Redo, Remake, or Reboot: Land of the Lost

Welcome to the first Redo, Remake, or Reboot, wherein Fandomania asks whether the new Will Farrell movie Land of the Lost is a redo, a remake, or a reboot, and whether it was a successful one. Let’s start with Fandomania’s basic working definitions:

Definitions:

Redo: An attempt to start over as if the original had never been made.
Remake: An attempt to imitate the original as closely as possible, with due recognition of how society has changed since the original was released.
Reboot: An attempt to keep the essence of the original, including characters, significant plot points, and the fictional universe that has been created, but to create in the audience an expectation of taking the original fictional universe in a completely different direction, with new adventures for the characters.

Synopsis:

The original T.V. show aired from 1974-1977 (there was also a series in the 1990s that made significant changes to the look, feel, and plot of the original, but we’ll concentrate on the 70s version). It was a children’s show in which a father, his teenage son, and his pre-teen daughter get sucked onto a different world — a world outside of time, where the lost creatures of the universe have been brought together.  The show’s primary story-telling tools, aside from endearingly bad special effects, seems to have been expositional dialogue and a lot of pantomime.

But it made up for bad dialogue with an ongoing story arc in which we find out that there are lizard people called Sleestack, intelligent primate creatures called Pakuni, a bunch of dinosaurs, “pylons,” and strange crystals that somehow make the whole thing work.  The interesting part is that little bits and pieces of how they all fit together are slowly revealed in various episodes.  It’s the way in which the episodes slowly unveil how the crystals work, why the heroes were sucked into this land, and how to get back home, that make up for the other shortcomings.  Well, partially make up for it.

The movie, released June 5, 2009, stars Will Farrell as a scientist who has discovered that “tachyons” are time particles that can be manipulated in such a way that people can move sideways in time and space.  He is of course laughed out of the scientific community for his ridiculous theories. But not to worry: a scientist admirrer shows up and uses irrefutable logic to convince him to finish his time/space machine. The fact that she is totally hot has nothing to do with her motivational skills.*

They decide to conduct a “routine expedition” into an area in the desert that has more than the usual amount of tachyon radiation, which by coincidence is the location of a rather pathetic run-down amusement park run by a lovable loser who ends up joining them in their adventure.

They end up in the Land of the Lost.  They meet a Pakuni named “Cha-ka” and a bad-tempered T-Rex they dub “Grumpy,” stumble into a nest of the local Sleestack, get high on nasty looking coconuts (which I assume is the local equivalent of the mysterious “hallucinogenic frog”) and naïvely help the evil Altrusian lizard-midget “Enik” conquer the world.  After that the movie starts to lose coherency, so I won’t go any further, except to say that the “being crapped out of a T-Rex while he’s still alive” gag wasn’t as funny to watch as it must have seemed on paper.

Was it a Redo, Remake, or Reboot?

At first I was tempted to go with Reboot.  They keep most of the main characters — the Altrusion Enik, the T-Rex named Grumpy, and of course Cha-Ka (one question that perhaps those familiar with the T.V. series could answer: why is Cha-Ka the same color as the rest of the Pakuni?  On the T.V. show, he had tannish fur.  Did that have some sort of significance?).  They even use the same names for the main characters: Marshall, Will, and Holly. So, perhaps they were trying modernize the show, and set up a new franchise that would allow for another three or four more movies.  They could appeal to a wider audience by making all the characters adults (and check off the “love interest” box in the “how to make a blockbuster” movie that somebody who knows nothing about movie-making seems to have circulated throughout Hollywood), and they could take advantage of the bigger budget to deploy better special effects.
But as I thought more about it, I realized that it couldn’t be a reboot, because they ignored the ongoing story arc from the original series. The primary element of the original series that made it appealing despite the poor special effects and painfully painfulish painful dialogue was the way you learned — bit by bit — a little more information about what was going on.  The first thing you want to know when you watch the show is: how did they get there?  Then you want to know: what phenomenon took them to the Land of the Lost? What, when, and where is the Land of the Lost? What are these crystals, and what are these pylons?  Is Enik really a good guy that’s kind of a jerk, or is he secretly a bad guy? What is that lost city all about?  Why is Grumpy so grumpy?  As the series went on, you got bits and pieces answered (none of them were answered to complete satisfaction. I blame it on early cancellation.  Damn that need to make money!).

In the movie, all the questions are answered up front.  The Land of the Lost is a place where all the lost creatures, people, and stuff go to.  The characters got there because of Dr. Rick Marshall’s Tachyon amplifier, because (as everyone knows) tachyon particles alter time and space (Star Trek fans also know they work great when Enterprise has been written into a corner and the writers don’t have time to go back and fix the second act. But that’s a different story).  Enik is a bad guy who wants to take over the Earth. Hmm… what else? Oh, I almost forgot: the crystals and pylons are simply tools in Enik’s evil plot.

There is also the whole thing about the endearing quality of the family trying to make it by sticking together, and the father trying to keep his kids safe but at the same time allow them to grow as people. That was completely thrown out.  Therefore, there is not much left of the essence of the source material.

In theory that is okay. If your intention is to produce a redo, you of course would throw out most of the stuff from the original. As a film maker, you’ve seen the potential from the original, but you are going to fix the shortcomings.

Thus, the Land of the Lost film is a redo instead of a reboot.  In a reboot, you might change a whole bunch of stuff, but you keep the essence of the fictional universe (and, depending on the nature of the source material, the essence of the characters).  However, Will Ferrell and his team of highly talented film makers** decided to throw out everything that made the original Land of the Lost appealing to its viewers and instead ruin one potentially funny joke after another.

Okay, so it is a redo. Next question: Was it successful?

Only if you are a die-hard Will Ferrell fan (the kind, for example, that loved Semi-Pro). The jokes, on occasion, are pretty good, but you have to be in a Will Ferrell kind of mood (and even then, you’re better off getting together with friends to quote scenes from Anchor Man at each other).

The main issue is that it could have been both a good Will Ferrell vehicle and a good reboot or redo that would lead to additional exploration of the Land of the Lost mythos (in true reboot or redo tradition).  Instead, its opening weekend was the lowest grossing ever for a Will Ferrell film.

Conclusion: It’s an unsuccessful redo.  They should have respected the source material.  On the other hand, Will Ferrell did have his moments (three that I counted).

* That was sarcasm
** The “highly talented” thing also was sarcasm