by Vox has a handy refresher on what is – or at least should be – meant when studios assign terms like reboot, remake, reimagining and more to the movies they’re putting out. I agree with most of the definitions here and wish people would use these terms more judiciously since often it’s not the studios but the press who are guilty of calling something by a name other than what it actually is.
It’s important to note, though, why all this different terminology exists: It’s because the studios, both on their own and with the press outlets that are used for buzz and publicity, want to position different movies in different ways. So Vacation was positioned as a reboot instead of a sequel despite the latter being the more accurate term because Warner Bros. wanted the audience to not be burdened with the baggage of the classic (for the most part) franchise. Yes, there were nods to the previous films in the marketing, but there was also a fair amount of distancing this movie from what had come previously. And it didn’t want the audience to feel like they had to do homework before seeing this one.
The press has a role to play here in cutting through the prefabricated studio boilerplate and call something what it is. The Amazing Spider-Man was a reboot because it abandoned the continuity of the previous movies. Jurassic World, for all the talk about it being a “sidequel” was just a sequel because it continued the story from the previous movies and built on those stories, even if it was selective about which parts it acknowledged. Studios can call their movies whatever they want for the purpose of marketing and positioning with the audience, but people who know better can use the correct phraseology when passing that along to the general public.
