Every once in a while, I must make a post where I nerd out about something (something=movies and TV). And after three consecutive life update posts, I could feel the TV opinions bubbling to the surface. (Also I have nothing else interesting in my life to report about.)
Last week, I watched the trailer for the new Harry Potter TV series coming to HBO Max in December.
(Ironically, HBO is, like, the only streaming service that no one in my immediate family has. Literally the only one. I even have Dropout.)
I am also currently watching the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW) that is currently being released. I’ll go ahead and just give a disclaimer here–I know that no one who reads this blog watches Star Trek, but a large chunk of this post will be about Star Trek.
You have been warned. 🖖
The combination of seeing the trailer for the new HP show and watching the new season of SNW, which is a prequel show to the Star Trek original series (TOS), got me thinking about how almost every TV show or movie being made these days is a reboot or a sequel.
We are living in the nostalgia age of television.
But the thing is, most of these reboots have been flopping. Nostalgia and fan service are what’s in demand right now, but it’s not turning out liked we hoped. There are good reboots that exist, so we know it’s possible to remake a classic story. So, if good reboots exist, then what makes a good reboot versus a bad one?
Well, let’s go back to Harry Potter and Star Trek (what a combo) and take a look.
With the Harry Potter trailer, I was actually surprised by how good it looked. At first. But as the trailer went on, it began to just look like a slightly-off version of the movies.
So many things looked the same. The Dursleys’ house, Hogwarts, a lot of the setting, really. It’s like they wanted to do a remake but were scared to actually…remake it, lol. I will say, the castle did look *slightly* different, but overall it looks like they didn’t really take much creative liberty with the setting. And how could they, when there’s already merch and multiple theme parks based off of the originals?
I do like the cast so far, but one of the strengths of the original movies is that they got pretty much the perfect casting. So while I have no doubt that this cast is also fantastic, it is going to be hard not to compare them to the original cast. Especially since the movies came out less than 30 years ago.
Basically, the trailer read to me like some sort of fan remake of the movies. I think one of the reasons this remake is being done is because everything is a TV show nowadays. It used to be that books got adapted into movies, but now, in the age of streaming and binge-watching, movies are being adapted into TV shows.
Another thing I noticed in the trailer was that there were some scenes that were not from the books or the movies. So it looks like they are going to be changing some things and adding some scenes, which is good. But overall, because they really can’t change much about the series because of theme parks, pre-existing branding, etc, it just looks like a knockoff version of the movies or something.
I am actually cautiously optimistic about this series, and I am hopeful that this new TV show format will distinguish it enough from the movies. It honestly looks pretty good.
On kind of the flipside: Star Trek.
The original series (TOS) came out in the 60s, and then TNG and the rest of the shows came out in the 80s-2000s. And then there was a big break, until Discovery came out around 2017, I think.
It took a minute for “New Trek” to find its footing. Discovery was basically not a Star Trek show at all. Then, finally, in 2023 we got Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original series. The show is about the crew of the Enterprise before Captain Kirk was the captain.
The first few seasons of this show were great. Season one was good. Season two was fantastic. The peak of the show, definitely. Season three was okay. And season four has been…bad. Just bad.
So far, every episode has been fanservice. Except it’s really bad fanservice. At every moment, it’s like, “Oh, here’s a reference to this obscure plot point from the 1960s!” or “Here’s a fun little easter egg!” or “Oh look, it’s that actor from that one episode 40 years ago!” But none of it means anything. It’s all there just to be there.
Every episode so far has also been what I like to call a “gimmick” episode. There’s been a time travel episode, a “shore leave goes wrong” episode, a horror/haunted starship episode, a black-and-white episode, an episode based on the TV series “24,” a soap opera episode, and a muppets episode. Out of the eight episodes that have come out so far, that is seven of them.
Old trek is known for having silly, “gimmicky” episodes too, but that was not the focus of the show. These gimmick episodes were usually regarded as filler episodes, actually. And that’s what this season of SNW has felt like: just a combination of filler episodes.
Right now, SNW feels like it’s trying to copy old trek, but only copying the worst parts of it. What makes Star Trek good is the thoughtfulness behind it. Not the gimmicks, not the fanservice, not the references, not the silly goofy episodes. Star Trek had this strange ability to be super entertaining, but also make you think. It “boldly went where no TV show had gone before.”
New Trek feels like it’s timidly going where Old Trek already went a million times.
What made SNW good initially was that it wasn’t trying to emulate old treks. Seasons one and two were great because it felt like there was finally some thought behind the episodes. It wasn’t just an action or thrill series like Discovery. Season three was alright, but now it seems like with season four, we have officially lost the plot.
Literally. So far, there’s no plot to this season.
This show is made by the same studio as the original series, has the same characters, even has the same setting, and yet it feels completely different.
It’s Star Trek the same way a tomato is a fruit: only technically.
So then what makes a good reboot?
After kind of thinking about the HP trailer and this new season of SNW, I’ve come up with a list of three things.
- Keep the themes, change the details
A good reboot should not try to directly copy the original.
One of my favorite Disney live-action remakes is Cinderella. It’s completely different from the animated movie, but it still has the same heart and message.
On the flip side of this is the live-action Lion King, which was literally a shot for shot remake and added absolutely nothing new.
The best reboots are the ones where the overall heart of the story is the same, but the small details aren’t. I don’t need the new Star Trek shows to look exactly like the old ones. It does not matter to me if the starships are shinier, the actors look “too perfect,” or if they change how the Klingons look for the bajillionth time (these are real critiques that people have).
What I liked about Star Trek was that it was a hopeful show about the future of humanity, and the episodes felt like they had actual messages to share.
SNW is at its best when it isn’t trying to service the fans, and instead tries something new.
- Distance from the original
We shouldn’t be remaking things that don’t need to be remade. Especially just for cash grabs. An example of something that needed to be remade is Percy Jackson. Pretty much all PJO fans agree that the movies are terrible. The TV show has actually done a great job at fixing a lot of things about the movies and overall just capturing the vibes from the books better.
Harry Potter does not need to be remade. Sure, some diehard fans are picky about things that were left out of the movies (I might be the diehard fan in this scenario…), but the HP movies are good movies. They effectively and concisely tell the story from the books, even if that means leaving out a few minor details. The Harry Potter movies are widely regarded as some of the best book-to-movie adaptations out there, so there’s no reason to remake them.
The target audience for the new HP series seems to be the same people who grew up with the books and the movies–which is not good. It hasn’t been that long since the movies came out, so everyone is going to be comparing the show to the films, especially because of how similar they look.
There was a funny tweet I saw earlier this year about the live-action Moana. Basically, it was a mom saying that her kid didn’t want to see the live-action movie because the live-action Maui wasn’t the “right” Maui. The target audience for this movie was kids who had already seen the animated movie–and the kids didn’t even want to go see it!
If your target audience doesn’t even want to watch it, then who’s going to watch it?
Reboots or remakes should have distance from their originals, and they should be made for a new audience.
- They should improve upon the original
Once again: Percy Jackson. The TV show is a huge improvement upon the movies. The characters are actually the right age, for one, and it just does a better job at capturing the same vibes from the books. The movies had hardly any similarities to the books at all.
Another way that reboots improve upon the original is by adding new material that is actually important to the story and not just sideplot. For example, in the live-action Cinderella, Cinderella meets the prince before she goes to the ball. This gives Cinderella and the prince a preexisting relationship that actually influences the story.
Basically, a remake or a reboot should have a purpose–it shouldn’t just exist because “why not.”
I’m still excited about the new Harry Potter series, and about Strange New Worlds Season 5 (not necessarily the rest of Season 4…I’ve kind of given up hope on that). I think the trailer for the HP series showed that they’re still keeping to the same vibes as the books and movies, so at least it’s not going completely off the rails. Who knows, maybe they’ll even put Peeves in this one.
Reboots are super common nowadays because people are scared to take risks on new stories. It’s easier to create a story that already has an established world, and it’s easier to watch a movie where you already know the characters and know that you like the story. However, I think the best remakes are closer to new stories than they are shot-for-shot remakes.
Overall, I’m just really tired of this “nostalgia” era of TV, and I am looking forward to when new stories become exciting again.
Until then,
