Re-done, re-imagined, re-hashed
call it what you like but in your opinion which Movies do you think should never have been re-made because the original was far better and which movies should never be re-imagined
The Italian Job was a classic so why re do itthe newer version was no where near as good.
the Wizard of Oz should never be re-imagined but they are doing it, Why ???? has holly wood run out of ideas ?
They never should have done transformers as anything other than a G1 style animated movie or all CGI video game quality (which in the war for cybertron game was good).
Robocop
Back to the future
ladyhawk
red dawn
nearly every 80s movie in my opinion
french connection
Casablanca
Gone With the Wind
The Godfather
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Raiders of the Lost Ark
It's a Wonderful Life
Back to the Future Trilogy
Star Wars
The Day the Earth Stood Still (oops!)
Star Trek (major oops!)
"Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot"
Well it shouldn't, should it?
Kevin
Man, I think it'd be easier to come up with a list that SHOULD. I've enjoyed some remakes, but very, very few and far between. For each time I say "yeah, fun new take on the material," there are ten times I say "why bother?" and a few times where I'm frothing with outright cries of "blasphemy!"
But for fun, here are some of my favorite movies, and hence movies I think should never be remade.
1. Seven Samurai
2. Blade Runner
3. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
4. Let the Right One In (I watched a snippet of the American re-make, decided I wasn't interested in seeing it).
5. Apocalypse Now
6. Kill Bill
7. Star Wars (OT)
8. Robocop
9. Nightmare Before Christmas
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
11. Mad Max 1 and 2
12. The Godfather
13. Psycho
14. Yojimbo
15. Casablanca
It's funny how some re-makes cause a stir and then are more or less forgotten. I was re-watching Psycho a few weeks back, and suddenly I remembered: didn't they re-do that with Vince Vaugn or something? And it's already pretty much forgotten. But Hitchcock's brilliant original lives on.
NO movies should be re-made by Hollywood in its current pathetic state.
I'm convinced Solo114 is right that the suits have perfected their marketing tools to such a pitch now, that they calculate they can now make their money while making minimal effort in the filmmaking dept. Money for nothing is their philosophy. They cynically calculate that it's an effort to think up and market new stories, hence remakes, sequels and rehashes of existing brands. They've seen poorly-written, poorly directed films make millions, and so now calculate that it's wasted trouble to bother making these rehashes even well-written or well-directed.
Don't mean to nitpick, but you do know this was remade a couple of times? Just, you know, not with Samurai.cayman shen said:
And Yojimbo was reimagined into Eastwood's The Man With No Name films wasn't it?
For me- if they remake Star Trek II, I burn Hollywood to the ground.
No wait... That was Nemesis... and Trek '09. Oh well.
Kevin
Not just an effort, but a risk.
A remake is SAFE because people already are familiar with the product. You know the brand. You have, most likely, SOME positive connotations in your mind with that brand. Even if you don't, the mere fact that you are FAMILIAR with the brand means the studio has less work to do in convincing you to see the film. Why? Because -- merely by virtue of the brand itself -- you know what you're getting into.
Take Transformers, for example. You call it Battle Bots, change the robots' names, and make ONE voice-cast change (Peter Cullen) and suddenly all you have is some crappy Transformers knockoff film. BUT, you slap that Transformers label on it, cast Peter Cullen, and people line up to see it. Even if they enjoy the Baysplosions, I doubt the studio would be able to launch a Battle Bots franchise. BUT, again, the Transformers name and intellectual property window dressing gets people into the theater.
Same deal with the recent G.I. Joe film. Rename the characters and strip out the associated IP, call it "TacCom: Global Commandos," and it's just some lame G.I. Joe knockoff. Even with a decent cast, and big 'splosions, the film maybe makes a minor profit at the box office, does middling in the DVD market, and that's it. $200 mil spent to make maybe $50 mil profit.
Why the hell would ANYONE do that when they can simply graft on the intellectual property from these franchises and in so doing probably QUADRUPLE the amount of money they'd make? I mean, are the executives cynical? Sure. But they're also right. Seriously, I challenge ANYONE here to play the thought exercise I described above (IE: stripping out the IP from the two films mentioned above), and then try to tell me that either film would've been the success it was.
Brands act as shorthand. What's the first thing you ask about a movie, usually, if you don't know anything about it but the title? Me, I usually ask "What's it about?" By contrast, if ALL I tell you is "Hey, new movie coming out. Title is Goonies," you INSTANTLY know what the movie is about. I don't have to tell you who's in it, I don't have to tell you the plot. I don't have to tell you ANYTHING except the NAME and you know everything you need to know to at LEAST pique your curiosity (or your ire).
That is the power of branding. That is why you see remakes, re-imaginings, and reboots of franchises even after only about 4-6 years from the last entry. I guarantee you that if there had NEVER been a Robocop film made in 1987 and nobody knew about that brand, there is no way in HELL that film would be green-lit, even though we can all agree that any way you spin it, the concept is pretty damn solid ground on which to build a cool sci-fi or superhero film. But why, if there is no brand familiarity, would a studio RISK that the film might not do that well, when they can simply reboot Spiderman now that none of the original cast are bound to their original 3-picture contracts, unless the brand wasn't JUST "Spiderman" but rather the ACTORS who play the roles IN ADDITION to the characters in the films? I guaran-****ing-tee you that Disney would "reboot" the Pirates franchise IN A HEARTBEAT if they thought that ANYONE would go see those films WITHOUT Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. But that's the thing: the Pirates Franchise basically IS "Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow." At least for the present. But if they could figure out how to do a Pirates film WITHOUT him, I guarantee you they would.
But Spiderman? Pfft. Who cares about crybaby Tobey MacGuire or snaggle-toothed pasty-skinned Kirsten Dunst? We can recast 'em in a heartbeat, reboot the films, set them back in high school, and appeal to a whole new demographic....until we run out the three-picture deal in another, oh, 8-ish years and reboot AGAIN.
I think someone should remake Hollywood. I'd pay to see that.
I just found out there is a re-make of total recall planed staring Colin Farrel WTF!!!!!!!
For me- if they remake Star Trek II, I burn Hollywood to the ground.
No wait... That was Nemesis... and Trek '09. Oh well.
Kevin[/QUOTE]
Wow I never made that connection
TK1961 said:
Wow I never made that connection
Very simple formula:
Insane badguy bent on revenge:
ST:II= Khan |Nemesis= Shinzon |Trek09= Nero
Superdestructo device:
ST:II= Genesis device |Nemesis= Thalaron radiation bomb |Trek09= Red Matter
Beloved main cast member dies: (Bonus points if done "saving the ship")
ST:II= Spock |Nemesis= Data |Trek09= Amanda and Vulcan itself (bit of a stretch here)
You could throw in ST:Generations too except Soran wasn't bent on revenge (but was insane), had a star imploding device, and Kirk died in the end.
Enough similarities for me.
Kevin
SSgt Burton said:
Yeah i thought this too, the Magnificent seven springs to my mind, i could be wrong
TK1961 said:
crieky your right
Colin Farrell Suiting Up For 'Total Recall' Remake | PopEater.com
Why?? for Gods sake why?supa troop said:
I have to say that even though I'm a big Arnie fan Total Recall should have been made without him.
One of the premises of Total Recall is to keep you guessing whether or not what is happening is "real" or just "false implanted memories."
The problem with having Schwarzenegger in the lead role is that Arnie is known for being a (literally) larger than life, action hero.
Because of this it is difficult if not impossible to believe that everything happening is "all in his head" and not real. I mean he's Arnie! Of course he knows how to break a man's neck in a second, how to shoot with deadly accuracy, and escape death several times!
But the whole point is to keep you wondering "hey maybe this IS just an out of control memory implant."
The movie needed more of an "everyman" who doesn't look the "superspy" type but maybe just might be.
You couldn't cast someone like Woody Allen (or for the younger folk... uhh... Michael Cera?
I've always believed Total Recall would have been a little closer to the PKD story if it had someone like Matt Damon in it (yeah yeah
Colin Farrell... Sounds good to me!
Total Recall isn't exactly Schwazenegger's or Verhoeven's best, nor is it Othello.
Kevin
Last edited by SSgt Burton; Mar 15, 2011 at 11:22 AM.
There are some good remakes.
Maltese Falcon
The Thing
Oceans 11
Cape Fear
The Fly
3:10 To Yuma
I like both versions of The Italian Job. Just because a remake is made, doenst mean the original is ruined, or that they both cant be good.
I think the idea of a Total Recall remake sounds great.
It's not that remakes are always per se bad. But with respect to things like action and sci-fi and such, they're ALL that gets made anymore. Remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels, or other branded properties. You don't have as many original ideas being made because they're too risky and because the people running the studios are marketing guys who naturally view "new" as "risky," rather than as an "opportunity."
Someone (I forget who, so apologies) recently posted an article about how films like Inception are so rare these days (and how, unsurprisingly, an Inception 2 would be a no-brainer for any studio). It's because marketing guys run the show now. They know they don't have to make anything impressive, just something that sells and is -- ideally -- disposable so you can sell people something NEW after that.
Yes, but those re-makes weren't strict 1:1 re-makes. I have no problem with Magnificent Seven, Samurai Seven, or a Bug's Life. Even King's Wolves of the Calla. They're not remakes in the sense that they do the exact same thing on newer film stock.SSgt Burton said:
Regarding Mag. Seven/Seven Samurai and Yojimbo/Fistfull of Dollars: There's a line between re-make and homage, and the give and take between the American and Spaghetti Western and the Japanese Samurai film is a fruitful one, not a parasitic one.
Right. Plus, in today's culture, none of those movies would be green-lit. Or at least, they'd be seen as riskier than simply taking a book/comic/TV show/toy property/previous film, keeping the name and most basic window-dressing, and doing a movie based on THAT.
It's what makes "brand" films so cynical and manipulative -- much of the time, only the thinnest veneer of what makes the original brand special is retained, and a lot is changed. There's always a tension between keeping just enough of the original to satisfy folks, and "updating" things enough so that you aren't literally just aping the original one for one.
With the Kurosawa/Western films, the setting changes, but the basic plot points don't. Sometimes this kind of thing works, but a lot of the time it doesn't because the cultural cues don't translate that well. With the Kurosawa films translated to Western films, they work fantastically well. But a lot of the horror films that get translated to American audiences from their originals don't work that well, or at least don't work as well as the original.
However when it's working, what you're seeing is a translation of the common cultural elements from one culture to another. In that case, a "remake" makes sense. But those aren't "branded" films, or at least not the kind of no-brainer that a film like, say, Gummi Bears: The Movie, or Laser Tag: The Movie, or a remake of Goonies would be. Those branded properties all have way more strength on the NAME ALONE to the point where it doesnt' MATTER what's different between the film and the original material. The point is that you KNOW the basic concept, and that's all they need to get you to "just give it a chance."
Why does this work?
Simple.
"Just give it a chance" means "Just go buy a ticket." And once they have your money, they don't CARE if you like the film, as long as enough people go to see it. I mean, look at how people hate on Bayformers --- and still go to see it and its sequels.
Branding works.
As long as it continues to work, why would they do ANYTHING differently? Why take a risk, when you're FAR more likely to make bank with a safe bet? Especially when "making bank" on the safe bet is basically the same as "making bank" on a risky property? Where's the upside to the risk of backing a film like Inception? What, you get a new franchise you can launch? WHO CARES?! Just go option an OLD franchise or brand. Pitfall: The Movie. Oregon Trail: The Movie. Cap'n Crunch: The Movie. Laugh at this stuff if you want, but I GUARANTEE you that some Hollywood ******* would look at that and say "BRILLIANT! Britney, get my lawyer on the phone!"
rodneyfaile said:
Add Wizard of Oz, An Affair to Remember, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70's) and The Ten Commandments to this list as well.
Doug
Seriously, thanks for that. I needed it!SSgt Burton said:
"Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot"
Well it shouldn't, should it?
Kevin
There are some good remakes.
Maltese Falcon
Maltese Falcon was remade??? when.... where....why????
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