Remake vs Re-release

[Flagg]

Lately there has been much posting from people about the amount of remakes going on in the movie industry and the standard answer is that they are easier money for the studios and that in the long run everything comes down to profit.

I have spent a good amount of time around my 17 yo step kid and his friends and they aren't even aware many of the remakes out today ARE remakes so it got me to thinking that if it really is all about money then why doesn't the studios just spruce up the FX a bit on some of the older flicks and just straight re-release them? Seems like it would be a much less costly en devour to do this and it would free up funds to actually make some of the higher risk movies concepts that get passed on.

Personally, I'm not against remakes. There's been several I liked better than the originals if the truth be told but I seem to be in the minority here.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Because that would be even more appalling than the remakes they are already pumping out.

Though I've often thought about older movies having updated their SFX, I quickly realized that not only are you crapping on what they were able to do back then, but also the people who worked to achieve them. We've seen enough of that crap from Lucas, completely disregarding the contributions from people by altering and sometimes completely removing them from the movie.

I'd prefer remakes to that.

 

[division 6]

Back in the day Disney would re release movies in the theater every 7 years, now for some of them it's out on DVD every 6 months.

Many older films are out on DVD and some theaters specialize in showing older and foreign films.

 

[Flagg]

Because that would be even more appalling than the remakes they are already pumping out.

Would it? People complain about remakes "raping their childhood" so would releasing the same movie again be doing the same thing? Just playing Devil's Advocate here.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Would it? People complain about remakes "raping their childhood" so would releasing the same movie again be doing the same thing? Just playing Devil's Advocate here.

As I added to my above post it would be an even worse thing than a remake.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

re-releasing a movie as it is, only cleaning up the image, dirt and flaws, I have no problem with. But start changing things and things get into a no-no zone with me pretty quickly.

 

[Probe Droid]

I'm with TMG. A film is a thing of its time and to update the effects is to lose a part of its charm. If someone were to digitize a more realistic-looking shark in JAWS or erase the wires on the ships in the 50s War of the Worlds it would diminish the overall film.

Hollywood and audiences have become too effects happy instead of concentrating on story and character, which is a large part of why so many films today stink.

Just rerelease the old films the way they are. And don't remake good films, remake the bad ones and improve them.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Actually, wire removal would be in my thoughts of cleaning up the image and removing flaws. It doesn't detract from the movie, or remove contributions to the movie or otherwise change anything.

However, when it is done like it was for the War of the Worlds DVD, then I absolutely DON'T like it, as they just fudged out the general area where the wires were and you could see that fudging as clear as you could have seen the wires, so the attempt to remove the wires only created an equally visually distracting nuisance. When the attempt to fix something doesn't remove the reason the wires were decided to be removed - annoyance - then it shouldn't be attempted.

Changing the shark in Jaws would absolutely be changing the contribution made to that movie, using the effects and technology available at that time. Changing that would be equal to changing the gliders in WotW with CGI. Totally different thing to wire removal.

However, from a more cinematic historical aspect... even wire removal shouldn't be done, but from a movie watching aspect, they should/could. It's all a question of preserving the original and presenting the fixed version.

 

[Egon Spengler]

Because that would be even more appalling than the remakes they are already pumping out.

Though I've often thought about older movies having updated their SFX, I quickly realized that not only are you crapping on what they were able to do back then, but also the people who worked to achieve them. We've seen enough of that crap from Lucas, completely disregarding the contributions from people by altering and sometimes completely removing them from the movie.

I'd prefer remakes to that.

True dat, or something.

 

[Probe Droid]

It doesn't detract from the movie, or remove contributions to the movie or otherwise change anything.

It does to me. Eye of the beholder.

 

[JD]

Oh boy, here we go again...

This isn't new. Hollywood's been recycling from pretty much day 1.

The mainstream version of The Wizard of Oz that we all know and love is a remake. Scarface, The Maltese Falcon, 12 Monkeys, Resevoir Dogs (which might be more of an outiright rip-off than a remake), Heaven Can Wait, Fatal Attraction, The Thing, Ben Hur, A Fistful of Dollars, Insomnia, Never Say Never Again, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Victor/Victoria, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, True Lies, Meet the Parents, The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, King Kong (duh), 101 Dalmations, Always (Spielberg), Angels in the Outfield, Annie, The Bachelor, Battle Beyond the Stars, Magnificent Seven, Battle of the Sexes, Cape Fear, Jekyll & Hyde, Freaky Friday, Get Carter, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Hand (Oliver Stone), The Heartbreak Kid, I AM Legend, Omega Man, The Jazz Singer (both 1980 & 1952 remade the 1927 version), Little Shop of Horrors, Meet Joe Black, Miracle of 34th Street, The Money Pit, The Mummy, Nutty Professor, Outland, Scared Stiff, Scent of a Woman, Solaris ('02 and '72 remade the '68), 3 Men and a Baby, True Lies, You've got Mail, the list goes on and on... and all remakes.

This is not a new phenomenon. This is just new to certain people because they're becoming old enough to realize movies are recycled all the time... and well, Hollywood's being more brazen about it.

No one has raped your childhood. No one has take the original away from you, it's still there for you to enjoy.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

JD, I think you missed the point of this particular thread. It isn't so much about remakes rather than why don't the studios just not take the old original films and update their SFX and sound, etc, instead of shooting a whole new movie.

 

[Solo4114]

Cleaned-up re-releases? No problem! I didn't get a chance to see Raiders in the theaters when they recently re-released it, but that, to me, is fine.

Re-release with new f/x?

NO.

Part of what makes a film important is its historical context. Seeing that they could do XYZ way back when is often impressive. Seeing what they DIDN'T do is often enlightening.

I'd rather see a remake than a re-release with altered footage. My only exception to this is when you provide the previous version for archival purposes. Best example of this I can think of recently is Alien. On the same blu-ray, you can watch the 1979 theatrical version or the 2003 "Director's Cut" (which really just means Scott oversaw the manipulation of footage to his satisfaction -- he still prefers the '79 version). Both look GORGEOUS. THAT is the way you handle things. Go ahead and much about with the original stuff as much as you want....but please provide a restored, archival version alongside it.

I actually find it interesting to see deleted footage added back in. I thought Apocalypse Now Redux was kinda cool. I still prefer the theatrical version. I'm glad I can choose to watch either. I like seeing the other ideas the directors had and how they'd fit into their films, or what they'd ahve done then if they had today's technology. That's kinda cool to see...when it doesn't simultaneously obliterate what came before.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

It does to me. Eye of the beholder.

I can certainly see where you are coming from. It does remove things and I'm usually very adamant on keeping things as close to the original print as possible - meaning no oversharpening, no insane amount of DNR as I want the filmgrain (also because DNR doesn't just remove grain, it removes details and smooth over surfaces and makes things look artificial), and to an extent; if the original movie was originally presented in mono, I would want that soundtrack too.

Some older effects are just jarring and in the case of WotW, the wires, with the technology used to film it and present it on screen, were never meant to be seen and were in fact not seen at all in the theatrical release - and seeing them in the televised transmissions later just added an unwanted and unneeded sense of cheese to an otherwise good movie.

It's a tough choice, because, for the most part I'd want things as they were first presented in the theatrical release print - not how it was experienced by the movie going audience at the time. But... at the same time I get distracted by the wires on the gliders, the optical mattes in Star Wars and several other things that takes me out of the movie experience - things that were never supposed to be seen and weren't seen when in the theater at the time. From a technical and historical standpoint, removing those things and you remove a part of the history of the making of the movie preserved within the movie itself. What do I prefer more? The historical record or the cleaned up and restored version? For me it would be something inbetween.

 

[JD]

JD, I think you missed the point of this particular thread. It isn't so much about remakes rather than why don't the studios just not take the old original films and update their SFX and sound, etc, instead of shooting a whole new movie.

I got the point. Just adding to the conversation that remakes are part of Hollywood and have always been.

Let Hollywood do as it wants and we can pick and choose what we wish to support. Obviously, recoloring old B&W films pretty much flopped so there isn't a whole lot of support for "fixing" old movies.

If George Lucas want to add a digital Jar Jar to ANH... it's Lucas' film and vision and his to play with. Or if he wants to redo the entire OT recasting Luke and Leia with digital morph of Hayden and Natalie, so be it - it's his film/franchise.

Why some of us spend so much time debating and worrying about other people's property (both artistic property and actual) and second guessing those people is beyond me.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Why some of us spend so much time debating and worrying about other people's property (both artistic property and actual) and second guessing those people is beyond me.

Because it's fun.

 

[Solo4114]

And because it's art. People form emotional connections with art. Also, art is important from an academic perspective in that how and why it evokes emotion, and the techniques involved in the creation of that art, are important for future study.

If Charles Dickens rose from the dead and decided to re-write Oliver Twist only THIS time he'd be a modern antihero badass, I think folks would be rightly pissed. Simply saying "Well, it's his book, so...too bad" doesn't cut it.

If someone applied a DNR filter to Van Gogh's Starry Night, smoothing it out and basically making it NOT a pointilist piece anymore, I think folks would be rightly pissed.


Art isn't JUST the artist's property once it's put out in the world. That's the point of art. It's an experience beyond just the artist themselves. It's a form of communication. It creates emotional responses and intellectual responses. When you go back and ERASE art, that's where I have a problem. You want to do a new take on it? Knock yourself out. Just don't erase the original. Lucas may own the intellectual property, but this goes beyond legal ownership and into, I guess, what I'd call art ethics. I think even if it's legal, it's ultimately kind of unethical to go back and erase art. It's not a clear-cut black-or-white rule, but to simply eliminate old versions because they don't match what the artist's artistic vision has morphed into over 30-something years is just wrong, in my opinion.


And for the record, I'd say the same thing about ANY film. Eliminating the old versions to fix it up to one person's standards is wrong. Whether it's Star Wars or The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.

 

[EyeofSauron]

And because it's art. People form emotional connections with art. Also, art is important from an academic perspective in that how and why it evokes emotion, and the techniques involved in the creation of that art, are important for future study.

If Charles Dickens rose from the dead and decided to re-write Oliver Twist only THIS time he'd be a modern antihero badass, I think folks would be rightly pissed. Simply saying "Well, it's his book, so...too bad" doesn't cut it.

If someone applied a DNR filter to Van Gogh's Starry Night, smoothing it out and basically making it NOT a pointilist piece anymore, I think folks would be rightly pissed.


Art isn't JUST the artist's property once it's put out in the world. That's the point of art. It's an experience beyond just the artist themselves. It's a form of communication. It creates emotional responses and intellectual responses. When you go back and ERASE art, that's where I have a problem. You want to do a new take on it? Knock yourself out. Just don't erase the original. Lucas may own the intellectual property, but this goes beyond legal ownership and into, I guess, what I'd call art ethics. I think even if it's legal, it's ultimately kind of unethical to go back and erase art. It's not a clear-cut black-or-white rule, but to simply eliminate old versions because they don't match what the artist's artistic vision has morphed into over 30-something years is just wrong, in my opinion.


And for the record, I'd say the same thing about ANY film. Eliminating the old versions to fix it up to one person's standards is wrong. Whether it's Star Wars or The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.

the WIPO sees this differently. the artist himself can do whatever he wants to a publicised piece of art, from slight adjustments to destruction. Ethics play no part here.
Its different if someone different than the artist holds the art. he is not allowed to change it, but he is allowed to destroy it.
if an artist is in a contract relationship he gives away all his rights, making the employer the single rights holder, so he can do anything he wants with it.
Ethics, while a good concept, dont work here.

 

[Solo4114]

Yeah, I know what the WIPO says, and I know what the 1976 Copyright Act says, too. Those are important to protect artists, but I think art goes beyond just the artist.

I support artists being able to make money off of what they want, but I think it's irresponsible and short-sighted of them to suppress what they did before.

 

[tain669]

To tell you the truth I'm not really against remakes.It's good sometimes to see a turn on a well known movie for good. or ill. Horror films to me are the exception to this rule for me.My one film i'd like to get on dvd is the Night Of The Living Dead with the new footage added to it.Or the colorized version of it. i get them used so not really a bid deal to me