ReBoot is Back, But In Name Only

How long has it been since we last heard about that “Reboot Reboot” they’ve been working on up north? Like the rest of us, did you finally assume it was cancelled and would never happen?

So did we, until yesterday when Netflix sent out its list of acquired shows for March and out of nowhere, with no prior announcement, “ReBoot: The Guardian Code” was on that list. Turns out the Re-Reboot is a little more than a month away — March 30. Who knew?

After that silent surprise, it didn’t take long before the official trailer was sent out. Aaaaaand….let me just say this: if you are in any way a fan of the original series, you need to do one thing: turn around, walk away and forget this version was ever announced. We’re serious — it’s that bad.

Still here? Your curiosity will be the death of you. Okay, well…..the first thing you need to know is that it’s a live-action show about four totally radical teenagers who attend Alan Turing High School and get “digitized” every episode into Guardians. They fight the schemes of a ridiculous-looking hacker in a hoodie who tells Megabyte what to do. The weak CGI scenes are rendered with the Unreal game engine and could actually run on a game console. It does not resolve the cliffhanger from the first series and, in fact, has nothing to do with the first series at all.

So how’d this happen? Michael Heffernon serves as showrunner and heads Rainmaker Entertainment, who inherited the ReBoot brand and characters years ago. Indiescreen Magazine published an interview with him recently, and the headline was “Don’t Call It A Reboot.” A choice quote from the article says it all: “The show we eventually created is certainly inspired by the original ReBoot, but I don’t think of it as a ReBoot reboot. Rather, we tried to imagine that ReBoot had never been made, and we were making it for the first time for today’s audience.”

Does today’s audience (and I assume he means children) want a rehash of Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad? That’s the kind of thing they would possibly watch back in 1994, when the original ReBoot was ON, but not so much now. In fact, there’s a ReBoot episode (“NullZilla”) that makes fun of this type of show. The original could be incredibly sharp and smart at times, and it makes this version look even more horrible by comparison.

We need a Reboot Reboot Reboot. WARNING: Incoming lame: