I’ve been thinking about this recently. I’ve seen it 3 times now and I’ve come to the conclusion that I personally don’t feel that reboot is a fair term.
Generally a reboot is a retelling of a story using the same characters, same villain, etc with small tweaks. While not the greatest example, the the first TMNT movie with the Henson turtles vs the current movies with the CGI turtles. Same characters, “same” villain, but they changed the origin story etc. that is a reboot.
With GB: Answer The Call we have a brand new team, different villain, similar but different story. Yes the living cast members make appearances but not as their GB characters. That makes me feel like we have something other than a reboot.
With some of the comments in the movie I felt like there is a chance that GB: ATC could be in the same universe but after 30 years the cat had been put back in the bag and people had forgotten about the 100’ tall marshmallow man that terrorized the city in 1984.
I could be totally wrong but I figured I’d post here and see what everyone thinks.
I’d call it a reboot. It’s a reboot of an entire universe rather than a single movie, however. Ghostbusters is distinguishable from TMNT because there is no central villain in Ghostbusters lore. They face a rogue’s gallery.
I do think there is some connection between this film and the original film’s worlds. Just not sure how it will be executed yet.
I’ve always found that the word “reboot” comes with some negative associations. Like, this franchise is broken or tarnished, let’s reboot it. Unfortunately there isn’t a good word to totally describe what this movie actually is. I think that they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by marketing the movie from the beginning as Ghostbusters: Answer The Call and use a description along the lines of .
“In a parallel universe where the original Ghostbusters have never existed, a team of four…and so on.”
I think they could have totally gotten away with that.
The problem with the term is that there is no standard definition of what it means. It’s not applied consistently. I think the industry is starting to use “reboot” to mean “rebooting the public’s interest in a franchise,” which could mean anything.
To me, anything that replaces or ignores the original canon and/or characters is a reboot.
If it keeps both the canon and the characters, with nothing more than small changes, it is a remake.
Anything else is a sequel/prequel.
These are just my definitions, though.
So, Jurassic World (again, in my opinion) is clearly a sequel, even though it is pretty frequently called a reboot. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek* is a reboot because, although it used the same characters, it did not follow the original canon. I have even heard of The Force Awakens being called a reboot, even though this is another clear sequel.
*Star Trek is kind of a unique meta example of this, as it contains an explanation within the movie of why the canon changed - an altered timeline. In this way, you could call it a sequel if you were being really technical about it.
Funny you should say that, my (personal) definitions are almost opposite lol
A reboot (following the industry) is when a franchise is brought back into the public eye with a new installment to refresh interest. This can be a sequel like Force Awakens or Jurassic World, the Thing (2011).
A remake is a smaller category of reboot, when you take a previous franchise and retell a part of the previous story to refresh interest for a new generation. Generally this overwrites the previous canon but not always. These are more in line with Evil Dead, Robocop, The Thing (1982).
By my definitions, every remake is a reboot but not every reboot is a remake. Some reboots are just sequels. With this logic, GB16 fits more into my remake category. It is definitely a reboot to refresh interest (or cash grab) but it is also retelling an origin story for a new generation squeezing into that remake territory.
There is no industry standard for the term though and most use them interchangeably.
For me, technically speaking, the first 20 minutes are a successful reboot, the remaining time is a Mel Brookes style Spaceballs parody or professional fan fiction film.