148 CHAPTER 8 New Millennial Remakes CONSTANTINE VEREVIS WHEN ASKED in a recent interview what appealed to him about “rebooting a series that had already been interpreted,” Christopher Nolan replied that when he undertook Batman Begins (2005), the irst installment in Warner Bros.’ he Dark Knight Trilogy, “there was no such thing conceptually as a ‘reboot.’ hat idea didn’t exist” (Foundas 2012/13: 7). his chapter takes Nolan’s comment as a starting point for a preliminary investigation of the state of cinematic remaking in the irst decades of the new millennium. In an earlier period, the 1980s and 1990s, ilmmakers and their production companies had been forced to defend serial ilmmaking— speciically, ilm remakes and sequels—against accusations that aesthetically inferior remakes (and commercially timid sequels) were evidence that Holly- wood had exhausted its creative potential. 1 By the beginning of the new mil- lennium, however, there was evidence of a discursive shit, with subsequent industry discourses framing publicity more positively around a new ilm’s “remake” status by ascribing value to an earlier version and then identifying various ilters—technological, cultural, authorial—through which it had been transformed (“value-added”). In the irst instance, this move can be seen as 1. Lütticken, for example, opens “Planet of the Remakes” with an account of the “widespread critical and popular aversion to remakes of classic—and even not-so-classic—ilms” (2004). 00i-287 Kelleter 1p.indb 148 12/19/16 3:10 PM