Devisionism
Right now this is a blog post about media, but in 20 years I may edit it to make puppies the focus.
Remember that movie, Goldeneye?
Pierce Brosnan as James Bond doing the shooty-jumpy-explodey-spy-thing. They turned it into a video game at the time of its release, a classic for the GameCube that I wasted many hours on in my youth.
Like many media properties in these apparently creatively-devoid days, someone thought it was time for a remake. This time around, however, Brosnan isn’t the man facing off against rogue Russians, they’ve opted to update the game by inserting current-Bond, Daniel Craig, into the role.
This, to me, falls directly in line with the buggering up of Star Wars, and the removal of weapons from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
At some level these are pop-cultural artifacts that are being monkeyed with – what happens when DVD becomes entirely digital and then that becomes some crazy cloud based share-system, and the “early versions” are progressively culled?
“So what?” I can hear that guy at the back of the room saying, “I don’t care if Han shot first.”
Fine – but what happens when a precedent of historical editing is put in place and Akira Kurosawa’s great-great-great-granddaughter decides Seven Samurai would be better if it featured an animated cyber-rabbit as well as digitally inserted Olsen-Twin septuplets as the leads?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3-LxmrFm40]