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Are Movie Remakes Doomed to Fail (Generally)?

Justac00lguy

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I've watched a few remakes recently and, to be honest, they've never truly bothered me - even if I'm a fan of the original. However, you read reviews and you see the awful scores such films, generally, get as well as the negative backlash they receive, which raises the question: Are they always doomed to fail?

Also share some examples of bad movie remakes as well as ones you thought were rather good.
 

Mercedes

つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
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Definitely not. To say that would be to argue the very concept of a remake will always draw negative attention and that's certainly not the case; the issue is higher expectations than a brand new, un-proven film, and so people, fans or not, tend to be a bit harsher on them I would say. As for remakes I'd consider to be quite good, urrrrrrm... The Thing, Dawn of the Dead, Ocean's Eleven, Casino Royale. I'm not that big of a movie buff so I can't really list them off, I've probably watched lots of remakes I didn't realise were remakes, but I wouldn't say knowing any of those were remakes effected my opinion on them whatsoever.
 

Hanyou

didn't build that
Let me really emphasize this. If you don't think there's such a thing as a good remake, watch the first two movies on this list. Watch the originals too if you can.

Good:

The Thing (1982): This, ladies and gentleman, is how it's done. Everything about this movie is top-notch. It's got visceral jump scares, an eerie atmosphere, psychological thrills, everything. It's one of the most terrifying movies of all time--not just for its gross-out factor, but for its intelligent stab at making the viewer feel paranoid for the characters in the film. The original is good, but it's not this good.

The Fly (1986): Another 80s gem. As with The Thing, the special effects steal the show. However, I also find Goldblum's portrayal of the main character, Brundle, sympathetic. Watching him undergo his transformation is heartbreaking, and it's something all of us can sympathize with--as we get older, we change, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and the process is rarely comfortable.

I actually love the original version of The Fly and it's not made obsolete by Cronenberg's re-imagining. Still, I feel the 1986 film improves on the original and uses its concept to explore different themes.

Less than good:

Peter Jackson's King Kong: It's not a bad movie, but it is certainly worse than it should be, a sign of things to come for Jackson. It's bloated so full of plot and action that it ceases to mean much. The dinosaurs in the original film were more terrifying, the island more mysterious, the simple plot more engaging. I do prefer the cast of Jackson's remake--including King Kong himself--but it doesn't really help.

Oldboy: The Spike Lee film makes me angry like few other movies do. The original was amazing. A remake was unnecessary, but if you're going to do one, either do justice to the original or explore new themes worth pondering. The remake did neither, and just felt like an insult to the original.

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There are more examples, but those are the first that spring to mind.
 

Stitch

AKA Patrick
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Aug 13, 2013
I'm gonna make this short and simple: remakes have always been a part of the industry. A lot of movies that are today considered "great" were actually remakes (or rehashes) of other movies. I wouldn't be surprised if we looked at actual numbers, that remakes probably do about just as well as original movies do critically and at the box office.
 

Mamono101

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I don't think that they're inherently doomed to fail. The problem is they attempt to remake beloved films that have already heavily ingrained themselves into pop-culture and people often dislike change of any kind. Remakes often deviate from the original version of the film and when people are not expecting this deviation, it leads to problems. I know that I, myself, am part of that mentality.

Example Remakes That I Like
[SP][/SP]
  • The Omen
  • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
  • The Amityville Horror
  • Poseidon
  • The Producers
  • Reefer Madness
  • Victor/Victoria
  • Moulin Rouge!
  • Romeo+Juliet
  • Macbeth (2006)

I feel that all of those remakes either managed to stay true to the original movie or ended up making them better than the original—which is what I believe a remake should do. Unfortunately they don't always manage to get it right and this seems to happen the majority of the time. Changing characters' names or attempting to update the themes of the movies in order to modernise them is something that often falls flat. The original story and themes attached to a classic movie worked and became popular for a reason and when you begin messing around with them, the end result can be disastrous.

Example Remakes That I Dislike
[SP][/SP]
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
    [*]A Nightmare On Elm Street
    [*]Annie
    (The Disney Version)

The above are a few remakes I consider to be terrible. Not only was the story for some of them completely changed and butchered (I'm looking at you HHGTTG and Nightmare On Elm Street), but the movies themselves were far inferior to their original versions. This is why the quote unquote "classics", especially cult classics, should not be touched.

And then there are movies that have been remade that I won't go and see because I am too fond of the original such as:
[SP][/SP]
  • Fame
    [*]Footloose
    [*]The Karate Kid
    [*]The Last House On The Left (2009)
    [*]The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

I love every one of the films on that list and I don't want my memories of them tainted by what could potentially be a really poor remake of some of my favourites.

Finally, I severely dislike any foreign movie that has been remade simply to make it more accessible to an English speaking audience. A lot of the time the cultural elements in these movies particular to the country of origin are changed and localised, often butchering both the story and the theme of the movie in the process. In particular with remakes of Asian films, the main character and their reason for being in the Asian country has to be changed as they are a foreigner to that particular country. For movies that move the setting to America or Canada, this sets off a whole chain of changes that are made to the movie and often I feel the story suffers.

This includes movies such as:

  • The Ring
    [*]The Grudge
    [*]The Eye
    [*]One Missed Call
    [*]Let Me In
 
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Garo

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Let me really emphasize this. If you don't think there's such a thing as a good remake, watch the first two movies on this list. Watch the originals too if you can.

Good:

The Thing (1982): This, ladies and gentleman, is how it's done. Everything about this movie is top-notch. It's got visceral jump scares, an eerie atmosphere, psychological thrills, everything. It's one of the most terrifying movies of all time--not just for its gross-out factor, but for its intelligent stab at making the viewer feel paranoid for the characters in the film. The original is good, but it's not this good.

The Fly (1986): Another 80s gem. As with The Thing, the special effects steal the show. However, I also find Goldblum's portrayal of the main character, Brundle, sympathetic. Watching him undergo his transformation is heartbreaking, and it's something all of us can sympathize with--as we get older, we change, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and the process is rarely comfortable.

I actually love the original version of The Fly and it's not made obsolete by Cronenberg's re-imagining. Still, I feel the 1986 film improves on the original and uses its concept to explore different themes.

The thing that makes these two remakes great - along with the ones Mercedes mentioned, particularly Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven (2001) and Campbell's Casino Royale (2006), and a laundry list of others such as Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) - is that they are only remakes in the loosest sense of the word.

Questions like this should really ask what is meant by the term "remake" - a shot-for-shot duplication of a film is almost always going to fail, no matter how great the source material is. Gus Van Sant's Psycho in 1998 demonstrated this, and there's a very real reason for this: duplicating the same beats of a film is a rote, mechanical process that does not take into account small little moments of truth that arise on set. Film is a very volatile medium to create within; your actors are going to find little moments that neither the writer nor director thought of prior to that instant, and you need the freedom to adapt and capture those moments. A shot-for-shot remake, even with the same actors, will not have the flexibility necessary to bring out the discovered moments of truth, and will be demonstrably lesser than the original.

So a shot-for-shot remake, which is perhaps the most literal interpretation of the term, is right out. What, then, is a remake? Is it making another film with the same script? This has happened so few times (if at all) in the history of film that I think we can dismiss this possibility out of hand. Is it simply making another film from the same source material or using the same plot? The Coen Brothers, when writing/directing the 2011 film True Grit, insisted that their film was not a remake of the John Wayne original, but rather a separate, independent film that simply adapted the same source material. Both films are great films, unquestionably (my personal preference lies with the Coens' version). But what qualifies it as a remake or, as the Coens insist, a separate adaptation?

Ultimately the concept of remake is very ill-defined. It generally refers to a film that takes the basic premise of a prior film as its own, often borrowing the title (but not always - Scorsese's The Departed was a remake of a Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs) as well. But that leaves a lot of room. A film can take that basic premise and do wildly different things with it, or it can adhere very closely to that original premise.

I posit that the best remakes are in the former category - they borrow the basic skeleton of a prior film and do something novel with it. Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven turned the Rat Pack's caper film into a stylish 21st century heist film that hewed close to modern heist trends, glamorized white collar theft, and used an ensemble cast to its advantage. Martin Campbell's Casino Royale (often termed a "reboot," which is an even messier affair that we won't get into) used the skeleton of a James Bond film that had come before in order to deconstruct the Bond character and strip him down to his essential masculinity, and then tear at the seams thereof. John Carpenter took Howard Hawks' bizarrely against-type horror film and shoved his own unique style into it, creating yet another horror classic. David Cronenberg took the 1958 film The Fly and injected his pet topics of sexuality and body horror into it, creating a film that is perhaps the best example of his unique style (maybe Scanners has that title, but Fly is real close).

Good remakes do not simply remake, they reinterpret. A film that is remade without having something new to say - as many foreign films remade as American films often are - is rarely substantial, often feeling rote or obligatory. While Let Me In was a very serviceable horror film, it was not as good as its forbear, Let the Right One In. David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, however, in reinterpreting the source material that spawned the Swedish original films, managed to create a film that not only stands alongside the original, but by many accounts (mine included) supersedes it.

Remakes aren't a "mixed bag" or anything of the sort. Just like a wholly original film (if such a thing can be said to exist; all films are influenced by what comes before), the success or failure of a remake is going to come from the talent, creativity, and inspiration put into it. Plain and simple.
 

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