Nostalgia Done Right and Wrong! How Nostalgia Can SAVE or RUIN Movies! 

For the record, The Flash was a cluster from the start, the effects and the controversy just further exasperated the finished product.

Top gun maverick is a prime of a sequel that is nostalgia done right.

Back to the Future could actually use a remake but I wouldn't trust any modern studio to do it properly

While I don't want a remake of "Back to the Future" you brought up a very good point that enough time has passed that the 30 year jump no longer overlaps with the first movie. Even if you keep the basic plot the same, having the main character run around in the 90s has a lot of potential of being unique compared to the first movie. Of course it'd be better to go further and make it an original time travel story inspired by BttF but we've reached the point where you'd have to go out of your way to incorporate nostalgic references and/or characters in a reboot since you couldn't do simple stuff like "hey it's Hill Valley in 1985 just like in the original film!"

Just take a look at your shirt, that's a great example of Nostalgia

I’m not huge on No Way Home, but that movie is the staple on how to do it right. Just give your characters the time to shine and close out whatever doubts or potential arcs there could’ve been like with Tobey and his MJ, and Andrew now being stronger to surpass his previous failures. I’m willing to argue Deadpool and Wolverine did it good too, with Laura and Blade, I was around 11-12 when I saw their respective films for the first time, and being 19 now and seeing all these characters again, it felt like a simple check up on old friends. I think that’s a good way to go about it.

The Force Awakens is so obsessed with nostalgia that it literally is Star Wars 1977

Felt nothing in The Flash. Felt everything in Deadpool & Wolverine.

I am curious of the announcement of the TMNT Last Ronin R rated Live Action movie. I think that has potential if done right. For me nothing has surpassed TMNT1990 with Judith Hoag Elias Koteas and Corey Feldman and Sam Rockwell

Nostalgia is boring at this point and it's time to move on. The 2010's and 2020's have pretty much created nothing new and it's all about living off the past. Let it go and move forward.

Movies are now using nostalgia as a plot now rather than a fun add-in.

Spider-Man no way home and deadpool and wolverine both films respected the fans of the pre mcu Spider-Man and X-Men movies that's why they performed well at the box office

I guess I fall in the minority of I only go see movies because of who's the director or who's staring in it.

I’ve been re-reading Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need” the past two weeks and there’s a section towards the beginning about how many movies releasing at the time were sequels or tied to some kind of intellectual property. Well, Save the Cat was published in 2005. Fast forwarding to 2023 and 2024, the concept of movies tied to existing movies, books, and video games have only extrapolated. Just when it comes to legacy sequels, in 2021, we got Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Matrix Resurrections. In 2022, we got Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion. In 2023, we got Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Exorcist: Believer. In 2024, we’ve gotten Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. And in 2025, we’re getting Tron: Ares and The Naked Gun. I think storytelling and filmmaking has infinite possibilities to explore, but the more general audiences and movie fanatics pay to see movies to evoke nostalgia for a couple of hours, the more Hollywood goes “Why don’t we just make more of those.” I go to the movies all the time and I’ve seen a lot of 2024 releases that aren’t tied to an IP in the theater, and I’m one of six or seven people in the screening. I couldn’t predict if or when Hollywood is going to stop funding IP movies and when general audiences are going to stop going to see IP movies. That’s incredibly concerning in my eyes.

This overload of nostalgia is getting old. It's not 2015 anymore.

Weird thing about the Flash is, I have zero nostalgia for anything in it because I wasn't alive until 20 years ago, but I genuinely liked that movie as a movie.

Doctor Sleep is the best example of fan service done right in my opinion, it had nostalgia but it didn’t rely on it, you could enjoy the film on its own, it had callbacks to The Shining that fans will catch but people who haven’t seen the original won’t be confused.

To start, I agree with nearly everything expressed in this video. However, a huge sticking point is in where you mentioned that people gravitate to what they know. True, but that also means that it is easier to market the product, and marketing is a major expense for the studios. It's so much about that money right there. Your remedy is sound: support new work and make it profitable so that studios not only are more willing to absorb the risk, but also to prove that the public is smart and doesn't need to see facsimile after facsimile to reduce needing to "educate them" on this new thing. Without sending that message, you'll simply get weirder takes on known franchises, like yet another turn at The Terminator. The message the studios must receive is not only can the audience get a new concept, they can do so without the nostalgia cheat-sheet of an overly-worn intellectual property.

I don’t think the Flash was bad at all, it just had bad cgi but the story was nice and it had many emotional moments. People were just hating on the dceu but Michael Keaton was a nice edition

The flash, Spider-Man no way home and Deadpool and wolverine are all bland on rewatches

I think one of the best example of nostalgia done right is Haunted Mansion from last year. While I know not everyone liked it because of the script and characters, what the movie has going for it in spades is the love and care put into recreating the ride. You can tell the crew working on it loved the original ride and put so much work into recreating the beloved moments and sets down to a tea. The attention to detail is incredible in it.

I hope both of these studios realize though that nostalgia is something that can be used in the long term for success. There is a finite amount of nostalgia and that well will be running dry soon.

Perfectly said

A big downside to a great film that has nostalgia is that when they make big bucks the studios will take that as more more more

I don't care if you have a brilliant idea for Back to the Future. The original is a stone cold classic: *leave it alone.* There is not a snowball's chance in hell that current Hollywood is going to do it better.

Lol Deadpool and cameos was garbage. No plot and just cameos and the villian was weak. At least The Flash had a story.

Am I the only one that thinks The Flash is better than Deadpool and Wolverine?