Last month I watched the Disney+ special Muppet Haunted Mansion. It was about Gonzo and a shrimp (you know, an actual shrimp like you eat?) going to a haunted house. It was enjoyable but really if you don't like Muppets it would probably not make you a believer.
Since Disney bought the property and since the death of Jim Henson about 30 years ago, they've tried numerous times to get the property back to the popularity it held in the late 70s. For the most part none of it has really stuck. Not the various movies in the 90s and early 2000s. The reboot movie in 2011 or so did pretty well but the sequel didn't. A TV show on ABC flopped. I doubt the Disney+ stuff has done great either and at this point the Muppets have outlived Jim Henson and his son has pretty much retired.
So at what point does Disney just say, "enough is enough" and stops throwing bad money after good? Probably not for a long time, but the audience who really remembers the Muppets in their prime of the late 70s, early 80s is mostly over 50 now. Even people like me who only vaguely remember the live action show but better remember the Muppet Babies cartoon on CBS in the 80s are in our 40s for the most part. So you have to think they're running out of time to recruit new generations of fans.
This is a problem that has happened to plenty of other properties as well. Universal has tried to revive their classic monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the wolfman, and the mummy, but the last hit they had were the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz Mummy movies 20 years ago. The Tom Cruise reboot flopped, Dracula Untold flopped, the Benicio del Toro Wolfman movie flopped. Their hopes of a "Monsterverse" were summarily dashed. As classic a character as Dracula might be, the last time he was successful in his own movie was "Bram Stoker's Dracula" nearly 30 years ago.
Around that time, Hollywood tried to mine old 30s pulp heroes like Dick Tracy, The Shadow, and The Phantom and those failed pretty spectacularly. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon briefly had a moment in 1979-1980 before pretty much disappearing. The latter thanks to its cult status has had some talk about revivals, but nothing really solid yet.
Some have been more successful in staying relevant like Sherlock Holmes while recent attempts to make big budget movies about King Arthur or Robin Hood were met with failure. Disney's animated Tarzan did pretty well but live action versions haven't worked. John Carter was a monumental flop. Hercules and Conan reboots flopped.
Anyway, a lot of these you have to think are probably just too far gone to really bring back. Something that was popular in the 30s, most of its fans are either dead or really, really old. A lot of those classic characters, it gets harder and harder to put them in a modern context so they might become popular again, though it's unlikely they will ever reach the fame they once did.
The exception is for properties like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and James Bond that have had ups and downs but they've pretty much always been around in some form since their creation. There have always been comics with those superheroes while James Bond has had a few breaks but managed to reignite the franchise.
Maybe it's because it's easier to update those characters to whatever decade it is. It's easier than trying to update Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or even the Muppets.
While many of us (rightfully) hate prequels, sequels, reboots, and revivals, besides the shameless money grab aspect, they're also important to create new generations of fans. Without the Star Wars prequels, sequels, and TV show spinoffs, the fandom would probably just be getting older and dying slowly through entropy like the 30s serials it sought to emulate. As far as that goes, you have to keep stoking the flames or they die out.
Maybe that's why Matt Groening, Seth MacFarlane, and Matt Stone/Trey Parker seem to want to keep The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park on forever. If you keep your show on forever, you never have to worry about the fandom slowly dying out, right? Though you have to think it can only last until they and/or enough other voice actors on their shows literally die. It's kind of depressing to think about.
But like with The Muppets, how long can you keep shoveling coal into the furnace when all it does is smolder?
I was thinking the other day that I could probably add Mystery Science Theater 3000 to this list. Creator Joel Hodgson has tried bringing it back a few times but the big Netflix revival only lasted two seasons and I'm not sure they found a new streaming home yet. Mostly they seem to be concentrating on live shows right now.
I loved the show in the 90s, but I think Rifftrax has proven you don't really need all the extra stuff for movie riffing, like characters, sets, intermission sketches, and some overall framing device. All you really need is a good bad movie and 2-3 people making witty comments and jokes during it. That format has worked pretty much continuously for 15 years because it's cheaper to produce and not as much maintenance. As far as the audience goes you can put on any Rifftrax VOD and not have to worry about understanding any characters or framing device story, so it's really easy to just dive on in.
The MST3K format probably is better for live shows just because you're in the room with them so having that framing device makes for a more entertaining show than three guys standing at podiums reading jokes off a script. For TV, though, it's not really something you need anymore and thus it can probably just die out.
But those are just my thoughts.
1 comment:
When I think of the Muppets, I remember the Swedish Chef because my Mom would crack up laughing at him every time. As for me, I liked them as a small kid, but that was about it. I suppose a property will die naturally when they lose enough money.
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