‘Bel-Air’: ‘Dramatized’ Reboot Of ‘The Fresh Prince’ Unveils First Trailer, Internet Reacts Predictably

We’re going to open this article with a discussion about The Book of Boba Fett, Disney’s latest venture in making live-action Star Wars television. But first, a disclaimer: I love The Mandalorian and think, alongside Rogue One, it’s the best that Star Wars has been in my lifetime. So take that for what you will.

But The Book of Boba Fett, so far — two of its seven episodes have been released — feels hollow and momentumless. While the pilot of The Mandalorian managed to inject itself with pop-cultural steroids, thanks to the appearance of Baby Yoda at the end of the episode, and make itself a television phenomenon, The Book of Boba Fett has yet to accomplish that same feat. And maybe it will, but that’s not the point: the point is that I felt Boba Fett’s storyline, which has been far more exciting when tracing its past versus plotting its future thus far, would’ve been better served as a subplot in season three of The Mandalorian.

The Mandalorian has had eight episodes per season so far — why not jump it up to ten or eleven and commit the extra hours to Boba? Because money, that’s why, and specifically, money made through streaming service subscriptions. Ultimately, The Book of Boba Fett, currently feels like it was made simply to fill a content quotient on a streaming service and not because it had a progressive story to tell.

Disney is certainly not alone in this habit, as all of the major streamers do the same thing, some more successful than others. It’s why there’s going to be an Agatha Harkness series on Disney+ and why Netflix just announced they’re remaking The Raid — the greatest action movie of all time — with the director of the fucking Hitman’s Wife’s Body Guard. It’s why DC Films CEO Waler Hamada has publically said: “With every movie that we’re looking at now, we are thinking, ‘What’s the potential Max spinoff?’”

That is, of course, both a gift and a curse. On one hand, for fans, it means more takes and versions of characters and stories they love. But on the other, given the speed and frequency at which these projects are produced, an inevitable, and potential perpetual, dip in quality is always on the horizon.

This is, all to say, that the first trailer for the “dramatic reimaging” — which is marketing speak for the “gritty reboot” trope that Christopher Nolan popularized with Batman Begins — of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, simply titled Bel-Air, is here.

The series is based on a 2019 short film that imagined the trailer of what a dramatic version of Bel-Air would look like, which means we’ve got a bit of inception going on here: the trailer for a dramatic version of a show, based on a trailer for a dramatic version of a show, is here. As you can imagine, the reactions have been all over the map:

https://twitter.com/TheSonyPony1/status/1480628662022160392

https://twitter.com/JoshuaConkel/status/1480600785289236480

https://twitter.com/Basseyworld/status/1480581953950736390

Bel-Air will hit Peacock on Sunday, February 13.

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