Sad reason so many beloved movies and TV shows are being remade
This week came news we didn't realise we needed so badly, that a sequel to 2002's surprise hit rom-com Bend It Like Beckham is in the works.
The original made more than $100 million at the box office and only added to the Brand Beckham aura, so it seems impossible that Golden Balls himself won't good-naturedly sign on for some sort of guest part.
Unfortunately, while Becks himself reapplies a certain teak deck-like shade of self-tanner, if you're looking for a sign the world is distinctly not okay right now, then ta da. The world's 90s and early aughts obsession is a massive red flag.
The number of movie and TV remakes from that era has now reached a comical level.
Just this week, photos surfaced showing the cast of The Devil Wears Prada sequel on set, looking like the last 19 years never happened as they shimmy back into their characters' costumes.
There are sequels or reprisals of Clueless, The Bodyguard, Ghost, The Thomas Crown Affair, An Officer and A Gentleman, Anaconda, Ghost, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female in the pipeline.
New I Know What You Did Last Summer, Final Destination, Freaky Friday and The Naked Gun are wither out or coming to cinemas soon. The Mean Girls and Twister follow-ups did brisk business. On TV screens, we are getting new Murder She Wrote, Malcolm In The Middle, One Tree Hill, Desperate Housewives and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
The obvious move is to put it down to Hollywood laziness or the bankability of misty-eyed nostalgia. But I think it's actually a symptom of just how f**ked the world is right now. What this week's Bend It news confirms isn't that Hollywood ran out of ideas about the time they swore off gluten but how badly, how desperately, audiences are craving comfort right now. The characters, the formats and the worlds of Prada, of Clueless, of Buffy, are safe, familiar and unchallenging. To watch any of these is to catch up with old friends; it feels like slipping back on a favourite old pair of Levi 501s (they're back too). What these remakes are is perfectly-worn-in entertainment.
You have to go back to the dark days of the 1930s to find a time in history when the world felt this bleak. It's impossible to open a news site or social media feed without being immediately immersed in horror, extreme suffering, unthinkable starvation, and unspeakable cruelty and violence. To learn about how AI is about to fillet the job market and whole economies. To read about the loneliness epidemic that no one has any idea how to treat. Is it any wonder then that we want the simple, uncomplicated pleasure of seeing a cow sucked up by a twister again? To see Andy Sachs being dressed down by a deliciously imperious Miranda Priestly once more? To spend two hours with soccer-mad Jess as she unironically makes her dreams come true?
Emotionally, this tranche of 2.0 movies and TV shows is the equivalent of snuggling back down under the covers in your childhood bedroom and letting out a long slow exhale. We want - need - to cocoon ourselves in thoroughly known, uncomplicated plots and characters that don't demand anything of us; we want to be frictionlessly and immediately whisked away from reality. What also unites all these remakes is not just that they are sure-fire, bang-up, will-definitely work bits of IP but that they all hark back to a very particular period where the world looked golden.
In about 2000 when Bend It writer Gurinder Chadha was sitting down at her computer - let's imagine it's a bulbous coloured plastic iMac - and started clacking out a script about a Sikh girl torn between her family's expectations and her love of soccer, Tony Blair was Prime Minister. Bill Clinton and his saxophone were still in the White House. The Camp David accord was being hashed out, the Good Friday agreement had created peace in Ireland after centuries of Troubles, and in New York's financial district the Twin Towers stood tall. Breakthrough AIDs drugs had hit the market, broadband had arrived and the Nokia 3310 was the hottest ticket. A GFC? Never heard of her.
The world was fine, innit? Peace and stability reigned supreme. Economies were going gangbusters and the Iron Curtain had long since been torn down by the time Blair was covertly playing Snake in between budgetary briefings. No wonder the world is obsessed with the 90s and early 2000s right now. We all want to time-travel back to a period when the world felt safer, saner, and easier.
This impulse goes far beyond movies and TV too. Low slung jeans, halter tops and platform thongs are back. Oasis has just sold out a stadium tour. In the US, staple 90s retailers like Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch are experiencing sales resurgences, in the UK there has been a boom in sales in 90s chip flavours and in Australia, Allen's is bringing back single serve Killer Pythons. Data from taste.com.au from May showed an uptick in interest in throwback recipes like rissoles, beef stroganoff and pumpkin soup. Cheaper yes in a time of cost-of-living belt-tightening but, with the world looking in such a terrible way, who wants to sit down to sprouted buckwheat with a turmeric tahini drizzle? Pass the safe, soothing, uncomplicated stroganoff. More sour cream and Sarah Michelle Gellar? Yes please.
Recently J urassic World Rebirth director Gareth Edwards talked about making the seventh outing in the dinosaur franchise and said, 'I wanted it to feel like a film they'd discovered from the early 90s.' Which is exactly how we want to feel too. Yes, with all the movies, there is also the base economics of it all too.
Post pandemic, post 2023 Hollywood strike and in the age of the streaming wars, studios only want bankable surethings. Casual, movie-going has fallen away and getting bottoms onto cinema seats now increasingly means having to create a cultural moment or some sort of special event viewing. However, our appetite for remakes actually says something far bigger about our psychological needs right now.
The day after the Bend It news broke came the absolute cherry-on-top, piece de resistance: Channel Ten is bringing back Big Brother. Bust out the bunny ears. Don't understand the reference? Ask your parents.
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