Hollywood Reboots Embrace The Retcon And Why That May Be The Best Option For Movie Audiences

You know when you hear a single word over and over again, and it begins to sound weird and then loses all meaning? If that's not roughly where we are with the odd collection of consonants and vowels that spells R-E-B-O-O-T ["reboot," ree-boot, /ˌriːˈbuːt/], we must be pretty close. When this week "Terminator Genisys" (our review is here) will attempt to restart James Cameron's beloved franchise; when last week some bright-eyed chap called Tom Holland was cast as your new new new Spider-Man; when this very month "Jurassic World" had people debating, among other things, the minutiae of "sequel" vs. "reboot" while Universal sidled off to the bank with the contents of everyone's wallets; it feels like a word that is being tossed around to the point of white noise. And when it does register, it usually elicits a grimace —it's the latest band-aid over the gaping wound that is the creative moribundity of the Hollywood model. No matter what...