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With the news earlier this week that Spiderman 4 is dead in the water and a reboot would instead be taking its place I got to thinking how Hollywood seems to be lacking in original ideas. Original ideas that make a lot of money, anyway. Reboots, relaunches and remakes are all the craze in studios lately. While all redos haven’t been horrible, are they all really necessary?

Heres a short list of some recent or upcoming remakes:

• Superman (1978) – Superman (2006): Seems the comic book route is ripe with the reboots. This one though, may even go the route of yet another reboot. Wait and see.
• Halloween (1978) – Halloween (2007): Rob Zombies remake was well done and well received and even garnered a sequel of its own. That said, its hard to improve on a classic.
• Star Trek (1979) – Star Trek (2009): Most in need of the reboot treatment as the iconic series was pretty much left for dead. The retreatment of the ST universe was well done and leaves people eager for its sequel.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): Again, necessary? Not really. Plus, I’m having a real hard time picturing a Bad News Bear — Jackie Earle Haley — donning the glove of blades.
• Friday the 13th (1980) – Friday the 13th (2009): Another classic in horror/slasher movies, not to mention it spawned countless sequels, regardless on how much more campy each one became. Necessary? You tell me.
• The Karate Kid (1984) – The Karate Kid (2010): While casting seems intriguing at best, was it necessary to retell this story?
• Batman (1989) – Batman Begins (2005): Of the original and its sequels, the sequels seemed to be the most in need of a redo. Batman Begins did well to start the franchise again though.
• The Crow (1994) – The Crow (2011): This is probably the one I cringe at the most. It saddens me even more as I am a huge Crow fan and feel the sequels alone were more than enough of an attempt at tarnishing a great movie. I’m not too comfortable with it in the hands of the guy that brought us League of Extraordinary Gentleman. They better look long and hard at who they choose to play the part. Anybody even close to Edward Furlong and I’ll be looking for this in the $5 dollar bin at Wal-Mart.
• Spiderman (2002) – Spiderman (2012): 10 years between original and reboot. Not necessary, at all.

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