![]() ![]() During the last two decades, pretty much every popular franchise has been subjected to a tepid makeover: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist, The Omen, The Fog, The Wicker Man. Unlike today, directors were not chained to the studio’s every whim back in the 1980s there were more Martin Scorseses than there were superhero franchises, more room to breathe in creative terms. CGI would provide a similar upgrade to that of practical effects and animatronics (the kind that brought the original Chucky so devilishly to life), but today reboots are more plentiful, their reputation watered-down considerably. The same can be said of today’s CGI-attuned audiences. Cinema had come a long way since the kitsch days of Cold War sci-fi, both thematically and visually, and generations will always long for the days of old, but for those new to such properties in the 80s there was reason to be excited about modern remakes from some of the genre’s most influential directors. Again, there are exceptions - 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, 2018’s Halloween and the first chapter of Andy Muschietti’s It were handled fairly well for the most part - but they’re barely visible lilies in a deep and stagnant pond.Īudiences were less suspicious of the likes of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg when they rebooted The Thing and The Fly, respectively, though traditionalists were perturbed by a reliance on practical effects and horrific visuals, The Thing suffering at the box office following a spate of negative reviews regarding its sense of hopelessness. But the main reason was the fact that producers cared very little about making a quality product, only about the fact that exploiting long-cherished characters would slash promotional costs and give studios a licence to print tickets. There were various creative reasons for this: irreplaceable actors (Robert Englund) mind-boggling backstories (Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers) and a movie that was never going to replicate the appeal of the original Jason Voorhees, despite an interesting premise that transformed Camp Crystal’s perennial scourge into a well-schooled killing machine who hunted his victims like wild prey. ![]() There are exceptions - the majority of them originating in the latter part of the 20th century - but on the whole modern studio reboots have proved a depressing bunch: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th - they all received the reboot treatment and all failed miserably at one time or another, at least from this writer’s perspective. Reboots are always a cause for concern among moviegoers, and based on what studios have so far delivered it’s not surprising. When news of a Child’s Play reboot first reached me, I immediately smelled dissension in the air. Sorry Jack, Chucky’s back, but not as you know him
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