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Remember 2005?  Kobe Bryant's Lakers were a powerhouse in the NBA.  Global Warming/Climate change was a mainstay in the headlines.  And a little mindless fun movie called Mr. and Mrs. Smith came out in theaters.  Yeah, you probably remember.  But the folks over at Fox might be getting ready to take a stroll down memory lane with an apparent reboot to the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie action-comedy about married rival spies.  The plot of Mr. and Mrs. Jones will reportedly tell the story of a pair of newly-trained spies assigned to a fake marriage.  Hijinks are likely to ensue.  Of course, like most good reboots, the original stars aren't going to return.

To read what I think about this (terrible) idea hit the jump.

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There's no rule as far as I know that says a movie has to be a certain age before it can be rebooted, but 5 years seems a little short to me.  The reboot of Mr. and Mrs. Smith is even more ridiculous to me because on any given day, you can probably catch it on basic cable so it hasn't exactly faded from the public's memory.  Reboots work in sci-fi and comic book movies because Marvel heroes and Captain Kirk and crew exist in an expansive, unfamiliar universe that can be explored.  There's several stories to tell in those universes so occasionally it's acceptable to refresh the series with a new cast and crew.  For all intents and purposes Mr. and Mrs. Smith happens in the real world and additionally, it is a completely stand-alone story.  We see the courtship, married life, betrayal, sex life, and reconciliation of the title couple and there isn't any more story to tell at the end.

The whole story works on the basis that Brad Pitt doesn't know that Angelina is a spy and vice-versa and then shows the conflict between them.  Having two spies live together knowing full-well that their spouse is also a spy is not Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it's a different movie altogether with a different plot, different characters and a different cast.  If the whole movie is different, then why not just advertise it as a new movie?  Using the mild success of a five-year old movie just seems like a cheap marketing ploy to me.

(via Vulture)

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