EXCLUSIVE: Here’s one from the helluva good idea department. Marvel offerings are soaring, and Star Wars is being reinvigorated by director JJ Abrams. Now, Disney has just started to turn its attention to reviving the Indiana Jones franchise after buying the rights from Paramount in 2013. I’m cautioned that while things are very early, I hear the studio has set its sights on Chris Pratt as the swashbuckling archaeologist they hope to build the new franchise around, the role made famous by Harrison Ford in Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was bad enough. Leave the classic franchises alone.
It was said that Shia LaBeouf was supposed to be the franchise reboot since his character Mutt Williams is the son of our famous Dr. Jones. But to due its poor box office earnings those plans were shelved.
Movie studios are in business to make money, period. They own the rights to all these old films so they are going to keep remaking them or rebooting the franchises all together in hopes of making more money. Original stories are drying up. Other than novels they really have no where else to turn for new material.
I’m to understand the real issue in Hollywood is “script trolling”. “Writers” create a basic movie idea, and patent it so the movie can’t be made without paying them tons of money. So basically every good idea for a movie is patented, and can’t be made without taking a serious financial risk right off the bat.
I think we will see more Hollywood movies made over-seas, where the patent rights don’t apply…if it works that way, I’m not sure.
And this is most certainly why we see movies made, re-made, re-booted, etc.
Actually, I’ve long hoped that Indiana Jones would become like James Bond: change lead actors every few years and keep the franchise fresh.
Crystal Skull was horrible as much for Harrison Ford’s age as anything else. I also understand George Lucas was responsible for some of the poorer aspects of the story.
The part that turned off people from Crystal Skull was shifting from the mystical aspect of the first 3 to “oh hey, aliens!” How many other fantastic myths and legends are out there that could make a fantastic Indy story and yet you use aliens…
Oh no! Hollywood is planning to remake a series of movies based on pulp serials from the 30s and 40s!
And they’re making sequels to movies based on pulp sci-fi from the 50s? Mehercules!
Seriously, though, the last Indiana Jones movie had aliens because it was based on the pulp serials of the 50s. And the earlier movies had mystical elements because those were in the pulp serials of the 30s and 40s. And both Star Wars and Indiana Jones are based on serials that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg enjoyed as kids. So there’s not much originality involved - they’re remixes. So remixing a remix doesn’t seem that horrible to me.
Putting this way actually gives it a welcoming perspective. It might be nice to see it reinvigorated but I just don’t see lead changes being as acceptable with the Jones series as it was with the Bond series.
I remember the outcry when Sean Connery stopped playing James Bond. Everyone thought it was the end of the series. No one can play Bond except Connery, and whatnot… People boycotted the first Roger Moore Bond flick out of protest.
Then time went on and people (especially a new generation) accepted Moore as Bond, and he went on to make a slew of James Bond films.
I see Indiana Jones the same way: older fans will cry “Foul!” but will eventually accept the inevitable, and we may get a damn good replacement actor playing the part.
I personally think the ‘Star Trek’ reboot is a travesty, but I’m willing to concede that you can’t make “Classic Star Trek” with the original cast forever. How many have died now?
It’s time to grow up and face reality that “the play’s the thing.” Shakespeare lives on because people accept different actors playing the parts. It’s a time-honored tradition.
Even though it was one of my favorite childhood memories, I stopped giving a damn when the prequels were made and the re edits of the originals were released. Much like the new version of Ghostbusters, these are all things I will simply ignore. I wish they would stop releasing crap, but Hollywood has been doing it for a LONG time now and they aren’t going to stop anytime soon.
I didn’t believe this but stepped out to get some food and sure as s**t it was on the news. Horrible idea. Some movies/franchises need to be left alone. Maybe the way to get the younger crowds to appreciate this would be to remake their favs; I.E.- Scream, Final Destination, Twilight Crap…, etc.
Or would that just perpetuate the problem?
LOL! Hell yes. If more parents did this then maybe we wouldn’t have this problem. Younger crowds would have already an appreciation for the “parent” film.
If they DARE remake Goonies, I might just be done with 'em.
It’s not so much that there aren’t new original ideas to make movies, it’s that producers have taken far more creative control than they should. They are the money people. They get the cash, and hire the director. Problem is, that these suits are now wanting to be involved in the creative process. It’s an area where they don’t belong. Their role used to be keeping the director’s vision from being financially impossible. Ergo, “We can’t afford that shot. We need to shoot something we can afford here.” Now, they want to have a say in how things happen creatively when they’re not really artists. The money is the only thing they provide that’s worthwhile, but they know they can force their changes and they take full advantage of it. They depend far too much on market research to determine what will be a “sure thing” vs. what will have lasting appeal. It sucks for many of us in the trenches because it’s almost always a producer who decides to dumb things down to appeal more to the lowest common denominator. This is why movies which have good potential often fail. It’s not so much that the creative people didn’t want to make something good, it’s that their hands get forced by the empty suits who control the cash. They think they know what you want to see, but often are just trying to justify their own presence any way they can and usually using really stupid reasons to do it, thereby making the picture less a product of the director’s vision and more of a “process of committee”.
some movies are OK to remake that are not character actor driven IMHO at least the characters are more about the actor
Ghost Busters being one of them Bill Murray cant be replaced but instead they want him to play a part debunking the ghost busters ?
or some Robin Williams movies that were made like Mrs Doubtfire etc…
They could have made more The Next Generation movies. Or maybe a Deep Space Nine or Voyager movie. Or they could do a new next generation, set it thirty or forty years (I was going to say twenty or thirty, but I realized that it has been twenty) after the destruction of the Enterprise-D. Get some actors from TNG, DS9, and/or VOY to do cameos like DeForest Kelley did for the pilot of TNG.
Don’t get me wrong, I think they did pretty well with most of the cast of the new Star Trek. But I still don’t like it. And the fact that Chris Pine is a horrible James T. Kirk (well, a horrible actor) and that they haven’t gotten a good writer together with a good director… Well, I’ll stick with the classics.
the characters are more about the actor