I generally agree but there is a counterpoint that could be regarded, too: younger generations have different consumption habits than their predecessors and an effort to make art accessible to a new audience is IMHO a commendable effort.
Now, that is not an argument for the new HP show (I’d love to see that franchise go to ruins and the abyss of irrelevance together with its awful creator), just a general thought I have when talking about remakes, continuation, new adaptation etc.
Progressing technology and changing habits impact different media differently, and there is a general spectrum from books (or written storytelling, generally least affected) to video games (generally most affected). Especially the latter has gone through enormous changes over the last three decades alone and I often wish there were more actual remakes of older games I never got to play but really don’t feel like playing now because really outdated graphics and awkward controls are somewhat repelling.
And for movies and TV you can see a shift, too. I don’t think The Lord of the Rings would have been made today like it was in the early 2000s and some movies (often adapting other media, but that’s a different discussion) are already readapted into a more serialised storytelling for streaming instead of cinematic movies (e.g. Snowpiercer or Percy Jackson) while Disney is producing life action remakes of their animated catalogue.
That does not mean there is anything wrong with the source material, it just means a story is made accessible for a wider audience. Is the motivation for that a capitalism driven greed for money? Yes it is. Would these adaptations still happen in a world where artists would not be objected to monetary pressure? I do think so. Maybe not to the extend we see in our world, but maybe just with a different focus.
For sure that can make sense, but when tastes have changed enough to warrant a remake, I could just as easily file that under “making a case for itself”. Just like how history books have to be constantly rewritten not just to incorporate new findings, but to continually be the translation layer between how people back then understood things and how contemporary readers understand the world. History books are not a mere tome of facts, but a deliberately crafted lens to account for past fuzziness and present distortions. In the same way, I can see last year’s Frankenstein film as a fresh and valuable take on the old story. Remakes aren’t inherently bad, but like I said, they do put prior installations on trial. That can be a good thing!
I generally agree but there is a counterpoint that could be regarded, too: younger generations have different consumption habits than their predecessors and an effort to make art accessible to a new audience is IMHO a commendable effort.
Now, that is not an argument for the new HP show (I’d love to see that franchise go to ruins and the abyss of irrelevance together with its awful creator), just a general thought I have when talking about remakes, continuation, new adaptation etc.
Progressing technology and changing habits impact different media differently, and there is a general spectrum from books (or written storytelling, generally least affected) to video games (generally most affected). Especially the latter has gone through enormous changes over the last three decades alone and I often wish there were more actual remakes of older games I never got to play but really don’t feel like playing now because really outdated graphics and awkward controls are somewhat repelling.
And for movies and TV you can see a shift, too. I don’t think The Lord of the Rings would have been made today like it was in the early 2000s and some movies (often adapting other media, but that’s a different discussion) are already readapted into a more serialised storytelling for streaming instead of cinematic movies (e.g. Snowpiercer or Percy Jackson) while Disney is producing life action remakes of their animated catalogue.
That does not mean there is anything wrong with the source material, it just means a story is made accessible for a wider audience. Is the motivation for that a capitalism driven greed for money? Yes it is. Would these adaptations still happen in a world where artists would not be objected to monetary pressure? I do think so. Maybe not to the extend we see in our world, but maybe just with a different focus.
For sure that can make sense, but when tastes have changed enough to warrant a remake, I could just as easily file that under “making a case for itself”. Just like how history books have to be constantly rewritten not just to incorporate new findings, but to continually be the translation layer between how people back then understood things and how contemporary readers understand the world. History books are not a mere tome of facts, but a deliberately crafted lens to account for past fuzziness and present distortions. In the same way, I can see last year’s Frankenstein film as a fresh and valuable take on the old story. Remakes aren’t inherently bad, but like I said, they do put prior installations on trial. That can be a good thing!