Jurassic Park. Ghostbusters. Scream. A Christmas Story. What do all these unrelated films and franchises have in common? They all have graves that should have never been disturbed.
Don’t get me wrong: I love all four of these pieces of cinematic art and I would love more content from their respective universes. The problem is: so does everyone else, and I’ll be damned if anyone who’s not a film snob like me has any say in what’s quality entertainment. That’s a little too harsh and cynical – even for me – but there’s always a level of truth behind every thread of cynicism. The powers that be are no longer on missions to deliver timeless, well-developed pieces of art that we can discuss ad nauseam until our heads spin. Rather, they’re on missions of box-checking, crowd-pleasing, focus group and corporate-acquiescing, fan service and trailer shots, all cleverly packaged as “Hey, we rebooted that movie that took your breath away as a kid. Please spend $30 to waste your Friday evening watching a movie that actively punishes you for thinking. We even brought back all your favorite characters!”
Not to channel my inner-Donald Trump, but truthfully, no one likes nostalgia more than me. But it has to be done right. You don’t shove a chicken in the microwave to get it done quickly because you’re hungry. You let it bake in the oven like a normal person and enjoy a quality meal.
Nostalgia isn’t something that should be pigeon-holed into a Swiss cheese plot, or something that exists for the sake of itself. It has to be calculated in order to land correctly, pull on heartstrings, create clever callbacks to the source material, and tie into the plot directly. You can easily tell anyone who’s worked on Star Wars content for the last six or seven years or so has abandoned this rule entirely.
In another food-related analogy, most people like chili. However, we don’t want our entire plate to be chili. When it’s all fan service, over-the-top special effects and dime store nostalgia, impact is substantially lost. It’s too much of a good thing, and not done right, at that. So, what’s the industry’s response?
“There’s already way too much of that, why not more?”
Nostalgia is one of the most powerful emotions and properties a piece of music, film, art, etcetera can contain. And it’s depressing that it’s a victim of those dominating our entertainment culture today.
When nostalgia becomes abstract, it becomes worthless.
A reboot I’d like to invoke for specifically breaking this rule is the Jurassic Park sequel trilogy Jurassic World, which is as guilty of filmmaking malpractice as it gets.
Remember the first Jurassic Park? How we only had like an hour to meet the entire cast? How John Hammond was a well-crafted character whose ego made you root against him, but his heart and his drive made you love him? Remember how the mission – “get the power on and escape the island” – was the simple plot that didn’t require insane conspiracy theories and horribly dated jokes?
Yeah, that’s not a thing in the reboot.
Instead, it’s all forced tension and people mugging for the trailers. In the finale to the godawful stain of a trilogy, Dominion, the original cast of Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and the enchanting Jeff Goldblum reprised their famous roles, only to be shut out of any action and good dino scenes, because, during a movie about dinosaurs, we totally want to talk about giant locusts and pulling off a heist. Oh yeah, spoiler alert.
Dominion completely ruined my faith that the film industry could course-correct itself. Instead, it solidifies their intentions to pillage our childhoods for the last shreds of entertainment that geniuses who actually cared about art created, while mercilessly nostalgia-farming to galvanize viewers who simply don’t look past the veneer of emotional skullduggery.
The real cash cow is streaming, specifically content made for streaming. Look how great of a show Stranger Things turned out to be. It’s not perfect, but it’s nostalgia, suspense, coming-of-age and good acting all done right. I can forgive the show for its sins because what it does right, it does fantastic.
But it illuminates a great point observed by some: the complete moral and creative bankruptcy at the box office is indicative of a shift of talent, money and resources to streaming. That’s where the good content is. It’s a sad reality that I hope reverses course soon, but it seems the movies are not the place to go for good entertainment anymore.
The last time I actually left the movies satisfied was in 2017 after the Jumanji reboot, actually. That’s a reboot done right. It wasn’t too dated— it wasn’t promising to be better than the original. It played some good fan service but stayed in its own lane.
As much as I’d love to relive the past (I actively try to by reading the newspaper, not just this one), some things are better left in their graves. The mad cash cow disease we see now doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. I see more and more reboots dominating the marquees than I do original content. It’s not enough to keep me away from the theater, but it’s plenty to keep me complaining about things I can’t control.
