Reboots Of Reboots Ranked Worst To Best

What's better than a good idea? A good idea repeated over ... and over ... and over. Okay, so a good idea repeated ad infinitum may not sound so great to us moviegoers, but it certainly does to Hollywood. As long as we keep showing up to the multiplex, they'll keep supplying our cinematic diets with hefty helping of sequels, prequels, and remakes. We live in the intellectual property era, when any property that has a built-in audience (no matter how small) is bound for the blockbuster treatment. And in this cinematic cavalcade of repeats and retreads, the reboot looms very large.

Technically, a reboot is a relaunch of a franchise from scratch (think "Batman Begins"), but increasingly, that definition is becoming too narrow. For example, take "Ghostbusters: Afterlife." It's a reboot of the franchise with a new cast ... but it's also technically a legacy sequel too. To avoid confusion (hopefully), we're defining "reboot" as anytime a studio relaunched a franchise, even if that relaunch was also a sequel. And many times, Hollywood studios have relaunched a franchise more than once. Why? Sometimes to keep printing money from a proven property, other times to give a potential series another shot at glory. Which series succeeded spectacularly, and which franchises failed miserably? Here are reboots of reboots ranked worst to best!

There are characters that thrive in a specific era and characters who stand the test of time. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are ... both? Thanks to toys and TV shows, the teenage terrapins were the biggest pop culture stars of the 1980s not named He-Man, Hulk Hogan, or Michael Jackson. Their dominance was cemented with a 1990 movie that made $202 million on a $13.5 million budget, making it the highest-grossing independent film of all time, at the time. Wild, right? 

Alas, the shine was off the shell by the second and third movies, which made $78 million and $42 million respectively. Producers have tried to recapture the '80s magic ever since, on the small and big screens. The Turtles' first cinematic reboot came 14 years later with the animated "TMNT," which was so-so but not spectacular, with $96 million on a $35 million budget. After successfully relaunching another 1980s series, "Transformers," Michael Bay brought his brand of Bayhem to the turtles as producer. While the first film made $485 million on a $125 million budget, the producers neglected to note moviegoers really didn't like it, based on its critics' and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Consequently, the sequel took a "shell-lacking" with viewers and at the box office.

The most powerful force in the pop culture universe is 1990s nostalgia. Feeling old? We'll give you a moment. If you lived through the 1990s, you remember Saban's "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," arguably the greatest repurposing job in history. Quick backstory: Saban used footage from Japanese series "Super Sentai" for all the awesome fight scenes, shot new footage with American actors on the cheap, and repackaged it as "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" in 1993, launching one of the most popular brands of the 1990s. 

However, audiences are fickle, and children are even more so, so by 1995, "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie” underwhelmed with $39 million worldwide, but it still made money thanks to a $13 million budget. While Power Rangers sequels, remakes, and reboots have been a mainstay on TV ever since, Saban tried to reboot the series for the big screen 22 years later with 2017's "Saban's Power Rangers." Despite Elizabeth Banks chewing scenery like it was a sirloin as Rita Repulsa, the grim-dark reboot of the brightly colored children's fantasy missed the mark, with a mediocre IMDb rating and equally lukewarm critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

There are "sure thing," multi-film franchises like "Star Wars" and "Batman." Then there are series best described as "there's no way this movie should've worked, but it did, so let's make sequels." "Ghostbusters" falls in the latter category. The idea of four schlubby dudes launching a business exterminating ghosts should not have worked. But thanks to Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd being at the peak of their star power, plus a really catchy tie-in song, "Ghostbusters" became a comedy classic and box office hit in 1984, earning $295 million on a $30 million budget. Thus, what should've been a "one-and-done" became a brand, with toys, video games, merchandising tie-ins, and eventually sequels. Alas, the sequels have been the hardest part. 

You can't catch lightning in a bottle twice — or in this case Slimer in a Ghost Trap — but "Ghostbusters II" tried, earning stacks of cash but underwhelming critics and fans. The series spent decades in development hell while fans awaited a sequel, up until Sony said "screw it" and relaunched the series from scratch with an all-female crew. The 2016 "Ghostbusters" did so-so with critics, terribly with fans, but it was doomed from the start because of its absurdly high $144 million budget. In 2021, Sony finally gave fans what they wanted with the legacy sequel "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" (and smartly shaved the budget in half to $75 million), earning solid numbers from critics and great numbers from moviegoers.

King Kong has starred in a cinematic classic, a few great films, and a lot of monkey crap. And that's not even counting the "King Kong" movies that never happened. The 1933 original is, of course, the series' sole masterpiece, with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. King Kong's legal backstory is almost as compelling and complicated as a journey to Skull Island, but the abridged version is that in the 1970s, Paramount Pictures was able to make a "King Kong" remake, produced by the Italian equivalent of Carl Denham — Dino De Laurentiis. However, critics and moviegoers were mostly underwhelmed with the 1976 film. 

Its sequel, "King Kong Lives," fared even worse in 1986. With a low audience score and 0% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, "King Kong Lives" not only killed the series but is one of the worst movies ever. Despite numerous starts and stops, it would be almost two decades later before Peter Jackson directed his nearly three-hour "King Kong" passion project. The 2005 film wasn't meant to launch sequels, but it satisfied quite a few critics (though moviegoers were less impressed). Over a decade later, Legendary Pictures had the genius idea of merging Godzilla and King Kong into a shared MonsterVerse. "Kong: Skull Island" did away with Jackson's drama and was straight action, pleasing critics and fans.

The "Halloween" series has come back more times than Michael Myers stalking his little sister (well, his former little sister). However, there have only been two reboots. First, there was "Halloween: H20" in 1998, which was a sequel to "Halloween II," ignoring the previous three Michael Myers films. Second, there was "Halloween" in 2018, a sequel to the original, which ignored every film except the 1978 flick. "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" is its own thing that doesn't include Michael Myers at all, while Rob Zombie's two "Halloween" movies (2007, 2009) were remakes. 

Okay, with all of that out of the way, how do the reboots stack up to the original classic? "Halloween H20" was the best of the sequels up to that point, but it was still pointless. Meanwhile, David Gordon Green's 40 years later "Halloween" boasts the second best Rotten Tomatoes scores of the series, behind only the first film. Even more impressive was its $255 million worldwide gross, which was more than three times the then second highest-grossing film in the series.

"Star Trek" started on the small screen in 1966, made its way to the big screen in 1979, and became a multi-media franchise that was interconnecting universes when Marvel was still in its proverbial diapers. While "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was a sequel/continuation of the TV series (continuing a trend that lasted decades), it rebooted the franchise, resulting in five more films featuring the original crew and four featuring the "Next Generation" crew. However, a changing of the guard was clearly in order when "Star Trek: Nemesis" only earned $67 million worldwide on a $60 million budget in 2002. 

Following that film's financial failure, Paramount boldly did something they really hadn't done before — take "Star Trek" backward. Or at least sideways. By that point, "Star Trek" had always been spinoffs and sequels following the same timeline as the original series. Now, Paramount was going to reboot the series from scratch, telling the story of Kirk, Spock, and the gang in a whole new franchise (that still managed to tie itself back into the original because this is "Star Trek," after all). It was an easy decision for the studio but a bit of a gamble given notoriously fickle Trekkies. However, it paid off. Under J.J. Abrams' vision, 2009's "Star Trek" reboot earned the best reviews of the entire franchise, as well as the series' second biggest worldwide gross.