We live in a strange world. A world where cowboys do battle with aliens and Abraham Lincoln lived a secret life as a hunter of the undead. In the past few years people have been noticing how odd and zany certain movies were becoming.

But hey in a world where a movie gets made out of “Battleship” I’ll take zany over unoriginal.

Genre mash-ups aren’t a bad thing though. For years, comic books have been doing mash-ups of various genres or settings. For example, Marvel comics published a limited run of a storyline called “1602” where most of the big heroes and villains were reimagined as archetypes of the 1600’s.

It was a great storyline and a lot of fun to see the characters in different lights like Magneto reimagined as member of the Spanish Inquisition who hunts down witches (people who are secretly mutants) or Thor as a giant Templar. It was a brief eight-issue run but it was inventive and interesting.

Sometimes it’s really nice to mix things up and make things feel fresh and new.

Video games have been doing remixes and reimagining for years.

This is why Hollywood likes doing reboots so much. It’s always interesting to put familiar characters in different scenarios. You can see this a lot in themed episodes of your favorite shows (the wild west, space, or casino episode for example.)

I personally like these mash-ups. When I first read “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” I loved its’ loyalty to the book but also it’s originality and humor.

I am glad that studios are taking a few more risks than they used to. If someone in 1990 had pitched a movie where Abraham Lincoln kills vampires there would have been no way it would have gotten made.

So bring on the science fiction meets historical fiction meets supernatural movies! I’m always down for something new.