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An interesting thought I had was what if if in the future, several decades from now, if the current trend most reboots have of turning characters black/gay/etc. was seen as unacceptable and the reboots were treated like the cartoons of the 1920's-50's in that they were either rarely shown or censored? What if society in the future were to grow to hate shallow token representation as much as discrimination and actively seek to purge it from media from our time period for display in their time period? What if changing characters to be black/gay/etc. was treated as just as bad as depicting blackface/gay stereotypes/etc.?

I'm not arguing for or against anything, but more of simply exploring a thought. I'm wondering more often than not how future generations are going to view our present day and this is merely an extension of that. It seems that most mainstream media today is made to pander to certain groups, so what would happen to that media if the groups it pandered to were no longer around or popular? We can't predict future cultural trends in an exact manner, but we can still speculate on how current trends might be seen and received by future audiences.

I'm also working off of the assumption that the current trend of shallow pandering in reboots continues and intensifies for the rest of this decade and maybe the next one before simply fizzling out as most trends do after a couple decades, so there's that.

Seeing that they're already in our current age roundly mocked and considered inferior to their original classics counterparts, woke reboots fade into obscurity relatively quickly. Ghostbusters 2016 and Terminator Dark Fate were box office flops and really no one cares about them any more, whereas their 80's originals remain timeless classics.

Perhaps they'll resurface in some decades and gain some ironic niche popularity for being a product from a weird past age ("haha that movie is so 2010's!") and the its-so-bad-that-its-good factor, much like B-movies from decades past are enjoyable nowadays for their trashiness.

John Wayne being cast for Genghis Khan in the 1950's is nowadays ridiculed for being so unhistorical, and I'm sure future generations will treat black Anne Boleyn not differently.

I see it as the symptoms of creative sterility and a cheap way to gobble up the money of minorities.

This is why we need new things with ethnic heroes

I feel like most corporate reboots aren't even memorably bad, but forgettably bad – the worst kind of bad

I couldn't tell you what separates any of these reboots except for Mulan, which is unique for supporting the genocide of Muslims in the CCCP

History won't even mock them, for there is little substance to be mocked

Guys not to be a party pooper but… I am pretty sure reboots ain't getting any better in the following decades…this a long term thing

That's because they keep trying to reboot IPs that are already successful, if you are going to reboot something it will always be compared to the original and the better the original was the greater the reboot's chance of falling short when compared to it is.

The execs in charge of these decisions only want to remake popular works because they want to tap into that sweet pre-existent veiwerbase. Making a profitable franchise from scratch is too much work for them.

Like stop remaking The Powerpuff Girls, the new writers are clearly incapable of of matching the quality of the original series. Remake Whatever Happened to Robot Jones or make new episodes of any of those shows that were prematurely canceled.

I hope that they become ironic cult classics so that the 2063 equivalent of The Nostalgia Critic reviews them all in comedic videos of variable quality, and then they become viral on YouTwo, the replacement of YouTube after they went bankrupt for either too many adpocalypses or internal sexual scandals (whichever one their apology statement emphasizes the most), and people make YouTwo poops out of them, which consist of turning scenes from those shows into literal, realistic renditions of poop using just pixels from the reboots displayed on virtual reality on your PlayStation 45 helmet since that is what comedy has turned into in this age. I think my possibly Alzheimer-deteriorated future self would enjoy these a lot – more than I do the actual shows while lucid today, anyway.

(I know that this is the Serious Debate forum, but trust me, I do truly want these to become meme material for the long-term future in some capacity rather than be forgotten. I feel like being forgotten is a waste of good mocking material.)

Had Disney put this scene in the CGI "live action" Lion king remake

I think that would have helped attract more viewers to go see it in theaters. But since they didn't include one of the most iconic and memorable scenes from the 1994 masterpiece, that put off some of the preexisting viewerbase who were waiting to see what others who had already watched it. Seeing a CGI meerkat dress in drag and do the Hula would have been worth the price of admission by itself.

They might be looked back on mostly negatively, though I can see a few being remembered more fondly, like the She-Ra Netflix reboot or Rise of the TMNT, both of which make use of the usual "woke reboot" tropes like changing a character's skin color, but still managed to find some success despite any backlash they got.

We really need a law against remakes/reboots before a certain amount of time has passed

I wouldn't go as far as Kups suggests. Personally I'd rather live in a world where the majority of reboots/remakes are of bad properties in an attempt to improve on them, but money talks.

I do think that if we ever get to a point where shallow representation does end up being looked down upon, I think it would be safe to say that subtitles or dubs of anime that insert politics where there were none like in Dragon Maid or Prison School will be just as looked down upon due to the idea of altering the intent of a foreign work to fit one's views.

I personally think it would be a given to have all the woke reboots be looked down upon and only watched for historical value like the 2016 Ghostbusters. In fact I imagine that the 2010's and possibly 2020's will be looked down upon for creative bankruptcy due to all the reboots and remakes thrown around.

Unless your John Carpenter.

My issue with this is that it doesn't allow for more original diverse stories told by actual minorities and women. Most of the reboots getting the greenlit are usually produced and directed by rich white people who have barely the slightest clue what being in someone's shoes is like. So you end up with all these token efforts to write diverse characters who are more like a checklist of tropes rather than actual, believable people.

The moment a actual minority broadcasts their own ideas and stories, they somehow get cancelled for doing a tiny slip-up while more affluent, white dudes get a slap on the wrist. Rarely do some of them get what they deserved.

I don't mind reboots that actually care about their fans and are made with love, I just don't like the ones which feel more like cynical cash grabs than anything meaningful.

Your reply is part of why I wish shows like Rutherford Falls and Bravestarr and Black Lightning were more mainstream

There are two elements here.
Reboots. Woke.
Reboots exist for multiple reasons. 1) It preserves an existing Intellectual Property (IP) that a company has. 2) if the company already has the IP under it's belt, licensing and distribution becomes far easier, and cheaper, allowing for it to do whatever it wants. 3) There is less risk associated with an existing successful IP, because the company can usually rely on a base fandom to come out. Less guess work means less risk. 4) As the international audience has radically expanded, it makes absolute commercial sense to rehash older IPs that worked well in existing American/European markets, and expand them to new markets (largely China.).
For many many, MANY years the above 4 points, especially the 4th point, worked out really well.

Woke.
This is a bit tricky and in my opinion comes down to 3 things. First, since the mid-20th century there has been a consistent well-to-do younger generation demographic that was has provided a revenue stream to entertainment media. This went into hyperdrive in the late x-gen and millennial generations, in the 1980s and 90s. Just think how much entertainment was specifically targeted towards kids born or living through those ages – consoles, cartoons turned toys, music.
Second, in the wake of that boom, that I think lasted well into the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was a new cohort of CEOs that relied heavily on the appealing to those "younger demographics" borrowing much of their thinking on their own experiences either growing up, entering the corporate ladder, or etc.
Third, the rise of HR, "Woke ideologies", and aging, out of touch CEOs. It is no secret that much of the entertainment and technological powerhouse exists in one of the most progressive/woke places in the country (California). These industries rely on a local workforce that is consequently very progressive, and many of the higher ups are extremely dependent on the information they are given by younger staff members to guide what ought to be green lit vs not. Couple this with social movements, such as the "#Metoo", trans-gender rights, LGBTQ representation, BLM, etc, no executive, no person in any position of power wants to be the target of any of these movements. They comply easily with what their underlings say.

And so you have a perfect storm of people who are completely disconnected from the mainstream audience, dependent on information from younger "with it" people to tell them what the mainstream audience wants, but unwilling or incapable of ever pushing back criticism when the metrics don't add up. At the same time you have China which is pouring billions into entertainment industry to the point where even poor reception in the US audience base doesn't sink a movie and lowers risk of a poorly performed movie. You have young progressives being in positions of indirect power, and use that power extremely effectively, and since there is no incentive to push back (risk of alienation, criticism, public scorn and outrage), and a little risk of failure (over-seas markets may – and do – make up the loss of revenue from a poorly received film in the US), there is no incentive to push back.

Ahhhh..
But this has started to change. Now that China has started using propaganda to make-or-break hollywood films, and now that China has turned off the faucet of easy money flowing into Hollywood to any company that doesn't comply, things start to become more interesting. Couple that with a whole pipeline of movies scheduled to be developed, made, invested in pre-COVID now having to be designed for and released on theaters that are effectively half empty, Hollywood is going to start feeling a TON of financial pain. And since "woke" media becomes an increasing financial burden it's going to make it far more easy to push back.
At the same time, there is an exodus of technological jobs and entertainment OUT of California meaning that these companies are going to start hiring people in more … diverse places – leading to a more diverse work place – which will ebb the power of the ideologues within.

I predict an increasing pushback from Hollywood on "woke" media in the coming months, and we are already seeing cracks (Marvel canceling New Warriors".)