Over the last 15 years or so it’s looked like Hollywood has slowly been running out of ideas.

Actually, that’s probably a little unfair.

They haven’t necessarily run out of ideas. They’ve just apparently decided that coming up with a new one is far too risky when they can dig through my childhood, find something I loved, slap a new coat of cheap paint on it and sell it back to me.

And to be frank, I’m getting a bit sick of it.

When I was growing up, going to the cinema was genuinely exciting. You could walk in, look at the posters and have absolutely no idea what you were about to watch. There were original characters, original stories and films that didn’t come with a built-in audience because they’d already made three of them thirty years earlier.

If you didn’t fancy going to the cinema, you could rent a VHS. Now, if you have read some of my previous blogs you’ll already know I absolutely loved Blockbuster. You’d wander around for what seemed like hours, picking up the boxes, reading the back, looking at the pictures. You got home, whacked it into the Toploader (No, this isn’t where the band got their name, that’s a whole different story if you know, you know) and settle down, fill your eye’s with what was to come and then try to decide whether you’d just wasted your evening watching something that looked brilliant on the cover but turned out to be absolute shite.

There was no internet to check 47 reviews before making your decision. You just took a chance, sometimes you got lucky. Sometimes you ended up with a film so bad that you thought “Well, there’s 2 hours I’ll never get back”.

But at least it was new.

Nowadays, Hollywood seems to have discovered that there’s an easier way. Remake it, reboot it, reimagine it and then turn it into a franchise. Ok, I’ve just realised that Bond is a franchise and I actually quite like them, let’s move on.

Now, I’m not against remakes in principle. There. I’ve said it. In fact, some remakes have been bloody brilliant. And this is where I have to reluctantly admit that Hollywood has occasionally, and I emphasise occasionally, got it absolutely right.

Take Scarface.

Most people think of Al Pacino, Tony Montana, the white suit and enough cocaine to supply a small country but the 1983 Scarface wasn’t actually the original. It was a remake of the 1932 film. There’s a cool subtle nod to the original with “The World is Yours” popping up, the words are lifted directly from the original. And I have to say, It’s an outstanding effort.

Then there’s Cape Fear. The 1991 version with Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange is a fantastic film, but again, it was a remake of the 1962 original.

And then there’s Ben-Hur.

Here’s one that some people don’t realise was a remake. The Charlton Heston version from 1959 is one of the most famous films ever made (I love a good epic), but it wasn’t the first attempt. There was a silent version from 1925.

I hate admitting it, but these are examples of remakes actually being done properly. They took an existing story and did something with it. They didn’t simply photocopy the original and change the actors.

That’s the difference.

Unfortunately, for every Scarface, Cape Fear or Ben-Hur, we seem to have a boatload of films that make me want to reach for my own throat: “Why?” here’s why. Let’s start with RoboCop.

The original was brilliant.

It was violent, funny, satirical and completely bonkers in exactly the right way. Peter Weller wandering around Detroit as a half-man, half-machine police officer somehow managed to be both ridiculous and genuinely entertaining at the same time.

Then came the remake.

And somebody apparently decided that what RoboCop really needed was to be less fun. It’s shiny, it’s far too polished and it feels like someone has taken the soul out of it.

Then there’s Total Recall.

Arnold Schwarzenegger stomping around Mars with bulging eyes. Mutants with three boobs and Memory implants. It was one of those films that you watched and thought, “Bloody hell, this is brilliant.” Then Hollywood decided we needed another one. Why? And no, we didn’t.

My next example of an abomination is The Karate Kid.

The original had everything. Daniel, Mr Miyagi, Wax on wax off and that awesome crane kick. It had a genuinely brilliant relationship between two characters. But the remake? Really?

I know, some people liked it. I’m not one of them. I’m sure it’s perfectly competent. I’m sure the acting is fine. I’m sure the production team worked incredibly hard. But sometimes a film doesn’t need improving. Sometimes you just need to leave the bloody thing alone.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, we arrive at Point Break. I sat there thinking, What the actual f**k were you thinking?

The original Point Break is one of the best films ever made, one of those films that just works. Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, surfing, bank robbing, Skydiving. The Ex-Presidents. And Gary Busey wandering around looking like he’s just woken up from a three-day bender and somehow become an FBI agent. It’s brilliant. It’s got atmosphere, it’s got great characters and it oozes personality.

Then 24 years later some bright spark thought Let’s do it again, No! Just no! They took Point Break, removed half the point and somehow turned it into an extreme sports video with a plot attached. For me, it’s one of the worst examples of a remake.

But even Point Break wasn’t the worst, very close yes but not the worst.

Because that title belongs to the one that took the biscuit, the one that made me want to burn out my own eyes…. Road House.

Patrick Swayze as Dalton. The Double Deuce. Ben Gazzara. Sam Elliott just being the coolest dude on the planet all the while sporting the tash of all tashes. It’s one of those films that shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it does. It’s cheesy, violent, ridiculous and absolutely glorious. You don’t watch Road House because you’re expecting Shakespeare, you watch it because Patrick Swayze is going to walk into a bar and kick the living shit out of somebody while looking unbelievably slick at the same time.

And that’s exactly what you wanted. Then they went and did it, we got the remake. Of course we did.

Now, I’ll admit something here. I actually tried to watch the new one but only lasted an hour. I sat there thinking, “Come on Dom, don’t be that guy. Give it a chance.” I gave it a chance. I gave it just over an hour of a chance. And eventually I found myself wondering why I wasn’t watching the original instead.

That’s when I realised the problem. Hollywood isn’t necessarily making these remakes for people like me; they’re making them for people who didn’t grow up with the originals.

And that’s fine.

I understand that.

But there is something slightly depressing about seeing your childhood being repeatedly dug up, dusted off, re-hashed and sent back out into the world like an old dog that refuses to retire.

What happened to original ideas? Why can’t we just make something new? Give me a character I’ve never seen before, a story I don’t already know. Give me a film where I don’t spend the first ten minutes thinking, “Hang on, I’ve seen this before.”

Again, I don’t want to be that guy who thinks everything was better when I was young because I don’t think everything was better back then. Some of it was bloody awful but at least it was original.

And that’s the bit I miss.

We didn’t have social media telling us what we should watch. We didn’t have algorithms deciding what we’d probably like because we’d watched something similar three weeks earlier.

You found something yourself; you took a chance. You watched it. And sometimes you discovered something brilliant, that’s how films became classics. They weren’t designed to be classics, they just well, became them.

And perhaps that’s what Hollywood has forgotten. You can’t manufacture nostalgia. You can’t recreate someone’s childhood by putting a bigger budget behind it. And you certainly can’t assume that because I loved something thirty years ago, I automatically want you to remake it.

I don’t.

I want you to leave it alone, Let the memories stay where they belong. On that old VHS tape, In the soundtrack and the characters we grew up with.

BUT..

 just when I was about to completely write off Hollywood, along comes something that actually gives me a little bit of hope. The Goonies 2.

Now this is how you do it. Well, hopefully.

The Goonies is one of those films that doesn’t need explaining to anyone who grew up in the 80s. Mikey, Chunk, Data, Mouth, Brand, Andy, Stef, Sloth, One-Eyed Willy, the pirate ship, the caves, the traps and that feeling that, for the time you spent watching it, you were part of the greatest adventure any group of kids had ever been on.

And here’s the important bit.

They’re not remaking it.

They’re making a sequel.

Warner Bros has The Goonies 2 in development, with Steven Spielberg and original writer Chris Columbus involved as producers and this is exactly what I want.

Don’t take the original away from me.

Don’t find six new kids, put them in the same situation, change the characters’ names slightly and tell me it’s a modern reimagining. No. Give me the next chapter of the original story, acknowledge that many many moons have passed and let those characters grow up just like the rest of us have.

That’s what makes me so excited about it.

The people behind The Goonies have apparently, and I really hope that it’s true, been incredibly reluctant to make a sequel simply for the sake of making one. Spielberg has previously talked about ideas being discussed over the years but not being good enough, and Ke Huy Quan has said that numerous scripts never felt worthy of the original.

Good.

Take your bloody time.

That’s what I want to hear.

Don’t rush it because someone at Warner Bros has looked at the numbers and thought, “Hang on, people still love this. Get it made by Christmas.” Take the time to get it right. Because if you’re going to reopen one of my childhood memories, you’d better well respect it.

And that’s the difference.

I’m obviously not against nostalgia. I’m not even against bringing old characters back.

I just don’t want Hollywood to keep taking the things I loved, putting them through the remake machine and giving them back to me looking like something I vaguely recognise but don’t actually know anymore.

The Goonies 2 could be different. If they get it right, I won’t be sitting in the cinema thinking, “Why have they done this?” I’ll be sitting there thinking about being a kid again, probably sporting a massive grin.

So, Hollywood, here’s my advice.

Leave the classics alone.

If you really want to bring them back, don’t remake them. Continue them. Give us the next chapter, give us something new. Give us the characters we remember but let them be older and let the story move forward. And most importantly, don’t screw it up.

Because I’ll be watching.

And if The Goonies 2 is everything I’m hoping it could be, I’ll happily admit that maybe, just maybe, Hollywood hasn’t completely run out of ideas after all. Although,

It could just be me.