![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Paddington - greatest reboot ever
I saw Paddington in Peru last night. Rewatched Paddington 2 recently, and was semi-watching Paddington a week or so ago.
I consider this, completely unironically, the best reboot the movie industry has ever achieved.
The movie industry loves to reboot old shows. New ideas are risky. Established IPs comes with a baked in audience. Unfortunately the makers often seem to miss the point entirely. So we have the dreadful Avengers Movie where they simply miss the lighthearted comedy and charm of the original, or M Night Shyamalan's awful adaptation of The Last Airbender. Sometimes they end up with something that's decent. 1993's The Fugitive was a solid action thriller but only had a few similarities to the original TV show. Josie and the Pussycats was an enjoyable parody but was a very different take on the show.
Paddington though is different. Aside from shifting to a contemporary period, there's no real attempt to make anything super-modern. Sure, Jonathan Brown likes his technology, and Judy Brown has ambitions for a career, that wouldn't have been something encouraged for a girl in the 1950s but that's just a minor update.
There's no attempt to push too hard with the humour. Nothing wacky happens. Characters are larger than life and eccentric but not wild or whacky. There's no attempt to make the dialogue too clever. The only attempt to make a character "cool" is for a joke about Jonathan wanting to be called J-Dog. An affectation he drops in the end when he realises he likes Steam Trains.
Paddington as a character is unchanged. He's extremely friendly, somewhat accident prone. Very naive, and thinks the best in everyone. He doesn't have an ounce of meanness. The most brutal he'll be is to give you a hard stare. And this is why it's so charming. His naivety and clumsiness tend to drive the plot. His politeness and good nature mean we root for him and everyone else does as well. It's somehow believable that he can make an entire prison population into better people.
Ultimately, like the books, it's wholesome. It's all about acceptance, kindness and just things going well for good people. It offers a sense of justice and fairness that we need.
I consider this, completely unironically, the best reboot the movie industry has ever achieved.
The movie industry loves to reboot old shows. New ideas are risky. Established IPs comes with a baked in audience. Unfortunately the makers often seem to miss the point entirely. So we have the dreadful Avengers Movie where they simply miss the lighthearted comedy and charm of the original, or M Night Shyamalan's awful adaptation of The Last Airbender. Sometimes they end up with something that's decent. 1993's The Fugitive was a solid action thriller but only had a few similarities to the original TV show. Josie and the Pussycats was an enjoyable parody but was a very different take on the show.
Paddington though is different. Aside from shifting to a contemporary period, there's no real attempt to make anything super-modern. Sure, Jonathan Brown likes his technology, and Judy Brown has ambitions for a career, that wouldn't have been something encouraged for a girl in the 1950s but that's just a minor update.
There's no attempt to push too hard with the humour. Nothing wacky happens. Characters are larger than life and eccentric but not wild or whacky. There's no attempt to make the dialogue too clever. The only attempt to make a character "cool" is for a joke about Jonathan wanting to be called J-Dog. An affectation he drops in the end when he realises he likes Steam Trains.
Paddington as a character is unchanged. He's extremely friendly, somewhat accident prone. Very naive, and thinks the best in everyone. He doesn't have an ounce of meanness. The most brutal he'll be is to give you a hard stare. And this is why it's so charming. His naivety and clumsiness tend to drive the plot. His politeness and good nature mean we root for him and everyone else does as well. It's somehow believable that he can make an entire prison population into better people.
Ultimately, like the books, it's wholesome. It's all about acceptance, kindness and just things going well for good people. It offers a sense of justice and fairness that we need.