The Movies: Maleficent, Dracula Untold, Noah, Hercules (and Transformers: Age Of Extinction, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Godzilla) Remember that movie/book/story you know so well? Well that's not had it really happened. That's the flawed conceit behind some of 2014's biggest mis-steps. Whereas The Dark Knight Trilogy just went with its gritty world, other takes on classic tales are keen to point out just how new this take is, as if a single idea offsets a lack of cinematic prowess. OK, Noah actually worked, but the other examples certainly didn't. Both Hercules and Maleficent were painfully overt in their execution of this, with a voice-over hammering home just how different this was from other versions. The latter was particularly odd, treating the original Sleeping Beauty (the Disney animation, not the ballet on which it's based) as some piece of propaganda. The problem is, that when this is just tacked on as a way to justify a reboot (oh, sorry, re-imagining), the only real change it's making is sucking out all of the fun from an idea. Remember when you thought Dracula was cool? Not any more. A sub-category of all this is the movies that rewrite real world history as part of their movie's plot - the dinosaurs were made extinct to make Transformers, JFK was a mutant, 1950's nuclear tests were trying to kill Godzilla. Not a trend new to 2014, but its overarching prominence makes it certainly worth remarking on.
