Nostalgia-bait “What if we made a whole-ass movie explaining how Han Solo got his windshield dice???”
I love media content. Every day I consume media content. Do you know what I love more than media content? Variety. You know what the entertainment industry loves more than media content? Milking a franchise for all it’s worth until it’s a husk of its former glory.
Especially in the film industry, it feels like all we get are remakes and sequels. Only a month ago did we get a fifth Indiana Jones film, one which featured the 81-year-old franchise lead alongside a younger, increasingly popular actor, most likely in a bid to keep up franchise relevance and longevity. In the realm of TV, we just got the revival of cult animated series Futurama, a series that had such a definite and impactful ending that follow-ups don’t make a lot of sense. And in video games it’s more or less the same: Mortal Kombat going back to the original designs of the characters due to convoluted story reasons, all the mainline Resident Evil games being remade, the milquetoast Ratchet and Clank reimagining from 2016, and not to mention lazy HD remasters of classic IPs which are broken beyond belief but turn a profit due to the nostalgia factor.
Ratchet and Clank (2002) vs Ratchet and Clank (2016) The same level, 14 years apart
It seems playing on people’s love of yesteryear content is here to stay, and I gotta say that, to an extent, I’m fine with it! To an extent.
A favourite example of mine is the recently released The Matrix Resurrections, a movie so heavily in love with the prior trilogy that it used footage from the original films in place of new content, while also remaking entire sequences and recycling story beats. Look I’m a fanboy, I ADORE The Matrix films and everything that comes alongside them, so I am NOT unbiased at all. However, if your film is relying so much on nostalgia for what came first that you’re reusing old footage every time a name drop occurs or a past event is mentioned, I think you need to do some rewrites. As a movie goer, I don’t want keys jangled in my face whenever something from a prior film is mentioned. It feels lazy, and it can make the audience feel stupid, as if the director doesn’t trust them enough to remember prior films and needs to go “hey hey! This is that thing! Remember thing? You loved thing so much, here it is again!”
Again, I love The Matrix and enjoyed the latest film, but I didn’t enjoy it due to the rehashing of plots from the first three, or the remade shots, or the shots literally taken from the first movie. I enjoyed it because of the fun set-pieces, interesting special effects, and stellar cast. The jangling keys were at times a bit distracting. All of this culminated in an ending that was punctuated with a somewhat decent cover of Rage Against the Machine’s Wake Up, the same song used in the end credits of the first Matrix movie. Opening with a callback and ending with one, Matrix Resurrections is a film bookended by nostalgia.
A different film, albeit one that relies solely on audience nostalgia, is Solo: A Star Wars Story. While it does not rehash plots or reuse footage, it feels the need to have an explanation for every single detail about the titular character. In this one movie we find out:
How Han Solo got his ship
How Han Solo met his best friend
How Han Solo met his rival
How Han Solo got his blaster
How Han Solo’s ship got the iconic look
How Han Solo did an event which is mentioned in passing in the first Star Wars
How Han Solo got the name ‘Solo’
And finally, how Han Solo got his windshield dice. The windshield dice only seen in the movie which came out a year prior. I swear this film is trying to drum up audience memories for things which the average film goer won’t have even thought of. At best it’ll get a slight chuckle or acknowledgement from a die-hard fan, but at worst it just makes the plot feel disjointed and contrived. There’s no longer room for audience interpretation. If details from ten years ago have not been explained, it will be explained in the most obnoxious way possible. Studios love to jangle them keys before the audience, thinking that the best way to get a good reaction is to remind them about things they did enjoy.
I think nostalgia can be done right, a film like T2 Trainspotting shows this. Through callbacks and reused footage, alongside the original cast, T2 manages to pull off a story that relies heavily on nostalgia. It gives the audience a narrative all about people growing old and failing to recapture their youth, punctuating this with numerous homages and callbacks. I know it’s ironic of me to critique one and praise the other for basically doing the same thing, but the difference is one was jangling keys and the other did it right!
Thing is, I’m not completely against this trend, much as it sounds like I am. I can enjoy a callback or two here and there! I just really want more original stuff dammit! There is zero chance we’ve reached a point in our creativity where there are zero new ideas. Like, it’s just not possible. But if that is the case, then all I ask is that our nostalgia is touched upon a little less ham-fistedly.
Hollywood, stop treating the audience as if we’re dumb! You don’t need to jangle the keys every time a reference to the past is made. At least, not so obnoxiously.