Is the Pandemic the Cause of Our Nostalgia?
Has anyone else felt like recently all the movies and shows created are either reboots, remakes, sequels, or the like? From remakes of movies such as Little Women and Batman to reboots of the shows Sex and the City, Full House, That 70’s Show, and The Proud Family, it seems that recycling old ideas is all there is now.
I get so excited for the few instances where something is brand new or original to watch because I’ve gotten so used to this trend, if you could even call it that. I will admit that it was fun at first; it was especially exciting to see shows or movies that I hadn’t seen in years make a reappearance in pop-culture.
The overuse of the term “reboot” or “remake” is something that I first started noticing around the start of the pandemic, and have continued to see now. This seemed strange to me initially, but I let it go and chalked it up to coincidence. The more it started happening, though, the more it got me thinking that there might be a reason for this.
After doing some research, it seems like this is a common phenomenon. Film and media trends, as well as just trends in general, have always had a cyclical nature to them. According to Cosmopolitan, this cycle seems to happen around every 100 years or so, typically after an economic crisis such as 9/11, the 2008 recession, or the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea is that it is pretty much just a safe bet in the film industry to fund a project that you know your audience will enjoy as it is something they have enjoyed before, rather than take a financial risk on a project that you don’t know for certain the audience will like.
This practice is nothing new. According to Film School Rejects, the first film remake can be traced back to 1896, which is when cinema itself was first emerging. Some films have even been remade or revived more than once, for example, A Christmas Carol has been remade 9 times according to Screen Rant. Since 1902, there have been at least 1,438 films made that were actually remakes, according to Music Magpie. Clearly, it has always been a common practice, and it does seem to be going away any time soon. Though, what is unclear, is whether or not it may be declining in popularity.
To anyone who’s tired of this trend you can rest assured that this won’t go on forever, and to anyone who’s enjoying all these revivals, you’re in luck because it’s likely this era will last a while longer. As we’ve seen before, this is not the first time it’s happened, and it definitely won’t be the last time.