(EDITOR’S NOTE : The following is a fannish discussion of modern box office and television trends. As such, it may seem innocuous, even harmless. But within this work there is a very harsh truth. Consider yourself forewarned. ) \

We live in an era of creative cul-de-sac. At least half of the movies and a third of television series are based on properties that the public already knows. Whether it’s based on a comic book, a novel, a TV show, a movie franchise, or even a video game, the odds are good that you, the audience, will not have to deal with anything original and hence unfamiliar. You can just relax and watch whatever has warm memories attached.

But those memories shouldn’t be too sharp, because then you will notice all the ways that the new version is appallingly different from the thing you love and you will go away from it at the very least disappointed but more likely in a rage over how insulted you feel by the pathetic piece of garbage they have dressed up to be superficially similar to the thing you love and cherish.

It is as though they are saying, “You love your mother, right? Well here is a giant sack of dog crap with a picture of her face stapled to it! Don’t you love it?”/

I am not immune. I have felt that rage. One of the defining characteristics of a nerd like myself as opposed to other species of intellectual is that we are very open about how deeply we connect with certain media properties. There is little room in fannish culture for casual indifference or even mild interest.

To be a nerd is to care.

But I have come to recognize the futility of such rage because I have come to recognize the futility of the entire endeavour. From the fannish perspective, there is absolutely no reason to ever reboot a media property.

Why? Because it is literally impossible for them to “get it right”.

For one thing, we nerds have extremely high definition memories that love to absorb all possible aspects of the things we love.

This means that that details the filmmaker would have to get “right” is absolutely staggering. This stacks the deck against them before they even start.

Then there is the fact that movies are not made to please audiences, they are made to make money. The fact that those two thing overlap a fair bit is the whole reason the entertainment media exists in the first place. It’s called show business and not show art for a reason. Whatever else a movie is, it’s an investment.

And if it was your money on the line, you would want to make sure that the movie makes as much money as it possibly can, and that means making it appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

And nerds are a rather small minority of the population. We are a subset of another minority, intellectuals, and as such are a minority of a a minority. There are just not that many of us relative to population.

That means that it simply isn’t worth it to make movies or television shows that appeal only to nerds. You can’t turn a profit on a population that small that is spread so thin. Sure, there are millions of us all over the world, and the Internet brings us together like never before, but we are still a tiny diffuse minority.

Not only that, we are incredibly hard to please, and the media companies know this. They know that no matter what they do to appeal to the hardcore fans, they will get hundreds of fans violently rejecting what they do and flying into a rage that seems insane from a mundane point of view. And these people will call you and your company horrible things (like childhood rapist) and act like you should be on trial for crimes against humanity.

So why even try?

But the real reason reboots are futile is that, for us nerds, they are doomed to failure because what we really want is to recapture the good feeling we had when we discovered this media property, and that is completely impossible.

Time doesn’t work that way. No rebooted project can take you back to those happy days when you were young and fresh and the world was full of exciting possibilities. Nothing you experience now, as a more experienced and jaded adult, can ever be as good as your memories of your favorite thing.

And that leads to that harsh truth of which I warned you :

The thing you love is never, ever, ever going to come back. Ever. It won’t because it can’t. It’s impossible. You are a different person than you were when you discovered it, and that means that even if they “got it right” on every single detail you can think of, it still would not please you because it still wouldn’t be the same.

Stop demanding the impossible and simply close the book on all thought of a return to the days of yore when every single movie or episode (or book, or issue, or…) was a joy to discover. Enjoy your memories instead, and if they need refreshing, go to your treasured collection of your chosen property and its merchandise, and accept the fact that, as you define them, there will never be :

Another episode of your favorite show
Another movie in your favorite franchise
Another book in your favourite series..

And so for and so on. The rule is simple : if it has stopped, it is dead. Period. Nobody can bring it back to life to your satisfaction. It will never happen. I

The best you can hope for is a new thing based on the thing you love that will partially please you. But that can only happen if you accept the truth that the thing you love is never, ever, ever going to come back.

The past has passed. It is gone forever, with no possibility of return.

It’s time to face forward and find new things.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow, homework permitting.