Reboots that Got the Boot

While writing an article on the current and most recent reboot of the Planet of the Apes series, I began to wonder about other reboots. Technically, reboots are very unpopular. They in effect erase the cannon of a series. It is not just getting a new actor portraying a character, but a brand new origin. Lets take the television series Smallville which changes the following in the already established history of Superman. It eliminates Clark Kent's stint as Superboy during his pre-teen years, suggests that Lex Luthor was killed off then cloned back to life, that Doomsday never killed Superman, that Brainiac became a hero, that Krypto was not from Kent's home planet, and a number of other major changes to the comic book cannon. Making such major changes often draws the wrath of fans, especially those who have established past chapters as cannon. If a reboot is done well then it is inevitably accepted. Done poorly and fans of the franchise are unforgiving. There have been successes. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins ( 2005 ), Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China ( 1991 ) and the reboot of the series Hawaii Five-0 won over fans of their respective original series. But more often there are mistakes. The following are the ten most hated reboots of all time.

#10. Casino Royale ( 1967 )
No, not the 2006 James Bond reboot, but the first attempt at a reboot way back when the James Bond franchise was only 5 years old. This requires a bit of explanation. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli had made a deal with Ian Fleming to give them exclusive rights to all the James Bond books, which they produced through their studio EON Productions. ( United Artists was technically only the distributor, although they did finance much of the production of the films. ) While EON had exclusive rights to most of the James Bond library, there were two books they did not own. Thunderball began as a script that Flemming co-wrote with Kevin McClory with the idea of selling the script to a major Hollywood studio. After a legal dispute McClory ended up owning the film rights to the script and resulting novel. The other was Casino Royale which Flemming had sold the film rights to back in the mid 1950s. Those rights were eventually sold to M.G.M. who could legally make their own James Bond movie, and then follow that with their own sequels as long as they did not use material from any of the other James Bond books. M.G.M. hoped to cast Sean Connery as Bond, but he remained loyal to EON and turned their offer down. For some reason M.G.M. was unable to conceive of a serious Bond movie without Connery, and instead came up with the idea of turning the film into a madcap comedy with an ill conceived plot where there are several agents called James Bond. Adding to the confusion, five directors worked on the film, each directing their own Bond segment. Peter Sellers who played one of the Bonds apparently quit mid production, forcing producers to use trick editing and footage from other Sellers films, as well as coming up with a completely different framing segment with David Niven to explain why there are so many Bonds. The end result was a mess, a film that Bond fans avoid.

#9. The Little Rascals ( 1994 )
One of two misguided attempts to reboot a classic Hal Roach series. The idea was to recast the same characters made famous in the 1930s Our Gang series, and put them into a brand new film that would capitalize on the subsequent success of the series after it went into television syndication. Producers purposely chose a young cast ( averaging around six years old ) because they wanted at lest three more films out of them before they outgrew their roles. But what producers failed to realize was that the original cast were, well, original. They were not playing characters, they were playing themselves ( with the obvious exception for Froggy, a character that turned up after the Our Gang series transferred from Hal Roach to M.G.M. studios ) The new cast was nowhere as good as the originals they were portraying. As for the so called new movie, much of it was predictably reworked from a number of popular Our Gang shorts.

#8. Planet of the Apes ( 2001 )
Tim Burton's "re-imagining" of the 1968 movie had great special effects and a lot of action, but failed to recapture what made the original great, and that was it's core story that had intelligent apes questioning if humans were capable of intelligence. Add to this the elimination of all characters from the past films, as well as an ending that confused just about everyone who saw the movie, and you have a reboot that fans of the original series overwhelmingly rejected.

#7. New Monkees ( 1987 )
In the mid 80's MTV began broadcasting old reruns of the 1960s television series The Monkees, a sitcom about a rock band, introducing them to a brand new generation. There was a sudden interest in the band. Monkees albums that had sat unsold in record bins for more than a decade gathering dust were suddenly in demand. As was all old Monkees merchandise, such as their lunch boxes which were suddenly Worth hundreds of dollars. It was inevitable that someone would come up with the idea of a new Monkees television series, this time with a brand new cast. The only problem though, the original Monkees still existed. Although they had been created for the television show, they inevitably began making real record albums and having a string of their own top ten singles. Even after the Monkees television series was cancelled they continued to make albums, continued to tour, and even made a movie. And although the band had broken up by the early '70s, they had reunited shortly after MTV began re-airing their old series, and even managed to put a new single That Was Then, This Is Now into the to 20. Interest was in the original band, not in replacements. The New Monkees failed, while the originals continued to profit from their revival success.

#6. The Pink Panther ( 2006 )
Lets face it, the original Pink Panther series did not end well. Peter Sellers died in 1980 of a heart attack. He was scheduled to begin filming Romance of the Pink Panther. Instead the studio rehired Blake Edwards to put together a new Pink Panther movie using deleted scenes from all the previous films. The Trail of the Pink Panther ( 1982 ) has Clouseau in only the first half of the movie, after which he mysteriously disappears. The rest of the movie has an investigative reporter interviewing various cast members about the missing detective, which is just an excuse to show flashback scenes from the past movies. Two more attempts were made to make Pink Panther films without Sellers. Curse of the Pink Panther ( 1983 ) had Ted Wass as an equally inept detective assigned to locate Clouseau. And Son of the Pink Panther ( 1993 ) starred Roberto Benigni as Clouseau's illegitimate son. All three films were both critical and financial failures, and it looked as if the franchise was finally ended. That is until 2006 when someone came up with the idea of rebooting the series with Steve Martin playing Clouseau. While Martin is a genius, there was simply no way that he or anyone else could recapture the performance delivered by Peter Sellers. Clouseau was not really a good character to begin with. It was only Sellers performance that made the character great. While the reboot did well at the box office, making the studio close to $100 million in profit, the sequel The Pink Panther 2 ( 2009 ) made less than a third at the box office and lost the studio money. Inevitably audiences realized that Martin was no Sellers.

#5. Superman Returns ( 2006 )
Superman was another franchise that ended badly. While the first two films were well loved, Superman III ( 1983 ), Supergirl ( 1984 ) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ( 1987 ) were considered three of the worst superhero movies ever made. In 2006 Warner Brothers came up with the idea of a partial reboot. The Return of Superman would be the direct sequel to Superman II, the other three movies would no longer be part of the canon. The premise, Superman left Earth shortly after the events in the second movie ( this despite that movies ending where Superman promises the President of the United States he will never go away again ). It is now nearly a decade later and Superman has returned from space to discover that he and Lois have a son. The movie had two big problems. It was very slow paced, something you do not want with an action movie. The other problem was that the very things that had made the past Superman films terrible were once again part of this movie, such as the campy comedy. This just wasn't the roller coaster ride fans wanted from a Superman movie, and it was inevitably rejected.

#4. The Bionic Woman ( 2007 )
The Six Million Dollar Man featured Lee Majors as astronaut Steve Austin, who crashes his ship and is practically blown to bits. he is put back together using bionic parts to replace the limbs and eye he had lost, all which also enables him to lift heavy weights, bend bars, run really fast, and see things that are miles away or very small. The success of that series lead to a spin off. Steve's girlfriend Jaime Sommers ( Lindsay Wagner ) is injured in a skydiving accident. Steve begs the doctors to save her using bionics, which they do. But later her body begins rejecting the bionics and she dies. The character was brought back a year later where it is revealed that the doctors were able to bring her back to life, but for some reason failed to tell Steve about the good news. Furthermore she is suffering from amnesia and does not remember Steve at all. Steve decides to leave her to live her own life, which she did in her own series The Bionic Woman. Thirty years later and someone came up with the bright idea of a reboot series. There is no Steve Austin in this new version. Instead Jaime's boyfriend works for a top secret organization called The Berkut Group. She is unaware of this until after she is mortally injured in a car wreck and is saved by a bionic operation, after which she is now obligated to work for Berkut who basically own her. She also learns that she was not the first bionic girl. Another had received the same operation years earlier and the bionics slowly made her go mad, turning her into a killer. There were multiple problems with this reboot, such as the producers modeling the series after Alias rather than the original series. Another problem was that for some odd reason Jaime usually does not use her bionics, but rather solves problems without using super strength or speed. The series had promise, but was executed so poorly that it did not even last the full season.

#3. Zatoichi ( 2003 )
Zatoichi was a great film series featuring Shintaro Katsu in the lead role as a blind man who is also a Yakuza killer who has a sword hidden inside his cane and can mow down entire armies of thugs using his hearing. As the series progressed Zatoichi rejects the life of an assassin and instead attempts to spend his life incognito as a masseur, but in each film he inevitably gets caught up in some sort of conflict, usually involving a corrupt official or evil Yakuza boss who is suppressing the common folk. Each movie always ends with Zatoichi having a showdown with the villain and his henchmen, wiping them all out. This inevitably lead to his character being a wanted criminal, both by authorities as well as different Yakuza clans looking for revenge. What made the series work was Katsu's stellar performance as Zatoichi, where he not only played a convincing blind man, but was able to portray a character that was simultaneously comedic and tragic. When Katsu died in 1997 it was believed the franchise died with him. Then in 2002 actor/director Takeshi Kitano, better known as Beat Takeshi, announced that he would be reviving the Zatoichi series. And while some critics praised the film that resulted, many fans of the original series had a different opinion. It was not just that Takeshi filled the movie with artsy moments, such as when for no reason the entire cast gets up and dances, or that he chose to portray Zatoichi as a blond. Nor was it the fact that no one could top Katsu's performance of the character. What ultimately got them to reject this reboot was the ending of the movie where it was revealed that Zatoichi was faking his blindness all along.

#2. Godzilla ( 1998 )
No need to explain the well known Godzilla franchise. You all know the story. Giant monster comes stomping through Tokyo, knocking down buildings and derailing trains. The entire army and air force are useless. Then Godzilla shows up, fights the monster and kills him. Of course, in the first few Godzilla movies he was the bad guy stomping on Tokyo. This was the same formula for more than three decades and fans loved it. When Tri-Star paid Toho for the right to make their own Godzilla films, part of the deal was that Toho would cease making any new Godzilla films that would compete against Tri-Star's reboot in foreign markets. Toho agreed that they would conclude their franchise by officially killing Godzilla off, which they did in the movie Godzilla vs Destoroyah ( 1995 ). That left the door open for Tri-Star to begin their own Godzilla franchise, and they @#$%ed it up. The original version, nuclear weapons testing done by the United States brings a prehistoric monster back to life. The new version, nuclear weapons testing done by the french causes an iguana to turn into a giant monster. Deciding they wanted their Godzilla to look different than the old Godzilla, most likely for merchandising purposes, the new version looked more like the creature from Aliens than a reptile. Also, much of the movie was modeled off of Jurassic Park ( 1993 ) rather than the original Godzilla films. And the scale of the creature had it way too small to be able to crush buildings. Instead it turned over cars and dug nasty holes through the ground. Basically, Tri-Star paid tens millions for the right to make Godzilla films and ended up not making a Godzilla film. And if they were going to do that then why not save the money, not pay Toho for the rights but instead give their monster a different name. Fans of the original series were puzzled by what they saw and ultimately rejected the idea that this new creature had the right to be called Godzilla.



#1. The All New Adventures of Laurel and Hardy: For Love or Mummy ( 1999 )
They tried to make new Laurel and Hardy movies without Laurel and Hardy. How? Why would they be allowed to do that? Imagine some studio decided to make a Jim Carrey film, but instead of hiring hat actor they got a look alike and called him Jim Carrey in the credits. Basically, that is what has happened here. Way back in the 1960s, shortly after Stan Laurel died, Larry Harmon, the man best remembered for originating the Bozo the Clown character, was able to buy the rights to the name and likeness of both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The initial reason for this was to give Harmon exclusive rights to produce any Laurel & Hardy cartoons. But inevitably it lead to the hiring of look alike actors who portrayed Laurel & Hardy in commercials. Inevitably Harmon decided he wanted to begin making a series of new Laurel & Hardy films using look alikes. In this case Bronson Pinchot playing Stan and Gailard Sartain playing Ollie. Laurel & Hardy fans were outraged. It also didn't help that the movie was a critical failure. It ended up going directly to video, and no other fake Laurel & Hardy films were planned after that.