Rebooting and reinventing or how to dismantle your childhood heroes

 Rebooting a TV Show and turning it into something dark, brooding and deeply depressing seems to be the hip thing to do these past few years. Now, don't get me wrong I don't mind updates, remakes, reboots or whatever you want to call them. But I absolutely hate reinventing/reimagening. I really wished Hollywood and the movie industry would put its efforts into creating something original. Has Your generation nothing new to offer? Do you really ALL have to come back to the old and safe? There are so many good writers out there, with genuinly new ideas and entire universes to explore that it is unexplicale why they keep trying to fix things that don't need fixing in the first place. And why always turn something postive into negativity, darkness and distrust? Worse of all by constantly retconning, the makers alienate the longterm fans who actually made the show a success back in the days and passed the love for it onto a next generation. The lack of respect to the original stories, the characters and their fans is ipso facto counterproductive. Because we'll just stop watching, or going to the movies. No fans, equals to no commercial value of the movie/series and that, as we all know, results in the death of the show/movie/franchise. Get that Networks and Studios? Make the fans huff off, and You'll lose the show!

One thing I really mind is when my childhood heroes are being turned into whining alcoholics as in Battlestar Galactica, or one man shows for overpaid wannabe James Bonds as in Mission Impossible. (Teamwork? What Team?) Yes, and then the paramount of reboots gone bad: Bionic Woman. A stiff and sulky faced, bartending brunette that even makes the 24/7 pouting Kristen Stewart look vivid. Oscar Goldman and ALL other characters are badies and no one trusts or smiles at anyone, ever. EVER! (Alias squared)

Oh lordy Lord and holy flying spaghetti monster! Should I go into it some more? NOPE my grey hair is growing back!

I'm sure, there are plenty of lovers of the whole deep and dark and brooding approach. But its ike the "I'm thinking, I'm thinking" scene with the thinker by Rodin in Night at the museum II. Looking broody doesn't make you smart, dark shows don't make it interesting by just being dark. It's the writing, the originality, the difference that make us watch. And does he darkness has to be in EVERY reboot? We've had Alias! We've had Dark Angel! We've had the magnificent XENA! They were originally brilliantly written and conceived dark shows. But why turn Bionic Woman into a third class Nikita with an implant? (and yes, Jessica Alba had more sex appeal in her pinky toe than... You get my point) Why turn Hawaii Five-O into The Prisoner goes Lost with a sociopathic homicidal mother coming back from the dead? Why discard the planet of the Apes from all philosophical aspects, as in the brilliant final scene with the statue of liberty on the beach and Charlton Heston... oh I'm digressing again?

And Sabrina? AUDREY HEPBURN!!!!! Period! Need I say more?

And then finally why rip Batman from the last bit of poetic beauty and Burtonesque brilliance?

Its like that fashionable little sister/daughter thing so popular these days... She is annoying, clumsy and dad/mom/bro' does not understand. Good we got it. It stopped being funny in Eureka after season two. At least they got it and had her evolve a wee bit.

Take Hawaii Five-O for example. Season one of the new one had three dimensional characters a good balance of procedural "who done it" and the core characters back stories. You know... the kind of... do less more... (I'm quoting, I'm quoting) Season three has none of that elegance anymore. The criminal cases are boring and predictable and have become secondary, the back stories are so overcomplicated they are starting to bite themselves in the bacon, or vanish into oblivion, because no one gets it anymore. Even Ariadne would go "darn you've lost me" here. And the "additional women" on the show are written by men and for men as one-dimensional sexual fantasies in a way only a man can imagine how a woman of the 21. Century should be (always available and willing to do anything he asks for, no matter what it may cost her... but that's another story) to lure some Lara Croft fans off the computer towards this show. Even the original Charlies Angels was less oversexed. But Hawaii can take it, right?!

 Today's generation should have a chance to have "positive heroes" of some kind like we did. As a matter of fact looking at the world today, they even desperately need them! Why is Hollywood depriving them from hope in 3D? What is so wrong with some lighthearted fun? Or a good old-fashioned cop story? Why digitalize and over-CGI the crap out of all movies, as much as to turn them into a video game? Do You think drowning us in more and more CGI and rumination untill there's no living aura left will make up for a bad script? I'm not asking for Inspector Colombo or the utterly brilliant Agatha Christie's Poirot every week, but when You fell in love with a show back in your youth, why do you have to take it apart now? Why do you feel the urge to destroy it, by making it bad? My childhoods TV and movie heroes however trite, banal, cheesy, or naive they might have been, enriched my life. Roddenberry's approach to a positive future made me a better person. Instead of always searching for all the bad in all the characters in all the shows and all the universes, he gave me hope and trust in a better tomorrow. A trust that not everyone is trying to cheat on, or lie at me.

You know what? I guess I am wrong, I do NOT like reboots/reinvention after all. So far only two have not disappointed me. Drew Barrymore's Charlies Angels I and II and JJ.'s Star Trek into Darkness. But the latter one only because I'm a Spokaholic, both of them. The story itself was meh! 

I fear for the moment they’ll reinvent Magnun p.I. as a PTSD suffering, hobo with no home and welfare rejected secondhand Hawaiishirts, stalking a poor writer and uncovering a huge maleficiant underground coverup operation called Zeus vs Apollo and Higgins is the female ninja hitman/woman trying to drag Magnum to the dark side, with her singing remotecontroled helicopter called TC and they always meet in Ricks cafe, and new Baker and Poncherello are shooting themselves out of every trouble, shooting first and asking questions later, always dead serious of course. NOOOOOO!

"My" CHiPs, btw. never ever ! Except for Bear once, drew their guns in the entire series, they flirted, served and protected, and flirted - a lot - did I mention the flirting? ahhhh, the good old times!

And frankly all this overpondering crap today has gotten just plain boring! What some call good drama, I call destructing a good time. I don't want to go into darkness I want to go into the light! The undiscovered country ist bright! Right? I WANT MY JAMIE SOMMERS BACK!!!
Disclaimer: no picture belongs to me, I merely googled them. Mahalo!

Addendum, 30.05.2013:

I've since been asked why I prefered "my" Jamie to the new one. Is that a question, really?! Just look at that picture above! Not enough?

Ok, it's simply because my Jamie (sorry about that "my" thing Lindsay Wagner, not that I expect You to read this, but just in case...) had the sparkling smile of a life loving survivor. That smile you only get once you stood at the abyss of despair, felt the physical, psychological and mental pain of being sick or seriously wounded and yet and maybe unexpectedly surmounted it all!

No matter how often she got knocked down by life, enemies or deadly fembots, she stood up, wiped her clothes clean and continued on her path, giving the world her inimitable beautiful radiant smile. Gracefully, classy and loyal to her family, friends and loved ones. She stood by them and found them standing by her in return. She didn't hate the world for trying to protect her, she knew they did it because they loved her and subsequently proved to them she could take care of herself, not with hate, anger and negativity, but with a positive smile and a loving heart. My Jamie looked for love and found it, as much as the new one looked for distrust, hate, envy, grudge and guess what? She found it too. A generational problem? Maybe...

What I've learned from Lindsay Wagner's Jamie? We will always find what we are looking for, and we will find it in the same places. It only depends on OUR OUTLOOK