Welcome to Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen. The land of uninspired imaginism that relies on rebooting and remaking everyone’s favorite franchises in order to make a quick buck from beguiled parents whose children are pulling at their leg to see a third botched attempt “Beauty and the Beast,” the most recent rehashed money grab from the executives over at Disney. Especially when it pertains to summer blockbusters, we are expecting reboots this summer through the means of “The Mummy,” “Baywatch” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming” — how exciting.
While this trend in Hollywood doesn’t seem as if it will end anytime soon, especially with Disney announcing plans for 16 more live action reboots according to Digital Spy, one can only hope that film executives will understand that funneling money into our past will not progress the evolution of film any further. Some of these upcoming reboots include a live-action version of “The Lion King,” an “Aladdin” “prequel” and the one that hits closest to home, a live-action “Winnie the Pooh,” with Christopher Robin returning back to the Hundred Acre Woods as an adult.
Barring whatever your opinions may be of Disney’s recent reboot of “Beauty and the Beast,” featuring the ever-wonderful Emma Watson as Belle, it becomes visually tiresome as audiences seem to be spoon-fed Computer Generated Images, or CGI visuals as a passoff for modernity. While CGI in moderation can actually contribute to the overall tone of a film, such as in 2015’s visually stunning “Mad Max: Fury Road,” slapping on CGI as a means of revitalizing something old, i.e. what Disney is currently doing, is diminishing Hollywood as a whole. According to Mashable, remakes and reboots have earned an average score of 46 on Rotten Tomatoes, while originally crafted films poll in at an average score of 78 on the same site.
Though one can measure the success of a film by its critical reception, another way to measure success is through revenue earned, which is primarily the reason why Hollywood has completely invested themselves in rebooting franchises. Look no further than the site Box Office Mojo, which lists that one-fourth of the top 20 grossing movies ever are either reboots or spin-offs of different franchises, including “Jurassic World,” which earned $1.67 billion worldwide, and “Minions,” which surprisingly rang in $1.16 billion.
These examples are few of many rebooted films that have earned Hollywood bookoo bucks, and while no official estimate is available for the total gross revenue that Hollywood has earned through reboots, one can only assume the number is currently in the stratosphere.
Turning the attention back to Disney, we should be ashamed that we are currently paying hand-over-fist, between merchandising and movie tickets, to watch subpar rehashes of movies that made our childhood so spectacular. No matter how differently Disney paints the canvas, the intention behind each brushstroke is the greediness of Hollywood, cackling to itself as it struggles to create any sort of original idea.
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