Back to the Future fans can rest easy: director Robert Zemeckis is going to protect the franchise/nostalgic relic of your childhood until they pry his withered corpse off of it. There will be none of that deja vu nonsense here.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Zemeckis recoiled at the thought of not only another hollow reboot, but a hollow reboot of his inarguable classic:
"Oh, God no. That can't happen until both [co-writer Bob Gale] and I are dead. And then I'm sure they'll do it, unless there's a way our estates can stop it...I mean, to me, that's outrageous. Especially since it's a good movie. It's like saying 'Let's remake Citizen Kane. Who are we going to get to play Kane?' What folly, what insanity is that? Why would anyone do that?"
While reboots can sometimes be be beneficial if they stay faithful to the source material while forging ahead with original and creative interpretations (like, by all appearances, the new Fantastic Four film, or what the Spider-Man reboot could have been, or possibly be), more often than not they are poorly executed, or downright meaningless.
As Paul Feig's upcoming all-female Ghostbusters 3 can attest, socio-cultural relevancy does wonders to aid in the potentiality of a reboot. (This, of course, is not to say that the only movies that should be rebooted are the ones that incorporate 21st century identity politics, but the Ghostbusters 3 debacle is a great example of an exception wherein a remake isn't all for naught.)
#whatyougonnawear pic.twitter.com/o5oyHeIaSx
— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) June 29, 2015
Despite these rarified exceptions, Zemeckis is unequivocably 2000% correct, because the first Back to the Future movie is an actual national treasure. As he usually did, Robert Ebert (RIP) put it best in his 1.21 gigawatt review back in 1985:
"[Back to the Future] shows not only a fine comic touch but also some of the lighthearted humanism of a Frank Capra...It's about a character who begins with one view of his life and reality, and is allowed, through magical intervention, to discover another."
There is, however, another Zemeckis flick that is getting the shiny new remake treatment: Romancing the Stone, which has been in development for a few years.
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