Your thoughts on remakes, in general

[SimonDoom]

Some movies I would like to see remade:

1. Forbidden Planet: It was a great sci fi movie concept but the movie is very dated, very 50s-ish. I think there's a lot of material to work with to make an interesting modern film.

2. The Maltese Falcon: It's a perfect noir story and it would be interesting to see a modern update of it.

3. Salem's Lot: It's a perfect vampire novel and it's never been done right as a film/TV miniseries.

4. Logan's Run: A cool sci fi movie idea that was limited by some cheesy special effects. You can't beat Jenny Agutter in the skimpy sea-foam dress, but this could be a good remake.

5. Rebecca: Hitchcock's classic gothic mystery.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Some movies I would like to see remade:

1. Forbidden Planet: It was a great sci fi movie concept but the movie is very dated, very 50s-ish. I think there's a lot of material to work with to make an interesting modern film.

2. The Maltese Falcon: It's a perfect noir story and it would be interesting to see a modern update of it.

3. Salem's Lot: It's a perfect vampire novel and it's never been done right as a film/TV miniseries.

4. Logan's Run: A cool sci fi movie idea that was limited by some cheesy special effects. You can't beat Jenny Agutter in the skimpy sea-foam dress, but this could be a good remake.

5. Rebecca: Hitchcock's classic gothic mystery.

I agree on all counts. With The Maltese Falcon, you'd run into he crowd that will be upset with trying to replace Bogart
Salem's Lot would be awesome if they could stick with the novel well.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Oh God, why?

I know right? But, studios hate a sedentary franchise.

 

[Yarglenurp]

I disagree with the idea that the classics should be untouched. I actually would like line-by-line remakes of classic performances to do side-by-side comparisons.

Watch the Hannibal Lecter performances between Mikkelsen (Hannibal TV series), Hopkins (Hannibal the movie), and Cox (Manhunter). The fact that they're saying the same lines but do it in such different ways shows such a range of interpretations of the character and the power that the non-verbal communication can have in forming your opinions of a serial killer's personality.

See:

I would love to see different actor's interpretation of famous dialogs or monologues in classics like "Glengarry Glenn Ross" or "There Will be Blood."

 

[onehitwanda]

I disagree with the idea that the classics should be untouched. I actually would like line-by-line remakes of classic performances to do side-by-side comparisons.

Watch the Hannibal Lecter performances between Mikkelsen (Hannibal TV series), Hopkins (Hannibal the movie), and Cox (Manhunter). The fact that they're saying the same lines but do it in such different ways shows such a range of interpretations of the character and the power that the non-verbal communication can have in forming your opinions of a serial killer's personality.

See:

I would love to see different actor's interpretation of famous dialogs or monologues in classics like "Glengarry Glenn Ross" or "There Will be Blood."

 

[SimonDoom]

I disagree with the idea that the classics should be untouched. I actually would like line-by-line remakes of classic performances to do side-by-side comparisons.

Watch the Hannibal Lecter performances between Mikkelsen (Hannibal TV series), Hopkins (Hannibal the movie), and Cox (Manhunter). The fact that they're saying the same lines but do it in such different ways shows such a range of interpretations of the character and the power that the non-verbal communication can have in forming your opinions of a serial killer's personality.

See:

I would love to see different actor's interpretation of famous dialogs or monologues in classics like "Glengarry Glenn Ross" or "There Will be Blood."

This one has an interesting history, though, which explains why the remakes make sense. The first movie was Manhunter, starring Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter and directed by Michael Mann, who gives a very 80s-ish feel to the material. The second movie, Silence of the Lambs, wasn't a remake because it was based on a different book, and Anthony Hopkins brought his own Oscar-winning interpretation to the role. Both actors, I think, did an excellent job. Everybody liked Hopkins so much that they made two more Hannibal Lecter movies with him, Hannibal, and Red Dragon, which is based on the book Manhunter was based on. The latter is a perfectly good and sensible reinterpretation of the material that Manhunter is based on.

 

[SimonDoom]

An interesting movie to remake would be The Breakfast Club. It's such a quintessentially 80s movie; it would be interesting to update it with new young actors to give it a contemporary interpretation.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I think remakes are often unfairly panned. People tend to be receptive to covers of songs. Shakespeare has been staged hundreds of thousands of times, if not millions, sometimes with radically different interpretations. But Ghostbusters is sacrosanct?

I mean, I'm receptive to the idea that some of these remakes aren't of the best quality, or that they sacrifice aspects of what made the original good in order to make the new version profitable; Robocop's PG-13-chasing immediately comes to mind. And I can kind of understand the visceral reaction to The Crow, given Brandon Lee's death during filming. But there's this weird, reflexive reaction to remakes that doesn't make much sense to me. No one's taking away the older version, no one's saying it doesn't exist, etc. I didn't particularly care for the all-women Ghostbusters reboot (Kate McKinnon's and Chris Hemsworth's performances aside), but it's okay if not everything is targeted at me, you know?

I'd much rather see someone take an interesting concept and run it through different filters every few years than someone trying something like Atlas, the recent movie with Jennifer Lopez and Simu Liu. My wife and I watched it last night, and it was just a pastiche of ideas lifted from other movies and done worse. There was a scene that was literally "Ripley briefs the Marines" from Aliens, for God's sake. I'd much rather have an Aliens movie that goes in a different direction than Aliens with the serial numbers filed off, slammed together with Terminator and a few other movies.

I dunno. Maybe it's because I come from a comics background, with, "Hey, let's let this new creative crew take a crack at Superman and see what happens" being sort of the default setting for the medium. That methodology has yielded tons of great stories over there, along with admittedly some awful ones, too. However, there's a reason Hollywood has been mining the medium for stories for the last few decades: it's rife with strong takes, even on the same concept or character.

Videogames do the same thing, too, even if they sometimes couch their "remakes" as sequels; however, if you look at the Doom series, Doom 1 and 2 are clearly in the same universe, Doom 3 is set in a similar but different one and plays as a survival horror game, Doom 2016 is a reboot of Doom 1 with modern sensibilities, and Doom Eternal is a very arcade-y shooter set in the same universe. Then there's the mobile game, some of the console ones, etc., that are each their own version of that universe, all filtered through the mechanics, hardware needs, or audience targeting (Nintendo censoring a lot of the blood with Doom64 back in the late 90s). Each one plays differently, has different lore, etc., and while players might quibble over which ones are good or not (Doom 3 being particularly divisive), very few people think they shouldn't have been made.

So, yeah. Gimme a shitty Aliens reboot, and a great True Grit remake, and Sense and Sensibility as a 2020s romcom, and and and. 90% of everything is shit, or so the saying goes, but that's true whether it's original IP or remakes.

 

[NoTalentHack]

An interesting movie to remake would be The Breakfast Club. It's such a quintessentially 80s movie; it would be interesting to update it with new young actors to give it a contemporary interpretation.

I don't know that it would work, but it would be interesting to see. I know they tried Heathers, and it bombed horribly, because they couldn't make the archetypes fit in modern high school culture. Remember that scene from 21 Jump Street with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill where they get to the school and Tatum tries to fit in by being the jock bully, only to have everyone in sight verbally rip him to shreds?

 

[Yarglenurp]

Ultimate movie remake list:
1. My Dinner with Andre
2. My Dinner with Andre
3. My Dinner with Andre

 

[SimonDoom]

Some movies are good for remakes because the originals are very much movies of their time, and they feel dated. Like True Grit, for instance. John Wayne is great, but the female lead has a hair cut and a chirpy, contemporary demeanor that scream "1960s!" And it's got Glen Campbell, for crying out loud. So that movie needed to be remade. A lot of 60s-80s movies seem very dated today and could use remaking.

Bonnie and Clyde could be a good remake.

Network could be an interesting remake because of all the technological and political developments relating to media since then.

I thought Apocalypse Now was a wildly overdone, over the top, and overrated movie translation of Heart of Darkness. It would be interesting to see an updated, more sober modern interpretation of the source material, because it's a great basic storyline.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Some movies are good for remakes because the originals are very much movies of their time, and they feel dated. Like True Grit, for instance. John Wayne is great, but the female lead has a hair cut and a chirpy, contemporary demeanor that scream "1960s!" And it's got Glen Campbell, for crying out loud. So that movie needed to be remade. A lot of 60s-80s movies seem very dated today and could use remaking.

Bonnie and Clyde could be a good remake.

Network could be an interesting remake because of all the technological and political developments relating to media since then.

I thought Apocalypse Now was a wildly overdone, over the top, and overrated movie translation of Heart of Darkness. It would be interesting to see an updated, more sober modern interpretation of the source material, because it's a great basic storyline.

Look up a game movie version of "Spec Ops: The Line." It's basically a video game spiritual successor of Apocalypse Now, except even more depressing.

 

[AlinaX]

Silence of the Lambs worked because of more than just Hopkins' brilliant Lecter. I would have loved if Demme & Foster had done Hannibal (and without trashing the ending).

 

[TheLobster]

Videogames do the same thing (...)

Videogame remakes (often called remasters) are generally done just to improve the technical quality of the original whilst cashing in on a well-known franchise. No other pretext is really necessary, because the advancement in the field compared to say, 2000s or early 2010s, has been enough for these kind of remakes to be marketable.

This is distinct from modern sequels, such as Doom (2016) you mentioned. Those are new games in their own right, paying homage to the original but very much standing on their own merit. They might be reboots of the original franchise story-wise (insofar as Doom has a story ), but they aren't simply taking the 1990s Doom and slapping modern 3D graphics on it.

And all of the above are yet different from pure relaunches/re-releases of the old games, such as what GoG.com is doing, or what the classic version of World of Warcraft was. These are simply the old titles introduced into the market again, with nothing but compatibility fixes to make them work on modern systems.

In other words, I'm not sure there is actually a category of "remakes" in the video game industry that would cleanly translate to what film remakes are. They are different mediums, with different emphasis on storylines, and it's not at all straightforward to draw comparisons between them.

 

[Bamagan]

I'd be kind of interested to see a Zach Snyder remake/adaptation of The Flintstones. I'd be expecting a grim tale of Fred, one of the last Neanderthals, struggling to find his place in a community of Cro-Magnons that don't like or understand him very much. The director's cut will only be six hours.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Silence of the Lambs worked because of more than just Hopkins' brilliant Lecter. I would have loved if Demme & Foster had done Hannibal (and without trashing the ending).

After multiple re-watches, I think my order of favorite Hannibals is Mikkelsen's portrayal, then Cox's, then Hopkins'. If we're going with modern actors, I'd be interested in Adam Driver, Joaquin Phoenix, and Dwayne Johnson. I think Adam would hew most closely to the classic sociopath Hannibal, Joaquin would bring a kind of indignant desperate edge to it that Hannibal the imprisoned should have, and Dwayne Johnson would bring up a "brute" aspect that hasn't been associated with Hannibal.

 

[Euphony]

Generally speaking (but being a film buff from the age of twelve, so I've seen a few movies over many decades), remakes are lazy movie making, unless they turn out better than the original. But that's rare. Very rare.

It's like people coming along saying, I can update/rewrite/improve your story, let me do it, because it's such a great idea. It was, which is why the movie/story was made/written in the first place. "Now show me your own good idea."

This.

Remakes are fertile ground for corner cutting laziness. "Let the fans do the narrative lifting." Yeah, no.

As you said, a pathway to increasing odds of success is taking a film that's suffering a bit from aging and shining it up with a little modernity.

You really need to add your own oomph to your story though, it should essentially stand alone but have the stepping stone for fans of the O.G. to connect with/quick start understanding most of the setting and universe.

Most everyone who write significantly sooner or later comes around to the idea that a bunch of super promising seeds (scenes, a clever dialog exchange, a unique universe) is a long way from bountiful harvest.

Many of those who want to a head start by pilfering another Lit'ers story beats aren't getting 50% of a finished work. It's low single digits. And still a boatload of work to make even a passable homage. (in a lot of cases, self-creation is actually less work but some just don't trust in themselves to do it.)

 

[NoTalentHack]

Videogame remakes (often called remasters) are generally done just to improve the technical quality of the original whilst cashing in on a well-known franchise. No other pretext is really necessary, because the advancement in the field compared to say, 2000s or early 2010s, has been enough for these kind of remakes to be marketable.

This is distinct from modern sequels, such as Doom (2016) you mentioned. Those are new games in their own right, paying homage to the original but very much standing on their own merit. They might be reboots of the original franchise story-wise (insofar as Doom has a story ), but they aren't simply taking the 1990s Doom and slapping modern 3D graphics on it.

And all of the above are yet different from pure relaunches/re-releases of the old games, such as what GoG.com is doing, or what the classic version of World of Warcraft was. These are simply the old titles introduced into the market again, with nothing but compatibility fixes to make them work on modern systems.

In other words, I'm not sure there is actually a category of "remakes" in the video game industry that would cleanly translate to what film remakes are. They are different mediums, with different emphasis on storylines, and it's not at all straightforward to draw comparisons between them.

I mean, yeah, but that has to do as much with marketing as it does anything else. A casual user would have said, "Why would I buy Doom again?" back when Doom 3 was released, if they'd treated it like a Hollywood-style reboot.

Yes, each medium has different lines when it comes to reboots vs. sequels vs. remakes, many of which get blurred from time to time (looking at you, attempted DCEU soft reboot), but only in movies and TV do you see this visceral reaction to what would go almost unmentioned in any other venue. I think it's part of the culture as much as anything.

 

[Euphony]

There have been several major shake-outs in the history of cinema. The first really big one was the decline of the big studio system, the Hollywood film factories, in the 1950s, as they tried to compete with television.

The first big fight back was wide screen, at first with three projector systems then 70mm and anamorphic lenses. That resulted in the big epics of the 1960s - David Lean's movies, some of the classic westerns, 2001, etc.

At the same time, European cinema dominated the art movies - the French and Italians mostly.

Then Brit Pop and the swinging sixties - James Bond, The Italian Job, "my name is Michael Caine." And in the US, lower budget independent studios, a new breed of director, culminating in The Godfather era.

Then Star Wars hit, Spielberg and so on, the rise of the multiplex, sequel after sequel, into the remakes and here we are. High technology movies, and movies made with super lightweight digital cameras.

My prediction for the next signing technological shift - virtual reality.

Incredible post. A mini-history lesson in film.

I would say the shift to streaming was another watershed event and had reverberating effects that we are still working through. Writers being sidelined, financial inequality being even wider (the haves have more at the expense of the nots.)

Venture capital hyper charged the sequels and superhero boon. Used to be more acceptance of trying to roughly break even on most of your tries, let your hits finance the bulk. Profiteering doesn't like that.

Super creatives will always find a way to shine (see the publish houses sinking steadily since the 80s) but the fringe, very talented people, are getting edged out.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I'd be kind of interested to see a Zach Snyder remake/adaptation of The Flintstones. I'd be expecting a grim tale of Fred, one of the last Neanderthals, struggling to find his place in a community of Cro-Magnons that don't like or understand him very much. The director's cut will only be six hours.

Amusingly, there's a fantastic Flintstones comic from DC that they put out a few years ago, where it treats Fred, Barney and the rest as "real" character working and living in a semi-realistic take on that environment, while still retaining things like the talking dinosaur tools, etc. It has one of my favorite quotes about bigotry, actually:



There were some other great ones from that time, too, like Snagglepuss the gay-coded pink tiger taking on HUAC and Dastardly and Mutley as a Gulf War-era satire, along with some more standard takes on the characters.

 

[Living_in_a_lewd_world]

A TV-Show, from which I really would like to see a good remake would be "Buffy - the Vampire Slayer." The show had very good actresses and actors, which harmonised (at least til the end of season 3) very well, the main idea was very good and creative, it was one of the first TV-Shows to have an overarching plot over each season and character development over the whole show and the dialogues, which Joss Whedon wrote were often hilarious and pointed. I only recently saw the show up til the 5th season and liked most of it. It's a total source of inspiration. Nevertheless, the show felt never that wholesome as e.g. later "Breaking Bad" but I think, the whole idea of the show offers enough potential to produce something that could feel so wholesome.

 

[NoTalentHack]

A TV-Show, from which I really would like to see a good remake would be "Buffy - the Vampire Slayer." The show had very good actresses and actors, which harmonised (at least til the end of season 3) very well, the main idea was very good and creative, it was one of the first TV-Shows to have an overarching plot over each season and character development over the whole show and the dialogues, which Joss Whedon wrote were often hilarious and pointed. I only recently saw the show up til the 5th season and liked most of it. It's a total source of inspiration. Nevertheless, the show felt never that wholesome as e.g. later "Breaking Bad" but I think, the whole idea of the show offers enough potential to produce something that could feel so wholesome.

It kind of went off into other media. There was a long-running comic for a while that was treated as canon by the original creators, and there's a serialized story on Audible now with a bunch of the original actors. I think it would be hard to reboot it, because Whedon will have to be attached, and he's pretty persona non grata at the moment.

 

[Yarglenurp]

It kind of went off into other media. There was a long-running comic for a while that was treated as canon by the original creators, and there's a serialized story on Audible now with a bunch of the original actors. I think it would be hard to reboot it, because Whedon will have to be attached, and he's pretty persona non grata at the moment.

Nah, he just needs to make a hard right turn, talk about how "the Left has changed" and hearken back to the good ole days where men were men and women were women. It's the classic play: revealed-as-corrupt-abuser => "the Left has changed" independent => "taxes are bad" libertarian => "libertarian"

 

[Rob_Royale]

An interesting movie to remake would be The Breakfast Club. It's such a quintessentially 80s movie; it would be interesting to update it with new young actors to give it a contemporary interpretation.

I disagree completely on this one. I think the issues that this movie is about aren't generational but simply the difficulties of adolescence and dealing with adults, classism, popularity, and the feeling that all kids have, that "no one understands me". Those problems haven't changed for kids since '85. My boys watched it with me when they were teens and they appreciated it as if it had been about them. We had several father/son discussions afterward. It was a good bonding experience.

 

[SimonDoom]

Speaking of remakes, there's yet another "Dracula" remake on the way, a remake of Nosferatu by director Robert Eggers with Bill Skarsgaard (Pennywise in "It") as Nosferatu.

This seems to me a good example of a justifiable remake, because it's a story with a timeless fascination, which can be interpreted in different ways. I liked Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu. I had mixed feelings about Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula from 1992. Despite Gary Oldman's strengths as an actor, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder were terrible, and the whole thing seemed underdeveloped.