Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Retcon, relaunch, reimagine

It's hard not to notice a growing trend in the new TV shows and movies being produced these days that a growing number aren't exactly what you can call original. They are either a relaunch, or 're imagining' of a old TV show or movie. Of course some existing TV shows, movies and even comic books are exactly being what you can call original right now as a growing number of them seem to be falling prey to the evils of 'retcon'.

For the non geeky among you who think that retcon sounds more like a cough medicine then something which happens in fiction allow me a moment to explain. Retcon stands for retroactive continuity which is a posh way of saying that something that has happened in a work of fiction is later changed or is retold in a new way which basically says " It didn't happen that way it happened this way". One of the most famous examples of retcon is Bobby ewing from dallas where the entire series after he had 'died' was shown to be a dream when his wife found him in the shower.

Another example of this was Spiderman where I'm sure most of you know that Peter Parker married Mary Jane parker. However what the non geek among you might not know that in a effort to save his Aunt Mays life, parker agreed to a deal which meant that his wedding to Mary Jane never happened. So in the new retconned universe Peter Parker is currently single and appears to be likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Well this little geeky rant was bought on by news that they are planning to relaunch " Buffy the Vampire slayer" as a movie, however it will not involve any of the original cast or even the creator who made the TV series. Now star trek you can relaunch quite effectively as the recent movie has shown, but I don't know if buffy will be as effective as Geeks can be quite passionate about their TV shows.

The relaunched Battlestar galactica is a prime example as when it was announced fans of the original series were screaming from the rooftops as to what they saw as heresy.

We almost didn't have a institute class this evening as the sub teacher thought the class started at 7pm so after waiting 25 minutes he was on the verge of leaving when Physics and I arrived. We were also very thin on the ground as only 7 people turned up. Our guess was most of the missing students were probably at home watching the football.

Speaking of which for our activity afterwards we played chair football in the cultural hall. Each player had one chair and had to defend that chair from all other players. If another player kicked the ball at you and it hit your chair you lost a life. Each chair had three lifes before you were 'dead'. The winner was the last player left standing as it were. It was actually a really fun game even if No Fears and physics competivness shown through especially in the second game.

anyway,

Later folks

2 comments:

Scully said...

The weirdest thing about the Buffy relaunch is the fact that it started out as a movie with Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry. And honestly, do you think people will actually want to watch a BtVS without either Sarah Michelle Gellar or Joss Whedon and all the original characters he created? Wasn't that what made the tv show great? I was very confused by the whole announcement. I'm still waiting for a Wonder Woman movie.

Saxon said...

I know it seems to have come full circle. Movie to TV back to movies.

Based on the success of the new Battlestar galactica apparently their planning to do a new Movie but based on the original series not the new one.