Let's stop with the reboots, okay?

Let me say something that we’ve known for some time: the world is going to hell.  I’m not talking politics, the environment, or the composition of the US Supreme Court (although any of those would provide excellent evidence).  I’m talking about the complete and utter bankruptcy of the creative people we rely on for our entertainment.

I understand the desire to reboot TV shows from the 1960’s, or turn series from the 1980’s into movies.  But this week it was announced that Disney is considering rebooting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.  This follows hot on the news last week that NBC is developing a spin-off of that long lost show Grimm.  

The AV Club article linked to above says, with what I can only assume is tongue planted in cheek, that the Grimm spin-off might “satisfy TV viewers’ unquenchable thirst for nostalgia.”  At least I hope this is sarcasm because how can audiences feel nostalgic for a show that ended last year?

Rebooting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise would be making the same mistake so many reboots make, namely taking a property whose popularity is based primarily on the star power of the actors, and then remaking it with a new actor.  Rebooting Hawaii Five-O is one thing, because the original show wasn’t popular because of the charisma of Jack Lord; but remaking Magnum PI without Tom Selleck is just an exercise in futility.

When I (correctly) predicted that Johnny Depp would get an Oscar nomination for the first Pirates movie, a friend said I was nuts, that films like that didn’t get acting nominations.  I replied that a) Depp was a respected actor among his peers, and b) the film made $300 million domestically, and it wasn’t because of the script, or the direction, or Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightly.  Probably $200 million of that $300 million gross was due to Johnny Depp’s performance, and while Hollywood does not generally reward high grossing films with Oscars, they do acknowledge when a performer brings in the dough.

I’ve written before about Grimm, a show I find fascinating because of its flaws.  It was a clever concept, but the show runners would set up serialized plot lines then go back to a “Monster of the Week” format, leaving plot lines dangling.  The supporting actors were generally great, especially Silas Weir Mitchell, Sasha Roiz, Reggie Lee, and Bree Turner, but the lead actor (David Giuntoli) was fairly wooden.  On top of that, there was NO chemistry between Giuntoli and his on-screen girlfriend (Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch), which is the embodiment of the cliché that off-screen couples usually have no on-screen chemistry since Giuntoli and Tulloch were an item off-screen and eventually married. 

So maybe a rebooted Grimm could work with a slightly more charismatic lead.  Certainly the concept appears flexible enough to be expanded upon. 

But just starting a series over from scratch because the producers want to keep the franchise going with younger actors is creatively hollow.  The only memorable thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (I bet you forgot about the part after the colon) was Depp’s performance, and Disney managed to wring 4 sequels out of it (one of the “blink and you miss it” jokes in the TV Show the Good Place was a poster in Hell that advertised “Pirates of the Caribbean 6, The Haunted Crow's Nest, or Something, Who Gives a Crap, Now Playing Everywhere Forever").

Disney caught lightning in a bottle once with Depp’s performance in the original Pirates movie, but it is unlikely to happen again with a reboot.  Given that Pirates is just about the only Disney movie based on a ride at Disneyland that was successful (personally, I loved Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, but the box office [$93 million domestic gross on a $190 million budget] shows I am not in the majority), creating a new franchise on that concept seems to me to be a risky proposition.

Reboots occasionally work (the Addams Family movies are a vast improvement over the original).  But I’d be willing to bet that for every successful reboot there are a dozen flops (remember the movie based on Car 54 Where Are You? The Beverly Hillbillies?  Bewitched?  The Flintstones?  McHale’s Navy?  I thought not).  Note: for purposes of this discussion, the Mission Impossible films are NOT in any way, shape or form related to the TV series; they appropriated the name as a brand identifier, but they only use the words “Mission Impossible” because they are easier to market than films called “The Ethan Hunt Adventures.”

Dredging up properties from the 1960s or 1970s is bad enough, but rebooting properties that began in the 21^st century is simply robbing too fresh of a grave. Surely Disney can come up with another ride at Disneyland to base a movie on.  Autopia: The Movie anyone?