Jessica Goldstein

Like the rest of humanity, I have complicated feelings about reboots. Reboots are what I do to my phone or computer when I cannot think of anything else to do to try to solve a problem. In my interactions with technology, a reboot is a last resort.

I have discovered that the entertainment industry views reboots in a similar way: When the bottom of the new-idea barrel has been thoroughly scraped, producers dig into the archives and attempt to jolt life back into a long-dead franchise. For moviemakers, it’s a hit-or-miss proposition, heavy on the misses. For every Christopher Nolan “Batman” trilogy, you get about 10 million unwatchable movies based on board games and action figures.