Why Old Heroes Never Die

Hollywood’s often-successful approach to iconic heroes these days seems to be to identify and retool the touchstone elements of the character that must be included, or at least nodded at, at in order to satisfy longtime fans that what they are seeing here IS, in fact, the character they love.

At the same time, much is stripped away to enable the character to fit into a recognizable 21^st century reality (as with Daniel Craig’s James Bond and Joss Whedon’s Avengers), or into some surreal background that nevertheless reflects a 21^st century sensibility (as with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock).
In Man of Steel, for example, a literally darkened Superman will be confronted by the American military-industrial complex.

And the approach isn’t limited to Hollywood — the BBC gives us an ingenious, fully realized example of the technique with its Sherlock series.