'The Matrix' Reboot: It's Finally Happened. Hollywood Has Run Out of All the Ideas (qz.com) 542
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: In our hearts, we all knew this day would come. Warner Bros. is planning a reboot of The Matrix just 18 years after the iconic sci-fi action film dazzled audiences around the world, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Matrix films were lauded for their creativity, special effects, and distinct cyberpunk and manga influences. In total, the trilogy grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide. The Matrix will join other famous film properties -- Star Wars, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, and Terminator among them -- receiving a recent franchise reboot or "reimagining." Others include RoboCop, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, reboots of Indiana Jones, Predator, Jumanji, and every superhero movie that's ever existed, are scheduled to hit theaters soon. And TV, for its part, is a dystopian wasteland of bland prequels to famous action movies. Hollywood relying on tentpole franchises, instead of taking risks on original ideas, is not new or surprising. But many believed that certain properties like The Matrix were off limits -- at least so soon after originally being made. It's clear now, though, that the major film studios can't afford to wait. They have no other ideas. This puts the studios in a precarious situation, because the once tried-and-true strategy of inundating cinemas with popular franchise extensions no longer looks as foolproof as it used to.
Leave the original (Score:5, Insightful)
remake 2 & 3. They were garbage.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Funny)
What is this 2 & 3? They never made any sequels... [xkcd.com]
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Funny)
There was a 2 and 3? Non sense. Why not sequels of Starship Troopers while you are at it!
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a 2 and 3? Non sense. Why not sequels of Starship Troopers while you are at it!
If ever there was a movie needing re-imaging ... Starship Troopers. I take that back, moving closer to the book (power suits) is not quite re-imagining is it?
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Not merely power suits. Power suits that launch out miniature nuclear weapons like grandma handing out cookies at Christmas.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I've seen the Matrix! Let's talk about Heinlein. Also, wouldn't it be awesome if blah blah blah? Why do all movie discussions on slashdot forums go like this? Also it's important that I post this so it appears as high as possible in the conversation at the time of my posting, regardless of relevance or whether this story is even news. Whew! Now I can get on with my day.
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Instead of a reboot, I'd like to see John Steakley's 'Armor', which basically borrows the premise of Starship Troopers the book (a bug war on an alien planet) but is primarily action focused. When I saw the first preview for the ST movie, I actually thought it *was* Armor before they showed the title. Also, it's just a really good book.
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Why reboot ST when there's a huge canon of Heinlein to pull from. How about Farnham's Freehold? Time travel is hot right now...
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Informative)
There was a 2 and 3? Non sense. Why not sequels of Starship Troopers while you are at it!
If ever there was a movie needing re-imaging ... Starship Troopers. I take that back, moving closer to the book (power suits) is not quite re-imagining is it?
There actually is a new Starship Troopers movie in the works, apparently. The makers are saying they're ignoring Ve'ereHeavin's abhomination, and going back to the book.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c... [hollywoodreporter.com]
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Starship troopers is a fantastic movie.
It was a terrible movie that had a few cool action scenes. For the record, I'm not a movie snob (some mindless action can be fun) and I'm not much of a fan of Heinlein as an author (early stuff is decent, but his later works are horrid). I watched the movie before I read the book, so I had NO initial biases. And when I eventually read the book, I remember thinking "shit, why didn't they make *this* into a movie?"
From what I can remember, one of my beefs was the casting, which seemed to place more emphasi
Starship troopers movie was not based on the book. (Score:3, Insightful)
From Wikipedia
The movie started life as a script called Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine.[2] When similarities, especially the "bugs," were pointed out between this and the novel Starship Troopers, plans were made to license the rights to the book and tweak character names and circumstances to match.
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Good comment. This is also true of "I, Robot", which was based on a non-Asimov novel called "Hardwired" or similar. However, why do all movie threads on slashdot go to this topic?
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Too bad George Lucas never made Star Wars 1, 2 and 3. I still never understood why Spielberg only made two Indiana Jones movies, Ark and Crusade. I also expected to see a third Die Hard, but that never happened.
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They did make a Star Wars 3. It hit the theatres just before Christmas last year. Rogue something.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, no, it was titled eXistenZ - a complex plot starring Willem Dafoe as a homicidal motor mechanic.
It features a young kid named Jude Law; I wonder if he starred in any other movies.
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The Animatrix was interesting.
If the Matrix just happens over and over again, isn't it basically okay for them to move to a different section of the timeline, roll the dice, and play again with totally different characters / monsters?
If the new movie features Neo, though, forget it.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a large number of books that they can use as a base for movies.
The reason is not that they are out of ideas, the reason is that they are lazy and just re-use what did work one more time.
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They're scared to make anything that will flop because it will put them out of business
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember coming out of the theater after seeing #2 (The Matrix: Reloaded) and thinking, "Huh, not fully what I was hoping for, but that ending could herald interesting things. If Neo can affect reality after waking up then they must be in a layered Matrix. The idea of layered realities and never knowing which one is finally real could be a cool way to wrap up the series." Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they'd take the route of Neo being future-Jesus who has completely unexplainable powers in the real world, and we're going to abandon any aspirations of science fiction and go headlong into pure fantasy.
It's hard to imagine how they could screw the story up even worse. Then again, as Douglas Adams said, "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
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Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they'd take the route of Neo being future-Jesus who has completely unexplainable powers in the real world, and we're going to abandon any aspirations of science fiction and go headlong into pure fantasy.
Any sufficiently advanced science/technology is indistinguishable from magic. ;-)
Similar thought after 1 and 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought it would lead to layered realities, and that it would expose that many people are perfectly content in the baseline Matrix, some people's minds rebel. These people are identified and hooked to a 2nd Matrix in which they are made aware of the baseline Matrix, can interact with it, pursue their hero fantasies each to their own level necessary (Neo needed to be the One, Trinity need to be in love with the One, Morpheus had to be the one to find the One...) and steered into the whole Zion mythos.
A few might, like Neo, once exposed to he baseline Matrix, realize that they could be in a 2nd-level Matrix and find themselves able to manipulate it as well. At that point a 3rd..N+1 level matrix would be unnecessary. Those unlucky few would just be lobotomized by the machines and put back in the soup. The effort to entertain the chosen ones with Matrix 2 is justified only by the notion that the undamaged brains allow more wetware computing power to be utilized (i.e., humans not just batteries).
Neo getting a big needle in his brain may have been an unpleasant ending. Perhaps once the battle of Zion happened, the 3rd movie would end with a "reset" back to Neo first waking up in Scene 1 of the first matrix. They can just keep Groundhog Daying the hell out of Zion.
Re:Similar thought after 1 and 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought it would lead to layered realities, and that it would expose that many people are perfectly content in the baseline Matrix, some people's minds rebel. These people are identified and hooked to a 2nd Matrix in which they are made aware of the baseline Matrix, can interact with it, pursue their hero fantasies each to their own level necessary (Neo needed to be the One, Trinity need to be in love with the One, Morpheus had to be the one to find the One...) and steered into the whole Zion mythos.
A few might, like Neo, once exposed to he baseline Matrix, realize that they could be in a 2nd-level Matrix and find themselves able to manipulate it as well. At that point a 3rd..N+1 level matrix would be unnecessary. Those unlucky few would just be lobotomized by the machines and put back in the soup. The effort to entertain the chosen ones with Matrix 2 is justified only by the notion that the undamaged brains allow more wetware computing power to be utilized (i.e., humans not just batteries).
Neo getting a big needle in his brain may have been an unpleasant ending. Perhaps once the battle of Zion happened, the 3rd movie would end with a "reset" back to Neo first waking up in Scene 1 of the first matrix. They can just keep Groundhog Daying the hell out of Zion.
If the matrix was layered, obviously the second layer was for the machines, and was there because the humans won in the host "reality", and even those thinking themselves humans in the second matrix would actually be AI slaves for humanity in the 3rd layer :P
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I remember when that movie ended in the theatre someone yelled, "Is that it?" and a bunch of us agreed. I never did get around to watching the third one.
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"God always makes a better idiot" was the one my cs college professors always used
The "idiot" is just an instance of using a Monte Carlo method search of solution space. :-)
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I came here to say that. Two and three were like a college student had vomited their one course on philosophy back out in script form.
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remake 2 & 3. They were garbage.
I think you mean parts 2 and 3. And, yes, you are right; they were pure garbage. I, for one, do not expect any better from any reboots.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Interesting)
What is really interesting about all this retread garbage is why is it happening, why has all creativity left tinsil town. Could it possibly be because of rampant nepotism, you know the ugly, rich and greedy marrying the shallow, pretty and stupid and producing generations of incompetence, who lack all creative ability but are guaranteed employment in management roles. Those individuals spending substantial portions of the companies budgets on public relations bullshit and marketing just to make themselves as individuals look good (weird crap like spending advertising budgets on package cinema tickets bundled with junk food to inflate gross revenues even though nett revenues shrink as a result but it ensures mummies little darling looks good in front of the board). Acting so bad they have to pay animators to touch up films to give hereditary actors realistic emotions, as for autotune for singers so post set animation for actors (hugely more expensive but daddies little princess must be a star). Then there are rumours of even weirder sicker stuff, that bonds the psychopathic elite (I suppose that would be the elite of perves) togethor.
There seems to be the expectation that no matter how shite the stuff they produce, marketing will save them or that is the delusion they share within the endless narcissist party circle. The psychological elements behind the failures are more interesting than the content they produce.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. One of many examples is that soon after Terry Gilliam was given the job of directing the first Harry Potter movie an exec suddenly found out how popular the series was, sacked Gilliam and gave it to his friend Chris Columbus.
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my thought was, They're going to ruin it worse than The Matrix: Reloaded and the stupid little mini cartoon movie they did. I doubt it would be worth the $15 to see it.. And I still don't understand why they're mad at me for "stealing" movies when most are absolute shit anyways. Honestly I dont even watch TV anymore because its just turned to shit. Best thing on TV is reruns of Southpark and the occasional new one they air.
Re:Leave the original (Score:5, Interesting)
There can only be one response (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa.
There can only be one response. Get a Rope (Score:4, Informative)
LOL, brilliant. This is a terribly written article, for the simple reason that it fails to identify if the studios are doing a remake, a reboot, or simply adding more stories in the same 'Wachowskverse'. Remakes are usually dimwitted rewrites of old classics, (I challenge anyone here to name a remake that was better than the original.) while adding more stories occasionally yields real gems like Aliens, Empire Strikes Back, and T2. Reboots are somewhere in between where an existing IP is rewritten and started over again, such as thee fucking mess that Sony has been making of the Spider-man franchise for the better part of twenty years now. I might be willing to watch more new stories set in the same world, but I really don't need to see a new Neo movie.
Look Hollywood, if you aren't going to try to write new stories about new IP, at least write new stories about old IP rather than remake and reboot the same old stuff over and over again. We are bored with the same story over and over again.
Re:There can only be one response. Get a Rope (Score:5, Insightful)
Remakes are usually dimwitted rewrites of old classics, (I challenge anyone here to name a remake that was better than the original.)
That's easy, there's a bunch.
1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). The first one in the 50s was interesting and not bad, but Donald Sutherland's version was excellent. Don't watch the 3rd one made around 1990 though. The 2000s one with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig isn't bad.
2. The Thing (1982) by John Carpenter. This was a remake of a cheesy 50s movie. JC's version is fantastic, and has amazing stop-motion effects.
3. Battlestar Galactica (2003). The 70s show it was a "re-imagining" of was rather cheesy, like most TV and sci-fi stuff in the 70s. The 2003 mini-series was fantastic, and the follow-up TV show was great too, for about 2 seasons. Unfortunately, it jumped the shark after that, somewhere around season 3.
4. The Fly (1986). Jeff Goldblum's version is much better than the 50s version.
Here's an article [screenrant.com] that lists some more.
Re:There can only be one response. Get a Rope (Score:5, Insightful)
Star Wars: ESB is the first thing that comes to mind there.
Some people might argue "Aliens", but I would argue against that, instead maintaining that both movies were excellent, for different reasons and shouldn't be compared too directly.
Some people might argue Terminator 2.
Superman 2 is a possibility.
Maybe X-men 2.
I can't think of any others offhand. Notice that most of these are well before 2000, just like all the ones in my movie re-make list (except BSG, but that wasn't a movie remake, it's TV) Personally, I think it's safe to say that in the last 15 years, there have been NO remakes or sequels better than the original, and really that Hollywood is going down the tubes.
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A few tricky ones there.
Aliens, Mad Max 2 and arguably Evil Dead 2 changed genre from their original.
Alien is a supremely excellent horror. Aliens is possibly the greatest action film ever made. I wouldn't compare them, they're very different stories doing very different things that happen to be contiguous and fit together beautifully.
Mad Max is a dystopian revenge drama with action scenes. Mad Max 2 is an action film. I prefer the original but low budget Australian cinema is a weakness of mine so it's not
Re:There can only be one response. Get a Rope (Score:5, Informative)
> (I challenge anyone here to name a remake^H^H^H^H^H^H regurgitation that was better than the original.)
FTFY.
/sarcasm You mean the new Ghostbusters -- that NO one asked for -- was better then the original? **snicker**
Oh wait, I _actually_ have a legitimate remake that isn't shit. Challenge accepted!
Robin Hood.
I mean, one of the eleven remakes has to be better then the original 1912 version, right? :-)
But yeah, I agree with you 99%. I'm tired of film re-cash-grabs [wikipedia.org]
Instead of reboots / reimaging / remakes / reimagining -- we should call them for what they are:
Regurgitation
They'll screw it up as they did with Point Break (Score:3)
Re:They'll screw it up as they did with Point Brea (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll screw it up as they did with Point Break
I think the problem is that there isn't an asshole shortage in Hollywood.
Star Wars ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the submitter meant Star Trek not Star Wars. Star Trek got the re-imagining, Star Wars has merely had more delivered of the pre-envisaged canon.
I wonder how long we'll have to wait before a proper new and original franchise star up. I'd like to see Elric or the Ian M. Banks Culture stories
Re:Star Wars ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The pre-envisaged canon looks suspiciously like the original movie, just transposed in time by a few decades.
Re:Star Wars ? (Score:5, Funny)
That's because all of this has happened before and it will all happen again.
Wait .. Wait, was that the wrong franchise?
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Mote in God's Eye. The Gil Hamilton series.
I guess I have a soft spot for anything with three arms.
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I wonder how long we'll have to wait before a proper new and original franchise star up.
There was Firefly and Serenity. And I believe the Kingkiller Chronicles have been optioned. The Expanse is a TV show. Movies, in general, do the subject matter little justice -- either too little character development time or too little Sci Fi/Fantasy time.
Just so long as they don't remake the Princess Bride. I'll quit TV then.
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This just in: slashdotters are OLD (Score:5, Interesting)
NOW you perceive the film industry has run out of ideas? In 2017? More likely, those who voted this to the front page just happen to be in the 35 to 40 year old zone where the banality of popular entertainment starts to become intuitively obvious even to those with no critical thinking skills. Not news. Status quo.
Out of ideas? (Score:5, Interesting)
NOW you perceive the film industry has run out of ideas? In 2017?
Well, let's see here.
They started making a movies of video games, such as "Doom", which had very thin plots.
Then they started making movies of video games that had no discernable plot, such as "PacMan".
Then they started making movies of *board* games, such as "Battleship".
(Monopoly (the movie) is apparently in production [imdb.com].)
Battleship? Really?
I'm sure the studios still have a lot of ground to cover. I anxiously look forward to "solitaire, the movie" in the next year or two.
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Akira Kurosawa's name is not Rashomon, he made a movie by that name as well as the Seven Samurai.
If they make the sequels as intended, (Score:2)
not as made due to divorce issues, then I might actually look forward to this.
In their defense... (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it, it isn't a reboot per se. Rather, it will be another story set in "The Matrix Universe." So rather than the story of the Nebuchadnezzar [wikipedia.org], it will center on the crew of, say, the Ganesha [wikipedia.org]. Make it a prequel.
Think something like "Star Wars: Rogue One" or something similar.
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I'm guessing they'll find a gifted hacker who's name is "Wot" (hopefully I don't have to point out that's an anagram of "two") and played by Alex Winter.
There really isn't a lot of creativity in Hollywood.
Re:In their defense... (Score:4, Funny)
Stop stealing my fan fiction!
Neuromancer (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe go with the original this time? Get William Gibson to adapt it for them?
Re:Neuromancer (Score:5, Interesting)
yes, please... or Snowcrash
I would like to return this monkey's paw... (Score:2)
Re:Neuromancer (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, please... or Snowcrash
I vote for Cryptonomicon.
You don't need to remake (Score:2)
Just make proper sequels
My idea for a new matrix movie: (Score:2, Funny)
John Wick 3: The Matrix
On the run from fellow assassins, John decides to change his identity, and become Neo. Neo then encounters a group of terrorists, and is offered a chance to see the truth. The world, as it really is. After some stuff Neo/John returns and fights a bunch of terminators.
The End.
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Honestly that sounds better than Reloaded.. So you know it wont happen.
It's not ideas. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideas are plentiful. I can come up with ideas. Some might even be decent movies.
But ideas are risky. Making a movie is expensive, especially a big-title blockbuster. Tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars for the very biggest. $63,000,000 for the Matrix. Of course studios aren't going to gamble that kind of money on new, unproven ideas. They will spend it on things that they know have a proven history of financial success. Franchises, sequals, spin-offs. Things the market has assessed, and judged worthy. Stars with a track record of drawing in the crowds. Stories that are packed with cliches, but cliches that audiences have always responded positively to.
This assures hollywood of profits, but it also means all movies start to look the same after a while. If you want new material you will have to look to independent productions, where they can take risks - but be warned, Sturgeon's law holds, and you will have to wade through a lot of horrible B-movies and obscure review websites to find the hidden gems.
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$63,000,000 for the Matrix. Of course studios aren't going to gamble that kind of money on new, unproven ideas.
If nobody would risk $63million on a new idea then how did The Matrix get made in the first place, considering it was a new unproven idea?
Re:It's not ideas. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it was a different time back then.
We were heading into the dotcom bubble back then, economy looked extremely healthy and things were looking up as we were heading into a new millenium. You can see the same thing with computer games from around that time, lots of experimentation (some better than others ...) as 3D graphics were becoming the norm.
Now, though, everyone is afraid of screwing up and bankrupting the company on one miss because that is all it will take. And what do we get? Movie rehashes and half of all AAA games desperate to get in on the E-sports market because that could prove to be a sustainable business model if it works. The rest are, again, rehashes. You don't see groundbreakers like Portal or Everquest and WoW now - which is surprising considering those were all so successful in their heyday, actually.
Let's reboot the reboot of Spiderman's reboot! (Score:2)
Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.
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Or Hulk or Fantastic Four!
It's not out of ideas, it's risk adverse (Score:5, Insightful)
The Hollywood business is currently driven by metrics that put incredible emphasis on the immediate payout over the long-term health of franchises and eventual returns that used to come with home video sales. Part of this has been driven by the digitization of movies and music and part of it is the marketing of instant gratification.
Much of this has to do with Wall Street's insistence for quarterly returns since this is where movie studios have to go to if they want the cash to make them. It's also why you've seen movie budgets both explode and shrink at the same time. The banks want their money at a return rate which would make most mobsters blush. If you're not going to produce a hit that will, at minimum, return triple its costs then you'll not get financed. On the other hand if you can keep the costs down in the single digit millions, then plain curiosity during opening weekend will likely see profit.
The stuff in the middle doesn't return fast enough for anyone to care about getting it made. Forty million for a movie these days? Forget it. Hollywood can't make the guarantees it can with a budget of two-hundred million. You want the movie to grow an audience through word of mouth? Forget it. Hollywood doesn't have the patience for that to happen. It needs the numbers to come up in the black inside of the next twelve weeks, not in the next two years.
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Though to me, a Matrix sequel/reboot/whatever is a major risk with the amount of effort to get it right. Though I don't think this is the kind of risk Hollywood cares about.
I hate to say this... (Score:2)
I really hate to say this, but it could technically work.
In the original matrix movies, the matrix and zion kept getting rebuild and they were already on their 6th generation or something.
So this could be the generation after
That said, I still think they shouldn't do it.
Re:I hate to say this... (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably won't work (at least for people who saw the original) because it won't be the original. It won't have the novelty value of those cool action scenes, of bullet time, etc. It won't have Reeves, Fishburne, Moss, or Weaving. Chances are they've learned the wrong lessons (as already shown by the 2nd and 3rd movies) and instead of a good story we'll get endless boring overly-choreographed action scenes.
On the other hand, it's a chance to do it right - ditch the battery crap and make the humans enslaved so their unused brain capacity acts as processors for the machine network, making it more creative than any silicon-based system yet designed. Make Zion just another layer to capture those who 'escaped' the Matrix. Do more with the Architect (in fact, I'd have bits of the original trilogy on his wall displays...)
Then show the REAL real world at the end of it; the new Neo waking up into a more typical futuristic world, all shiny, bright sky... but all the 'people' walking around are machines. Make the machines afraid of humans waking up en-mass because it would lobotomize them. Make the humans concerned that if they all woke up, they'd simply starve to death if the robots didn't notice and strap them right back into the Matrix.
Film_s_? (Score:4, Informative)
Films? There is only one Matrix film. There were never any sequels.
There are hundreds of movies out there... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's hundreds of movies that come out each year, maybe 10% of which are prequels or re-makes. If I go to AV Club and look up their reviews of recent movies, I see:
After The Storm, Taipei Story, Frantz, The Sense Of An Ending, Raw, Personal Shopper, My Scientology Movie, Actor Martinez, Kong: Skull Island, The Last Word, The Shack, Table 19, Catfight, Before I Fall, Wolves, Donald Cried, Logan, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Collide, Rock Dog, Ash Brannon
20 movies, only two of which are big re-makes/sequels of well-known action movies. So what's the problem? If you don't like franchise movies, the large majority of movies being created aren't re-makes/sequels.
It's like saying all music today is terrible because you hate country...just listen to something else!
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Re:There are hundreds of movies out there... (Score:5, Funny)
But I tried the other kind, turns out I hate western too. :(
They aren't making movies for you (Score:2)
That is also why a lot of movies are full of explosions, and don't have much confusing plot (woohoo transformers!), because that is easy to translate into any language and culture. Seriously, check out these numbers [wikipedia.org].
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So what you're saying is, decent movies are another casualty of globalization?
The current model is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
Hollywood can't help but do this now. It's all that's left to them.
Every film nowadays has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly thanks to Hollywood accounting practices [wikipedia.org]. To invest that kind of money you have to be able to show the principals an expected return on that investment. You need to do market analysis and show that you have an audience large enough to get that return.
The only way to do that is to copy older blockbusters and assume the returns will be in the ballpark. Hence, reboots.
Look at Deadpool if you want to know about risk aversion. The studio did NOT want to make that movie. It was "risky". [gizmodo.com] Imagine living in a world where you would think that a Deadpool movie was too risky. That's why they're going for The Matrix. The two sequels were garbage but still made bank. So they know that this reboot will too.
It's the beginning of the end for Hollywood, IMO. Their model can only support smash blockbusters, and now they're out of them.
Re:The current model is broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost all the big budget blockbusters are remakes, retelling or variations on successful works. It's covered in better detail by people earlier in the thread because of the reality of large studio's investing large amounts of money and needing instant returns.
But the biggest Irony of the whole "no new ideas" trope is that it's absolutely false. There are more movies being produced these days by orders of magnitude what they were 20 years ago. In the 80's there were maybe 20-30 or less movies produced a year, these days it's probably closer to 200. But the problem is that almost all the money goes to a handful of "blockbuster" films that are expected to gross billions in the first month.
Re:The current model is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the beginning of the end for Hollywood, IMO. Their model can only support smash blockbusters, and now they're out of them.
But the blockbusters are still making a billion dollars each. Transformers makes money. The new Star Wars are forgettable crap but they make money.
Saying it's the "beginning of the end" when they're still pulling in billions is like Yoga Bera's restaurant nobody goes to anymore because it's too crowded.
Next year - "Good Omens" (Score:2)
On the Beeb, at least something original (to the screen) is coming.
OriginalDVDs/Tapes are now "bootlegs" of respins (Score:2)
I'm guessing that if you have a VHS Tape or DVD of a movie which is being "rebooted" or "reimagined" then you could be a target of big film-maker lawyers because you have a competing work which could hurt the value of the new product.
Hopefully I'm not giving any studio suits any ideas - I'd hate to go to the clink because I owned a copy of the Matrix part 3.
The Amber Chronicles (Score:2)
The Amber Chronicles is a swashbuckling matrix with infinite universes between Amber and the Courts of Chaos. Do that.
What do you mean 'finally ran out of ideas'? (Score:3)
I agree with others on this; leave The Matrix alone. It doesn't need to be 'rebooted', it doesn't need a 'remake'. Leave it be.
Remake, not "reboot" or "reImagining" (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we stop with this reinventing of the language and stick with the words that really describe what they're doing? They're doing remakes. The only reboot I've seen is Star Trek, where they used time travel to radically change the universe, but it's technically the same universe (or multiverse) as everything that had preceded it. The new Battlestar Galactica pushed the term "reImagining" to stress that they were changing the story and doing it differently, but it was still a remake (a fantastic one).
Movies in a franchise are generally either a remake or a sequel (or prequel). I'm not sure I would use the term "sequel" for the James Bond movies, where each one tends to be an independent storyline with few sequential aspects, but loosely speaking they fit the definition.
because (Score:2)
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they are about as good at coming up with new ideas for films as they are at coming up with new distribution methods.
fucking auto complete
You hear that, Mr anderson? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of creativity's death.
The studios primarily care about profits reaped with minimal risk. The glut of prequels, sequels, reboots, and adaptations is happening because those properties are already known among the population and have a built-in audience.
Consequently, original material gets shoved aside. Hollywood writers should be pissed because they're not being utilized to their fullest extent. At this rate, Avatar may be the last original property to originate in Hollywood.
Can you skip The Matrix and just redo 2 and 3? (Score:3)
I think this was Richard Jeni. I don't remember the exact skit, but it was something like:
Hollywood Has Run Out of All the Ideas! (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: "I only go see big budget blockbusters and I don't understand why Hollywood would rather bet that money on a proven franchise or remake rather than a riskier original film. Plus I'd rather whine about it than risk going to see smaller, independent films that might be original!"
Authors refuse to deal with Hollywood (Score:4, Interesting)
Some authors have sought legal relief and won, but the process is prohibitively expensive enough to discourage litigation - and Hollywood knows it. The authors may have had their day in court but they have lost control of their original material forever, as those contracts are sealed in iron-clad concrete that the control freak entertainment industry refuses to give up.
The problem isn't the lack of new ideas. The true problem is that authors have been screwed by Hollywood for so long that they refuse to sell their original works that could be made into a movie or TV show. Hollywood can't find authors willing to sell them new ideas, so they re-hash existing ones in their control into re-makes, sequels, prequels, baby versions, et al all in a formulaic process. Small wonder that there is little original material coming out of Hollywood anymore. How many more damn re-makes of "King Kong" does the world need?
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and when movies try to go beyond that, like Star Trek The Motion Picture, people complain endlessly.
Well, many would say that was just the 2001: A Space Odyssey idea.
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it's really about a dozen ideas but the matrix is your cookie cutter hero story with a bunch of old names thrown in to make dummies think how deep it is
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A faithful BTTF set in 20151985 could have been rather amusing.
Of course, a faithful reboot of anything is rarer than anything else.
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I dunno. They do a Three Musketeers for every new generation, and that's always in the year 1625. Remaking Back to the Future every thirty years or so actually seems like a pretty good idea, because you can slide the window forward and have a whole fresh set of gags.
Eighteen Years???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck me.
I'm old.
Re:Eighteen Years???? (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck me.
I'm old.
Fuck me, I'm legal!
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Both of those statements taken together make quite parent fetish. *shudder*
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Nah, cheer up. You'll know it's really over when you need to take the blue pill.
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Hollywood and Dollars are never far apart...
Money talks and they only listen to money out there on the left coast. Unfortunately they only listen to left coast money...
Which is why there has been a bunch of independent films making money for decades. If you want to make a movie that's not PC in it's story line, or has subject matter Hollywood doesn't like (even if it would do well in fly over country), your best bet is to avoid Hollywood.
Ah, but Rocky actually *losing* (Score:3)
after all that was a bit of a fresh idea.
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Maybe the "AI"s were actually real people and the people were really "AI"s
Kill an enemy in a game its gone forever.
Die in a game and you always respawn.
Clearly the actual "happenings" within the movie indicate that the agents are real and the "humans" are A.I.