Remakes and reboots are taking over the world of cinema. Seriously, in just doing a quick search of the latter term on this very site, you can find articles about the latest takes on Superman, Evil Dead, Spider-Man, and several others. While many cry foul over the apparent lack of inspiration in Hollywood… well, I have to agree with them. Seriously, are the writes and directors really at that much of a loss for ideas? Are we about to be stuck in some seemingly endless spin cycle of concepts? It appears so, because yet another beloved ’80s film franchise is being rebooted: Predator.
Fittingly, the Metro slammed the idea of this (and other) reboots in their headline, “Had enough of reboots yet? That’s good, because now Predator is getting one.” Nice one. Anyway, the news surrounding this particular reboot is that it at least has some decent names behind. Primarily, there’s Shane Black, who’s set to direct the new Predator movie.
For those unfamiliar, he was actually in the first Predator, which was released in 1987, as the character Hawkins and contributing to the screenplay (though without proper credit). That same year he wrote (with credit!) the highly successful Lethal Weapon and, most recently, he wrote and directed Iron Man 3. So, yeah, this guy’s definitely got the appropriate chops to take on a franchise such as Predator.
Despite all the good things going for it, the Predator remake left me feeling this way: “Why have all of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic films led to remakes or unnecessary sequels?” The easy answer here is obviously money, but let’s take a look.
First, we can look to another (relatively) recently announced Arnold sequel, Terminator: Genesis. The good news (I think) is that he will once again appear as the T-800 machine. However, as MTV reported, there will be more than one of him in the film and his “skin” will show signs of aging. That’s… cool, I guess. But how about they just, you know, not do this film at all? Do we really need it? Nah.
And then there are the films that have already been remade. In 2012, Arnold’s 1990 sci-fi hit, Total Recall, was released with Colin Farrell taking the place of the muscular Austrian import. And to coincide with the film, which didn’t do so well per Metacritic’s roundup, a mobile game was released. And like the movie, Total Recall (the smartphone-gaming version) hasn’t fared particularly well when you see the three-star reviews.
One year prior, another one of Arnold’s seminal ’80s flicks hit the silver screen for a second time—sort of. You see, the only thing that 2011’s Conan the Barbarian has in common with the 1982 is its name. Sure, it also features some huge guy named Conan battling a slew of bad guys and whatnot, but that’s where the similarities end. No surprise, then, that it absolutely bombed at the box office and barely made back only half (!) of its budget, according to Box Office Mojo. Like Total Recall, games were released to coincide with the film, including a clever animated take on the long-haired bad ass at Inter casino. They claim to have “the world’s first and only Conan the Barbarian slot,” which is kind of crazy considering the story of Conan dates back to 1932.
So, what’s next? A remake of Jingle All The Way? How about a sequel to True Lies, Junior, Twins, or The Last Action Hero? Oh no… maybe I shouldn’t have thrown those ideas into the universe. Please ignore that, uninspired Hollywood writers.
