I once asked what media franchises need to just stop, that have run their time. Now I want to know which ones DID stop, and could be restarted with new content.
The Expanse
The show didn’t cover the Laconia story line, and given the time that passes before the final three books, we’re coming up on the perfect time to get the same cast back to do it.
The last few books are, in my view, the most compelling part of an already superb story.
There was this late 90s show called Sliders where this team travels to different parallel Earths with different histories. I would like to see that rebooted.
I didn’t really understand how TV worked back then, and I just hated that the Sliders crew couldn’t get back home
Space Ghost
“Moltar!?!?!?!?!?. Get off the internet!”
From coast to coast?
Gritty or camp?
Not a particular franchise, but I miss parody movies like Hot Shots or Airplane. Barring one of those being remade, I’d settle for a reboot of Tremors.
My 10 year old and I just watched airplane! And started top secret this weekend.
The tower! The tower! Rapunzel! Rapunzel!
Johnny was fucking hilarious, by far the funniest character. I could imagine the stuff he’d be in today if he didn’t pass away.
Oh and tremors 1 and 2 are in my top 20 favs.
“Bad news. The fog is getting thicker.”
“And Leon’s getting LARGER!”
There’s a new Scary Movie coming, so… yay?
I wasn’t really psyched about it tbh, plus I’m not really into horror in general so the references would be lost on me anyways.
I always thought that every 30 years they should reboot back to the future. No connection to the original in terms of production team or cast. The writer and director can’t be old enough to have many memories of the time (Zemeckis and Gale were both 4 in 1955)
Just someone doing their own take on “teenager goes back in time and meets their parents as teenagers”
See how the “past” of 30 years ago compares to the “present” of the previous version
Long term, that could be a really interesting experiment
Do we also remake bttf2, so you can see what people think 30 years into the future is like?
Too depressing and a whole other genre.
I make no prescriptions beyond the first. No objection if they do, but i think “what will the near future look like” is more common and therefore less interesting
Since 2016, I’ve wanted a Back To The Future remake just to have a scene where Doc Brown disbelieves Donald Trump is president like the original had him disbelieve Ronald Reagan was president
Max Headroom could work, IFF they went full-bore with the mockery of media, corporatism-as-government and cynical view of advertising. Though the desolation inside and outside the cities and the plight of ‘blanks’ might hit too close to home nowadays as it’s pretty much a literal reality now.
There was a Captain Planet parody with Don Cheadle like 15 years ago which was very much like The Boys + Captain Planet. I think that could actually work well now and have a more mature tone of Captain Planet who is like Homelander.
I think we should reboot Arthur (PBS)
But, and get this, make it a gritty realist drama about Arthur the Aardvark coming to terms with the death of a loved one
And it would have to be 18+ of course.
And the finale should have an avengers team up of all the classic PBS characters, to beat up Mickey Mouse in a fistfight. No holds barred of course.
Final scene will be Arthur walking away without looking back as all that the series represented is destroyed systematically by reboot after reboot destroying all value from all entertainment and nothing original being made, and then a nuke goes off, and there’s a cameo from SUPERMAN, MR ROGERS AND THE GREEN MEANIE
Nice try, Hollywood.
Imagine the Crimson Skies (game) universe but with a more interesting story.
Sorry if you liked the plot, I loved the game but the story wasn’t particularly memorable for me.
It might make a fun TV show.
Here’s one out of left field- Bucky O’Hare
The franchise has been dormant for about 30 years, and even back then there wasn’t that much established lore for a modern reboot to tiptoe around- a comic book that frankly not too many people read, a couple pretty good video games, and a Saturday morning cartoon made to sell toys, and there was little to no continuity between those different properties, you pretty much have free reign to go in and do whatever the hell you want with it.
And there’s was some pretty good stuff in there to work with that’s maybe even more relevant today than it was when it came out- plotlines about inept bureaucracy, imperialist/capitalist toads controlled by an AI, pollution, climate disruption, slavery, etc.
And the property was kind of hamstrung by its budget and stuff. I definitely enjoyed it as a kid, and when i went back to rewatch it a few years ago as an adult I thought it held up well enough but the animation and voice acting was definitely pretty janky at times, but even still it managed to have some bigger overarching story arcs. It also had a couple strong female characters without getting preachy about it, though there’s certainly some room for improvement in how they were written.
And if nothing else, today we can probably count on the furry community to watch a show about a green rabbit space ship captain, a cat space witch, a 4 armed pirate duck, a muscly baboon, and their nerdy human audience surrogate.
Andromeda. Yeah, the Kevin Sorbo show.
The premise is actually great, and the overall plot until Robert Wolfe got pushed out showed a lot of promise. The poisonous factor largely came from Sorbo wanting to intentionally turn the show into campy trash, and TV executives who somehow agreed with him.
Reboot the show, get actors who won’t sabotage production, and hire some half decent writers who want to do a Star Trek-like new franchise.
It was originally envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, hence the quality of the concept.
I’ll be honest, I’ve no idea if that’s a codemnation or an endorsement lol.
I like Trek just fine, but it almost entirely stems from catching TNG episodes on daytime TV growing up, as well as the memes. My understanding was that TNG didn’t start to get gud until Roddenberry had largely been sidelined.
I’ve seen this a lot in popular sci-fi. George Lucas did it, Gene Roddenberry did it, Steven Moffat did it.
They have great ideas, they make excellent media…with a team that can on occasion say no.
I remember, I had that VHS set of Star Wars back in the 90s, the one that’s basically the theatrical cut except in 480i, each tape started with an interview with Lucas about what a genius he is. You can find interviews with the cast at the time about how off the rail he already was; Mark Hamill talks about undeliverable lines, his then wife basically saved it in the edit. Star Wars hit mythical status, Lucas was elevated to the rank of turbogod, when it came time to produce the prequel trilogy in the late 90s and early 2000s, what we got was the most disappointing thing since my son.
Steven Moffat wrote many of the best episodes of 21st century Dr. Who. As a showrunner, he is physically incapable of calming his goddamn tits. All he does is shout at you about how awesome the main character is, and over-produce inconsequential shots. There’s an episode of Sherlock that takes place at Watson’s wedding, it’s basically one long monologue by Sherlock, the bridal photo scene is shot like the goddamn Matrix. The man can write! But he prefers to just say “He’s the Dokta! He’s the coolest and most badassest of the cool badasses. His dad could beat up your dad.” And then spend the entire budget on wooshy camera effects.
Gene Roddenberry was a fantastic screenwriter, but by 1987 he was THE man. Series creator. He got a lot of what he wanted, and he wanted what any forward thinking progressive man in his twilight years wants: A group of vegan space socialists who are always right, and women in short little skirts. He was so into his vision of a post-scarcity utopia that he didn’t allow character development, and he knew his boners were rapidly running out so he wanted to sex it up as much as he could. His health declined to the point the team took over, and the show got better. They realized the cast was so damn good that all of them could carry episodes, so they started formatting it as an ensemble cast where each main cast member is the star of a few episodes a season, and they made some of the best television ever broadcast.
He also helmed the original Trek Series and it was all his concept, in the same way Andromeda is a solid concept.
A lot of the ideas of andromeda ended up in the later seasons of star trek discovery
I would watch that. I loved that show for the first few seasons.
Teen Titans original would be my go to.
They attempted a reboot that didn’t hold the the water because it didn’t follow the main storyline, or the main personalities. Honestly the fact they used the original voice actors in it was just a slap to the face to the fanbase.
If they rebooted it properly that could defo take off.
The problem with the reboot wasn’t that it was bad or didn’t follow storylines, was that it was made for a different audience than the original show and/or comics and then forgot to tell that old audience. Watching it from the outside, it was hilarious and well written.
I personally didn’t like the humor in it but, I agree with your statement that it was made for a diff audience without letting legacy fans know.
Babylon 5.
IMO Stargate could use a reboot. I know a new series is in the works, and that this is supposedly a continuation rather than a reboot. But honestly I think I would prefer a clean reboot. I think this for two main reasons - contemporary relevance and power creep.
Stargate was unique in that it was a sci fi setting brought into our world. It’s not the enlightened 24th century humans of Star Trek seeking out new civilizations and going where no one has gone before. It’s some random US Air Force officers in our world today. People who could be your next door neighbor are visiting space aliens and fighting for the survival of humanity, and you’re completely oblivious. And as the series went on, the post-9/11 environment definitely was reflected in the Stargate world as well. So many of its themes explored anxieties of that era.
But now? Too much time has passed. The technology introduced by the events of the show would have percolated out into wider society and had such an impact that the Stargate world and our world don’t really resemble our own anymore. Maybe the new series will make it work. But that show was such a thing of its time, I think a complete reimagining would be the best way to bring it into the present.
Second, simple narrative power creep. As the story advances, humanity gathers artifacts and technologies. Now, one very cool difference between Stargate and Star Trek is that Stargate actually remembered its lore. In Star Trek, the ship’s doctor or chief engineer will invent a miraculous new technology or medical treatment, inventions that should have massive world-shifting implications…and then be promptly forgotten about. In one episode of TNG they discover a transporter effect that turns adults into children. Yet no one is later seen using transporters as a fountain of youth. In Stargate, the teams discover alien artifacts, meet and make alien allies, vanquish alien foes, etc. The official standing orders of the whole operation are to go through the gate and acquire new technology. And those technologies show up later in the show! Over the course of the show, humanity slowly grows from contemporary humans to a galactic-level power having acquired the complete technological and historical records of two of the most powerful races to have ever existed. They’re defeating literal gods at the end of SG1.
It was an amazing journey to go along. Hell, I grew up with that story. It was an epic journey to go down. Yet, it’s hard to see where you could credibly go from there. The power levels were already ridiculous at the end.
I would like to see a completely new SG1. In this setting, the Stargate program is started not in 1992, but in 2026. (Hell, you could canonically make it an alternate reality. Inter-reality travel was canonically established. So there would still be a way to do cameos of characters from previous series. Hell, feel free to really shake it up. Who says the aliens they meet out in the stars have to be exactly the same as in the original show? Alternate reality. Alternate history. Alternate aliens. This would allow the show to have a sense of genuine mystery even among those who watched the previous series. And it being an entirely alternate version of the creation of the SGC would allow a story to be told that better reflects our current times.
