Remake, restart, recycle: why Hollywood will never stop giving you the same stories
The naked pistol. 28 days later. I know what you did last summer. Jurassic. I thought these are all titles of 2025, you might be forgiven to think that they came from Movonfone.
This year’s summer blockbuster season has been dominated by nostalgic dishes: restarts, remakes and suites. And while the story told was an element of the cinema industry that dates back to its first days, the studios seem to take more than ever – and the public buys.
From Lilo & Stitch becoming the first misunderstanding of the billion dollars box office of the year, for HAPPY Gilmore SMASHING NETFLIX AUDIENCE Records (47 million looked at him on the streaming service in the first three days he was available), for King of the hill Clicating as the biggest first animated for Disney adults in five years, the desire for old stories has done news seems to have been higher.
“We are all looking back with, you know, pink glasses at times when we also grew up,” Friday more bizarre Director Nisha Ganatra explained to CBC News in a recent interview.
“At the moment, above all, the world is a bit of an uncertain place. And I think that the comfort of these films and this collective feeling of conviviality that we had when we watch these films … This is why people return to theaters.”
Nisha Ganatra, the American Canadian director of Freaker Freaker on Friday, explains CBC News on the reasons why the consequences and remakes resonate with the public today, highlighting nostalgia, shared experiences and a collective desire for uncertain time.
A return to the well
The Hollywood affection for recycled and altered stories started next to Hollywood itself: going to Georges Méliès’ The sprinkler From 1896, a remake of the previous year The sprinkler sprinkled. And 1903 The big train flight was sadly recreated in a remake in a counter-shot shooting remake the following year, then several times after that.
And the trend of journalists emphasizing the remakes is almost as old as the remakes themselves.
“Redoing old movies is really an old hat for people of cinema”, reads a 1937 New York Times article. “Although the screen only recently emerged from his swaddling clothes and has managed to crawl almost halfway in his metaphorical knee pants, he already denies his years and even throws affectionate looks and reminders back.”
“Most often, these aspirations of the past have been caused by pecuniary motifs rather than aesthetics. Depending on its point of view, studios can be considered either as a critical actions of themselves, or as the collection of their former favorite. This last vision seems more consistent with the facts.”
Apart from the flowery language, the complaint that a given year has been overloaded with remakes seems to have been able to come from today.
Canadian director Dean Deblois is not a fan of live remakes. In an interview with CBC News, he shares the meticulous work of the translation of his animated feature film How to Train Your Dragon in his first live film.
‘They often miss the soul’
“I’m not a fan. I continue not to be a fan of live remakes because they often miss the soul,” said director Dean Deblois, despite the publication of a live remake How to train your dragon Earlier this year.
“Too often, they feel like they are lower versions of the animated film for me.”
So why did the remakes and the restarts become the dominant price of the 2025 film’s slate? According to Senior Comscre media analyst Paul Dergarabedian, this goes to dollars and hundred.
The summer blockbuster was a hob for Hollywood dating back decades; Dergarabedian notes that it generates around 40% of the Total Box-Office in North America. The success therefore often depends on the launch of their safest bets during this period “Play It Safe” where they have the best chance of satisfying the public as much as possible.
That, says Dergarabedian, is not a recipe for originality.
Many of the box office tubes this summer and the most watched streaming titles are not original films, and analysts say that studios and banners play it safely for a reason.
“As much as so many people denounce the lack of originality in the films, when you watch the 10 best films of the year, in general, there could be one or two of the top ten which are real original films,” he said.
“This explains to you why studios, marketing specialists, public relations, advertisers – they like proven and known and known brands.”
Instead, it was a recipe that led to films built around the show and excitement, with studios based on huge franchises and superhero fanaticism to attract ever higher box office receipts.
But also recently as 2023, a successful chain of bombs suggested by the public was no longer also interested in this price. Chasing these audiences, known as Dergaradedian, meant that the studios began to make films that could appeal to even wider demographic data. And in the past two and a half years, he said that it has led PG films to go beyond the PG-13 films for the first time.
It stimulated a return to the films and shows that people remembered their own childhood, he said. Film titles which were already considered healthy and accessible, or which were redone to be as harmless as possible, as with Lilo & StitchA live remake with a disinfected ending that has aroused wide criticism.
It was a decision prefigured by the co-president of Disney Entertainment, Alan Bergman, who said to the Times before the first of the film that changes were made to the original story because “to make the kind of box office that I think we are going to do, you must get everyone”.
This year is supposed to be Mark, the post-comfortable return of summer blockbuster to the cinema, but many major titles with swollen budgets have underperform. Experts speculate that this could change what Hollywood produces in the future.
The impulse of nostalgia
Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at the University of Syracuse, says that the desire to return to familiar stories is far from the films; as evidenced Odyssey be a series of The iliadAnd the two being stories of the ancient Greek myth.
Even the genre itself is a broader extension of the remake, according to Thompson. Comparing him to the automotive industry, he says that stories – like cars – historically could not be made for the tastes of each public member. Making stories similar enough to adapt to a genre was the solution.
“You are not going to make each driver an individual automobile. You must deactivate these things with a mounting chain,” he said. “And that’s what is the genre … get something that works and continue to do it.
The problem is that Thompson potentially believes at the origin of this current cycle of remakes and restarts: a reactionary change towards the fracturing of pop culture by the digital age. While the internet and streaming democratized entertainment, we have gone from media consumption from a few dominant points of view to a landscape full of competing productions giving voices to demographic data that had never had it before.
It complicated the types of stories and positions considered to be good or acceptable, says Thompson. The fear and the discomfort that followed some felt fed with the desire to return to a simpler period; To recreate a media landscape which they considered to be preserving traditional social norms, “because we celebrate this traditional and perfect past.”
He suggests our current overabundance of pink stories celebrating that the past has resolved by the media. “In the sense of” let’s just go back when things were simple. Let’s go back when things were good. Let us return art again. “”
https://i.cbc.ca/1.7541173.1747935998!/cpImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_1180/ent-film-review-lilo-stitch.jpg?im=Resize%3D620
About The Author
