Re-boot

If there's one thing that really bugs me, it's the use of new words to describe things have adequately been described otherwise for years. I'm not talking about Fracking here, as the use of that appears to be just because someone has decided that fracturing has too many syllables for us plebs. No, re-boot is today's moan.

If a film was remade, we'd call it a remake. What was wrong with that? Was the term remake not an accurate enough description of a remade film? Was there plenty of confusion abounding that remade might not actually refer to the remaking of a film but something else?

No. Re-boot is all about making the art of remaking something old (possibly because they can't be arsed to either come up with or take a financial gamble on new ideas) appear more sexy or 'modern'. It gives the impression of something more than a remake. It's a remake 2.0 as no doubt some twat or other would refer to it.

The phrase reboot, as we all know, comes from computing. When the sodding thing crashes, which lets face it they all do, you turn the bleeder off and back on again. It then restarts. So to me, a rebooted film would be one where you start from the beginning, same actors, same set, same script and remake the film so it's the same as the original. After all, when you reboot your computer you don't open it up and change all the workings inside, do you?

So as well as annoying, it's, in my opinion, wrong.

What makes this a thousand times worse, for me, is the latest subject of the 'reboot' is Robocop. To me, this was one of the best films of the eighties. A bit of dystopia, a shed load of sarcasm (especially the adverts) and maybe the fear that at some point in our lifetime mechanised cops may actually exist in some form. What was so wrong with it that it needed rebooting?