Reboots

 We live in a time of reboots - at least that is what it looks like when you look at the new releases for movie theatres and the new series released by TV stations and streaming services. There’s a lot of known names there which are being ‘redone’ or get an unnecessary sequel.

 

Reboots come in two different varieties: hard and soft. Both come with their own problems and both have their own good sides.

Hard reboots take only the bare basics of a property and build a completely new structure on them. One example for a hard reboot is the “Ghostbusters” movie from 2016. There’s still ghost busting, but the old timeline, the old characters, the old stories are no longer existent. We have new people coming in, a new story, a new tone, a new setting. Apart from also busting ghosts, they are in no way related to those who came before (even though quite some of the old actors have a cameo, it’s not in their past roles).

Soft reboots often happen when writers have written themselves into a corner, so they simply ignore or take back some plot points and continue the series. One example for a soft reboot is “The Empty House” - the story in which Arthur Conan Doyle took back the death of Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to publish more stories about the detective, but had killed him off prior, so he needed to mitigate that and turn the death into a disappearance. Luckily, he’d not given first-hand accounts of the death in the first place, so he could write himself out of that corner again.

 

In general, soft reboots are much easier to do and usually much harder to get wrong. Working again with the same characters in the same environment means it’s much easier for the audience to slip back into the story and enjoy it again.

Sometimes, though, a soft reboot isn’t possible any longer. The actors might have grown too old or died already (as with “Ghostbusters” - one of the original actors is dead and the others are past the age of an action comedy). The story is focused on a new audience (as with properties originally done for children and rebooted for adults). The corner which the authors have written themselves into is too tight to get out of again.

 

Both types come with their own problems.

In a soft reboot, the first question is how much to undo in the story to get back to the new starting point. How much of the lore has to be removed? How many character plots have to be undone? How much time needs to be rewritten? Yet, the core of the property is normally left untouched, because the past is not undone, so what made the story or the characters interesting is still there. They still have their past relationships, their past adventures, and their past development.

In a hard reboot, the first question is what the core of the property was. Which parts of the old lore need to be kept or redone? Are there characters which need to make a return? Is the setting of the world still solid or does worldbuilding need to happen? The big danger with the hard reboot lies in the story losing its core, the basic premises that made it work in the first place and drew the audience to it.

Let me give you two examples for hard reboots, one of which works and one of which doesn’t.

 

Recently, “Fate: The Winx Club” has been released as a reboot of the “Winx Club” series. The original “Winx Club” was a series for children, often watched by young girls. It was bright, cute, emotional, built around the friendship of the main characters. It was diverse, too, adding different POC characters to the story. It had its weaknesses like not having any male characters as fairies or witches and no female characters as specialists (fighters). Not all of the story lines were strong, either, but it ran for quite some years, so it definitely was successful.

The reboot falls into the ‘dark and gritty’ category and has lost all of its brightness. Instead of having a tight-knit group of female characters who get through their adventures together by helping each other and using their bright fairy powers, we have a group of girls who seem to barely tolerate each other. “Winx Club” was always Bloom-centric, since the character Bloom was the entry point into the world of the series and the focus character of most stories. Yet, the other characters were well-created and each of them was distinct, they weren’t just a backdrop for Bloom’s adventures.

According to the creator, the reboot is meant for the original fans of the series (who are in the young adult to adult range now) and has been changed to fit with their sensibilities. Yet, the fans of “Winx Club” loved the series for being bright and happy and full of positive feelings. They loved the girls’ powerful friendship and their fashion sense (the original series actually had fashion designers design the girls’ outfits). None of that is present in the reboot. Yes, there are male fairies and female specialists now, which is good, but for that, the iconic villains of the original have been replaced by a single character and with them the third faction of the witches has disappeared. The magic school looks more like Hogwarts than like any of the three schools present in the original series. If the names of the girls were exchanged for different ones, the whole new series could run as an original, because it hardly shares plot points or worldbuilding with the original. It certainly doesn’t share the original’s core.

It’s easy to say that this is definitely a hard reboot fail.

 

The “Ghostbusters” movie from 2016, despite the weaknesses in writing, is a good example for a hard reboot. While it has a completely new cast of characters, it keeps the core of the original. It’s a goofy action comedy, even if the type of jokes has changed over time. It has four characters who work together on busting ghosts (even if the ‘street-smart’ one is, again, the only POC character) and gives us a good look at them starting their work. Unlike the original, it even has them rent much worse rooms first - the iconic fire department building is their reward at the end, not what they work out of for most of the movie.

The authors have understood that “Ghostbusters” always was an action comedy and they wrote it accordingly. They keep the tone of the original, the banter, the light-hearted fun, but undercut it with darker themes, as they should. There were darker themes in the original as well, it’s not something that is new to the property.

Yes, the villain is a disappointment in this one. Yes, the movie does have a weakness in the third act, which is a shame (but not unique, quite some movies don’t deliver on their initial premise). None of this, though, is the problem of the reboot and all could have happened just as well with a soft reboot or a completely new project.

Despite not being a hugely successful movie, this hard reboot did it right on the side of the property.

 

It is, of course, much easier to do a soft reboot and conserve the core of the property. Yet, it isn’t always possible, because the original actors are not available or the sensibilities of society have changed too much or certain aspects are no longer viable.

I want to add something else here - what is not a reboot, soft or hard. “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is not a reboot, soft or hard - the 1990s TV series was based on the Archie Comics character of Sabrina The Teenage Witch and the same goes for the new series. The only difference is in the choice of the comics they are based on. The dark story of the Chilling Adventures is taken from the comics, just as the light-hearted teenage fun of 1990s Sabrina was. The same goes for the Teen Titans ‘dark and gritty’ series - it, too, is based on another medium and picks different aspects of the source material this time. One can like or hate it, but it’s not a reboot.

 

Reboots have their challenges, but they are unavoidable sometimes. Yet, it would be nice if we got less reboots - good or bad - and more new material. Just because something was successful twenty years ago doesn’t mean that it will be successful today and an easy formula (like ‘make it dark and gritty’) doesn’t always help.