Reboot

Reboot. It’s a popular term these days. Everyone from Hollywood to video games is using the word. It is most commonly used in reference to computers, the act of restarting a computer in case of a system crash or operating system upgrade. There are times though when I wish the word was never used. The Tomb Raider franchise has decided to ‘reboot’ the story; start over from scratch. At the time when I first heard it I felt some confusion, I had liked the previous two games, infact they had won awards and received critical praise and commercial success. The idea that the franchise needed a reboot was slightly annoying to me. As time went on, the studio made great pains to publicly distance themselves from past efforts. I acknowledge that no story can go on forever but where does that leave those of us who enjoyed the experience when we’re told that was a lesser product. 

I remember when Michael Bay, Hollywood’s perennial loud mouth cast aspirations on his own movie, the second Transformers. He was quoted as saying "We made some mistakes…The real fault with ["Transformers 2"] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers' strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you've got to have a story in three weeks." I remember when I read this thinking, so if I liked the movie what exactly does that make me? In the end, where there is money to be made there will be Reboots, but I for one am sorry to see them stay and will be happy to see them go. By the way, did you hear they’re rebooting Batman?