“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
I’m sure this phrase was intentioned to speak to larger issues of war and tragedy and undesirable behavior passed down generations, but when philosopher and cultural critic George Santayana coined it, I wonder if he ever considered that pop culture would be condemned to the same fate by actually heeding his words.
The past of film, literature, and even video games is unable to be forgotten because it is exactly what sells, what audiences want. Disney is in the process of remaking every single one of their animated films in live action, and audiences have flocked to each in a storm. Just last week the second attempt at rebooting Spider-Man as a film franchise debuted in theaters, and beyond that comic book superheroes themselves have a multi-generation appeal that makes them impossible to stop. They have existed for the majority of the 20th century, meaning they have a ridiculous number of different iterations remembered by you and your parents and your grandparents, and on top of that, they are colorful and punch people in the face, bringing in new, fresh young audiences.
Transformers, a film franchise based off a popular 80s toy commercial disguised as a show, makes over a billion with each installment, and despite “The Last Knight” touting itself as the final entry, clearly there is far too much money to still be made to stop at number 5. Wait a few years, remake, reboot, or “re-imagine”, as Tim Burton would put it, and see how it ends up. If it does poorly, then maybe it’s time to resurrect something else people remember fondly; Ducktales, He-Man, how about The Smurfs for a third time?
Now if it’s successful enough, lets not stop at simply a film franchise, the craze now is “cinematic universes.” Marvel of course started this trend, D.C. is desperately trying to catch up to them, and Disney’s direction for Star Wars is following the same suit, and now many, many other studios are looking for a slice of that pie. The Mummy, a recent bomb with Tom Cruise, was meant to be the start of the “Dark Universe”, remaking all of the classic Universal Monster films of the 30s and 40s. Next year “S.C.O.O.B.” is set to begin the “Hanna Barbera Animated Universe.” Lastly, in a rather tasteless move, Warner Brothers announced the “Willy Wonka Cinematic Universe”not long after Gene Wilder’s death in 2016.
Nostalgia is the artery-clogging life-blood of contemporary Hollywood, and the cinematic universe craze is determined to fill up the demand for it until audiences regurgitate it back out. It’s hard to say when that will ever happen though, because in a world where truths and facts are being twisted and questioned by people of the highest powers, escapism feels more tempting then ever. That said, perhaps finding positives in this nostalgic overload will help make it easier to swallow.
Franchise films of nostalgic properties may be the dominant force, however ‘throwbacks’ and ‘homages’ to past decades and their pop culture have a decent output as well, and in many cases make better and more thoughtful messages about those times for our present. One of the most popular examples is Gary Ross’s Pleasantville, a dissection of how we view the 50s through the guise of the uneventful, black and (mostly) white, sexless television of the time. Recently, the fantastic American Crime Story: The People vs O.J. Simpson, not only retold the events of the “most publicized” criminal trial in history, it used this infamous phenomenon for social commentary on race and celebrity that is painfully relevant to this day. Even Austin Powers (yes I’m serious) had some thoughtful reflection, this time on the 70s from the view of the 90s:
——————————————————————
DR. EVIL
—isn’t it ironic, Mr. Powers, that the very
things you stand for: swinging,
free love, parties, distrust of
authority- are all now, in the
Nineties, considered to be…evil? Maybe we have more in common than you care to
admit.
AUSTIN
No, man, what we swingers were
rebelling against were uptight squares
like you, whose bag was money and
world domination. We were innocent,
man. If we’d known the consequences
of our sexual liberation, we would
have done things differently, but
the spirit would have remained the
same. It’s freedom, man.
DR. EVIL
Your freedom has cause more pain and
suffering in the world than any plan
I ever dreamed of. Face it, freedom
failed.
AUSTIN
That’s why right now is a very groovy
time, man. We still have freedom,
but we also have responsibility.
————————————————————————-
Nostalgia can be a force for good, it can be used as a reflective learning tool as Santayana intended, but it requires the heart and intelligence and research to understand the property, and/or the times they came from, and use them in a way that justifies revisiting. Will you update? Will you reflect? Either way, remember to respect.
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