First Click: Have we reached peak nostalgia?

Last week I yelled at the internet about our collective obsession with nostalgia. Since then, we got the first trailer for the fifth transformers film and this lovely blast from the past:

As my colleague Chaim Gartenberg said in our company Slack room, “Is this 22 Jump Street on a beach?” Then, as if on cue, came the first trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming this morning; the second reboot for the boy in red and blue pajamas, and the 16th film in the impossibly lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe. It all makes me wonder: have we reached peak nostalgia yet?

Let’s look at the facts:

I’m fed up, personally. I’m tired of being spoon-fed memories dressed up in bigger pecs and painted with better CGI. And I don’t think I’m alone. A 2015 report warned Hollywood that the “IP re-exploitation” trend was close to being “played out.” More recently, Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson asked the question “Is Hollywood’s Sequel Economy Crashing?” after films like Bridget Jones’s Baby, Blair Witch (2016), Alice Through the Looking Glass, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, and Independence Day: Resurgence all flopped. Of course, when the money dries up, so will the derivative remakes, reboots, and sequels.

So, is this the beginning of the end, dear reader? Is the backlash at hand, or are we all just waiting for Mary Poppins Returns — a film that’s actually being remade by director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) and will star Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, and Lin-Manuel Miranda? Because, dammit, that does sound like it’ll be good.