Hollywood Babble On & On #924: You Asked For It!

I got two questions from reader Nate Winchester that I'm going to answer here.

1) With the upcoming release of Spider-man, and the announcement that Batman will be rebooted right after Nolan's 3rd movie ends, I can't help but wonder why don't Superhero movies  do more of the James Bond route? (well, until Casino Royale, but was that even a true "origin" story?) True, if it's a more obscure hero or if it's leading to a grander epic (like Avengers), why do we have to have "origin" movies all the time? Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Hulk, Captain America, most of these the public zeitgeist get the basics of.  Why not just skip straight to a new story?

First we need to talk about reboots.


Sometimes a reboot is necessary.  There's been a long time between chapters in the franchise that the zeitgeist needs a refresher, or there's some sort of dramatic change in the fundamental nature of the franchise itself.


The Bond franchise's "reboot" with Casino Royale marked a shift to the characters literary roots with darker grittier stories and more believable gadgetry after the incredibly cartoonish turn the films took with the last Pierce Brosnan film.


I get the feeling that the people behind The Amazing Spider-Man feel a reboot is necessary to correct what were the strategic errors made in the Sam Raimi trilogy.  First, Tobey Maguire was too old to play Peter Parker, being about 10 years older than the character he was playing. Also, by dropping Gwen Stacy from the first film and bringing in Mary Jane right away, they lost the motivation for his reticence in starting a relationship with MJ in the second movie.


I try not to talk about the third movie, because it was a complete narrative boondoggle which probably increased their urge to do it again with a clean slate.

Nolan's "reboot" of Batman's origins were necessary because his trilogy was so radically different in style, tone, and method from the Burton/Schumacher movies that came before them. In fact, divorcing themselves as far from the disco-nipple-suited Schumacher movies as they could was essential to reviving the franchise.

Of course such rational thinking may not have anything to do with the studio's decisions. They might think that tweaking the origin story opens doors to more potential merchandise or they think that the audience's collective attention span is as short as their own.


Now when it comes to "James Bonding" superheroes by just changing the actor when the contracts run out, that's good if you have the character and their origins firmly established in the zeitgeist. Batman, Superman and Spider-Man could potentially be adapted from scratch without telling their origins, because everyone pretty much have those stories already burned into their brains.


Characters like Marvel's Iron Man needed a little more explanation because of their then status on Marvel's "B-List," but when Robert Downey Jr.'s time as the character is up, you don't really need to tell it again. You can just bring in another actor if you can find one who can match Downey's performance.


So I guess what I'm trying to say in my incredibly rambling way is that the James Bonding of superhero characters can be done as long as they're not trying to correct the errors of the previous movies. If there's no disaster to get away from, then why bother, just change the cast and crew.

2) I hear often the old stories about how the original studio system was "broken" to give rise to our current set up in Hollywood.  Which you point out is very dysfuncitonal.  So I'm curious what you think it would take to "break" the current Hollywood system and allow something more sensible to arise, and a rough estimate on when (if ever) it would happen?

To answer that question we must look back at what broke the studios back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and that was the simple fact that they were broke.

20th Century Fox had to sell off huge chunks of its back-lot to avoid bankruptcy. Gulf+Western owned Paramount at the time, but was seriously considering shuttering the studio and selling off its assets because it was a financial black hole. In fact the only studios that were anywhere near being financially healthy at the time were United Artists (because of its low overhead) and Universal, (because it dominated television production).


Right now, though dysfunctional, and losing audiences for theatrical there are things that are keeping the studios from engaging in the radical reforms they need.


1. The studios are just parts of very large multinational media corporations with sizable monetary cushions that protect them from the vicissitudes of the real world.


2. They are mostly making money hand over fist from their television channels and productions.


3. The occasional record breaking blockbuster convinces them that they're on the right track, even when everything else they do fail.


4. Any independent company rises to challenge them can be either bought up, or brought down by the studios without too much trouble.


New media, via the internet, may become a challenger one day, but even they will face consumption by the awesome Borg-like power of the big media companies.


Any more questions?