. Also, the whole Snowden/NSA thing made any dystopian surveillance fantasy passe. I think there was even a sci-fi author who gave up on a book about a dystopian surveillance state because it was already here.
The last sci-fi things I liked was Dark Matter, kind of felt highly Serenity influenced. Incorporated was ok, but too much eco-doom and hyper violence.
Hollywood demands that authors of original works sign one-sided contracts that obligate them to give up their publishing and copyrights in exchange for a cut of the net profits. The problem with "net profits" is that Hollywood uses "Hollywood Accounting" tricks to turn profits into a loss and deprive authors of royalty payments. There's a REASON why established actors demand payment UP FRONT.
Some authors have sought legal relief and won, but the process is prohibitively expensive enough to discourage litigation - and Hollywood knows it. The authors may have had their day in court but they have lost control of their original material forever, as those contracts are sealed in iron-clad concrete that the control freak entertainment industry refuses to give up.
The problem isn't the lack of new ideas. The true problem is that authors have been screwed by Hollywood for so long that they refuse to sell their original works that could be made into a movie or TV show. Hollywood can't find authors willing to sell them new ideas, so they re-hash existing ones in their control into re-makes, sequels, prequels, baby versions, et al all in a formulaic process. Small wonder that there is little original material coming out of Hollywood anymore. How many more damn re-makes of "King Kong" does the world need?
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Good comment. This is also true of "I, Robot", which was based on a non-Asimov novel called "Hardwired" or similar. However, why do all movie threads on slashdot go to this topic?
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
They have other ideas. They just don't believe those ideas are as profitable as rehashing existing franchises. And they may be right.
Kill an enemy in a game its gone forever.
You youngun's and your persistent state worlds. Go try an original Megaman and see how many enemies are "gone forever." Or basically any other game of that era.
I think the problem is that there isn't an asshole shortage in Hollywood.
"That's the problem with Hollywood. Everyone has two pricks and three assholes. It's the genitalia hall of plenty."
- The Larry Sanders Show
they're cowardly. Making movies is hard work. Reselling last gens hits is a safer bet. Probably 80% of the /. crowd will get suckered into seeing it.
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Yeah, this is what one my language teachers told the class. Even Shakespeare was ripping off greek plays.
V'ger was a verbatim ripoff of The Changeling from TOS.
Hollywood is so busy gazing into its own navel, they don't even want ideas from outside. Across the world, tons of literary content never before in English have been translated and published, and a lot of these books are jammed with ideas and approaches and concepts never seen or used by Hollywood. Fresh, new material ripe for licensing and/or theft.
But Hollywood doesn't want ANY of it! Because Hollywood is always busy trying to remake the last thing that was a hit, not trying to make new things.
Alien Covenant is at least 50% a remake of the first movie and Scott is not only proud of this, he wants to make (or remake) a ton more movies it the same series, probably all of them retellings of an existing story.
Spiderman, Batman, and Superman have all been rebooted multiple times despite the fact that everyone pretty much knows the origins for these characters. Hell, the fact that people already know is considered a PLUS, not a negative. Remake it again. Stupid moviegoers will happily buy the goddamn tickets anyway.
That's the other half of the problem: Hollywood keeps remaking bullshit but the motherfucking public rewards this by spending billions on tickets and DVDs and BDs and rentals and happily spend spend spend every damn time they remake this shit.
Geeks and nerds are the worst. You lot go to every single super hero movie to support the genre or whatever, but your devoted movie dollars go to reward completely crap and studios who don't even try, and you convince yourselves these movies are good. And you go again!
No wonder Hollywood keeps making this crap. They have no reason to make the next Arrival or take any of a dozen excellent contemporary Chinese fiction works and make a movie from that. And then they make crap like Great Wall, which flops because it is crap, and that right there will reinforce Hollywood's idea that they should just stay insular.
Sig for hire.
Whatever it takes to get Fluke to release some new material. 2bp is OK, but not the same.
Go try an original Megaman and see how many enemies are "gone forever."
All of them. Each time its a new entity with not even a single bit of state dependent on what happened to the similar entity that died previously.
You "youngun's" that played the games that we wrote, not knowing anything about it, but pretending to.
"His name was James Damore."
Six Million Dollar Man is something that should be a remake.
To rub things in there wasn't much actually original in "The Matrix". While that isn't such a problem with a one-off thing since "good artists steal" and it put a of lot different stuff together in one place it gets a bit much when a derivative product gets digested and regurgitated again.
Even the green letters scrolling down the screen was taken from an anime called "Sumeba Miyako no Cosmos-s Suttoko Taisen Dokkoidaa", which was itself very much a derivative product (superhero comedy), so it probably came from somewhere before that.
I'd rather like to see a faithful adoption of the original story on which The Matrix is loosely based upon,
Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye.
I'd pay to see Apollo 13 remade with an all female cast.
I liked the battery part, whether it was intentional or not showed that the characters were not omnipotent (or all knowing) and showed them to be somewhat clueless as was stated a few seconds before in that scene. What if the people in zion didn't really know what they were being used for and came up with the battery idea as their best guess and ran with it. How well did they understand the technology they were using? Was it something they had developed themselves or was it leftovers from an earlier era? They could be living in some sort of cargo cult society. What was the year, something like 2100? What if it was really more like 21,000? People just didn't know.
Though I doubt people would still have Durcell batteries 200 years in the future.
There are a large number of books that they can use as a base for movies.
The reason is not that they are out of ideas, the reason is that they are lazy and just re-use what did work one more time.
Eh, being risk-averse is not lazy. The profits from these big blockbuster projects are fairly predictable.
Mass audiences prefer content that they are already familiar with. They like songs that sounds like songs they already like. They like stories and movies with plots they're already familiar with. People take comfort in being able to predict what's going to happen because they've seen something familiar. We don't like to be challenged with the new and unexpected, unless we feel really comfortable and safe and confident -- which most people don't.
I'd say it's a fair amount of work to meet people's existing expectations using established formulas and pacing, rather than going all creative and taking risks of pushing the envelope too far. Not the kind of safety net everyone appreciates, but whatever, it's just business.
Interesting. But at least the start of the script must have been substantially rewritten. The boot camp stuff was definitely based on the book.
You oldun's and your technicalities ;).
That Dark Elf has enough personality and badassery to have 10+ movies to himself. If done right these movies could be up there with the best of the best!
I tend to rant.
its free, just change the names
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
ROCKET ROBIN HOOD ALREADY!
But for gods sake just make more Karl Urban Dread movies. People skipped an amazing action movie because of what they did to it in the 90s.
^^^^This. Although I'd much rather see a TV series. Dredd, like Robocop, isn't best as the main protagonist - he's best as a hook or kind of anti-hero which they can build stories around. Basically as it works in the comic.
The fan episodes of Star Trek have often been far more creative and original than the official productions. In particular I'm pointing at Star Trek Into Darkness, a THIRD retelling of the Khan story. Fast and Furious: Warp Factor Eight (excuse me, Star Trek Beyond) was at least a new story, but pretty much ignored the things that Star Trek is traditionally about (like anything that involves thinking) and turned it into an action movie.
The remake is guaranteed to make money. Knowing that the remake is going to make money, it can budget for big stars, etc. to further increase the boxoffice.
All-new movies are a crapshoot at best, where breaking even or making very modest money is a "very good" outcome. Sure, a few movies make great money, but they're outliers.
Why take an unnecessary gamble, seeing that studios are businesses organized to make $ -- not great movies.
I can think of a couple of sequels, or movies in a series, that I liked just as much or maybe more than previous movies.
Toy Story 3 is my favorite in that series.
Logan is my favorite of the X-Men franchise.
I think that these two did need the previous movies to give them the full context though.
Batman Begins dwarfs all previous attempts to tell that story, and The Dark Knight was fantastic.
Rise of and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes were great and much less corny than the original, although they were prequels.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The remake of Point Break isn't any worse than the original. They're both comfortable middle ranking mundane action films.
If you really want 'screw it up' try The Italian Job, or the ultimate fucked up remake, 'Get Carter'.
There is a reason the Matrix franchise made WB 1.6 Billion. It was a really good movie trilogy. Perhaps among the best. People complained about Keanu Reeves, but he was perfect for the part of Neo. People complained about the sequels, but they tied the story together really well. People always complain. It costs nothing to carp. It makes them feel like they have something important to say. But that's like, just their opinion, man... Name me any trilogy that did not have scorn heaped upon it by the Tittering Scofferatti. Star Wars? Every episode was scorned mercilessly. Alien? Should have stopped after Aliens. LOTR? You gotta be kidding me. Harry Potter? They only stopped because the kids grew up too fast. My point is simply, you can't please all the people all the time. Movies are, at their core, artful story telling. You either connect or you don't. No one has the right to pass judgment on them on behalf of anyone else.
I always thought that "Darwin's Radio" might be a good movie if done right (well, so much for that idea). Or perhaps in this Netflix/Amazon original content age, a mini series.
I'd like to see a remake of all three movies in anime form, like an extended Animatrix.
Be a lot cheaper, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Realtime Interrupt is a 1995 science fiction novel by James P. Hogan set in a near-future Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It tells the story of Joe Corrigan, who awakens in a Pittsburgh hospital without memory. As director of the supersecret Oz Project, he had worked on a virtual reality software project, and as he slowly recalls his past, he sets out on a quest to pick up the pieces of his past life. He discovers that the virtual reality is still going on [(spoiler) and he is trapped in it for reasons of corporate greed]."
Preceeded by his "Entoverse" in 1991:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"(spoilers) The Jevlenese move JEVEX [a huge supercomputer] to the planet of Uttan so that their researchers can increase its power without the knowledge of the Thuriens. Unknown to both parties, a pocket universe forms within JEVEX, the Entoverse. Some of its sapient inhabitants ("Ents") who go by the title of ayatollahs devise the ability to pass over to the original universe by taking over the minds of the Jevlenese [when they use headsets to work or play in virtual reality]. The Thuriens begin to trust the Jevlenese and contract them with the task of observing human civilization. Still driven by hatred of their old rivals, the Jevlenese set about hindering human progress."
But another comment mentions Simulacron-3 (1964).
I had also read a non-virtual-reality similar story (the simulated people were tiny robots) probably from the 1960s or 1970s perhaps. That world was built to test advertising, and it always was the same day and the "people" who were originally all killed by some nearby chemical plant disaster did not know they were now simulated.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm betting the machines will turn out to be Trump, Neo will be a black handicapped transgender, and they will once again ruin a perfectly good thing by politicizing it. It will play well in the blue bubble echo chamber of Hollywierd and flop miserably everywhere else.
Murphy was an optimist
Reminded me of a bit of Trivia about Sherlock Holmes:
http://www.guinnessworldrecord...
Also apparently there are 272 films about Dracula. Blah Blah Blah! :)
I recently finished watching the Shannara Chronicles on MTV. What's more surprising is apparently season two is coming this summer...