Remakes in Moderation Please

Well I have to say that I have recently come across some mildly disturbing news thanks to Cracked. That is their lovely article here detailing how we have a slew of remakes to look forward to in the near future.

For those not willing to read the article, a short summary; here we have no less than three Peter Pan remakes coming out in the near future, four series that could only under a generous stretch of the imagination be called Wizard of Oz spin offs (of some sort), two new sets of Tarzan movies, and two films about Hercules, one staring the Rock no less.

And some other kid

Now let me get something off my chest, I'm not against remakes, not at all. I actually like many reboots or re imaginings of old shows. For instance I loved Tin Man's re imagining of The Wizard of Oz universe in a slightly darker and more adult version of the old Oz franchise, I am a huge fan of Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong reboot, Death Race in 2008, The Godzilla remake in 1998, and I sincerely enjoyed the reboot of The Thing in 2011 (ok not technically a reboot or remake but still something cool finally done in the universe there). Hell until Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars I'd even been hoping to see some Star Wars remakes before I died.

However, there is a thing which makes reboots good, and what makes us want them, the fact that we haven't seen these things in a long time.

The upcoming Godzilla remake will have waited a respectable time (16 years) before putting a major Godzilla piece on the market again (and I say major in all seriousness, the Power Ranger esque Godzilla bits coming out in the 80s don't count) and that's what makes people look forward to it.

The TV series Once Upon a Time is fresh because no one has really done a grand new imagining of the old fairy tales in a long time, and not in such a fresh and fascinating way with a diverse cast of characters and an epic plot.

The upcoming sequel to 300 (300: Rise of an Empire) has waited a long time to reintroduce us to that crazy sword and sandals world we haven't seen in a while. I've been broadcasting all about it on my Facebook page for a while now and the trailers have been out on Youtube so if you don't know about it shame on you!

There's also the upcoming re imagining of the 47 Ronin which looks to be almost 300 in Japan, is a film to look forward to I would personally say with cautious optimism.

You know what separates these things from all the other remakes I've mentioned? They're years apart from each other, seem to be trying to breath new and innovative ideas into a creation, and they can act independently of each other. These remakes seem to not even care that they'll be competing with other remakes of the same story, as if the producers didn't stop and think "Hey we'll be flooding the market with a really similar product to the next guy!" making the potential interest evaporate as you see the same thing over and over again. Hell of all the items on the list the only one I would consider seeing is the one that puts a modern soldier in a post-apocalyptic Oz since that seems like an even darker version of Tin Man.

This is actually a problem I've been having with superhero movies recently. Yes their big flashy blockbuster productions what should I expect? Here's the thing though, we're being flooded with cheap (and sometimes tacky) remakes of films, for example, the Hulk films of the last decade are barely 5 years apart all so Hulk could be shoehorned into the Avengers (Don't get me wrong Avengers was great, but did they really need the remake? We know who Hulk is and he doesn't have anything original to contribute to the series like Iron Man, Thor or Captain America, but I digress). Now we're going to have to contend with yet another series of remakes for Super Man (whose films really can't do anything original to save their lives) and more Batman since it seems they intent on recreating the Justice League, meaning we will probably have to endure another Green Lantern movie (gack) and potentially Aquaman.

Now this version I would see

My issue with these is that they are basically just hashing out old ideas and trying to market them to a new audience. In some cases it works (for the Avengers especially) but for things like Batman and Superman, we're really just whipping the same dead horse and we'll probably be at it for the next decade.

Now although some of these remakes may not end up being awful (I'm willing to bet money they won't be great either) I'm not enthusiastic for their release.

To finish off I know that this blog would never get the ear of major producers, but is it seriously so much to ask of them to jump out of the cardboard box they've been in for the last decade and start trying to embrace some new ideas, writers, or scenarios? Hell would it be too much to ask that we could actually try and market a new superhero to people instead of just rehashing old ones?

If we're going to be dusting off old ideas, why not try some that really haven't been done before? Maybe some of H.P Lovecrafts numerous works in his mythos could be adapted (Aquaman optional)? Perhaps we could get a modern Dune series (yes we had the miniseries in 2000 but would a decent film with a good budget really be too much to ask for by 2020?). Or even say an adaption of the great novel Earth Abides? (Not starring Will Smith or Tom Cruise even).

What I suppose I'm trying to say if we have to dust off old ideas rather than attempt to embrace new ones, we could at least be dusting off old ideas that haven't been done before (or at least in a long time). Let's try fishing up some new fodder instead of digging up the same old corpse before it's body is even cold ok producers?

Until next time readers.

Spots the Space Marine

Well readers it seems a large company have once again embarrased themselves over a ridiculous issue. I can't even begin to comprehend why they would have chosen this issue to embarass themselves over! What am I talking about you ask? Why the Games Workshop Space Marine controversy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21380003

Now for those of you who haven't heard about the controversy (or didn't want to read the article) it boils down to this. Spots the Space Marine is an Amazon Novella written by author M.C.A Hogarth. The story is set in the future where humanity has allied with an alien race engaged in a brutal war with another expansionist race of aliens. The titular character is a space marine who is taking part in the fight against these aliens.

As an aside I've now purchased the novella and I have to say it's written in an interesting format which flows very well and since it's already in partial script format it would transfer easily to television or film. I highly reccomend readers look it up.

http://www.amazon.com/Spots-Space-Marine-Defense-ebook/dp/B006MGJYOE

In line with the rest of the article however, it gets weird. UK based Games Workshop sent a legal application for the book to be taken off Amazon because 'the book infringed on their trademark'. Now Amazon of course took the book down, but this understandbly upset the author, who posted about it and from there the story spread.

It garnered attention from other bloggers, authors, and members of the science fiction community who rightly called it 'absurd' and demanded the legal action be called off. In turn this prompted massive backlash from many of Games Workshops's own supporters and Warhammer players who launched a campaign of their own speaking out against the ridiculous action.

In response Games Workshop released a statement (which due to events I do not have a copy of, more on that in a second however) and have said:

"The law requires us to protect our trademarks in certain ways – and if we do not – we might lose them. As you can imagine, we do not want to lose our trademarks as we would no longer be able to create the great miniatures and tabletop hobby wargames that we pride ourselves on!"

Now let me just say something here, the idea of trademarking the term 'space marine' which has been around since 1932 is ridiculous. It would be like trademarking the word 'drone' or the name 'Enterprise' for a ship. However, Games Workshop has claimed that the loss of being able enforce a tradmark on the term would somehow cause a loss in their revenues or sales to their tabletop games. One of their biggest reasons for cracking down on the term was because of their recent forays into paperback publishing with Warhammer 40k fiction which can be found in the Black Library and much of that fiction has of course featured the ever popular space marine chapters of the Warhammer 40k universe.

Or video game series with the 40k logo

 However, the thought that someone else using the term space marine in an independent setting will somehow detract from the international sales of these books is absurd. In fact many of Games Workshop's own fans saw through this thinly veiled bully attempt and called them out on it, which lead to the Facebook page for Games Workshop on Facebook being taken down, as mentioned earlier.

Now when you upset your own fans that much you know you have made a mistake. As of time of writing no further legal action has been taken against Hogarth and Spots the Space Marine is back up for sale on Amazon. How Games Workshop will deal with the fallout among their consumer base and supporters remains to be seen, but hopefully they can manage it with grace and dignity.

As a final aside I would normally defend an author or companies intellectual copyright or trademarks, in this case however (just as with the case of DC and Marvel owning the word 'superhero') I do not support it. The idea that you can own a common phrase or word in the English language just because it ties into your franchise is absurd, it would be like Tolkien claiming he owned the term hobbit or halfing, or J.K. Rowling saying she owned the word 'muggle'. This is a case of legal overstretch and murkey copyright laws as they attempt to gain dominance over a subject, but thus far from lack of support and outspoken disagreement they have not been able obtain it.

I would encourage readers to use space marine as much as they please in their own stories or events and to always remember that free press and expression is important, and we can't let people pick and choose what words they want to trademark.

Space Marines forever readers!