Your turn now

This being the fourth week of the month, I offer up a post brought to you from the randomness that I call my thoughts.

I've been reading a lot in the past few months about how Hollywood is running out of ideas and that the creative well is running dry. What with all of the talks of retcons and reboots and such.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it isn't new. Those of us that have been comic book readers for any extended period of time are used to having the set rules and history of the fictional universe ripped from us. Especially, Spider-Man readers.

Oh yes, especially, Spider-Man readers, but that'll have to wait.

Before I get to the universe of sequential art, I'd like to talk film for a bit. A lot of vitriol recently has been hurled at some of the more recent cinema remakes/reimagining of classic movies.

One of my favorite novels is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Consequentially, I enjoyed the 1974 film with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, whom I believe to embody the very soul of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. The most recent version, in which Leonardo DiCaprio played the eponymous Gatsby, received some criticism that they were attempting to redo a classic novel that had already been done by arguably superior actors.

But, do you realize that before the 1974 film, there had already been not one, but three versions of Gatsby?

Also, after the 1974 version, and before the 2013, there were two productions of Gatsby?

Wow, that's a lot of remakes. Let's move on.

Who doesn't love the Wizard of Oz? A yearly tradition, I remember fondly, before the rise of the VCR and home video, is my family gathered around the TV on the one night a year that network television broadcast the classic 1939 film. This film is considered one of the classics of American cinema.

But, (and I truly hope I'm not about to dash anyone's childhood here), there are three incarnations of the Wizard of Oz on film before the '39 film. They were produced in 1910, 1925, and 1933. The version everyone loves was basically a reboot done a mere six years after the previous incarnation. You may have thought that kind of turnover was just reserved for Sony Pictures and their Spider-Man films, but apparently not.

Speaking of Spider-Man, let's move away from film and into the comic book universes. As more and more films are adopting this process of either a full on reboot (e.g. Batman Begins) or a retcon (e.g. X-Men: Days of Future Past), the average viewer is left wondering why Hollywood has run out of ideas and why do they keep rehashing the old ideas?

Well, here's my short answer:

It's your turn now.

For years, comic book fans have been subjected to various retcons and reboots in attempts to refresh the books for a younger generation.

For a while, DC made a habit of every five to ten years holding a universe spanning event, referred to as a "crisis," that allowed them to rewrite their history. The purpose originally, with the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths story, was to make sense of the Golden Age of comic and the silliness that permeated some of the stories with the more serious tone that the books were taking. At that point, they rewrote the history of DC comics to fit into a timeline that allowed the heroes to be younger and do away with some of the more troublesome continuity points from the past few decades. This worked so well for DC that they did it again with the Zero Hour: Crisis in Time crossover in the 90's. And again with Infinite Crisis in the early 2000's. Oh and again with Flashpoint a few years ago. It is their way of keeping the storylines fresh and new, despite the endless frustration of fans like me.

Marvel, on the other hand does less of the universe wide retcons and leaves that to the individual books. If you are a Spider-Man fan, you know what I am talking about here. Those of us that have followed Peter Parker through the years have witnessed him struggle with a horrendous clone plot, turning into a giant spider and giving birth to himself (don't ask), having elements of his history essentially erased from the collective memories of the world by the devil (again, don't ask), and so much more. Spider-Man fans are gluttons for punishment. Marvel knows we will keep reading, so they keep pulling the same crap over, and over. This happens in other book as well, with just as much frustration.

The point I'm trying to make is that when you see a favorite childhood cartoon being remade by someone who can only communicate with loud noises and explosions. Hold off on all the hate. Those of us that have been reading comics for a while are used to this now. I'm just trying to tell you that, you may as well get used to it. Because, one, Hollywood has been doing it for much longer than you realize, and two, the comics they are getting ideas from have been doing it just as long.

To quote from the reimagined BSG-

"All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."

I've learned to roll with the punches when it comes to a remake, reboot, sequel, prequel, reimagining, or otherwise overhaul of a franchise that I love, because if I hate this iteration of it, I just need to wait a little longer for the next version to come out.

Thanks for reading.

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Until next time,

-Anthony