Fiction films can be sorted into two categories: ones part of a franchise, or standalones. In the past couple of years, Hollywood has produced several sequels of films known previously as standalone, often made decades after the original came out in the theaters.
In 2018, 36 years after the original ‘Blade Runner‘ (Ridley Scott, 1984), ‘Blade Runner 2046′ (Ridley Scott, 2017) won two Oscars and two BAFTA for Best Cinematography and Visual Effect. In 2019, 14 years after the first film came out, ‘The Incredibles 2′ (2018, Brad Bird) was nominated for Best Animation film at the Oscars.
Both part of the top 17 longest awaited sequels by the public, it might seem like the audience would have grown disinterested in these films’ story-lines, but on the contrary they had a huge success with the critics and at the box office. The Incredibles 2 was produced on a 200 million USD budget and made back 1.243 billion USD worldwide.
Seeing the profit in rebooting these standalone films, a group of Hollywood actors decided to also reboot films they starred in over a decade ago.
Starting with Eddie Murphy, who will be reprising his role as Prince Akeem Joffer in the upcoming ‘Coming 2 America‘ produced by his own production company and expected to be released in theaters on the 18 December 2020.
Partly produced by Tom Cruise himself, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ will be released on the 24 June 2020, 34 years after the release of the original film, as announced two days ago by Paramount Pictures.
Likewise, Russel Crow is working on rebooting his 20 years old film ‘Gladiator‘ (2000, Ridley Scott), as announced in June 2019.
If these actors where wondering if their reboot would do well with the public, they should just take a look over at Will Smith’s ‘Bad Boys for life‘ (2020, Adil & Bilal) produced by the actor, which came out on the 17th January 2020 and did 59 million USD at the domestic box office on the opening week-end.
For Tom Cruise’s new Top Gun, the promotion is sorely based around the nostalgia audience would feel about his character being back in theaters so long after the original movie’s release. He insists on the time difference between the two films during an interview with TBS: “34. It’s been 34 years since since I mad the last Top Gun. Right here in San Diego.”.
For the other films, most of the promotion is constructed around the fact that this era and the younger audiences need these story-lines and characters as much as the last generation.
Eddie Murphy said in an interview about his upcoming film : “I remember saying to myself, ‘Yeah, I guess we need them right now, don’t we?’ I don’t want to sound too outrageous, but I think America needs Akeem and Semmi right now.”
Along the same lines, Will Smith announced during the movie premiere in LA: “I finally got to the point that I felt like it was a story that was modern, but also captured the flavor and the essence of the bad boys. But also a story that needed to be told and wanted to be told in and of itself.”
That be because of the need for these character to be in this era, or to give the audience their favorite character’s back, these actors are using the popularity of their original film to come back at the front stage in a world overcrowded by content.
The question is: will these reboot revive the popularity of the original films or spoil famous movies that might not have needed a sequel?
Léon Bodier 
