Hey, you. Yeah, you.Would you like to make a quick buck? Of course you would.Well, here’s my advice — take a long-time successful old movie or TV show, update the story to modern times, throw in a bit of 3-D and voila! Instant success.I may be exaggerating just a tad, but it seems two mediums of entertainment I love — movies and video games — just aren’t being as creative lately.The term “reboot” has been thrown around a lot lately, and while sometimes it’s box office gold, it becomes an insult to the original many other times.Let’s look at the movie industry first.An updated version of the 1984 classic “The Karate Kid” was just released in theaters.
While trying to turn a blind eye to many trailers so nothing would be ruined to me when I finally went to see it, I heard from many people it was a completely new movie and wasn’t a remake of the original.
Boy, do I have dumb friends.To get a good feel on how they changed (or didn’t) this new version, I decided to rewatch the original before venturing out to see the remake.The movie was pretty much scene-for-scene the same as the original with even some of the same exact lines (I was quoting them exactly before they’d even come on screen).I’m not necessarily saying this is a bad thing. This remake introduced the story of the karate kid to many who may not have seen the original and hopefully causes people to take a trip down movie history lane and watch it.Because, no offense to Jackie Chan, he’d get his ass kicked by Pat “Mr. Miyagi” Morita, but I digress.However, the horror genre’s current reboots are almost a taint to their classic counterparts.Recent remakes of “Halloween,”  “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” completely lost the soul of what made the originals great.But not all reboots are terrible — some I find even better than their originals.
The 2005 reboot of Batman in “Batman Begins” – and definitely its sequel “The Dark Knight” — are far superior to their  ’90s counterparts.While I’ve yet to see “The A-Team” — I’ve heard it’s fantastic, and last year’s reimagining of “Star Trek” helped do the original series justice and got many more people (myself included) invigorated with the original television series.
Now, let’s talk about video games.Reboots are fairly more common when it comes to gaming. When publishers have a successful series that eventually starts to wear out its welcome thanks to a few terrible sequels, they wait a few years then reboot it and pretend nothing bad ever happened.There were a few examples of this at this year’s E3 conference. Many of my old favorite series, actually, are getting the reboot treatment this coming year.New versions of “Medal of Honor,” “Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit,” “Mortal Kombat” and “Twisted Metal” will be released soon with updated graphics and full-blown high definition.While I believe some of these games may be good, I highly doubt they’ll be as good as their originals, and there may be a bad taste in some gamers’ mouths because of the way the series went before the reboot.It’s hard for game developers to make excuses for having to reboot their series because of what Nintendo has done with their key franchises.The Mario and Legend of Zelda series have been around for 25 years and sequel after sequel, they still, haven’t lost their touch. Sure there were a few not-so-great games, but nothing where Nintendo has had to go and completely restart either franchise.While sometimes movie and game reboots can bring patrons a bit of nostalgia of their childhood years, it also comes across many a time as creators being lazy or just looking for a quick cash-in.
Now, I’m not saying remakes should never be done because there have been many successful ones, but if they are going to be done, more time and care should be taken so as to not disrespect the originals or their creators. 
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Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected]