Remaking Films

[Durandal7]

Is anyone else getting sick of this recent trend of remaking every movie on the planet.

Why do the studios have to take a classic movie and put in a crappy cast with blitzy SFX. Some of them are remakes of relatively recent movies.

Case in point: Planet of the Apes
What was the point in a remake? Especially a version that omits Charleton Heston and the Statue of Liberty scene. This classic has been ruined.

Now they are taking movies from as little as 25 years ago and remaking them.

I recommend that the studios come up with an original idea.

[shadowfax]

i don't see how remaking a film ruins the old one, whether or not the remake sucks.

as to original ideas--everything needs some level of originality. it's funny you should recommend they get original ideas. you don't see that very often, remake or no. i think it's very possible to remake a classic movie and do it better. it's just that they're sucking now, not because they're remakes, but because the people doing them are unoriginal in their acting and directing and what not. there can be a great deal of originality in a remake. we see this on the acting stage with shakespearean plays--depending on the production, it can suck, can be ok, or can be unprecedentedly fabulous. no one bitches about how the team should get their a**es in gear and write their own damn play. so again, i think your frustration is misdirected.

[scem0]

Originally posted by shadowfax
i don't see how remaking a film ruins the old one, whether or not the remake sucks.

That statements sums up exactly how I feel.

Yes, Planet of the Apes and many remakes suck, but your not forced to watch them.

scem0

[wdlove]

Originally posted by scem0
That statements sums up exactly how I feel.

Yes, Planet of the Apes and many remakes suck, but your not forced to watch them.

scem0

I agree, not one is forced to watch a remake. The old saying applies, "There is nothing new under the sun." Hollywood is just trying to cash in on success.

[crap freakboy]

ok anyone name a least one remake that improves on the original? I couldnt think of one.

[Santiago]

Originally posted by crap freakboy
ok anyone name a least one remake that improves on the original? I couldnt think of one.

Ocean's 11 was a reasonably fun romp. The original was less than appealing, if you ask me.

[Mr. Anderson]

Ocean's 11, Italian Job were good examples of remakes - I'd agree that Planet of the Apes was a mess, though.

And look at Lord of the Rings....there had been only animation (bad ones at that) in order to make that movie. Along comes digital FX and 3D animation and its a success and damn good.

Its still Hollywood - there will always be Ishtars and Titanics...no matter what the concept;)

D

[shadowfax]

i never saw the original, but the opening scene of Vanilla Sky made the rest of a rather mediocre film quite worth it.

[mmmbop]

Originally posted by crap freakboy
ok anyone name a least one remake that improves on the original? I couldnt think of one.

Surely the Psycho remake has to rate as the most pointless remake of all time. Or maybe the greatest? Scene-for-scene and the script exactly the same. Genius :p

I read somewhere that there are over eighty film versions of Cinderella so I guess we're well and truly stuck with remakes.

Not a remake but a film version of a book, Bright Young Things has just had its premiere over here in London, not sure if it has/has had a US release. But if you want to make reading macrumors or any website sound more like 1920s high society Brits, check out the Spledidiser. It's very funny, IMO...

http://iconmovies.co.uk/brightyoungthings/

[markjones05]

I think that both Scarfaces were excellent.

And the original VanillA Sky wich was a Spanish film was much better than the new one with Tom Cruise. Penelope Cruz is in both.

[Chmeeee]

Gone in 60 Seconds is a pretty good example. I recently watched the original, and I wasn't too impressed.

[medea]

Originally posted by Durandal7
Is anyone else getting sick of this recent trend of remaking every movie on the planet.

Why do the studios have to take a classic movie and put in a crappy cast with blitzy SFX. Some of them are remakes of relatively recent movies.

Case in point: Planet of the Apes
What was the point in a remake? Especially a version that omits Charleton Heston and the Statue of Liberty scene. This classic has been ruined.

Now they are taking movies from as little as 25 years ago and remaking them.

I recommend that the studios come up with an original idea.

I agree, remakes have always been a bad idea. Same goes for sequals. If you are a director and come across a movie and you get the idea in your head "hey I could remake this...." that is not an original idea nor is it a good one. How about try viewing a film and thinking "hey that was a good idea for a movie, but I think I have an even better one.....?" You get much farther that way. And beyond that movies by directors such as the already mentioned Alfred Hitchcock are perfect as they are, Hitchcock already made Rear Window and it is a work of art, you have no right to think you can copy it and would have to be full of yourself to think you can come up with a similar result. Go copy a Rembrandt and try to sell it as an original......
Directors who make sequal after sequal or remake movies are not interested in showing me a interesting story, they are interested in only taking my money and unfortunately there are many who fall in line and hand their money over for it.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by medea
I agree, remakes have always been a bad idea. Same goes for sequals. If you are a director and come across a movie and you get the idea in your head "hey I could remake this...." that is not an original idea nor is it a good one. How about try viewing a film and thinking "hey that was a good idea for a movie, but I think I have an even better one.....?" You get much farther that way. And beyond that movies by directors such as the already mentioned Alfred Hitchcock are perfect as they are, Hitchcock already made Rear Window and it is a work of art, you have no right to think you can copy it and would have to be full of yourself to think you can come up with a similar result. Go copy a Rembrandt and try to sell it as an original......
Directors who make sequal after sequal or remake movies are not interested in showing me a interesting story, they are interested in only taking my money and unfortunately there are many who fall in line and hand their money over for it. i don't know what to say except you're plain wrong. X2 was a great sequel, one of the very best movies of the summer quite easily. and if you don't think that a movie can be redone with new insight into the issues of that film, well, you should take a cue from drama, where famous works are constantly redone and reinterpreted by very talented people to add a great deal to their meaning and communicate it in new ways to the audience.

all you've accomplished in that droningly long paragraph is to list a bunch of easily falsified assumptions. i'd MUCH rather see a remake of an old film done by a talented director than watch a "new idea" by someone who's mediocre. if you didn't notice, most "original" films suck the big one too. it's a hard thing to do, making good movies, whether you have a totally new idea or you're reinterpreting someone else's.

[Durandal7]

Remaking a film is a very different thing from a sequel or adapting a novel.

A film is a work of art that includes the director's talent, the talent of the cast, the writer's vision and the works of the crew. To remake the film is an insult unless all parties involved are taking part in or have consented to the remake.

Ocean's 11 was OK, but it still didn't have Sinatra. They could have easily made Ocean's 11 a standalone movie instead of billing it as a remake.

Abre los Ojos was much better then Vanilla Sky.

Now they are remaking The Manchurian Candidate? Wonderful :rolleyes:

[medea]

Originally posted by shadowfax
i don't know what to say except you're plain wrong. X2 was a great sequel, one of the very best movies of the summer quite easily. and if you don't think that a movie can be redone with new insight into the issues of that film, well, you should take a cue from drama, where famous works are constantly redone and reinterpreted by very talented people to add a great deal to their meaning and communicate it in new ways to the audience.

all you've accomplished in that droningly long paragraph is to list a bunch of easily falsified assumptions. i'd MUCH rather see a remake of an old film done by a talented director than watch a "new idea" by someone who's mediocre. if you didn't notice, most "original" films suck the big one too. it's a hard thing to do, making good movies, whether you have a totally new idea or you're reinterpreting someone else's.
Sorry but anybody that thinks fodder like X2 was one of the "best movies of the summer" obviously knows little about film , and plays were meant to be reproduced that is a part of theatre, if I were to publish my plays then I obviously would not be the only one to stage them but if I were to create a script and direct a movie I would not expect anyone else to re-direct my film. You can see several "versions" of a play in a year all staged by different directors but I really doubt you would like to see 4-5 different versions of the same Spiderman flick.....so don't try and compare film and theatre when talking about re-makes ok. And I hope you don't try and merge the two by bringing up crap like modernized film versions of Romeo and Juliet, all modernized versions of Shakespeare are utterly horrible and a travesty to the arts. Shakespeare is perfect as it is, no need to change it just like old movies.

[shadowfax]

yeah, i'm so sorry, what was i thinking? i don't know anything about film. i'm a terrible critic of it. you're right, for a thought to be original it has to be disconnected from all other previous thought. nothing can ever be redone with originality, remakes and sequels always suck, categorically.

if you stop and think, generalizations like you've made almost always fall to disproval. if you had said "usually," i would have agreed, but you had to say that doing a remake was a sure sign of lacking originality, which is BS. lacking originality doesn't have to do with where you get your ideas from as a director. originality is a quality that is independent of that--as i said, you can have an "original" idea for a movie and still make a movie as void of originality as the worst movie remake. the fact that it's a remake isn't what makes most remakes so terrible.

as for X2, you should learn to appreciate different genres of film. X2 had plenty of action, had pretty good acting quality, centered around a reasonably captivating plot, and incorporated interesting characters who interacted well and believably. as an action flick, it was great, better by far than the first (my real point), and better than other movies that came out this summer in that classic summer genre (action), like Tomb Raider, Hulk, Matrix Reloaded, &c. it was terrible as a drama, but it wasn't intending to be one, so critiquing it as such only makes one look like a fool. were there better movies this summer? not many. Open Range certainly was... but i never said X2 was "the best," anyway.

[markjones05]

Originally posted by medea
Sorry but anybody that thinks fodder like X2 was one of the "best movies of the summer" obviously knows little about film

So true. Besides everybody knows Finding Nemo was the best movie of the summer.

[markjones05]

Originally posted by medea
I agree, remakes have always been a bad idea. Same goes for sequals.

WRONG! GodfatherII. End of story.


Originally posted by medea
If you are a director and come across a movie and you get the idea in your head "hey I could remake this...." that is not an original idea nor is it a good one.

I disagree again. When done right remakes show the directors take on a movie. Sometimes they put a twist in it that you didnt see in the first one. I always like to see a good remake when done right. Take Romeo and Juliet for example. Who wouldve thought to film that story like that.

[tazo]

Originally posted by markjones05
WRONG! GodfatherII. End of story.




I disagree again. When done right remakes show the directors take on a movie. Sometimes they put a twist in it that you didnt see in the first one. I always like to see a good remake when done right. Take Romeo and Juliet for example. Who wouldve thought to film that story like that.

Are you referring to R & J with Leonardo Dicaprio? If so I agree that that was a pretty good version of it...

[markjones05]

Originally posted by tazo
Are you referring to R & J with Leonardo Dicaprio? If so I agree that that was a pretty good version of it...

Yes I am referring to the 1996 version with Leonardo Dicaprio. Not the 50 remakes before that.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by markjones05
Yes I am referring to the 1996 version with Leonardo Dicaprio. Not the 50 remakes before that. haha! that movie was so intensely cool. it was almost comical seeing that beautiful language used by modern day street gangs. my only beef with it is they really messed up the ending in some key ways that i don't remember so well--they made it focus a lot more on the 2 lovers than the point of the play, the reconciliation of the 2 houses. but still, it was a beautiful vision realized.

[Mr. Anderson]

Sequels that didn't suck - StarTrekII:Wrath of Kahn, Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back, EvilDead3:Army of Darkness, Back to the Future2....

Like I mentioned before, remakes and sequels are not always going to be crappy, we just have a tendency to remember the really bad ones?

D

[Rower_CPU]

OK, this thread's been reinstated. Let's play nice...

[themadchemist]

...I heard somewhere that Windows is a remake.

Enough said.

[shadowfax]

i know this is only sort of a remake, but what did you guys think of Mission: Impossible? i thought the first one with tom cruise was very well done. M:I-2 turned mission impossible into a faky-narcissistic one man team joke, but the first one was awesome.

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by themadchemist
...I heard somewhere that Windows is a remake.

Enough said. i heard somewhere that OS X is a remake of FreeBSD. they really improved on it, too, added that "Apple" touch, if you know what i mean. again, when the director sucks, the remake is going to be bad. MS, the director for windows, would still have a debilitated OS if they made it all from scratch. apple has never come up with a completely new OS, but their reworking of others' stuff, along with their own unique additions, are wonderful, because apple are a talented and creative group of "directors." that's my point. remakes don't make bad movies, directors make bad movies.

[solvs]

Sequel after sequel is usually a bad idea, but as we know sometimes part 2 (or 3, etc) is better than the original. Just as sometimes the remake can be better than the original. Most of the time, though, the original is better. And it does hurt it when instead of watching the original, people watch the remake and think it sucks and miss out on the better movie.

Why don't they remake more of the bad movies? Take a movie that had a great a premise, but horrible execution (there are A LOT out there to choose from) and make a good version. But that would make too much sense. "Let's remake the good movies instead, only make them bad."

Damn Hollywood...

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by solvs
Sequel after sequel is usually a bad idea, but as we know sometimes part 2 (or 3, etc) is better than the original. Just as sometimes the remake can be better than the original. Most of the time, though, the original is better. And it does hurt it when instead of watching the original, people watch the remake and think it sucks and miss out on the better movie.

Why don't they remake more of the bad movies? Take a movie that had a great a premise, but horrible execution (there are A LOT out there to choose from) and make a good version. But that would make too much sense. "Let's remake the good movies instead, only make them bad."

Damn Hollywood... i totally agree with you. this is exactly what i have been saying. your second paragraph is a great idea, to, i think. it's very hard to remake a great movie like planet of the apes and truly improve on it other than with special effects, which really count for very little in a truly great movie. but take a mediocre film with a decent plot premise, and you could really make a lot more of it without too much trouble.

[pseudobrit]

I'm going to be the first to predict that the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is going to suck.

Something about Bruckheimer or Bay being billed anywhere in scriptwriting, production or direction just tells me a movie's gonna suck. When there are three scriptwriters, alarm bells go off.

[markjones05]

Originally posted by pseudobrit
I'm going to be the first to predict that the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is going to suck.

Something about Bruckheimer or Bay being billed anywhere in scriptwriting, production or direction just tells me a movie's gonna suck. When there are three scriptwriters, alarm bells go off.


I concurr. Although i am still going to see it cause i love horror films.

[dynamicd]

If anyone wants to see a preview of a really good movie, check out the preview for Elephant on the apply quictime website. As far as sequels or remakes go....Snatch was definitely an improvement over Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Although that movie was also good.

[iGav]

We'll never see a remake of 'Dirty Harry' or '2001'....

'The Haunting' wasn't a bad remake...

I quite enjoyed the remake of Pyscho too, and I'm an avid Hitch fan...

G