Hollywood is back at it again.

[Flagg]

Like I said in my first post, this has been going on for as long as people have been telling stories, let alone writing them down. Some of the best movies and television shows ever made are essentially reboots. 'The Departed' was actually a "rebooted/Americanized" South Korean (I'm pretty sure, I may be wrong on the country) film called 'Infernal Affairs'. 'Avatar' was 'Disney's Pocahontas', only with smurfs.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Not to mention the number of Norman Lear sitcoms from the 70s/80s that were reboots of British sitcoms("Sanford and Son," for example, being a re-tread of "Steptoe And Son," and "Three's Company" being an Americanized "A Man About the House"), while Tour Of Duty was essentially Combat! set during the Vietnam War.

[Gandalf]

But I have to ask: Is Dredd even really a reboot?

Not really to me, it's a fresh adaption of the source materials.

You wouldn't call say the Keira Knightly Pride & Prejudice film a reboot of the BBC series either.

What's the difference? Aren't all reboots "fresh adaptations of the source materials," the key difference being that some are in print and some are on film?

[Gandalf]

Reboots tend to have issues of poor film making because they are quarter assed cash grabs that have the bare minimum of effort and rely of name recognition to sell tickets.

So isn't your issue with films that are "quarter arsed cash grabs" which sometimes take the form of reboots as opposed to just reboots themselves?

Like I said in my first post, this has been going on for as long as people have been telling stories, let alone writing them down. Some of the best movies and television shows ever made are essentially reboots. 'The Departed' was actually a "rebooted/Americanized" South Korean (I'm pretty sure, I may be wrong on the country) film called 'Infernal Affairs'. 'Avatar' was 'Disney's Pocahontas', only with smurfs.

Indeed. Nobody gets pissy about Leone remaking Yojimbo into Fistful of Dollars. Or... anyone remaking Shakespeare.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

What's the difference? Aren't all reboots "fresh adaptations of the source materials," the key difference being that some are in print and some are on film?

I'm thinking by "fresh adaptation," he means "movie with a good script, good actors, good visuals, and otherwise isn't a steaming pile of dogshit."

Or, perhaps that's just me. I judge movies/TV series/whatnot on their merits or lack thereof, not dismiss them out of hand for being reboots.

I didn't care for either JJTrek, not because Abrams rebooted the franchise, but, because he gave us nothing the TNG movies—especially Nemesissy—hadn't already done to death, including young Jimmy T.'s "fuck the rules, cause I'm the hero" mentality lifted right from Picard, Sisko, Worf, Wesley Crusher, et al., from the three TNG-era series and ST:Enterprise, and it cheapened(IMO) the entire Kobayashi Maru test into a TNG-esque "you go, boy!" moment, instead of keeping it as a life lesson learned the hard way, as it was for Kirk Prime in The Wrath of Khan.

The same with Burton's Willy Wanker and the Fudge Factory remake. Aside from the fact Johnny Depp was entirely the wrong actor for Wonka, Burton, instead of demonstrating the genius he's shown us in Edward Scissorhands or Heathers, just delivered a cut-and-paste effort, stocking it with enough clichéd Burton weirdness in an effort to paper over his just plain not giving a shit about making the damn reboot, much like his attempt to re-do Planet Of the Apes.

[Crazedwraith]

But I have to ask: Is Dredd even really a reboot?

Not really to me, it's a fresh adaption of the source materials.

You wouldn't call say the Keira Knightly Pride & Prejudice film a reboot of the BBC series either.

What's the difference? Aren't all reboots "fresh adaptations of the source materials," the key difference being that some are in print and some are on film?

Fair Point. My thinking was that movies that are based off adapting comic books/novels are better than ones adapted off other movies. But that's not really true as you pointed.

You're right in that it doesn't come down to Reboots inherently being bad. Bad films are bad, it's just that it seems like a disproportionate amount of reboots are bad. There's certainly a certain amount of confirmation bias there. When an original film is bad, its because of xyz quality that makes it bad, when a reboot is bad it's because reboots are bad.

[Grumman]

Some of the best movies and television shows ever made are essentially reboots. 'The Departed' was actually a "rebooted/Americanized" South Korean (I'm pretty sure, I may be wrong on the country) film called 'Infernal Affairs'.

I don't consider The Departed a good example of a good remake. The worst part of that movie was the part in which the remake diverged most from the original (the ending) - I hadn't even heard of Infernal Affairs at that point, and the change still stood out in a bad way.

[TheFeniX]

Like I said in my first post, this has been going on for as long as people have been telling stories, let alone writing them down. Some of the best movies and television shows ever made are essentially reboots. 'The Departed' was actually a "rebooted/Americanized" South Korean (I'm pretty sure, I may be wrong on the country) film called 'Infernal Affairs'. 'Avatar' was 'Disney's Pocahontas', only with smurfs.

And Lion King was a rip-off of an Anime, and both are pretty much Hamlet with animals. Avatar also ripped from an Ellison novel IIRC.

No one is arguing there's only so many basic stories to tell and themes to tie into. But none of those movies went "Hey, remember <insert popular thing here>? Here's that, but with a new coat of paint." There actually was a Smurfs movie, which was also a pretty generic "fantasy characters get dragged into the real world." I watched it due to Harris, but the entire movie tends to scream "enjoy these CHARACTERS you loved as a kid while we just kind of do things for an hour." There's a line there. A lack of understand why iconic characters are iconic. They didn't just show up and people fell in love with them (unless it's Boba Fett). There's chemistry between the actors and the story that a lot of people writing reboots just don't understand.

Another annoyance comes from tieing into something dead that was popular is often used to protect otherwise weak everything. I wouldn't be surprised if both series from the OP started off as typical buddy-cop and "smarter than everyone guy shows everyone he is smarter than them" shtick that TV loves these days after House. Sometimes this can work out, as with Bughunt (Read: Starship Troopers). However, the movie wasn't exactly a good adaptation of the book. Just like Stallone's Dredd wasn't a good adaptation of the source material even though "Dredd" was.

"Reboot" probably isn't the best word to use. There's obvious good examples over the past thousand years to show why certain stories are popular over and over again. But there's a line where you're aping old content and it comes off terribly. Such as Carpenter going his own route with The Thing, but the prequel release years later being much more a reboot than the Carpenter version. There's so much they "paid homage to" WRT Carpenter's version. But they did such a shitty job at it, the movie is a jumbled mess of poor character motivations and CGI.