As we close out throwback month, I want to talk about something that has been increasingly gaining popularity in today’s society.

If you guessed reboots, remakes, and revivals of popular TV shows and movies, then you’d be right! It seems like reboots are happening to everything now-a-days. The first time I remember seeing a reboot become huge is when Disney released Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015.

From there, more just seem to pop up. From Doctor Who to IT, reboot culture has no boundaries and stops at no genre.

According to Entertainment Weekly’s list of 12 of the best TV reboots and revivals, some of the best reboots and revivals are:

The Karate Kid (1984)/ Cobra Kai (2018)

Battlestar Galactica (1978)/ Battlestar: Galactica (2004)

Beverly Hills 90210 (1990)/ 90210 (2008)/ BH90210 (2019)

DuckTales (1987)/ DuckTales (2017)

One Day at a Time (1975)/ One Day at a Time (2017)

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003)/ Queer Eye (2018)

She-Ra: Princess of Power (1985)/ She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

The X-Files (1993)/ The X-Files (2016)

Jersey Shore (2009)/ Jersey Shore: Family Vacation (2018)

As you can see, not one singular genre is being missed when it comes to rebooting, revivals, and remakes. Even shows that were geared toward children are now being brought back so todays children can enjoy it.

Some TV shows and movies may take many decades to become relevant again and gain enough support to be brought back and other only take a little over one decade to be brought back. But there is one genre that has never truly gone away and is consistently being rebooted.

A genre that I would consider being constantly rebooted is the comic book genre. From the first time we see Kirk Alyn as Superman in 1948, there has been reboots of the Superman character every couple of years, with some overlapping. The same thing happens to mainly the most popular superheroes in the world of DC. The only exception being Marvel’s Spiderman which has been rebooted quite a lot.

Due to the amount of successfully rebooted movies and TV shows, I decided to ask a few students two questions:

1. What TV shows and movies do you want to see adapted in the future?
2. What show or movie do you think will become huge if adapted in the future?

Because two of my participants wanted to remain anonymous, I will refer to them as Student 1 and Student 2.

These are the answers they gave me:

1. DEAR GOD JESUS NO! They always turn out worse.
2. Miss Congeniality. I would like to see a version of this movie that takes out all the misogynistic aspects and replaces them with more intellectual and personality based aspects.

Student 1

1. Eragon
2. I also like the Miss Congeniality answer. I don’t think it would be huge but I kind of want to know how The Princess Bride would be remade.

Student 2

To answer both of your questions at once, I don’t really know tbh because a reboot is usually never as good as the original. The original has nostalgia attached that the reboot will never be able to obtain to the fullest extent. For example, with the Spider-Men, I can’t really fully evaluate that Tom Holland is the best because I haven’t seen all of the other ones and I don’t remember the cultural impact or the contextualization of the ones I have seen. I truly can’t think of an example of a reboot that I even want to happen because a) like I said, it can’t top the original version, and b) I usually think that the original should be left alone.

Anja

Well I would say that two out of the three participants don’t really like reboots, revivals, or remakes. But I want to know what you think. Do you think that reboot culture has gotten out of control or do you want to see more? If you want to see more reboots, let us know which ones you would want to see made in the comments of our social media pages.

Happy Thanksgiving and have a restful and relaxing break!!