Movies like ‘Star Trek’ have proven that when done right, rebooting a franchise can attract a new audience while simultaneously reinvigorating established fans (at least most of them). It wasn’t until I started looking for franchises that needed the on-off switch that I realized how many are already being done and how many are hanging in pre-production limbo. Here’s eight that should hit the fast track into production.

8. Jack Ryan

There has been a void in the political action thriller genre that can only be filled by one person. Originally played by Alec Baldwin in ‘The Hunt For Red October’, the politically versatile super patriot Jack Ryan has been seen on screen by the likes of three different actors including Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. ‘The Sum of All Fears’, which was initially a sequel to ‘Clear and Present Danger’, was rewritten as a prequel starring Ben Affleck to reboot the franchise. Unfortunately the movie was met with mediocre reviews and box office tally.

Hollywood needs more positive political figures in the movies. Take a look at that picture on the right. Who on Capital Hill right now would hold someone to a wall and point a stern finger  to stand up for what’s right for this nation and look that bad ass while doing it? My point exactly. As of right now a reboot of the franchise is potentially in the works tentatively starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Sam Raimi.

7. Conan

The original idea for bringing Conan to the big screen was a series of movies much like the James Bond franchise, conceived by Edward Summer the adaptation would stay true to the original lore of the character. This idea was scrapped however for an original screenplay, ‘Conan The Barbarian’ (1982) written by Oliver Stone (’Platoon’) and John Milius (’Apocalypse Now’), which had little in common with the original story and starred Arnold Schwartzenegger in his break-through role. The film was met with a sequel in 1984, called ‘Conan The Destroyer’, which had even less in common with the original stories. In the late 1990s a third film was conceived called ‘King Conan: Crown of Iron’, however Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003 terminated (heh) any chance of this happening. In 2007 the rights for the franchise were bought by Millenium Films who intend to release a more faithful adaptation in 2010. For a while Brett Ratner of ‘Rush Hour’ fame was attached to direct the project, thankfully he no longer is involved. WWE Wrestler Triple H was rumored to be filling Schwartzenegger’s boots but it’s not an easy task filling in a gap left by Arnold.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

“Lean, Green And On The Screen”, simultaneously the cheesiest and coolest tagline for any child moviegoer in the early 90s. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was met with fairly positive reviews and a very impressive box office tally. The sequel, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze”, came out only a year later and was still well received. But, it was the time traveling third film that put the nail in the live-action franchise coffin.

Perhaps  it was the absence of Shredder, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop not doing the animatronics or that the story was lame and felt like a 12 year-old wrote it. Either way it was more than enough to warrant a stop order on more sequels. Flash forward 14 years and we get a new Turtles, movie completely in CGI, which had great art direction but almost zero story and none of the charm and wit that existed in the live-action trilogy. If the Turtles franchise were to be resurrected a marriage between live-action and CGI would be needed, hell we don’t even need a new villain just bring back Shredder.

5. The Matrix

This is an instance where I’m using the term reboot fairly loosely. I don’t actually think, even though I was not a fan of ‘The Matrix Revolutions’, that we need to see the part of the franchise that dealt with Neo again. However, I do feel that there was a lot of opportunity missed in not doing a prequel as the second movie  in the trilogy and then condensing ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ and ‘The Matrix Revolutions’ together to make the third movie.

When I first watched ‘The Animatrix’ I began to wonder how socially acceptable it was that the Asian girl from ‘Flight of the Osiris’  was turning me on during that kung-fu sequence. Immediately after that though I wondered why ‘The Second Renaissance’, the first part of which was actually based on a comic written by the Wachowskis called Bits and Pieces of Information, was not made into a full length movie. It’s a compelling story about how humanity as we know it became the architects of our own destruction which in turn led directly to the inception of The Matrix.

4. Superman

I had such high hopes when I heard that ‘Superman Returns’ was being made and by none other than Bryan Singer who at the time was on a superhero hot streak having just come off ‘X2′ ,but alas it was not meant to be as yet another opportunity for a great Superman movie was passed. ‘Returns’ was not a bad movie by any stretch, it was emotionally complex and visually stunning, but I was never at the edge of my seat nor did I feel the movie made good use of the fact that it was being rebooted.

The first ‘Superman’ movie starring Christopher Reeve did an excellent job establishing the franchise. ‘Superman II’ (which if you haven’t checked out the Richard Donner cut, you should) proved to be bigger and better than the original and brought in a worthy adversary to Superman: General Zod. From there the franchise went downhill with both Superman III and IV. Jump ahead to 2006 and we’re getting the first Superman movie in 19 years.

I can’t wait to see who he battles in this, probably somebody who can go toe to toe with him, somebody who can really give Kal-El a run for his money. Oh, wait, Lex Luthor again?

Perfect.

Rather than introducing a villain that can really challenge Superman, we get him dealing with his emotional issues and with the fact that he now has a son. ‘Returns’ actually does bring up lot of good issues, including the public moving on after his disappearance, Lois being engaged and even having a child are all valid points that needed to be covered Unfortunately this was all there was in the movie aside from him lifting a continent into space and saving an airplane from taking out a stadium. A new movie  doesn’t need to be a slugfest between Supes and some other superpowered titan but how about taking a risk and bringing in someone like Doomsday? I should not have to watch a direct to DVD cartoon movie to see the Man of Steel having it out with someone like Doomsday or Brainiac.

Mark Millar, who authored the original graphic novel for ‘Wanted’ and ‘Kick-Ass’, made a proposal not to long ago for an 8-hour epic trilogy of Superman films starting on Krypton a thousand years ago and ending on Earth with Superman being the last being alive on the planet as the yellow sun turns to red and starts to supernova causing him to lose his powers. Unfortunately the studios seem to be stagnating on anything Superman at the moment so it may be a while before we see the Last Son of Krypton flying around.

3. Highlander

One liners like “THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!” are something lacking in film today. Highlander is an example of an amazing idea that took a turn for the worst. The first movie was decent, it presented not only Christopher Lambert’s ridiculous voice and the fact that no matter how you dress Sean Connery he’s still going to be cool but an idea that is enthralling and brought forth so many types of questions regarding mortality. Who hasn’t sat in their car, on the subway or in the back of the class daydreaming about what it would be like to be immortal? Oh, and better yet, not only are they immortals but when they kill each other, using the heaviest broadswords known to man, they go through this bad ass sequence where they levitate, have lightning bolts shoot from their body and wail loudly as they ingest the other person’s energy. Unfortunately this grand idea never reached its potential and was followed by a series of terrible sequels, however it did spawn off the fairly well received television series. Summit Entertainment announced in 2008 that it will be rebooting the franchise but no exact date of release was given.

2. Alien

The first two Alien movies are some of the best entries in the sci-fi genre. The beautiful thing about science-fiction is that it can combine with any other genre and there aren’t many franchises that have crossed between more than one. ‘Alien’ was a science-fiction/horror movie, directed by Ridley Scott, that followed Ellen Ripley and a small crew aboard a mining ship that gets terrorized by an alien life-form. Followed up with ‘Aliens’ which is science-fiction/action, directed by James Cameron, featured a group of marines, eventually led by Ripley, that investigate a planet rampant with aliens. At this point everything was on the up and up for the Alien franchise, until production of the third movie began.

Poor David Fincher, who was making his big budget directorial debut, was brought in very late into the development of the movie. The production seemed doomed from the start having gone through multiple drafts of the screenplay from a variety of writers and having already lost $7 million before Fincher even joined. Early ideas for the film were all over the place, at one point an idea was considered that involved the aliens invading Earth where they would then fuse into a “giant multi-talented monster” that destroys New York City to Ripley and Newt chasing down a mobile alien in a “Blade Runner-esque off world metropolis”.

Eventually the idea of a two-part story that carried a Cold War allegory involving the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, referred to as “The Company” in ‘Aliens’, facing off against a militarily aggressive culture of humans who removed themselves from society became the front runner for production. An early teaser trailer for the film even shows that this storyline. Ripley would have a much smaller role in the third film, with the lead role going to Corporal Hicks from ‘Aliens’ played by Michael Biehn, and would return as a lead in the fourth film which included epic battles involving mass-produced alien warriors created by the exiled Earthlings against those created by The Company.

The studios originally wanted Ridley Scott to direct and demanded the films be shot back to back to lower production costs. Scott, unfortunately, was already tied up with three other films. When the final script ended up being handed in to the president of Fox he hated the idea that Ripley was not a central part of the story. From there the script then went into revision hell. The production continued to spiral over budget with David Fincher having to keep up with studio demands and forfeit any right to his creativity. Allowing us to end up with the heap that we now know as ‘Alien 3′. Alien: Ressurection was written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer scribe Joss Whedon and while it didn’t turn out as bad as ‘Alien 3′ it still wasn’t enough to rescue this dying franchise.

Allegidly Ridley Scott is now toying with the idea of doing an Alien prequel that would effectively reboot the series.

1. Star Wars

Of all the disappointments I have had as a movie goer, none have paralleled the ones I had when Episodes I-III came out. It wasn’t that they were awful, which some of them were, it’s that they didn’t even reach a fraction of the potential that any of them had.

I’m part of the generation that grew up on the original trilogy. As stupid as it sounds, I actually believed that everybody watched Star Wars as a kid, almost as if it were mandated to do so. You could imagine my surprise when I first met someone who had never seen it.  I never bought the toys or wore any Star Wars clothing but the series was always on my mind, it was like a lifestyle to me.  For instance I’d measure time in units of Star Wars movies. School for example would be about the length of the trilogy if I watched it back to back and a trip to my aunt’s house would be about a half of ‘A New Hope’. And who hasn’t wanted to Force choke that kid who wouldn’t shut up in class?

So, like many other fans, I was of course excited when George Lucas announced he was beginning production on a new trilogy. All I could think of was what new technology would allow us to see that we couldn’t before: even more epic space battles, beautiful new worlds and Jedi fights that would surpass anything I could imagine. After ‘The Phantom Menace’ came out (if you haven’t seen the fan made edit ‘The Phantom Edit’, you should), I tried desperately to like it. I kept focusing on the Darth Maul fight at the end trying to block out everything that had happened previous to it. I wondered why Darth Maul had to die so early in the trilogy and kept thinking of how amazing it would have been to see an older Anakin face off against him.

Eventually I came to realize after ‘Attack of the Clones’ that Lucas had lost his creativity. I’m not really sure if he even had much to begin with aside from the concept of The Force and lightsabers. ‘A New Hope’ was good but a lot of it was saved by great editing and Lucas didn’t even direct the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ or ‘Return of the Jedi’. Even things like the planets, each of which apparently can only harbor one type of habitat, were bland. An ice planet, a forest planet, a city planet, a lava planet, a sand planet et cetera. It wasn’t until games like The Force Unleashed came out that I realized what could be done with this franchise when Lucas was removed from the creative process.

What we need is a new trilogy set during the Old Republic, thousands of years before the events of Episode I. No more dealing with Anakin’s family tree and nothing after Episode VI, please. The Old Republic is brimming with stories to mine; you could literally go anywhere with the Jedi lore that you wanted to. Hell, the trailer for the upcoming Old Republic MMO video game looks like a fantastic idea for a movie: armies of Sith and Jedi fighting each other all at once? Count me in. If we could get some of these writers to write a new trilogy sans George Lucas we could really get one of the greatest franchises back on the big screen again.

Tags: Reboot