You Guys. You Know If You Don't Like Reboots and Multiverse Stuff You Don't Have To Watch It, Right?

WE GET IT. People out there are sick of reboots, people out there are sick of the multiverse. Every time they announce a new Marvel movie or release a new trailer or Disney puts out a new reboot, you get a barrage of tweets like this:

I get that it can be frustrating to see your favorite old properties made unfamiliar and incomprehensible to you, but come closer, I've got a little secret:

Nobody is forcing you to watch these.

That's right! Contrary to popular belief, if you find the Marvel multiverse so confusing, you can simply bow out! If you don't like the idea of John Mulaney and Andy Samberg making meta commentary about fame in the context of an older cartoon, you can just not turn it on! You don't even run the risk of having it just be the only thing that's on anymore, because we live in the age of streaming, where anyone can watch anything at anytime as long as they've got a login.

And that's another point: It's not like TV networks and movie studios are Only Making Media to Fill Time Slots anymore. Streaming services mean that the content they put out is limited only by how much they're willing to spend on it - and while Marvel movies and remakes and other stuff with the multiverse in it have certainly gotten some pretty hefty budgets these days, it's not like new shows don't exist. Bridgerton exploded even though nobody expected it to. The Umbrella Academy, an original and brilliant work from the mind of Gerard Way, was never a show before either. Shows like Money Heist, Lupin, and Derry Girls literally came in from overseas and became smash hits in the US.

So what are you really mad about, online complainers - that the new movies making big headlines are repetitive and have been done before, or that the movies you care about aren't what's cool anymore?

The Case For The Multiverse

(Photo : Marvel Media Site)
Elizabeth Olsen in 'Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness'

I like multiverse stuff. Every time somebody talks about how confusing it is and how they wish they'd return to the way superhero movies used to be done, as though it's some kind of foregone conclusion, I am reminded once again of being the little nerdy kid who got cut off after yammering on about her latest obsession: It's like nobody has the attention span for the stuff I like.

This is part and parcel with the experience of being neurodivergent, which is a category a lot of "nerdy" people fall under, whether they know it or not. This isn't to say that all neurodivergent people prefer multiverse films, or that it's some kind of hate crime to not like them - but it DOES feel a lot like sour grapes from the same crowd that has always been making fun of things I enjoy.

I didn't enjoy Marvel nearly as much before the multiverse came into play. Before it was all action and fighting and political drama - now there's an element of magic to it, chaos, unpredictability - and isn't that what stories with people with superpowers used to be about anyway? I mean they have SUPERPOWERS, for god's sake!

(It's also the best long-term solution for a franshise that knows it's going to have to change directors a thousand times in the future. It's a whole lot easier, with a library this big, to be able to compartmentalize some aspects.)

(Photo : Marvel Media Site)
Benedict Cumberbatch in 'Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness'

There were no movies like this before. Or, at the very least, not enough that I would take up my whole hand naming them. The movie industry wasn't big enough to support them, so they didn't try - they stuck with what they knew. But now that they've got the bandwith to make multiverse content - like the bandwith Disney has between Disney+, past shows on ABC, and their ability to fill seats in theaters - they've found that it's incredibly popular and has a reliable fanbase, which shouldn't come as a surprise. Like I said, a lot of nerdy people are neurodivergent, and neurodivergent people tend to be incredibly passionate about the things they like - it's just that, before now, a lot of that passion was relegated to comic books.

You can't take the core components of what comic book fandom is out of it just because you're making it into a movie instead. We've learned a hundred thousand times: If you stray too much from the source material, your movie loses its heart - but staying close to the source material also means staying close to its fans. And Marvel comic fans are already well-acquainted with the multiverse.

Nobody's saying you can't critique Marvel movies and the multiverse concept in general - just examine your words when you do. You might find that you're being far more territorial and antagonistic than you realized, to a group of people that...kinda already tends to have issues with being bullied. (You can make fun of me for using 'bullied' as an adult all you want, but if you are, a) you're mean, and b) there's no age limit on not wanting people to be rude to you.)

And if you wanna watch a superhero movie with zero connection to any multiverse, just go see The Batman on March 4. Matt Reeves gets you.

The Case For Reboots

(Photo : Disney)

If you didn't like my last argument about bullying, hold on to your hats, because you're sure not going to like this one. Reboots have always happened. Literally for as long as there have been movies, as long as there has been ART, storytellers have been retooling and reworking each other's art. You know Dante's inferno was basically just Bible fanfiction, right? So were basically all Mideval paintings - just Jesus fanart.

Sure, new movies and ideas and experience are exciting, but it's pretty unreasonable to expect a ton of those right now. We literally just spent two years under some form of quarantine or another. We were separated from family, friends, isolated, and living in fear of a virus that we knew from the start would change life as we know it forever. We're still not fully out of the woods yet - so with all that going on, do you really expect moviemakers to be focused on new experiences? Sure, there can be a few odd movies about how strange it is to live in quarantine, but even the bulk of those have probably not been made yet: Not when nobody has had time to process anything that happened.

You know that urge you get, when you're tired or worn out or sad and you just want to watch the same old sitcom or a favorite movie? Something about that warmth, that familiarity, of those characters on your screen that feel like friends, plus the safety of knowing exactly what will happen next is so singularly comforting - especially now. Let me repeat for emphasis: For two years, we've been away from friends, not knowing what was going to happen next. If you ended up developing depression, as many did, that goes like, triple.

So of COURSE there have been an onslaught of reboots of old properties coming out these days - nobody has the mental or emotional energy to process something new! Not the artists making the movie, not the people watching it. What we do have the mental and emotional energy for, however, is to look at something old in an entirely new light.

Take Bel-Air for example. When Fresh Prince originally came out, mainstream TV wasn't ready for a drama like this. Shows with all-Black casts had only just made it to the mainstream, and the audiences those networks had at the time wouldn't have watched it if they knew it was going to be about the struggles of being Black in America. They wanted a funny show about how a rich couple took in a poor kid from West Philly - the creators were able to layer the serious storylines in with the jokes to make already loyal viewers listen.

(Photo : Peacock)
Olly Sholotan and Jabrai Banks in 'Bel-Air'

Now, we live in an America that is more ready to listen than it used to be, and as a result, someone finally looked at Fresh Prince, thought "this would actually make a compelling drama" and was able to successfully pitch it as one. More people have, at this point, done the work to be educated on those historical and ongoing struggles, and therefore when this character - who they have already known and loved once - has to go through them, nobody will be shocked by the fact that they exist.

And true, with a lot of reboots, like the infamous And Just Like That..., the much-maligned reboot of Sex and The City, the people doing the rebooting get everything wrong and lose the thread of the show. But they shouldn't get to ruin it for everyone else! Sometimes we remake a show because we genuinely have more to say!

Others are annoyed when they put a new face on a beloved childhood cartoon, like they did with Rugrats or Blue's Clues, or like they're going to do with Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. The thing they loved in childhood was perfect: Why even run the risk of destorying a perfect thing?

Here's the thing about that though: I was super weirded out by new Steve (Josh, his name is Josh) at first, and so was my older sister...but my niece, her daughter, LOVES him. And seeing my two-year-old niece excited about the same show I used to be excited about made me realize: These are done out of love too. The people doing these shows now loved the original so much when they were children that they want their kids to be able to experience the same thing. That's what love is.

So, look. I'm not saying you're not allowed to be unhappy about a given reboot or remake, or about the multiverse as a concept, or whatever. But you should watch the way you talk about it. Some of y'all out there are incredibly negative, and ONLY negative, when you discuss these things, and a lot of times all you're really doing is shitting on a project that someone put a whole lot of work and a whole lot of love into.

If you don't like it, it's probably not FOR you - but the good news is, you can move on, because there's definitely a ton of stuff out there that is.