Mike Gold: Bourne, On The Fourth Of July
I’m not the world’s biggest Jason Bourne fan. Not by a long shot. I’ve seen and enjoyed the movies but I haven’t read any of the books. But two days ago, as I was sitting in the theater awaiting The Amazing Spider-Man (for the ComicMix Mixed Review), I saw a trailer for the latest chapter, The Bourne Legacy. It’s a continuation of the series… but without Jason. As I was watching the trailer, I was thinking in the terms of my trade.
“Reboot! Reboot!”
We can argue if this is a genuine reboot or not, but let’s ride with the concept for a bit. My next thought was “why do the teevee and movie people do successful reboots of major properties, while in comics we butcher it every chance we get?” Which, by the way, is way too frequently.
Recent media reboots have included James Bond, Doctor Who, and Sherlock Holmes – the latter, twice. Other reboots have included Superman, Batman and the aforementioned Spider-Man. Only the former lacked enduring success. The Batboot was stellar, and we’ll have to wait and see about Spidey. So, of the five major characters, only one was a bust.
Allow me some jealous feelings here. To paraphrase Paul Simon (the singer, not the dead politician), after reboot upon reboot, the comics biz is more or less the same. Yes, there’s usually a solid sales bump and maybe it lasts long enough to make a difference, but that’s almost always short-lived. Is the Spider-Man marriage thing resolved? Is Jean Gray forever dead? What about Uncle Ben? Are you sure? Go ask Captain America and Bucky.
Over at DC, they’ve pressed the reboot button more often in the past 37 years than a lab monkey on an crystal meth test. How long should a reboot last before it’s deemed successful? I don’t know; we’ve never had one that lasted more than a couple years. Is the New 52 successful? Well, yes, in the sense that Dan DiDio still has his job. But they’ve only got sales figures in for the first year, and over a third of the titles have either been cancelled or have endured new creative teams. That doesn’t make it a failure, but if simply cancelling some titles and changing the crew on others is all it takes to make a character work for a contemporary audience, then we don’t need reboots.
In fact, this is the error message we get over each reboot. There’s no system upgrade here. We could have provided stability and growth by simply cancelling some titles and incubating those characters within their universes, and by changing creative teams on others – creators who will not restart history, but simply put it on an exciting path out of the woods. This may be the real “success” of the New 52. We’ll see in maybe five years or so.
The fact is, the media people haven’t pissed all over the trust of their audience. Despite public perception, most all of the pre-reboot movies and television shows featuring James Bond, Doctor Who, Superman, and Batman made money (I really can’t say about Sherlock Holmes; he seems to have made PBS a lot of money in the form of enhanced underwriting and public support). Maybe not enough to support the highest-ups’ eight figure salaries, maybe not as great a return on investment to make the stockholders happy, but in an industry where they put tens of millions of dollars on the line with each project – more than enough in each case to support a front-of-the-catalog comic book publisher – a five million dollar profit might not be a desired return on investment, but it’s still five million dollars.
Comics executives and, more important, their corporate masters need to give the four-color medium the same degree of patience and, quite frankly, they need to give their consumers the same amount of respect.
We need a comic book industry with an attention span.
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil
“We need a comic book industry with an attention span.”
Well don’t look at me. I read your post all the way through.
That’s more than I did.
TL; DR.
Seriously, isn\’t the entire point of a reboot is that people don\’t have an attention span? Otherwise, why would you need to retell the same story?
I read that over several times. Who are you again?
In pre-Crisis continuity, you were my uncle from Midway City.
Movies and TV shows are marketed to a more general audience. Imagine if the only people to watch James Bond movies were the fanatics who own every DVD box set of James Bond ever released.
You’d have traditionalists favoring retro James Bond movies aping a 1960s style. You’d have deconstructionists favoring an ultra-gritty James Bond that rapes women (that is actually not as removed from Ian Fleming’s original character, but that is neither here nor there). You’d have guys favoring a James Bond movie that is all about respecting the minutia of former movies and trying to make sense of widely different portrayals.
All of them claiming that the only good James Bond story is the one told in the retro/gritty/continuity style.
this is a sequel not a reboot. sheesh. damon will most likely come in the next one
I wouldn’t really consider Dr Who to be a “reboot.” The Davies-produced run, led off with Eccleston, followed by Tennant, was a DIRECT continuation from the previous 1963-89 series. There was no significant change to the Doctor’s continuity which would be necessary for a “reboot.” (Yes, several points were introduced–such as the apparent destruction of Gallifrey and the other Time Lords–but they weren’t erased from the Doctor’s history.)
Now, Bond–I’ll agree was more of a reboot but ONLY with Daniel Craig’s taking on the role. The previous Bond films were all as much part of a continuity (well, with the exception of 1983’s “Never Say Never Again”). Although Eon Productions was responsible for Craig’s Bond films, the producers opted to “start from scratch,” effectively removing all the previous Bond films from the “series’ memory.”
Simply changing actors doesn’t result in a “reboot” of a film series. There has to be a deliberate decision to start fresh with the whole history of the franchise. I don’t see the new Bourne film as a “reboot” either. The only thing I see this movie doing is ADDING to the Bourne legacy (no pun intended). The trailers make it clear that Jason Bourne was NOT the only superspy–now whether that is something new for the series’ mythos or not, I really don’t know but adding to an established mythos isn’t the same as “rebooting.”
Now, I’ll agree that Batman and Spider-Man qualify as reboots since “Batman Begins” and (from what I can tell from the trailers as I haven’t had the chance to see the film yet) “Amazing Spider-Man” are starting fresh–and not just because of new actors. Bear in mind that the last Superman film was NOT a reboot since it didn’t start over again. (The upcoming Superman movie will likely be a reboot but Routh’s Superman was a “return” as it picked up from an existing continuity.)