Modern Retelling: Making The Old New

Today, a modern retelling of an old story is more common than an original story. Some reboots and sequels have been quite successful. Meanwhile, others receive criticism for either being too derivative or straying too far from the source material.

Building On Success

Many times, media producers are looking for a sure hit. For most, the surest way to succeed is to utilize an existing intellectual property. They may try to find success with a sequel to expand a franchise. Sometimes a rebooted franchise gives a new audience a fresh take on an old story.

Often, nostalgia is a huge factor for re-imagining a story. Content creators hope to attract old fans of the original work to create buzz that will entice a younger audience. 1980s nostalgia fueled several recent movie reboots and re-imaginings. The Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were some of the higher profile reboots of 80s properties. But 80s nostalgia even extended to movies like Footloose and Overboard.

Modern Retelling Vs. Original Idea

However, dipping into past success is not always an indicator of future performance. Plenty of movies and television shows tried and failed to recapture the success of an original idea.

The results of a modern retelling of a story really aren’t much different than the results of new original works. Some are highly successful, like The Force Awakens was for Star Wars. However, fans highly criticized the latter two stories, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

An original story is capable of capturing an audience’s imagination in exciting ways. However, an original work requires more effort to create than an existing work. Nevertheless, a poorly received reboot or sequel can reduce public opinion of a valuable franchise.

Nothing New Under The Sun

Over the last decade, the super hero genre has seen an explosion in popularity thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For the first time, several different franchises shared a movie universe, allowing characters to mingle between them. This wasn’t a new idea. In the comics, these kinds of crossovers have been happening for decades. Marvel’s The Avengers and DC’s Justice League first teamed numerous heroes together in the 1960s. The 1980s brought us the first major company-wide crossovers with Marvel’s Secret Wars and DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Even looking at the whole hero story trope, there really isn’t any original modern hero story. Nearly all modern hero stories follow the same formula. Joseph Campbell summed it up in his seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Nearly every modern movie and book, from Harry Potter, to Star Wars, to The Hunger Games follows this motif. Even works, like The Odyssey, Beowulf, and The Epic of Gilgamesh, follow this pattern. All modern hero storytelling follows this formula.

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