Anyhoo, now that's out of the way, how about we talk about a big issue in film and TV that I was reminded by from a piece of recent pop-culture? Hey, I know that wasn't as snappy as 'hey sluts, who wants to play strip Jenga!' but it'll just have to do methinks. Now I know that nostalgia being a double-edged sword to video games and said culture has been thrown around since about 2010 or 2011 but it really isn't as big a problem as in TV and especially films. For me, the worst three things about video games over the last half a decade has to have been over-involvement of marketers and producers in game design, repetition of formulas without improvement or experimentation and underhand business tactics such as day-one DLC, episodic games or DRM always-online settings.
The reason as to why I suddenly had THE TOTALLY ORIGINAL AND UNIQUE idea of writing an article about the cons of nostalgia on modern film and TV came about because of much reflection on the recent and awful Ghostbusters (2016) trailer that I did a written reaction to on this blog recently. Upon more reflection on that travesty of a trailer I realised that it had copious amounts of nods to the original two films smothering the trailer and while designs of the ghostbusters uniforms and car were on point, the seemingly endless use of nostalgic imagery to build up hype and fan-base investment rubbed me up the wrong way.
Like I said though, TV and film even more so are both severely limited in their inventiveness and creativity as of late due to a huge over-reliance on nostalgia to sell views and tickets. Fundamentally, this isn't a bad thing but it has to be done in moderation because while nostalgia can be a refreshing reminder of what was, it has to be used appropriately because if we just accept it as the narrative crux for a plot-point in a TV show or the basis of a films' narrative overall then we allow film and TV creators to use said nostalgia as a creative crux and be lazy with their writing and design.
TV, in all fairness, isn't too bad with this trend but it does happen from time to time with easily the most prevalent example being the WWE (Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment). Now the WWE's main problem at the moment is easily its awful booking for big-event wrestling events but its overreliance on nostalgic booking of legendary wrestlers for ensuring the purchase of pay-per-view purchases and public event tickets isn't certainly helping. This means that with the over-reliance on legends like Psycho Sid, Sting, The Undertaker and other legends of the industry for storyline-making which not only precipitates lazy writing that over-relies on the status of these legends who defined multiple decades of wrestling but can be very harmful to some of the older legends such as Shawn Michaels who injured his back a few years ago, The Undertaker who injured his shoulder in 2010 and most recently, Sting who injured himself last year in a match where he was 55 at the time. Considering how physically-demanding wrestling is, not only does this mean that nostalgia can precipitate some lazy writing but can also risk the health of some truly tired and deserving-of-retirement wrestlers who just need a bit of rest.
Image source: http://wrestlingnews.co/wwe-teasing-the-undertaker-for-wrestlemania-32/
Image above: Legendary wrestler M.W.Calaway (aka The Undertaker) at the Wrestlemania 30 event in 2014.
Image source: https://www.blogger.com/blogin.g?blogspotURL=http://cartooncube.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-looney-tunes-show.html
When the 2011 series came along and changed up much of the physical-based comedy, character motivations and artistic themes and designs of the Looney Tunes universe, it didn't centre itself on the previously built cultivation of classic characters and instead tried mixing things up in terms of how story and character motivation were portrayed. In turn, it was severely lambasted by a large portion of the Looney Tunes franchise fan-base and while I can certainly understand that change to something as long standing as this is tricky to get used to there are two things that made this aggravating. Firstly was the fact that many of the fans were fans of the awful early-2000s remakes of the old show and completely disregarded any improvements made to the series in favour of rose-tinted images of the older shows. Secondly was that the comedy was at least a lot more risqué than any seen throughout the 1980s-2000s era of the Looney Tunes and this was thrown to the dirt by many of the millennial fans who preferred the tired and now-stale of the Looney Tunes comedy that they had grown up with. As a result, while picking up in the last couple of years, this superb remake/reboot of the legendary franchise was initially met with much hostility from old-school fans.
Putting aside any misconceptions that people had about this show when it first came out and believe you me, I can certainly see where they come from and sympathise. The Thing that people have to give credit to this 2011 series is that it tried to update a long-standing and flagging franchise to introduce it to a new generation of children and youngsters. Regardless of what you may think about The Loony Tunes Show, it tried something new while keeping the core of what made the universe and franchise of the show so popular in the first place mostly intact while doing away with the less-popular dead weight. The reason why I bring this up is that the show was buried under criticism from old school fans wishing to stick to older versions of the show from the 1990s and 2000s and unwilling to accept proper change to the franchise in order to give it a proper kick up the backside.
The example with the WWE shows that an over-reliance on nostalgia can have adverse consequences for performers and actors on the part of the content creator while the same on behalf of the audience is shown by The Loony Tunes Show. If we are to fully integrate what made older and well-established franchises to more modern TV and film styles and tropes for a modern audience in a smooth and constructive way then we have to reach a good balance between what the audience want and what seems to be the best way of either embracing or criticising modern culture. Now I'm not saying I have the be all and end all of solutions to this but as shown with the abundance of mini-series released after The Loony Tunes Show or the improvements made over the last few Wrestlemania events by WWE as shown by the success of Wrestlemania 32 in 2016, it seems like the best solution is simply trial and error and experimentation. If anything, while this isn't a fully efficient method, it'll certainly produce the most clear results when trying to create a good implementation of nostalgia into modern entertainment.
Now if you want a bad example, particularly in film where this problem has been far worse over the last few years as compared to TV or even computer games then you need look no further than the 2015 film release Terminator: Genisys.
Image source: http://www.hdwallpapers.in/emilia_clarke_arnold_terminator_genisys-wallpapers.html
Now Genisys is certainly not the worst release in the Terminator series (1984-present) with the worst in my opinion being that god awful TV show The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-09) but Genisys was certainly not helped by its almost jaw-dropping over-reliance on nostalgic imagery throughout pretty much the entire film. In all honesty, this wasn't the worst thing about the film or the main reason why it ended getting 26% on Rotten Tomatoes or 38% on Metacritic as that would probably be the shoddy writing and overly-backtracking story that beats the shit out of the overall franchise's storyline. However, the film's narrative problems were certainly not helped by a stunning over-reliance on scenes ripped straight from the older films such as a shot-for-shot replication of the Nike trainers scene from the original 1984 film without any proper context or ripping the first murder scene by Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 in the first film almost entirely shot for shot and line for line or replicating the death of the main villain again to a scarily similar degree from the 2003 Terminator film Rise of the Machines. The abundance of recreations of iconic scenes from older entries into the series was so over-saturated to such a degree that while I did enjoy this film overall, I never really got the sense that the film was trying to stand on its own two feet and instead tried to an almost wholesale degree to support itself on the iconography and pedigree of the Terminator series up to that point. Did the film do better than the fourth film or the TV show? Certainly, but it didn't revive the series to the degree that people thought it would on account of the almost unpalatable unoriginality rife throughout this movie.
Image source: http://lestoilesheroiques.fr/2015/03/terminator-genisys-arnold-schwarzenegger-et-emilia-clarke-en-couverture-dempire-nouvelles-images.html
Ok so to prevent myself from having my brains blasted out by a vengeful Emilia Clarke and her bloody dragon babies and terminator sidekick I should mention that this film is certainly not bad but it is certainly not the nostalgia and franchise tonic that was expected of it. In a similar way to Wrestlemania 30 in 2014, the film was expected to supercharge its franchise to its former glory and much like in that case the over-reliance on the nostalgia of the creators became a crutch for the film meaning that it never felt like relying on its own worth as a stand-alone film regardless of the pedigree of the series that it is a part of. Certainly not the main problem for the film but it is certainly a crippling one.
Now before I leave you all for another week I should mention the aforementioned point from me talking about The Loony Tunes Show that there really is no solid way of creating a bit of film, TV or a computer game that pays good homage to its series while updating the series to a good degree and creating a nice bit of medium that can stand solidly on its own two feet other than trial and error. The WWE learned from the mistakes made between Wrestlemania 27 and 31 and used that to create one of the best Wrestlemania events in about a decade with number 32. The Loony Tunes Show might not have been a wholesale success but it was a reasonably successful attempt at changing up the formula of its franchise while creating something new and anything that was learnt from its failings were then taken into account for future series. Maybe some franchises like Terminator, Scooby Doo (1969-present) do use their nostalgia base as a crutch and this can be shown to be a financially viable option in some cases but with increasingly critical movie and consumer-going audiences being more and more the case along with the rise of social media this may be a thing of the past. At the very least, as shown with TV shows like The Legend of Korra (2012-14) or films like Deadpool (2016), we are experiencing an increasing trend in using nostalgia as a dressing to fresh and updated ideas for established franchises and that makes me very hopeful for the future let me tell you that.
Hopefully I've hit the nail on the head for you all on this issue and if I haven't...then go suck on a copy of the original Scooby Doo boxset while cradling a Bugs Bunny cuddly toy...you fucking introvert.
