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They say Hollywood has run out of ideas, but sometimes a return to the well leads to some great movie reboots.(or at least pretty good ones!). Another crack at a franchise might just be exactly the thing to elevate a good idea to a great one, setting the stage for a fresh new take on a series that will carry it into the future.
What is a movie reboot, and how is it different from a remake? They're two different terms, but sometimes they overlap, and there isn't a perfect standard that determines if a movie is merely a remake or is also a reboot. Broadly speaking, a reboot is more than just a do-over of a movie, like a remake is. Reboots are intended to be the start of something: modernizing an old franchise and setting it up for sequels. (Some movies on here didn't end up getting sequels; it's fair to consider them reboots because the franchise intention was there.) Sometimes reboots also overlap with "legacy sequels," a term that gained prominence in the 2010s for movies that come decades after the last installment of a franchise and carry over some elements from the originals while also clearly establishing a new cast of characters that will helm this fresh era of the franchise.
Article continues below32. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Year: 2021
Director: Jason Reitman
Mckenna Grace stars as Phoebe Spengler, granddaughter to the late Harold Ramis' Egon Spengler, as she discovers her family's ghostbusting legacy. As a coming-of-age adventure comedy with some spooky funnyelements, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is not actually that bad. The problem is that it's a fundamental misread of the original '80s movie; that film was a grimy, sarcastic, and hilarious little flick, not an all-American blockbuster tentpole with big stakes and big emotions. The less said about 2024's Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the better, though Afterlife itself is okay on its own terms.
31. Jurassic World
Year: 2015
Director: Colin Trevorrow
The most interesting thing Jurassic World does is show what a functioning dinosaur theme park might look like, something the original Jurassic Park movies never got to do on account of the whole "life finding a way" thing. Once the dinosaurs inevitably escape, Jurassic World still works as an entertaining enough popcorn movie, but despite the fancy CGI, there's no sense of wonder. The subsequent Jurassic World sequels were even worse on this front; rather than fill you with awe at how they brought dinosaurs back to (cinematic) life, these movies are just monstrous content.
30. Tomb Raider
Year: 2018
Director: Roar Uthaug
There's nothing especially wrong with this Alicia Vikander-led reboot, an adaptation of the classic Tomb Raider video game series that had previously leapt to the big screen in two early-'00s movies starring Angelina Jolie. Vikander is a capable, relatively more grounded Lara Croft, and the 2018 movie plays like an Indiana Jones narrative, albeit one that's saddled with a rather uninspired origin story. There were plans for a sequel that fell through, and in 2023, another reboot was announced. This Tomb Raider was good, but not nearly good enough.
29. The Thing
Year: 2011
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
A stealth prequel to John Carpenter's iconic '80s sci-fi horror movie (which was itself a remake of a '50s movie), the 2011 The Thing tried to transform the shape-shifting alien into a franchise with a tale about how the members of the Norwegian research base who first recovered it from the ice met their end. While falling far short of Carpenter's masterpiece, it's not bad—or at least it might not have been, had the studio not demanded that almost all the cool practical effects get replaced by CGI that doesn't hold up at all. There was talk of a sequel starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead's sole survivor, but the 2011 Thing ended up resuscitating the franchise about as effectively as defibrillating a toothy chest cavity. (Poorly.)
28. Evil Dead
Year: 2013
Director: Fede Álvarez
Director Fede Álvarez read from the Necronomicon, so to speak, and brought back Sam Raimi's beloved Evil Dead franchise for the new millennium. The comedy elements of Raimi's later two Evil Dead films are gone, and instead, the 2013 Evil Dead is extremely gory and graphic. Jane Levy is a worthy scream queen as a gender-swapped protagonist, fighting off possessed vines, dead people, her possessed friends, and even her own dark doppelgänger. While there was no direct narrative sequel to this Evil Dead, it definitely set the mold for modern takes on Evil Dead; 2023's Evil Dead Rise is also nasty and gnarly.
27. Candyman
Year: 2021
Director: Nia DaCosta
A direct sequel to the classic 1992 urban folk horror movie Candyman (one that serves as a reboot in how it ignores the three sequels), Nia DaCosta's 2021 movie is extremely stylish, chilling, and it grapples with some big ideas, like generational trauma and gentrification. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as Anthony McCoy, a Chicago artist who might have a deeper connection to the legend of the spiritual killer haunting the projects than he suspects. Candyman's ambitions sometimes get the better of it, but it's a worthy attempt to summon a powerful horror franchise to the modern era.
26. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Year: 2023
Directors: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic
The live-action Super Mario Bros. movie from 1993 is a cult classic, but let's be honest: as an adaptation of the most iconic video game franchise of all time, it left a lot to be desired. The 2023 animated movie could be faulted for playing things almost too straight, though there are worse things than watching Mario (Chris Pratt) go on a colorful adventure through the Mushroom Kingdom to defeat Bowser (a sublime Jack Black). This time, though, he's trying to rescue his brother, Luigi (Charlie Day). Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) can handle herself.
25. Twisters
Year: 2024
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Lee Isaac Chung, director of the thoughtful immigrant drama Minari, seemed like a surprising choice to helm a reboot of the classic '90s natural disaster movie, but Chung, who grew up in Arkansas, certainly has a good feel for the American heartland. Following Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell's tornado-chasing researchers as they follow tornadoes, Twisters is pulpy fun, yet somehow it feels a little too polished to match the charm of the Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton-led original.
24. The Return of Godzilla
Year: 1984
Director: Koji Hashimoto
The Godzilla franchise is one of the oldest and most prolific franchises in cinema history, so it's no wonder that it's been rebooted several times since the first movie came out in 1954. The first reboot, which launched what Godzilla fans call the Heisei Era, premiered nine years after the end of the original film series, which wrapped in 1975. The movies had gotten pretty cheap and goofy-looking, and The Return of Godzilla was also a return to form, once more portraying the King of the Monsters as a serious threat to Tokyo. The rest of the movies in the Heisei Era would get silly again themselves in no time, featuring psychics, an adorable Godzilla, and a Godzilla doppelgänger from outer space. (Though they're still a ton of fun, so that's not necessarily a bad thing.)
23. TRON: Legacy
Year: 2010
Director: Joseph Kosinski
TRON: Legacy had two things the cult classic 1982 original didn't; computer graphics that actually made the digital world of The Grid look incredible, and iconic French electronic duo Daft Punk providing an original score. Those two things made TRON: Legacy a wonder to look at and listen to; the plot about a malevolent program trying to overtake the real world, in addition to the digital world, isn't half bad, either. It would take 15 years before TRON's reboot would pay off; 2025's TRON: Ares features a score from Nine Inch Nails. Honestly, more reboots should just be a means for great bands to make sick soundtracks.
22. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Year: 2015
Director: J. J. Abrams
Let's get this out of the way: The Rise of Skywalker is one of the worst movies ever made. With that being the case, it feels a little wrong to list The Force Awakens as one of the greatest movie reboots, and yet it has a lot of things going for it. The plot plays it safe, echoing the original 1974 movie, but the casting is spot-on (Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac are all perfect for their roles), and it was an exciting and effective return to that galaxy far, far away. The potential that The Force Awakens set up was clear, and while The Last Jedi has flaws, it marked a bold new direction for Star Wars. Too bad the trilogy-capper fumbled the bag so profoundly.
21. Scream
Year: 2022
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
The Scream franchise has been very self-aware and obsessed with tropes and meta-narratives since the beginning; so of course, the Scream legacy sequel would have a lot to say about the concept of reboots and legacy sequels themselves. Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega star as the new Final Girls who must fend off a knife-wielding Ghostface, but Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Neve Campbell are back, too. It's a very fun slasher, though the sequel Scream VI is less successful, and Barrera was unceremoniously dropped from VII.
20. Godzilla (2014)
Year: 2014
Director: Gareth Edwards
The first American-made Godzilla movie, the 1998 movie, was a disaster and not in the good, monster-stomping-on-buildings kind of way. 2014's Godzilla, which launched the ongoing MonsterVerse, has its flaws, but it's an incredibly cool-looking, moody, and surprisingly restrained (perhaps to a fault) effort. It paved the way for less-serious films like Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla vs. Kong, the last of which is one of the most "exactly what it says on the tin" movies ever made and is a wonderfully dumb monster masterpiece.
19. The Invisible Man
Year: 2020
Director: Leigh Whannell
Leigh Whannell's take on the 1933 movie deviates heavily from that film as well as H.G. Wells' original source material. Rather than following the exploits of a scientist-turned-lunatic criminal who turns himself invisible by drinking a chemical concoction, the 2020 movie follows Elizabeth Moss as a woman who escaped an abusive relationship, only for her tech-CEO ex to torment and gaslight her using an advanced cloaking suit. The Invisible Man is pretty astonishing, though unfortunately, the same can't be said of Whannell's next take on a Classic Universal Monster. 2025's Wolf Man is pretty dire.
18. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Year: 2011
Director: Rupert Wyatt
There's nothing in the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy that matches the shock of seeing the ruins of the Statue of Liberty and realizing that it's been Earth the whole time. Still, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its sequels find a different sort of power in showing how society might fall to the apes from the very beginning. James Franco stars in Rise as a researcher whose efforts to cure Alzheimer's lead to hyperintelligent chimps and the eventual end of humanity, though it's really Andy Serkis who leads these movies. His performance as the lead ape, Caesar, is a wondrously lifelike blend of motion capture acting and technology.
17. The Batman
Year: 2022
Director: Matt Reeves
There have been a lot of superhero movie reboots, especially Batman. You could make the case that Tim Burton's iconic movie is a reboot, given that there was a 1966 Batman movie starring Adam West. However, that was an adaptation of the TV show, while more recent Batman reboots are very consciously replacing their predecessors as ongoing superhero box office sensations. Matt Reeves' The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as a young Bruce Wayne, is almost a direct rebuke of the previous live-action Batman, the Zack Snyder version that had the Caped Crusader fighting Superman. The 2022 movie is the most grounded big-screen Batman, seeming to draw as much inspiration from Zodiac as it does from DC Comics. It is absolutely too long, but other than that, The Batman is an engaging start to a fresh new take on a classic hero.
16. Gamera: Guardians of the Universe
Year: 1995
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Gamera, a giant flying turtle that breathes fire and is a friend to all children, was created in the '60s as an explicit rival to Godzilla's popularity. Those original Gamera films were cheesy and cheap-looking even by kaiju standards of the era, but in the '90s, Gamera got rebooted for a trilogy of films that are among the best the giant monster has to offer. Boasting some of the best suitmation ever filmed, cool monsters, and an ambitious plot that has Gamera fighting ancient enemies to the planet, the rebooted Gamera movies are a massive improvement on the originals and well worth checking out for fans of the genre.
15. Doctor Sleep
Year: 2019
Director: Mike Flanagan
Doctor Sleep almost defies categorization; it's an adaptation of the sequel to Stephen King's The Shining, and it's a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of King's novel (which is very different from the book and which King famously hated). It's also a cultural reboot of The Shining, since it had been nearly 40 years since movie audiences visited The Overlook Hotel. And, somehow, Doctor Sleep manages to thread the needle and do justice to both the books and the film that came before it, following Ewan McGregor as a grown-up Danny Torrance who must face his traumas and use his psychic abilities to confront a new threat.
14. Halloween
Year: 2018
Director: David Gordon Green
This direct sequel to John Carpenter's slasher masterpiece throws out all the Halloween sequels that came out in the 40 years between the two films, introducing a Final Girl for a new generation as well as bringing back an OG survivor. Andi Matichak plays Allyson, granddaughter to Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, and she finds herself in the same struggle her grandma was decades earlier when Michael Myers escapes custody and starts wreaking bloody havoc. It's a near-perfect legacy sequel, though the follow-ups, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, both take big swings in different ways that don't quite land. (Catastrophically so, in the abysmal Halloween Kills' case.)
13. The Color of Money
Year: 1986
Director: Martin Scorsese
A legacy sequel of sorts that hit cinemas decades before they became all the rage, Martin Scorsese's 1986 movie The Color of Money stars Paul Newman as pool hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson, reprising his Oscar-winning role from the 1961 film The Hustler. That The Color of Money also stars a young Tom Cruise speaks to how perfectly the movie, which has Felson picking up a pool cue once more to try to win a big tournament, modernized the premise. A '60s movie led by a '60s star feels right at home in the '80s with a hot new '80s star.
12. Blade Runner 2049
Year: 2017
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Ryan Gosling leads this decades-later sequel to Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 cyberpunk masterpiece. Harrison Ford returns to play Rick Deckard, and the two characters must deal with new developments in this dark, futuristic world where artificial humans known as replicants abound—and are starting to demand rights. Director Denis Villeneuve brings a gorgeous new visual palette that makes Blade Runner 2049 look like something gorgeous and new while also feeling like a natural continuation of Scott's original, and this modern take on a now-outdated vision of the future further updates and complicates its characters' relationship with technology.
11. 28 Years Later
Year: 2025
Director: Danny Boyle
Coming not-quite 28 years after Danny Boyle's acclaimed and influential 2002 zombie movie 28 Years Later (but close enough), 28 Years Later mostly ignores the first sequel, 28 Weeks Later (which Boyle didn't direct) in favor of telling a whole new kind of story. While the rest of the world is fine, the British Isles have completely fallen to the Rage Virus that turns people into violent cannibals. The former United Kingdom has been quarantined off, and the people that remain have reverted to a more Medieval lifestyle. Far from just making another zombie movie, though, Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland use this decades-later return to the franchise to tell a visually overwhelming, emotionally intense, and beautiful story about life and death. The next sequel of the trilogy, The Bone Temple, was filmed concurrently with 28 Years Later.
10. X-Men: First Class
Year: 2011
Director: Matthew Vaughn
After the first run of X-Men movies came to an inglorious end with The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the franchise rebooted itself with First Class, an origin story that showed how Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) founded the Mutant super-team in the swingin' '60s. Wonderfully cast with stylish vibes, First Class was exactly what the X-Men franchise needed to evolve. The young versions of the characters would soon meet their old counterparts in the time-traveling sequel Days of Future Past, and the series' internal timeline would get all messed up, but it didn't really take away from First Class' refreshing excellence.
9. Spider-Man: Homecoming
Year: 2017
Director: Jon Watts
With apologies to Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man, there was a sense in the 2010s that Spider-Man, a character who helped launch the modern superhero movie with the 2002 Sam Raimi film, wasn't being done right—especially as the Marvel Cinematic Universe was operating at the height of its powers. Spider-Man: Homecoming rebooted Spider-Man and placed him inside the MCU, and young actor Tom Holland felt the part of Peter Parker perfectly. The MCU Spidey films swung the web-slinger right where he belonged in this era of superhero cinema.
8. Top Gun: Maverick
Year: 2022
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Tom Cruise took to the skies again as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell 36 years after first flying high in Top Gun, and the result was a smash hit. Top Gun: Maverick did more than just revitalize a thrilling but slightly corny '80s action classic; it made it a sensation. Top Gun Maverick was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and it's not that hyperbolic to say that the success of the film at the box office saved cinemas after the COVID-19 pandemic. Not many other reboots can claim such accomplishments.
7. Godzilla Minus One
Year: 2023
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Almost all of the Godzilla movies of the 21st century have been standalone reboots that offer a new take on the story of the giant radioactive monster who lays waste to Tokyo. Godzilla Minus One—the first Godzilla movie to win an Oscar, thanks to its win in the Best Visual Effects category—is one of the greatest films in the franchise. Minus One is set immediately after the end of World War II, with Godzilla attacking a battered nation that's still suffering from the fallout of the war that it started. The monster scenes are astounding (and worthy of the Oscar), but Minus One proves itself the most during the drama scenes, following a failed kamikaze pilot as he finds something to live for amidst the chaos. It's no wonder that director Takashi Yamazaki was hired to do a sequel.
6. The Mummy
Year: 1999
Director: Stephen Sommers
There have been attempts to bring Universal's Classic Monster movies, arguably the first franchise and shared universe in film history, back to life, Frankenstein-style. Many of them don't work—for every success like The Invisible Man (2020), you also have the infamous failure of the "Dark Universe" that the Tom Cruise 2017 Mummy movie was supposed to launch. The biggest monster reboot success story is undoubtedly Stephen Sommers' 1999 The Mummy, which swapped the staid horror of the 1932 original movie for a swashbuckling, spooky, and funny action-adventure. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz star.
5. Star Trek
Year: 2009
Director: J. J. Abrams
Thanks to the flexibility of science fiction as a genre, the 2009 Star Trek movie is both a reboot and a canonical sequel, taking place in an alternate timeline that sent the elderly Spock (Leonard Nimoy) back to when his younger self (Zachary Quinto), James Kirk (Chris Pine), and the rest of the Enterprise crew were just starting their Starfleet careers. Star Trek is tons of zippy fun. It moves a lot faster and slicker than the old Trek shows or movies while still feeling like it's exploring the same final frontier. The first sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, is awful, but Star Trek Beyond is a refreshingly low-stakes hoot and a holler.
4. Batman Begins
Year: 2005
Director: Christopher Nolan
The Joel Schumacher Batman movies are kitschy fun that perhaps get more hate than they deserve, but there's no denying that the goofy take on Batman was wearing thin. Enter Christopher Nolan, who cast Christian Bale to play The Dark Knight in Batman Begins, a relatively grounded, expertly made reinvention of the character. Batman Begins felt like a Batman who fought crime in the real world. The sequel, The Dark Knight, is one of the best superhero movies ever made.
3. Casino Royale
Year: 2006
Director: Martin Campbell
As a long-running franchise with a loose sense of continuity, it could be argued that James Bond has rebooted itself every time a new actor is cast to play 007. However, Casino Royale felt different. Starring Daniel Craig, Casino Royale was an exciting origin story for Bond that did away with some of the more outlandish gadgets and goofs from the Pierce Brosnan era in favor of more grounded spycraft and an emotional arc for the famous agent. His story, which boasted a greater sense of growth and narrative between films than the past Bond series, would continue for four more Craig-led films. (One of which, Skyfall, is also exceptional).
2. Creed
Year: 2015
Director: Ryan Coogler
The 1976 boxing movie classic Rocky won Best Picture at the Oscars. Somehow, Creed might be even better. Ryan Coogler brought Rocky back into the ring, but this time the title character, Sylvester Stallone, wasn't wearing gloves himself. Instead, he's training Donnie (Michael B. Jordan), the illegitimate son of his late, great rival-turned-friend Apollo Creed. The movie is an exhilarating sports masterpiece, and few legacy sequels have done a better job of giving both the new and old generations the space and respect they deserve.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
Year: 2015
Director: George Miller
George Miller made three Mad Max movies starring Mel Gibson as the titular wasteland wanderer in the late '70s and '80s. Then, 30 years later, he revved up the engine for a new movie with a new Max, a taciturn Tom Hardy. The result, Mad Max: Fury Road, is quite simply one of the greatest movies ever made. Following Max and Charlize Theron's instantly iconic Imperator Furiosa on what amounts to the craziest feature-length car chase you can imagine, Fury Road is a staggering work. If all reboots were like Fury Road, cinema would be in an amazing place.
