What class-conscious reboots should Hollywood make next?
Gossip Girl arrives on HBO Max, with a new season from the shows original creators, half reboot, half sequel. New Gossip Girl is still going through the trials and tribulations of a bunch of extremely wealthy Manhattan high school kids (plus a fish out of the water), but this time its a different group of extremely wealthy high school students from Manhattan. A few other things have also changed. These kids struggle with their privilege in a way I think the original didnt, co-showrunner Josh Safran told Variety. The light at [Black Lives Matter], in light of many things, even coming back to Occupy Wall Street, things have changed. Safran added that the original Gossip Girl leaned too much into wealth porn, which he described as Look at These Cars, or heres a montage of the best trim youve ever seen, suggesting the new Gossip Girl will rely less on this kind of ambitious vision of extreme richness. This may be true for the finished show, but it seems HBO Maxs marketing department sees it a little differently:      Its not fair to judge a show based on its marketing or what a showrunner says in interviews: its entirely possible that Safran and her co-showrunner Stephanie Savage made a version of Gossip Girl which allows the public to vicariously enjoy the pleasures of wealth while recognizing that the rich are destroying the planet. Consider what it means, however, that the showrunner of a series that ended just nine years ago already feels the need to clarify that the new version will feature characters with a more modern relationship to their wealth and privilege. If left unchecked, this trend could endanger Hollywoods strategic intellectual property reserve, the vast stockpile of already-filmed material that provides networks and studios with a constant stream of remakes and reboots. To avoid a nightmarish scenario where people trying to decide what to watch can no longer find new versions of things theyve already seen and enjoyed, weve rounded up a few reboot-ready movies and TV shows with problematic portrayals of wealth and privilege, and then came up with suggestions to make them work in a post-BLM, post-Occupy Wall Street television landscape. Here is what we found. The best of Movies, TV, Books, Music, and more, delivered to your inbox. Cruel Intentions has the exact same problem as Gossip Girl: Rich kids havent gotten any less shit since the 1990s, but theyve gotten a little smarter to display their depravity. There is simply no way to update the loathsome characters of Ryan Phillippe or Sarah Michelle Gellars in a way that would make them acceptable to audiences on the 21st.st century, with our more sophisticated understanding of the consent, class struggle, and environmental impact of keeping a 1956 Jaguar XK140 on the road. (NBC tried to create a Cruel Intentions TV series in 2016, and failed dramatically.) However, there is an elegant solution: rather than awkwardly dragging characters from the 1990s to the present day, the next incarnation of Cruel Intentions could send Kathryn and Sebastian back to a time when their obscene consumption would be a little less visible. If you reinvented them as aristocrats in pre-revolutionary France, for example, the public might attribute his cruel and manipulative behavior to his time and place, rather than assuming he intended to be cruel. Beverly Hillbillies      Unfortunately there is no way to save Beverly Hillbillies. Hamlet      Hamlet has always been a favorite for screen adaptations, but Shakespeares relentless focus on concerns about Scandinavian royalty ringing out of tune today, now that we understand how money and power work. HAMLET: My lord, The social safety net you built is still hanging, And gently catch those who slip and fall, The poor have everything they need, And no one should sleep under the stars, (Except for Lear, who does it a bit). In short, all is well, the poor are well, So lets never talk about them again. Once it is established that Denmark was already following the Nordic pattern during the hamlet era, the audience can relax knowing that all the plays, the lords, lords in charge, guards, musicians, itinerant players and soldiers receive a living wage and affordable health care. Annibal      Bryan Fullers, Thomas Harris brilliant interpretation of the epicurean cannibal seems particularly unsuitable for an injection of class consciousness, with all the ortolans etc. But heres what this analysis doesnt take into account: Annibal was great, and we would love to watch more. If the only way to do this is to have Mads Mikkelsen look straight into the camera and say, Im deeply concerned about income inequality once per episode, then Mads Mikkelsen better prepare to look straight into the camera. camera and to say, I am deeply concerned about income inequality. American psychopath      Mary Harrons adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis novel is now old enough to drink, but the beloveds debut installment franchise was done so well that its probably the one piece of vintage IP on the rich thats better suited for a blow-for-blow remake than a reimagining. It was still a period piece so a director trying to give it away the Gus Van Sant treatment would not have to worry about anachronisms. However, in light of contemporary attitudes towards the wealthy, a 2021 version of American psychopath should incorporate two minor changes. First, Patrick Batemans plan giving a tongue-in-cheek speech on ending apartheid, promoting equal rights for women and food and shelter for the homeless should now play to moving orchestral music ideally, something of the Avatar score to show the public just how serious these problems are, even for wealthy psychopaths. Second, all other shots in the film must be cut. Society      This one is perfect as is.