10 Movies That Were Meant To Reboot Franchises But Flopped Hard

The movie remake has been a popular trend for a while, but right now we are in a hot spot for franchise reboots – films that are not only redoing one popular movie from the past but also have to reignite whole series of movies. 2015 delivered a couple of big successes in this area with Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, while this year will see the likes of Ghostbusters join the ranks of reinvented franchises. However, for every one that works, there seem to be another three that fail. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, for example, reintroduced Batman to the screen. Though the movie has made a lot of money, the negative reaction it's received should give DC pause for thought about where they want their nascent DCEU to go next. So, what movies that were tasked with rebooting franchises utterly failed in their mission? Here are 10 such examples. As always, if you think we've missed anything, be sure to let us know in the comments section down below. 10) Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Fans were thrilled when Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg teamed up once again to do another Indiana Jones film in 2008. However, it had been nearly twenty years since the last movie – could they recreate the magic? The answer: no. What with the lack of Nazis, dodgy CGI and the oft-derided insertion of aliens into the Indiana Jones universe, there aren’t many people that would stand up for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Infamously, fans often pretend that the whole thing never happened. Conflicting evidence exists for whether this was meant to set up a new series of films or not, but the inclusion of Shia La Beouf as Indy’s obnoxious son Mutt does seem to suggest they were looking to extend the franchise’s life. Now that Indy 5 is happening once again, let’s hope Spielberg has learnt from his mistakes on this movie. 9) The Wolfman The Universal Monster films were perhaps the first Cinematic Universe, with the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman starring in their own films before coming together for several all-star monster mash-up movies. It makes sense, then, that the studio has tried to revive the franchise a few times in more recent years, with the likes of Van Helsing and 2010’s The Wolfman. It was the latter that was really meant to resurrect the series, though - something it spectacularly failed to do. The weight of the franchise meant that the film had too many people interfering with it, ending up with a muddled, unfocused final product. The universe has since been rebooted once again, with 2014’s Dracula Untold being the first of a planned long list of movies including The Invisible Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Mummy. Let's hope they're able to do a bit better this time, because this whole thing really does have a lot of potential. 8) The Incredible Hulk 2003’s Hulk from Ang Lee was a bizarrely cerebral, stilted film about an enormous green rage monster who famously likes to smash things. 2008’s reboot, The Incredible Hulk, restored the action/adventure that the first movie was sorely lacking yet it still didn’t ignite audiences as much as the preceding Marvel film, Iron Man. While it is generally considered to be superior to a lot of the picks on this list, The Incredible Hulk is still a divisive one. Many consider it to be a solid superhero runaround, but without much to differentiate it from the crowd. The Serviceable Hulk, if you will. As such, there wasn’t enough interest in a sequel. The lack of any individual Hulk films since hasn’t really dented the MCU’s success, however, so Marvel and Disney aren’t exactly crying over this one. Maybe the character just works better in ensemble films like The Avengers? 7) Planet Of The Apes The original Planet of the Apes movie is a true giant of cinema, with many moments and lines from the film working their way into popular culture. A remake was always going to ring alarm bells, then, and Tim Burton’s ‘reimagining’ of the film in 2001 definitely proved why you should leave the classics alone. While the ape makeup from prosthetics guru Rick Baker was amazing, the film came across as a 1950s B-movie dressed up as a modern blockbuster. Likewise, Mark Wahlberg delivers a bland performance as the Charlton Heston stand-in while the storyline makes no sense, ending on an infamously nonsensical cliffhanger. Thankfully, this misfire has been swept under the carpet in recent years as the franchise was reignited with great success in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The third film in that series, War of the Planet of the Apes, is coming next year and we can't wait to see it. 6) Friday The 13th The Friday the 13th franchise is most famous for starring Jason Vorhees, the hockey-mask wearing serial killer. As fans will know, though, the character isn’t even the murderer in the first movie and doesn’t wear his signature mask until Part III. As ridiculous as the slasher series got as it went on, fans enjoyed seeing how the iconic character of Vorhees developed. The 2009 reboot of the franchise, however, ambitiously tried to tell the story of the whole 11 film franchise in one movie, with ideas and set pieces cribbed from different installments. As such, it ended up being a complete rehash of the original films but without any of the shocks or the horror. Critics and fans lambasted the movie and the once-unkillable Vorhees has not been seen on the big screen in the seven years since. 5) Nightmare On Elm Street Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street franchise always set itself apart from other horror series with its strain of subversive, black comedy. Under his crispy face mask, Robert Englund managed to turn the despicable Freddy Krueger into one of the most charismatic icons of the genre. It would always have been tough to reboot the franchise with a new lead, then, and 2010’s Nightmare on Elm Street redo did not stick the landing. On paper, Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach in Watchmen) is a solid choice to replace Englund, but he never gets a chance to match up to the original. The film he is stuck in is just so unrelentingly grim and completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the franchise. Like Friday the 13th, this remake looks to have succeeded where numerous teenagers fighting for their lives have failed and might have actually killed Freddy Krueger once and for all. 4) Superman Returns As he is such a perennially popular character, it is odd to think that Superman disappeared from cinema screens for a huge 19 year period before 2006’s aptly-titled Superman Returns. Directed by Bryan Singer – the man who launched the mega-successful X-Men franchise – the Big Blue Boy Scout looked set to come back with a bang. Unfortunately, though, Superman Returns was a strangely pitched movie. While its faithfulness is charming, the idea to set it within the timeline of a film series that had been dead for two decades was a probably a bad move. It means Brandon Routh’s Superman is put directly under the huge shadow of Christopher Reeve’s beloved performance and never has a chance to stand on his own. The movie was not the big hitter that Warner Bros. were hoping for and so Supes vanished once again… until Man of Steel rebooted him in 2013. 3) Terminator Salvation The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day are widely seen as two of the best films of their kind. Unfortunately, this winning streak was broken with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - which eschewed the thrilling action and drama of previous entries for dumb moments like putting Arnold Schwarzenegger in comedy glasses. The fourth movie, Terminator Salvation, was meant to take the series in a completely different direction – no longer about the time travel, it was a future-set war movie with Christian Bale as a grizzled John Connor. In the event, many felt that - despite being a slight improvement on the third movie - Salvation ended up being pretty pedestrian. The film did decent business but didn't make a lasting impression and the rest of the trilogy it was meant to start never transpired. That didn’t put studios off, though, as another Terminator film did eventually arrive… 2) Terminator Genisys Six years after Salvation, the Terminator franchise returned - and this time with Schwarzenegger back in the lead and with the public support of James Cameron. Things looked set for this to be the biggest Terminator movie since the second… until everyone saw it. Completely misunderstanding everything that worked in the original films, the ridiculously-titled Genisys tied itself in knots of narrative logic in an attempt to create an interesting storyline. It also didn’t help that the trailers spoiled the movie’s biggest twists. Despite there being big plans for various sequels and television spinoffs, Genisys’ critical slaying resulted in the franchise being curtailed once again. We really hope movie execs have learnt their lesson and that we have now said "hasta la vista" to the Terminator franchise for good. However, something tells us that, like its star, it will be back. 1) Fantastic Four Genisys wasn’t the only franchise reboot from 2015 that flopped. After the cheesy Fantastic Four and its sequel from the 2000s, Marvel’s First Family desperately needed a reboot. In the hands of Josh Trank, the director of acclaimed and unconventional superhero film Chronicle, fans were hoping that this apparently more grown up Fantastic Four movie would do the characters justice. As it turns out, it might have actually been worse than the earlier films. At least they were proud to be about the Fantastic Four. The reboot, however, seems ashamed to feature these colourful characters and tries to fit them into a darker film that they just don’t belong to. Sporting a poorly-told story, Fantastic Four squanders its talented young cast in an effort to set up a franchise that will now never materialize due to this movie's failure. After three misguided attempts, fans are really hoping Fox will just return the rights to Marvel already.