4 Upcoming Reboots That Must Be Stopped
Despite what BuzzFeed quizzes would have you believe, very few people are kids during one decade alone, and an increasing number of us actually manage to stretch our child phase over several. It's just as well then that the pop culture franchises we grew up with tend to come back to haunt and/or delight us years and years after their initial run. But the fact that they can do this does not mean that all of them should. There are several beloved franchises that, should they ever return in full force, would probably only break our hearts. Here are four of them.
(Note: There are several spoilers for eons-old plot twists in this article. May anyone who does not realize and accept this be eaten by a grue.)
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is one of those rare shows that managed to simultaneously create and peak an entire genre. Its dreamlike atmosphere, well-conceived characters, and quirky dialogue that is at constant odds with the ever-so-slightly creepy overall vibe is responsible for roughly 75 percent of the shows you enjoy, and also that image of David Duchovny in drag that keeps popping onto your retinas at 2 a.m. After the series' initial run, owls could have conquered the world had they realized how terrified we suddenly were of them. For a solid year, every single viewer checked behind their couch for errant BOBs before they sat down.
And let's not even discuss the subject of bathroom breaks.
I love Twin Peaks. The show had a profound influence on me when I was a child, marking my transition from a snotty kid that lived on cartoons and MacGyver to ... a slightly older snotty kid that lived on cartoons, MacGyver, and Twin Peaks.
I love Twin Peaks, which is why I want it to never come back.
Why It Should Never Return:
Because it wouldn't be Twin Peaks anymore.
"Oh, boo hoo. Would the actors having a few extra wrinkles tug your itty bitty heartstrings?" you ask. "Of course the show would be different, it's been 25 years. Go read up on time skips as a narrative device, crybaby." To this, curiously cheeky person I just made up for the sake of narrative, I have two arguments: One, fuck you, you don't even exist. Two, I'm not saying the hypothetical Twin Peaks revival can't be a decent show. I'm saying it wouldn't be the same show.
Twin Peaks was always destined to be a short and beautiful thing. Its appeal lies in atmosphere and carefully balanced contradiction -- the coziness of a beautiful, all-American small town contrasted with the sins hiding underneath the surface and the absolute evil that lurks at the edges. The fun came from peeling all those layers of wickedness and absurdity one by one, and it worked like a dream ... as long as there were layers left. Once Laura Palmer's killer was revealed midway through the second season, the final layer was gone, and the core turned out to be a mystical potluck of lodges, spheres, hirsute chaos spirits, and tiny, overdressed arm-deities.
"Won egalkniD gnikcuf reteP ot elor siht esol ylbaborp dluow I."
Treated right, there are still the makings of a good show there, but too many secrets have already been revealed to keep things how they were. Any future episodes of Twin Peaks wouldn't be about exploring the secrets of a fascinating town with underlying darkness. They would be all about fighting said darkness. The final episodes irrevocably tore the sleepy little town's facade down for the viewer, leaving it less Twin Peaks and more Sunnydale. About two episodes in, Buffy and Angel might as well ride into town to kick Evil Agent Cooper in the dick before hitting the Black Lodge to punch everyone.
Which ... actually does sound kind of awesome.
Why It Probably Will Anyway:
Although David Lynch officially denies all rumors of a series revival, stories of him privately discussing it with former cast members have been known to surface. Add that to the fact that some other series creators have been pretty open about their desire to return to the creepy little town, and that Netflix has allegedly expressed tentative interest in rebooting the show, and it doesn't seem entirely impossible that a (possibly Lynch-less) New Twin Peaks will eventually confuse the shit out of viewers.
I realize that the phrase "return" is stretching it a bit here; despite the fact that their heyday was clearly in the 1980s, He-Man and his cohorts have been existing on the sidelines of pop culture ever since. There have been comics. There was the God-awful 1990s space opera reboot. There was the 2002 relaunch and an accompanying decent yet quickly cancelled TV show, and the surprisingly tongue-in-cheek 2012 mobile game.
Although it has managed to cling to existence, the franchise is far from the sort of cultural powerhouse some other popular toy lines of the era have managed to become. Think about it: This is a full-fledged fantasy universe that has somehow managed to avoid a movie in a millennium where The Lego Movie rules our hearts, Transformers ravage our senses every year, and fucking Battleship has had its chance to bomb at the box office.
There just might be a reason for that.
Not this one, although it probably didn't help.
Why It Should Never Return:
This is Fearless Photog.
Yes, that's a face camera.
Designed by 12-year-old Nathan Bitner, Fearless Photog was the winning entry in Mattel's $100,000 Masters of the Universe Create a Character competition in 1985. He was a sentient camera person who was decidedly nonviolent: His power was to suck evil powers out of his enemies, leaving only good behind. It was a novel and creative concept, which is presumably why Mattel took a giant dump on the idea and didn't introduce it in the toy line until 2011, as part of the "their joints move now so give us money, collectors!" Classics Series.
At the core of this story lies the reason Masters of the Universe should remain on the relative sidelines: It is the most irreparably outdated franchise in the entire world. Its universe is a product of a nonexistent time when steroids worked the exact same way on everyone and it was OK to prance around wearing BDSM gear and fur underwear, as long as you carried a kickass sword or had some interesting deformity you could maim your opponent with. Its mythology is much like that of Street Fighter: an over-complicated excuse for bodybuilders to attack each other. There are no redeeming features here, no place for alignment-adjusting camera-faced fuckers who can remove the element of evil and thus the only excuse good people have to smack around people who look weirder than them. Almost everyone in the Universe of the Masters is a combatant by design, save for the occasional magician or lame "spy" character that always ends up getting stomped on until someone's elastic band snapped, don't pretend that they didn't.
Was it a great universe to visit when you were 10? Absolutely. Is it one it's OK to feel nostalgic about? Totally. Can it be revived without summoning continent-shaking douche chills? Probably not.
Besides, Fisto would never want to bring the band back together because he makes a fortune on ... other areas of entertainment.
Why It Probably Will Anyway:
Current 30-somethings are creatures that are still well in touch with their inner child, yet starting to feel the first tugs of mortality. We basically amount to a huge pile of money that we're willing to burn to briefly escape the cold, patient stare of our ever-so-certainly approaching death by revisiting the rush of our childhood delights. Studios, of course, know this and happily prepare us our fix, usually in a diluted, over-CGI'd form.
With this in mind, it's not a question of whether He-Man, Skeletor, and the gang hit the big screen and attempt to overtake the pop culture world in an all-media assault the likes of which haven't been seen since the 1990s heyday of the once-again-attacking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's a question of when, and more importantly, how. It'll take some time, though: Although there has been a movie in development for a while now, it looks like the studios have realized how difficult the "Tom of Finland meets Manowar" vibe of the franchise is to execute even semi-correctly. As such, the project has been bouncing from table to table for years. The dude currently closest to helming the project is Jeff Wadlow, a fact that is less than comforting to those six people who actually managed to trudge through Kick-Ass 2 without falling asleep.
Still, find a way to get Frank Langella back as Skeletor and we'll all probably wind up watching that movie thrice.
ThunderCats
ThunderCats is another representative of the "weird good guys, weird bad guys, punching" concept the 1980s so adored, only this time everyone is cats. They look like a Juggalo gathering on Dr. Moreau's island, but you can tell they're heroic because they fight a bunch of ass-ugly mutants led by a mummy magician. Also, because they managed to resist the urge to murder Snarf throughout the series' run.
Fucking Snarf.
Why It Should Never Return:
A few years ago, a popular, cleverly written cartoon launched a beloved 1980s franchise back to the heights of its success. However, a group of people soon started investing way, way too much into the show. A strange fandom started sprouting, and before long, the Internet was teeming with the fruits of its creativity (including insanely long pieces of fan fiction and, of course, porn). Soon, these strange folks were seemingly everywhere, screeching defensive arguments re: their right to feel unhealthy affection for cartoon animals at the slightest provocation.
Yep, I'm talking about bronies -- the strange mole folk who have managed to up and get creepy about the least sexy, most child-friendly animated things in the entirety of recorded history. Now, keep their existence in mind and imagine what would happen to a show about scantily clad, fully anthropomorphic animals.
"Basically, what we're already doing, but everywhere." -deviantART
Why It Probably Will Anyway:
It already did! For, like, six seconds!
There was a brief revival of the series in 2011, promptly cancelled after one season. This isn't particularly surprising when you take a look at this comparison video between the iconic 1985 transformation scene of series villain Mumm-Ra and his 2011 incarnation, Droopylips McPout, inexplicably robed insurance salesman:
Hahahahaha! Oh God, he's just so angry that your boat was already insured.
Still, if we disregard that little gem, and the fact that resurrecting the show would be dealing out tickets to Furry Central, the series does have a certain commercial potential. Mumm-Ra can be an awesome character that could give any cartoon villain a run for their money, and the cast of the franchise is so slim that the company with the rights can pretty much screw animal heads on whatever old G.I. Joe dolls they have lying around and introduce them in the series as fresh characters. If whatever steaming pile of He-Man poop Hollywood is eventually going to produce proves successful, it seems inevitable that these creatures will also be back roaming the media field before long. So, you know, brace yourself for a whole lot of Rule 34.
Oh shit, I went there.
Firefly, for the three readers who have never heard of it, is Joss Whedon's much-missed sci-fi Western show about a crew of smuggling space renegades that you should probably go and watch right the hell now. The show kick-started the illustrious careers of a number of its actors and proved for good that Whedon had what it took to rule the game beyond the Buffyverse. Although it was cancelled before the first season was even over, the makers eventually provided some closure with a feature film that wrapped up some of the series' major plotlines (and killed off a significant portion of the main characters in the process).
I'll just leave this here.
Despite its short lifespan, the series has amassed an Internet fan base that is almost Whovian in size and rabidity. These people read Firefly comics, play Firefly RPGs, wear Firefly clothes, and call themselves Browncoats after a faction in a Firefly universe war. Oh, and that thundering sound you're hearing is the collective indrawn breath of them all as they prepare to scream bloody murder because I'm about to explain ...
Why It Should Never Return:
Because it's way too big in our heads now.
The reason why Firefly -- the New Adventures (or whatever) would never work is the reason we'll probably never see another truly great Star Wars movie. I'm not saying they would Jar Jar Binks that shit (... I hope). It's just that no matter how good new episodes might be, chances are our brains will never award them that elusive fifth star because the bar has been set too high by our own expectations, experiences, and gilded memories. It doesn't help that, unlike the original Star Wars trilogy and its share of weaker moments, practically every scene in Firefly is, if not outright awesome, at least insanely quotable.
As a show that comes with its own set of swearwords should be.
As such, Joss Whedon would need to deliver a slam dunk on par with The Avengers to even get close to what's playing in the brain cinema of every fan. Since this is pretty damn certain to include the spectacularly deceased characters of Hoban Washburne and Shepherd Book, chances are this will never happen unless they flat out ignore the movie. (Yes, I know they could probably go with some bullshit resurrection/clone storyline or place the new series/movie before Serenity, but come on -- this is the Internet, all of those moves would be nit-picked to death in seconds.) Even if they somehow find a way, the new series would probably flop in a manner most outrageous, as the overwhelming majority of people who don't really give a flying shit about the show would just shrug and go, "Is this, like, some Guardians of the Galaxy ripoff? Where are the ent and the raccoon?"
Why It Probably Will Anyway:
Hordes of fans aside, pretty much everyone who has ever been associated with the show loves it dearly. Series star Nathan Fillion's unconditional devotion to his character would be creepy if it wasn't so endearing, and other cast and crew members apparently aren't far behind in their fondness. There are probably catering guys out there whose most cherished memory is that one time they made a sandwich for Morena Baccarin. Even Whedon himself has stated he'd love to bring Firefly back in one form or another.
So, will Firefly be back on TV (or even the big screen)? My money says: eventually, yes. Will it be a thing of mind-blowing greatness? It almost certainly won't. Still, as long as there's life, there's hope. You know the lyrics, Browncoats:
Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Follow him on Twitter.
