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I know that reboot is a term often used by the media to mean a comeback of a franchise from scratch, but is my understanding correct of the terms:

  • Reboot: To start again from scratch, all previous continuity/canon is null and void.

    • Hard reboot: None of the previous continuity is canon any more - entirely new canon

    • Soft reboot: Some of the previous canon/characters/continuity carry over to the new movie, but not all. Partially new, partially related to previous continuity.

  • Remake: Re-making the original film, with minimal or no changes.

  • Re-imagining: Similar premise as the original but different in some ways (e.g. Christmas Carol films, The March Sisters at Christmas (a remake of Little Women, as I understand it).

  • Alternate continuity: It's canon, but the continuity is different from the original. Not quite the same as a spin-off. (Transformers is about the best example I can think of, apart from Marvel/DC Comics).

Is my understanding correct?

I am aware that many film series can be continuity-heavy, e.g. Freddy vs Jason, Captain America etc.

Just checking to ensure my understanding is correct.

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    The question about how long a reboot typically lasts is a little too borad and largely unanswerable in a general sense, though, since that entirely depends on the specific film and seems to shrink further every year anyway.
    – Napoleon Wilson ♦
    Nov 7, 2016 at 16:40
  • And it's a dupe. The same question has been asked before.
    – cde
    Nov 7, 2016 at 23:38
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    @cde Where? Feel free to provide a link to that question and/or close-vote it as a duplicate.
    – Napoleon Wilson ♦
    Nov 10, 2016 at 12:29
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    I have removed the too broad part that asked for how long reboots last. In its current form it seems like a reasonable question. However, the majority of close-votes were already made before that ciritical part was removed. I'd thus ask the users to reconsider if this is still too broad and why.
    – Napoleon Wilson ♦
    Nov 11, 2016 at 12:01

1 Answer 1

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Remake: Re-making the original film, with minimal or no changes.

I'd say this is wrong. A remake carries the same general plot line, but is often very different from the original. Just thinking of movies like Total Recall (2012) or The Magnificent Seven (2016) (which is, in fact, a "re-imagining" of Seven Samurai (1954)) and they're very different from the original versions

Reboots are used for a series of films that will carry a storyline or characters across the series, as opposed to a remake which is the term used for a stand-alone film.

Re-imagining is when they loosely remake a movie, such as Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven referenced above. Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964) is another example of a re-imagining.

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