The Fly (remake remake)

Riceball said:

This trend is hardly new, Hollywood has been doing this forever, pretty much since they've been making movies. There are probably remakes out there that you never knew were remakes and loved it thinking that it was an original idea. Here's just a few: Rio Lobo, Cape Fear, The Thing (John Carpenter version), Ocean's 11, Heaven Can Wait, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, A Fistful of Dollars, Scarface, The Maltese Falcon, and the list goes on.

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I know that Hollywood has done remakes in the past, but I think you have to admit that it's....different now. Hollywood is WAY more about brand exploitation, which leads them to option brands rather than focus on stories. Slap a brand overtop an otherwise blah story, and sell tickets. In the best cases, the brandification approach is done side by side with the story, because the execs are trying to nurture a brand and protect it (e.g. Marvel, Star Wars, etc.), but in the worst, it's just pure exploitation (e.g. Robocop).

cayman shen said:

Yeah I'm numb to it at this point. And hey, maybe it will be good. The 1986 Fly was a freaking masterpiece, and it of course was a remake. Having said that, the 1986 Fly was a freaking masterpiece...whatever, it'll make money off the kids, and maybe a few of them will look into the Cronenberg version (or hey, the original Vincent Price flick isn't ENTIRELY without merit) because of it.

I almost lost my damn mind with furious indignation when the Robocop remake came out, and it disappeared quickly and without hurting the original in any way. So I'm gonna remain calm and ignore this awful news I guess.

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This, to me, is the baffling part. These films don't end up doing all that well anyway. They go to the trouble of remaking this or that movie, only to have it be received with a resounding "Meh" by audiences, so...what was actually gained? In my opinion, the only reason these things happen is because the money people in Hollywood have all read from the same report that says "brand identification is essential." Therefore, they think it HAS to be included in every film and non-branded films are to be shunned altogether. Never mind if the branded films don't actually perform all that much better than the unbranded ones used to.

It warms my heart that the Point Break remake was a massive bomb, at any rate. Vengeance is mine, saith the GenXers.

Solo4114 said:

I know that Hollywood has done remakes in the past, but I think you have to admit that it's....different now. Hollywood is WAY more about brand exploitation, which leads them to option brands rather than focus on stories. Slap a brand overtop an otherwise blah story, and sell tickets. In the best cases, the brandification approach is done side by side with the story, because the execs are trying to nurture a brand and protect it (e.g. Marvel, Star Wars, etc.), but in the worst, it's just pure exploitation (e.g. Robocop).

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The point that I was trying to make was that Hollywood remakes is nothing new and has been since almost the beginning of Hollywood yet, if people here were to be believed, you'd think that it's a relatively recent trend. I think that the main difference between remakes now and remakes from the past is just that now they're remaking movies within living memory where as previous remakes were either done well before many of us were alive or were of movies from 40 - 50 years ago.

Personally, I have no problems with remakes and reboots. Like I've said before, this "trend" is nothing new and I don't see Hollywood ever stop doing remakes/reboots. so I find no point in getting upset over them. Having said that, I do feel that they really should try not to remake anything too new/recent, they should wait until a movie is at least 20 years old before remaking/rebooting it. The only exception would be a title that had a lot of potential but just failed because it wasn't done right.

cayman shen said:

It warms my heart that the Point Break remake was a massive bomb, at any rate. Vengeance is mine, saith the GenXers.

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Oh man, *THAT* remake was so bad - it was like the poster child for reasons not to do this...

Some good videos on the current state of the biz:

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=272608