Hollywood’s needs

So, after watching the trailer for “sequel” to Ridley Scott’s award winning Gladiator (released in the year 2000, but the way), I was very frustrated with it, and frustrated with Hollywood in general, not really for the lack of new material, I get that, there’s like half a million movies out there, but more that there is just no need for the remakes that don’t add anything, and even less so for sequels that are, essentially, not related to the original in most every way, outside of setting and, thus far, MAYBE two characters.

The difficulty being that I think remakes and sequels can absolutely be made, but should only be done so if they can add to the original in one way or another. Let’s dive in, just a little bit. I won’t go into Gladiator yet, just go along with me for now.

In 2016, we got a remake, or reimagining, of a classic horror comedy, Ghostbusters. I’m not one to shit on a movie for trying, not anymore, at least, but there were a lot things wrong with it. I don’t care about the whole “if men can do it, women can do it too” thing that a lot of people do. Women can be just as funny, smart, stupid, gross, etc. This was basically entirely proven with 2011’s Bridesmaids in rebuttal to the Hangover, and went over well. I use that example as both star Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, and directed by Paul Geig. And one was pretty fun. The other, was Ghostbusters. Held in such low regard that they changed the name, after it was released, to “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call”, which is outrageous. I don’t feel this movie was called a failure because of the acting, directing, even the writing.

I think it failed because it followed all the same tropes as the original, but 32 years later. That’s a difficult thing to do when, as they say, the times, they are a changin’. No role was altered at all, down to having Leslie Jones play the token black character who “knows the city streets”, which gets used a single time and she does basically nothing else. Chris Hemsworth is the entire highlight of the movie, but he pales in comparison to Rick Moranis. That’s not an insult in any way, merely that going up against a legitimate comedic legend is a nigh impossible feat. The only thing that the 2016 version did different was that they didn’t lean into the horror aspect nearly as much as the original, which may have been a downfall, I don’t know.

We could also get into something like 2014’s remake of Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. Or 2015’s horrendous attempt at remaking the Reeves/Swayze classic Point Break, but I don’t want to, because I’ll get far to upset and frustrated with things.

I’ll instead move on sequels that are unnecessary. There are a lot of sequels that are awesome, many of them further are story of characters, plots and things like that. The easiest one for me to point to would be The Lord of the Rings trilogy and, while one can argue it’s a single story, the books and movies are still separate and I can say they’re sequels. Each subsequent sequel adds something to every story, every character and every angle of it all. If you go the route of non-literary versions, the Indiana Jones series, at least the first 3, all have stories that add to Indiana and complete him as a character…. Let’s not talk about the fourth and fifth movies though.

Prequels are the same thing. For expediency’s sake, just look at Dumb and Dumberer (even writing that hurt me) or, objectively, the Star Wars prequels. That’s one I won’t touch as we don’t have four thousand hours to discuss that (we do, just not at this moment).

So let’s get into Gladiator II. It stars Hollywood gem Pedro Pascal as the hero, Joseph Quinn as the new emperor, though the first didn’t discuss Commodus having a child at all, and it would have made Lucius the new Emperor upon his death. Lucius is in this, so I am intrigued as to why there is a new Emperor, or if they just kinda glaze over it. It also has Connie Nielsen, who gases like a fine wine, reprising her role as Lucilla, Lucius’ mother and Derek Jacobi coming back as Senator Gracchus though, I imagine in a significantly smaller role as he is pushing 90.

My biggest question for this movie is, and always will be, why? The original was the telling of Maximus Decimus Meridious, commander of the armies of the north, general of the Felix legions, loyal servant to the true emperor Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and he will have his vengeance, in this life or the next. (Sorry, love that scene and had to write it out) The story and, everything therein, logically, changed when he kills the current emperor and subsequently dies. It was meant to show how Rome changed after these things happened BUT, from the looks of the trailer, Quinn has just said “no thanks, let’s keep doing it” and I don’t quite understand why. OHMYGOD, how could I forget that this movie ALSO stars CLASSIC Roman/English actor Denzel Washington in the same role as Oliver Reed’s Proximo, but slightly different maybe?

Granted, the trailer doesn’t show much and it could be a great movie but, for arguments sake, let’s say it’s not. Could it tarnish the name of the original? Probably not, but who knows? A lot of young pwople don’t want to see Alien because the Prometheus movies were made and weren’t amazing. Many classic movies that were remade or sequeled (is that a word?) are left to rot because people see the new ones and don’t watch the originals. Don’t even get me started on live action remakes, those are a whole different bag of snakes that can’t be laid out straight.

So my Question of why remains. Is it something. Ridley Scott really felt necessary to do, or something Hollywood felt necessary to give him (holy shit) $310 MILLION dollars to make? I’m sure it will be fine, I’m sure it will make money and people will see it. But I’m also sure that this movie didn’t need to be made with the title Gladiator II. Why not just name it something different to not piggyback the popularity? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would have been fine if it was called

Something different and had different character names, it wasn’t BAD, just not an Indiana Jones movie.

Hollywood just finds reasons to hit all of our pockets, all of our fond memories, all of it all, because they’re reliant on it. There’s legitimately like 5,000 stories within Marvel and DC alone, why not make those? Why not find smaller, more original writers to make other stories? I understand it comes down to money, but it’s a terribly unfortunate thing to happen when there are so many options for so many wondrous things.