7 reasons reboots are bad for us

King Solomon must be laughing in his grave. He cynically wrote 3,000 years ago that there was nothing new under the sun. But he never could have imagined we’d prove his point so well with that modern malignancy known as the reboot.

I don’t like reboots. In fact, I don’t even like the word. It’s just one letter away from “robot,” and a lot of reboots are pretty robotic. Every time I see it, I’d like to take my own boot and kick it to the curb.

I firmly believe that reboots are bad for us. They’re the empty calories of entertainment: all sugar and not much nutrition. Here’s why:

Reboots are lazy

Why bother to put any effort into a story when all you have to do is recycle something that’s already been done? You just need enough money to buy or repackage an old idea, then churn it out in endless permutations.

I’m a big fan of Star Trek, and I enjoyed Star Wars as a kid. But seriously, how many of these movies/TV shows do we need at once? I didn’t need a new Captain Kirk. I liked the old one just fine. And Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan? Please! He made a much better Smaug.

The same thing goes for superhero movies. How many reboots do Spider-Man or Superman or Batman need? And did Disney really need to remake its animated classics as live-action or CGI-filled knockoffs?

The phrases “too much of a good thing” comes to mind, except not all this stuff is good. Some of it is downright awful.

They stifle creativity

With so much energy (and money) being ploughed into retelling the same old stories with the same old characters, there’s no room for original ideas to get any traction.

All the promotion goes into the reboots, because companies don’t want to take a chance on anything that’s the least bit creative. They know what sells, and they stick with that. The result is that innovative stories don’t get told, or, if they do, they never get seen or read because no one knows they’re out there.

Much of the talent that could be producing new material goes into recycling the old, because that’s where the money is. Imagine if Mark Twain or H.G. Wells hadn’t written their novels, but had taken money to be ghostwriters for wealthy socialites instead. It’s not a pretty picture.

Artists get the shaft

Those of us who try to tell original stories get smacked down, and hard. The starving artist trope is an old one, but it’s never been truer than in the era of the reboot.

Innovation isn’t an advantage anymore, it’s an albatross. It’s an anvil around your neck. There’s about as much upside in trying to tell an original story as there is in buying a lottery ticket or wishing on a star. Even most well-known authors dare not write outside the genre that made them famous, for fear of disappointing fans who were expecting something different. It’s like being typecast.

Artists live to shatter expectations, but reboots exist to fulfill them. They set up an endless loop of dopamine-induced cravings that can only be satisfied by the same old, same old.

Think outside the box at your own peril.

I’ve started three series of novels based on original ideas that I haven’t finished because they haven’t sold. Where’s the incentive to do so? At least my latest didn’t end with a cliffhanger after two books, the way my previous one did. Lesson learned.

Loss of creative control

Reboots take ideas out of the hands of artists and put them in the hands of corporate shills who know less about storytelling than they do about making money.

Big corporations have enough money to pay creative people for their ideas, so they can dumb them down for what they think will create a demand for mass consumption. At least those artists are lucky enough to get some cash for their hard work, and that’s a very good thing. But it’s bad for the rest of us, who have to settle for watered-down, cookie-cutter adulterations of the original.

This is why we get director’s cuts, which allow us to see movies the way they were originally intended — but only because they allow studios to reissue another version of the same film (another form of reboot), so they can make more money.

Plagiarism, please?

It may not be plagiarism, but it’s pretty damn close. How often have original ideas been recycled to help wealthy corporations make a killing, while the artists themselves receive a pittance, both in terms of remuneration and recognition?

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Black artists put out some amazing music that was “covered” by white copycats who made the bulk of the profits because they could reach a larger audience. The original artists got next to nothing for their troubles.

I don’t like rappers “sampling” earlier cuts for the same reason. Would “Ice Ice Baby” have been a hit without Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”? Would “U Can’t Touch This” have sold millions of copies without Rick James’ “Super Freak”? I think we all know the answer.

Reboots discourage learning

If you’re continually watching the same thing over and over and over again, how can you learn anything new?

Learning requires exposure to different information. Digesting those same empty calories time and again is more akin to brainwashing: You’re being conditioned to buy what they’re selling, and it’s a lot more cost-effective for them to churn out the same stuff ad nauseam than it would be to actually develop original ideas.

They’re like pushers eager to get you hooked. And it’s working.

Conformity is everything

It’s hardly surprising that reboots are so popular in an era when tribalism and blind loyalty are running roughshod over independent thought.

New ideas challenge us to think differently. But we don’t want to be challenged. We’d rather take comfort in the familiar and reinforce our own biases — whether they’re about entertainment, politics, or anything else.

Reboots are just another source of noise in the echo chambers we’ve created to insulate ourselves from anything different than what we want to believe. We don’t have to think for ourselves anymore; we pay others to do that for us, whether they’re politicians or big entertainment companies. The more they tell us what we want to hear, what we expect to hear, the less thinking we have to do. Then they have us right where they want us.

I know I’m shouting into the wind on this one. Reboots will keep being made because they keep making money.

But if you want to help promote original ideas, independent thought, and real artistry, save a little of the hard-earned cash you might have spent on Star Wars CXVII or Phase 290 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and take in an independent film instead. Or buy a book by a little-known author.

Every little bit helps.