An inquiry on the nature of remakes/reboots in media from history to now
Can you remember the last time you went to the movie theatre and not a single remake or sequel was playing? I certainly can’t. Why do the same stories keep coming back, and why do audiences eat them up? Have all the good stories already been told? One thing is certain: no matter how recent the reboot craze may seem, its existence is rooted in our nature. Market demand dictates why this historical trend appears to have come out of nowhere.
The documentary Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture & Turkish Pop Cinema opens with filmmakers Memduh Ün and Kunt Tulgar, prominent figures in the Turkish film industry, in a period when production had reached its peak. As they are talking, the documentary cuts to almost identical scenes from different films on stories of revenge, love affairs, or superheroes, suggesting a formulaic approach in each presentation. This suggestion is debatable, but in the case of popular films, there are certainly many similarities. Where does this familiarity originate from?
The roots of the remake and reboot can be traced back to the most basic forms of storytelling. Childhood bedtime stories can be considered the individual’s earliest encounter with fiction; we listen and learn to empathise with a character going through a fictional situation, with the conflict often ending in a cathartic conclusion. In the case of favourite stories, the child often wants a retelling. If it’s a story we love, we seem to never get tired of hearing it again and again, maybe to relive that catharsis or to feel that familiarity. We are creatures of comfort, after all. Familiar stories create a sense of security. This familiarity is why specific types of stories are go-tos for certain people. For example, my mother usually enjoys watching Christmas films after a long day at work. She can predict everything that happens because the scripts are super similar, but it’s that same comforting predictability that draws her in.
Nevertheless, similar stories unmistakably differ from remakes and reboots. By definition, they appear as adaptations of previously existing material. These productions are a double-edged sword; seeing something familiar can appear reasonable to some, but having their memory of the original challenged appears to be distressing to others. This dilemma has come up so many times in recent years. Whenever a well-known film gets remade, even when the box office revenue is successful, the fans rebuke the remake as a disrespect to the original—as was the case in Ghostbusters and A Nightmare On Elm Street. Yet first, one should ask why a film gets remade anyway.
“To reintroduce it to a new audience” is what studios, producers, and directors usually say, but why would a ‘successful product’ need to be remade instead of just putting the original back in theatres or on streaming platforms? Repurposing a familiar story in a new era’s cultural environment can sometimes work. There are dozens of Dracula adaptations, and each has a different flavour. Nosferatu (1921) visually encapsulates the German Expressionism movement, while Dracula (1931) has the classic-era Hollywood filmmaking qualities. Shakespeare’s plays have been turned into teen movies in the late 90s and the 2000s – such as Get Over It or Anyone But You – maintaining the original’s core while wholly redesigning the environment.
However, there certainly is a profit-based motivation behind the production of remakes. Surely, a familiar story and name is more likely to sell than something completely unknown. The film is then made to work more like a brand than an actual piece of storytelling. I find this kind of mindset to churn out more remakes akin to the exploitation market of the 60s and 70s. Exploitation films were made with low budgets but often turned out to be profitable. Film studios usually did this by following what was trendy at the time or simply seeing what was hot in the theatres, and trying to cash in on its success. When Jaws came out in 1975 and became the highest-grossing picture of its time, it was inevitable that cinemas would host even more films about sharks and killer sea creatures in the same vein, such as Piranha, Barracuda, or Tentacles.
I think remakes are retrospective exploitation films but with copyrights. In their original period, exploitation films tried not to be obvious rip-offs. They were similar, but they made major changes, which let them get away with it. Modern remakes also have these changes, which make them noticeably different movies from the originals, yet the difference is that they possess the rights to the original product. This difference inevitably helps with name recognition, an undeniable factor in how well the film does at the box office.
Exploitation films were low-budget. Remakes are not. Exploitation films didn’t try to conquer huge cinemas—they acted more like sideshows. On the other hand, remakes get wild distribution.
This in turn feels to me as if B-grade entertainment is dishonestly being passed off as A-grade entertainment. Maybe there indeed are only 31 stories on earth and what we see are further incarnations of them. Maybe it’s also in our nature to enjoy something familiar. Even so, the monopolies on famous franchises have inspired remakes made with less effort and creativity than exploitation films; the fact these remakes are the first thing film studios try selling is a truly bizarre indicator of what the film industry has become. At the end of the day, it is of course up to you if you are willing to go see one or not.
