What is it with reboots?

Who you gonna call? Not this lot.

As mentioned in my first post I was born in 1980. So that makes me 37 years of age. 37. Sounds like a big number in age terms......but if I had a choice I would probably want to have been born a few years earlier.

Why would anyone say that?

Well the simple reason is because in the first half of the 80s I was probably too young to fully appreciate was going on. Also I had already missed the release date of Star Wars (1977) and I was a baby when The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980.

1980 - 1985 was exceptionally good to us:

• The Empire Strikes Back
• Return Of The Jedi
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark
• Ghostbusters
• Back To The Future
• Airplane!
• Stir Crazy
• E.T
• Gremlins
• Police Academy
• The Goonies

The list goes on and on and these are all movies I would go on to enjoy more when I was slightly older. Thankfully only one of the movies listed above have succumbed to the recent Hollywood trend of "rebooting" a franchise. Well....I say one. Star Wars may have also succumbed, depending your point of view.

I think we all know by now how successful the Ghostbusters reboot was. Famously the trailer is the most disliked in youtube history and it never really recovered from the negative online speculation. A lot of the negative comments centred around an all female cast. Personally an all female cast doesn't bother me. For me it could have been female, male, chickens, cats whatever.....if it wasn't Stantz, Spengler, Venkman and Zeddemore I wasn't interested. I can remember the director Paul Feig saying that in this movie the original Ghostbusters never happened. Yet when the trailer aired it made reference to the 1984 movie, which confused me and others. What was even more disappointing for me was that Dan Ackroyd was involved, and some of the original cast had minor cameos in the movie. Anyway, I haven't seen it so Im not qualified to say how bad it was but the box office returns suggest that there just wasn't an appetite for it.

No Gene Wilder? Im out

So why do Hollywood insist on doing this? Its been done a few times hasn't it? The Italian Job, The Karate Kid, The Planet Of The Apes, Rear Window, Charlie And The Chocolate factory, A Nightmare On Elm Street... all with varying levels of success (or not).

Captain Chunks says "do not remake The Goonies"

But what happens when they start getting their hands on the good stuff? Something that has been spoken about for years and years is why has there never been a sequel to The Goonies? Its a good question. But the simple answer is because it doesn't need one. In 2015 Chris Columbus had this to say:

"The Goonies is a much tougher nut to crack, for obvious reasons. We are in the thick of it now, trying to figure it out".

In 2016 I met Sean Astin and Jonathan Ke Quan in Glasgow and I took the opportunity to ask them about a Goonies sequel or reboot. Sean Astin was very chatty about the subject and told me that Spielberg is not a huge fan of reboots and as long as he is alive a reboot won't be the way forward. A sequel was more of a possibility but they couldn't find the right story. So no Goonies sequel in the near future. And to be honest I probably wouldn't welcome one.

Another movie that has been confirmed as being remade is Big Trouble In Little China. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson producing and staring in it. BTILC is untouchable, I can't believe that John Carpenter would be up for this. But then again The Thing was remade so its not really a surprise. BTILC was a box office bomb at the time in 1986, its the years since that have made it a nostalgia trip. It should be left alone, as should all the other classic movies which I grew up on.

So keep your grubby mitts off my childhood Hollywood.

Adam