Caffeinated Clint
If you’re old enough to vote, caress a breast or buy firecrackers in Canberra watch as your favourite movies from your recent youth are now evened out, jammed into the Hollywood sausage machine and spat out to sell at Bunnings, in bread, on a Saturday morning. Reboots of films only a few years old are now as common as bangers on D.I.Y day. And while they do do the trick, they do leave us hankering for something a little more substantial.
Per Heat Vision, Warner Bros are looking at rebooting 1999 (not that long ago, really) classic “The Matrix”. While original star Keanu Reeves had recently expressed interest in doing a fourth instalment in the series, there’s no word on his involvement in the report (though surely he’d be wheeled out for a cameo of some sort, if even to pass the torch to the new ‘Neo’), just a note that “Fantastic Four” star Michael B.Jordan might be headlining. At this stage, the Wachowski siblings, the godfathers of the series, aren’t even involved. Those that are involved include producer Joel Silver, who approached Warners with the idea, despite having let go of the film rights a few years ago (in other words, Warner Bros can decide to do it without him if they wish), and Zak Penn, of “X-Men” fame, who has been charged with writing the thing.
Clearly it’s early days so there’s no word on what type of story they might be planning to tell here – whether it’s a straight-up Xerox of the original or maybe a prequel, fixing on young Morpheus (with Jordan in the role).
What gets me about this is that, as appealing an idea it might be (or is it? Did anyone actually ‘enjoy’ those two “Matrix” sequels!?), Hollywood is still convinced they have to produce films based on existing brands to make moolah. If Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” proved anything, it’s that that’s no longer the case – that film, which has now chalked up over $100m in returns, has torpedoed the competition at the box office this month. Seems audiences are simply aching to see original, cooly-crafted stories again – even if Vin Diesel isn’t in them. There’s also been enough reboots of late that have flopped, like “Vacation”, “Ghostbusters” and “Rings”, to suggest that the teat’s all dried up – nobody’s much interested in sipping from that funnel anymore. Fair enough too, if folks are paying twenty bucks a pop to see a movie, they’d better be seeing something they haven’t seen before.
