Everything is All Wright!
Hollywood’s back on the treadmill, running through one 80s franchise at a time. Last week it was Predator: Badlands. This week, it’s The Running Man (2025). But this new wave of reboots feel different. Instead of hollow nostalgia plays built around fading IP, we’re seeing filmmakers with real points of view take the wheel.

Did Hollywood's obsession with running it back cost us our icons?

Reboot Culture and the Vanishing Icon 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems like just yesterday we were getting an onslaught of Arnold Schwarzenegger remakes. In the early 2010s, we got Conan the Barbarian, Total Recall, and Terminator remakes with varying degrees of success. What made the original 80s action movies so durable was their mythic simplicity. They were primal and direct, making them easy to reboot on paper but hard to modernize in spirit. The failed remakes of the 2010s mimicked the surface without reinterpreting what those conflicts meant. Audience expectations are always changing and evolving. That’s why the new wave of artist-led reimaginings, Trachtenberg’s Predator films and now Wright’s Running Man, succeed where those didn’t. The old fight remains but the meaning shifts. These filmmakers aren’t reliving raw 80s masculinity but are using those frameworks to explore what control, heroism and rebellion look like in 2025.

I've been thinking a lot about how with the rise of the remake came the fall of the Hollywood superstar. Where are the Leonardo DiCaprios, Tom Cruises, and Julia Roberts of the next generation? Once upon a time, a name on a poster could sell an original idea. Audiences showed up for the person, not the property. But as that era faded, studios leaned harder on recognizable IP to try to guarantee returns. It is easier to reboot a brand than to build a star.

I've been thinking a lot about how with the rise of the remake and the dominance of the internet came the fall of the enduring Hollywood superstar. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Julia Roberts were long-term investments that drew audiences for decades. With the internet, interests shift quickly and studios chase virality. Internet zaddy Pedro Pascal might star in five movies this year, but next year we'll have a new fixation. Remakes are a nostalgic flash-in-the-pan, no longer centered around a superstar.

The one exception might be the modern action experiment happening right now. Glenn Powell as the heir apparent to Tom Cruise. First he taught him how to play volleyball in Top Gun: Maverick, then how to properly hold a popcorn bucket for marketing photos.  If you look at Tom Cruise's Instagram, there are only pictures of him, creative collaborator Christopher McQuarry, and Glenn Powell. There's not even any primary photos of Tom Cruise with Edgar Wright friend Simon Pegg. And they've starred in six movies together in the last 20 years! Sorry Simon!