5 Franchises That Should Get Bloody And Violent Reboots

You know that 2017 Power Rangers film that reimagined the classic (and still ongoing) kids’ TV franchise as a darker, grittier story? You know how it completely failed at the box office? Clearly, the reason for this is it didn’t get gritty enough.

PG-13? That’s a rating for rookies. Everyone knows that real reboots lean so hard into an R rating that it creates enough controversy to show up in the morning news.

The new, R-Rated Power Rangers needs to more closely resemble Neon Genesis Evangelion than the colorful, cheesy franchise we all grew up with. Why should reboots emulate the tone of a franchise that has managed to stick around for 30 years, when we can watch these spunky young teens bleed, die, and get psychologically broken by a version of Rita Repulsa whose very presence will cause all the Rangers to endure irreversible psychological damage?

Speaking of traumatizing kids, does it bother anyone else that not a single team member in The Mighty Ducks suffered a horrific injury? That can’t be just me — I’m sure plenty of other psychologically-healthy adults go into a movie with the hope of watching children suffer. Thankfully, with the magic of R-rated reboots, our dreams of mixing our nostalgic feelings for Disney films with childhood trauma can come true.

Coach Gordon Bombay needs to spend less time learning the true nature of teamwork and more time acting like J.K. Simmons in Whiplash. Victory must come at all costs, no matter what harm comes to the children under his care. If there’s not at least one gut-churning injury per game, you’ll know the reboot failed.

Sure, one of the overarching themes of the Mighty Ducks franchise is that games are supposed to be fun. But as everyone knows, the secret to successful reboots is to remove everything that made up the heart of a franchise and replace it with the opening scene of Robocop.

C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, famously spoke out against the fear of appearing childish, as he saw that fear to be a sign of childishness in and of itself. He is, of course, wrong, and any reboots his lighthearted Christian allegory consisting of young children, talking animals, and an honest-to-god visit from Santa Claus absolutely must get a coating of grime and grit, lest someone suspect that us mature adults might enjoy things that aren’t caked in dried blood and filled with existential terror. 

Aslan’s Christlike death needs to be on par with Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and the death of the White Witch needs to involve Aslan going for the jugular and recreating a scene from a National Geographic documentary — only with more blood. Someone might mistake us for children if the final battle scene doesn’t resemble the final scene of the Evil Dead reboot.

Do you want to revive your love for old action figures and Reagan-era cartoons, without having to admit the fact that you pine for the simpler days of your youth? Well, the great thing about violent reboots is they can help you forget that you ever were a child with joy in your heart, faith in humanity, and hope for a brighter future.

There are probably few franchises that are more well-suited for a blood-soaked reboot than G.I. Joe. With character names like “Crazylegs” and “Covergirl” and snake-themed villains whose entire motivation involves being villainous and having evil laughs, it’s practically begging to be taken seriously. 

Since all the best reboots just rip off other, better movies, this G.I. Joe film needs to be a mix of Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket, and Apocalypse Now. I mean, not with any of the deep, thought-provoking themes about the pointlessness of war or the true meaning of bravery — we just want the violence. We all know that’s what really made those films good.

Nothing begs for realistic ultraviolence more than colorful puppets. Like with all great reboots, it’s only natural that we’d want to honor the memory of the late, great Jim Henson by fulfilling what must have been his true vision for The Muppets‘ much-beloved cast of absurdist characters: an abundance of blood and guts.

Did you know that, of all the times that Crazy Harry detonated his dynamite, we didn’t see a single scene of a shell-shocked Muppet, staring in disbelief at a now missing limb? Not a single Muppet covered head to toe in blood, screaming at the act of senseless terror? It’s like the creators had no desire to capture the true horror of violence, and that must be fixed.

Now, we all know that the R-rated 2018 film The Happytime Murders was a complete box office bomb, and the only possible explanation for that is it didn’t have a high enough body count. Thankfully for our muppet reboot, there are plenty of Muppets that haven’t been used for years, which can easily be used to create an ever-growing pile of puppet corpses that will no doubt lead the way to success.