Aidonian's blog

When Hollywood decides to modernise a intellectual property or IP, they do it for two reasons: 1) they want to make money. 2) it’s a safe bet to make more money. 

I don’t think there is a real message that Hollywood is trying to send. Equality. They don’t pay actrices as much as their male counterparts. Minorities have a hard time in Hollywood breaking out of the stereotypes that they usually cast in. 

What they will do, especially with blockbusters. Why? They invest a lot of money in it and those movies have to attract as much people as possible to get their investment back. Which means that in order to do that, those movies have to avoid any controversy. 

Than the message is: cater to the masses even though the story might suffer for it. 

The YouTuber ranting against Hollywood when the restart a franchise is a rant that says that he has a problem with modernising IP’s. Star Trek was created in the 60’s and Star Wars late 70’s. Those are IP’s of their era. Some of the things shown in that era could not be shown today. Except for a show that takes place in that time period. Than it’s something else. When Ronald D Moore reimagined Battlestar Galactica, he made it more gritty, more grounded than the original. For me it worked. Starbuck was made a woman instead of a man in the original. His version was less campy than the original. 

So in a way BSG was a success. Star Trek was not. J.J Abrams tackled Star Trek and made a flashy adventure movie with little substance. Even his take on the Star Wars sequels were not great to say the least. Star Wars episode 7 was a rehash of episode 4. Don’t get me started on episode 8 and 9. 

The biggest problem those IP’s have is that they require a lot of money to be made, studios are interfering and demand that they play it safe and not to take risks that might offend someone. After the crash of 2008, studios are only interested in existing IP’s that has a fanbase so they can play it safe. They don’t like to make risks when it comes to blockbusters.