My son hates old movies, old songs, old anything. If it’s over ten years old, he’ll refuse to have anything to do with it — with certain exceptions. I try to sneak things in, sometimes, but then he’ll catch on. “That’s Led Zeppelin. Not interested.”
It’s Millennial nostalgia, really. If it happened before the nineties, it’s the previous generation, and it has nothing to do with him.
I guess that’s where the modern desperation for reboots come from. The 90s kids haven’t seen it, so it doesn’t really exist. New to them!
This brings us to today’s writing prompt, which comes from JamiesVlogUK of “Oh, What’s Occurin’: The Life of a Welshman”, who asks:
What piece of content would you most like to have a sequel or reboot?
The picture at the top of this post is from “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters”, which was Jane Austen’s (with help from Ben Winters) smashing followup to her hit novel, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (helped along by Seth Grahame-Smith).
I’m totally on board with revisiting older works if you’re going to make them new again. I am less excited about shot for shot remakes of content, like when “The Force Awakens” rebooted “A New Hope”.
This year, they’ve rebooted “Doctor Doolittle”. Remember that? No? They also rebooted the “Grudge” series. Nobody asked for that. They rebooted “The Invisible Man” again, this time where a woman is stalked by her murderous and invisible ex, so this movie at least tried something new.
Mulan’s about to come out in some form, rebooted as a traditional martial arts film with the talking dragon replaced by a witch. There are apparently no songs.
Dune is being rebooted again. Nobody (except me, I guess) liked David Lynch’s take on it. I found the Syfy remake acceptable but forgettable.
I always thought Dune was a decent remake of Lawrence of Arabia, actually.
Lawrence is cast into the desert and falls in among the desert dwelling Bedouins, learns their ways, and leads them into battle against the villainous Ottoman Empire; Paul is cast into the desert and falls in among the desert dwelling Fremen, learns their ways, and leads them into battle against the villainous Imperial army. They are both examples of the White Savior trope.
The latest reboot makes some characters women and people of color (actually, Planetologist Liet Kynes becomes both) but doesn’t look like it really does anything to change the overall problems with the book or previous adaptations. I expect more CGI and fewer of the absolutely insane mechanisms that I loved so much in the Lynch movie.
Of course I’m going to go see the new Dune (in my living room, on some streaming service, probably — thanks COVID). I’ll probably love it. I just don’t think it’s necessary.
But wouldn’t the reverse be more interesting?
Let’s say an exiled woman from the Nomole, an uncontacted tribe from the Amazon jungle, found her way to America, where she learned our ways and rose to the top of the corporate ladder, then led the people of America in a revolution against the government, after which we reverted to a small population of hunter-gatherers living simple lives and occasionally attacking Canada.
That is a Dune reboot I’d like to see.
