I've thoroughly enjoyed all the "Best of" lists celebrating the superlatives of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. And I'm going to be fashionably late to the party and make some of my own lists this year, looking at movies and television from 2001 to 2025. However, I'm not going to make "Best Movie" or "Best Show" lists. No, I'm going to do the fun stuff. This month, I'm spotlighting my favorite remakes and reboots.
Each list will get 25 entries, but only the top ten will get write-ups.
What counts as a remake or reboot? This gets a little tricky, but I'm looking for cases where a specific IP is being brought back to capitalize on audience nostalgia, so no remakes of foreign media, like the US version of "The Office" or "The Departed," unless the creators appear to be specifically going after the original fanbase, like "One Piece" (2023). New adaptations of the classics like "Frankenstein," or obscurities like "Nightmare Alley" and "Widows" aren't what I'm after either.
Also, the new version has to significantly transform the original to some extent. "Dexter: New Blood" is a pretty straightforward "Dexter" sequel or revival because it has the same lead character being played by the original actor. Meanwhile, "Watchmen" and "Creed" are technically sequels with some of the same characters, but have entirely different lead characters and dynamics, so that's more in the spirit of a new take on familiar material.
For the record, I'm not counting Steven Moffatt's "Dracula," "Jekyll," or "Sherlock" series, though I enjoyed them all.
1. Doctor Who (2005) - A big factor in what ended up in the top ten was impact, and the 2005 "Doctor Who" was one of the biggest genre shows worldwide for years. In addition to acquainting a new generation with Daleks and Cybermen, it launched many careers, set many precedents, and despites some ups and downs, managed to hang around for over twenty years. Its immediate fate is uncertain, but there's no doubt that The Doctor will be back eventually, even if it takes a few tries.
2. Casino Royale (2006) - Remember when Daniel Craig was being criticized as the pick for the new Bond because of his blond hair? There were many 007 reboots and revamps over the years, but none felt like it was really turning a corner the way that "Casino Royale" did. This is easily one of the best films to ever come out of the franchise, setting a high standard for Bond films for the next two decades. And this wasn't only most audiences' introduction to Daniel Craig, but Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green too.
3. Battlestar Galactica (2004) - I'm not very far into the series yet, but it's already obvious that "Battlestar Galactica" is one of the best remakes ever made. It took a family-friendly '70s adventure series and turned it into a bleak, harrowing survival story about the human race desperately trying to endure in the face of an implacable threat. From a fan standpoint, this is the series that made science-fiction cool again, as "Galactica" broke into the mainstream in a way that none of its contemporaries ever did.
4. Mad Max Fury Road (2015) - George Miller and Mad Max returned with a vengeance after a thirty year hiatus, delivering what was not only the best installment of its franchise, but one of the most beloved action films ever made. It's not a particularly good film about its title character, who is a bit of a nonentity, but the unhinged "Mad Max" universe definitely got a major upgrade. And some of us older fans had to wonder, is this what "Mad Max" looked like inside George Miller's head the whole time?
5. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010) - I love it when a piece of intellectual property that everyone wrote off makes a comeback in a big way. The redesigned, significantly modernized "My Little Pony" created by Lauren Faust instantly caught on with its target audience of kids, but also attracted a surprisingly loyal following of adults. This created some inevitable fandom weirdness, but it also meant a great franchise for little girls got a lot of attention, and several others were rebooted in its wake.
6. Fargo (2014) - Noah Hawley turned a Coen brothers movie into an anthology of larger-than-life crime stories, all involving desperate characters in the American Midwest, with a few touches of the preternatural to keep things interesting. Sometimes the particular chemistry of the casts or the themes of each season haven't quite worked, but when "Fargo" is at its best, it's unmissable television. It's given us Lorne Malvo, Peggy Blumquist, V. M. Varga, and Dot Lyon among its many, many fantastic characters.
7. Westworld (2016) - The resources put into this series were incredible. HBO created the first ongoing television series that truly felt like it had a feature film cast, populating a much harder-edged take on the premise of the 1973 Michael Crichton film, with unapologetically adult content throughout. I watched all four seasons and found all of them well worth my time, even though the show changed considerably from the theme park-centered first season into a more conceptually thorny dystopian drama.
8. Watchmen (2019) - An edge case, because this is actually a sequel to the graphic novel "Watchmen," and not in the same continuity as the 2009 film, "Watchmen." However, Damon Lindelof and his collaborators definitely put their own spin on the material, using the "Watchmen" universe to explore additional racial and generational dynamics that weren't part of the original Alan Moore story. It's so niche and requires so much additional reading, I'm amazed that this got produced in this form.
9. Creed (2015) - Okay, so it's technically a spinoff of the "Rocky" franchise, but despite Stallone's presence and influence, this isn't his movie. "Creed" was a major turning point in the careers of both Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler, and was successful enough to spawn two decent sequels. It would have been easier to follow the template of "Rocky" more closely, but Coogler made some canny choices to ensure that "Creed" could stand on its own, while evoking the nostalgia for the originals.
10. IT (2017) - Finally, "IT: Chapter Two" was clearly a bust, but that doesn't take away from this wonderfully brutal adaptation of Stephen King's "IT," which sticks to the parts about the kids thirty years in the past. Horror reboots are very common, but "IT" stood out by being an unusually nasty film where terrible things happen to children. It helped to shepherd along the resurgence in Stephen King media, and gave us one of the best cinema monsters of the last decade - Pennywise the Clown.
The next 15:
True Grit (2010)
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
A Star is Born (2018)
Cobra Kai (2021)
Ripley (2024)
West Side Story (2021)
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Duck Tales (2017)
Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Suspiria (2018)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Matilda: the Musical (2023)
One Piece (2023)
Mickey Mouse (2013) and The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse (2020)
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