Saturday, June 21, 2014
To Be or Not To Be... A Remake.: To Be or Not To Be a Remake...It's actually a ques...
To Be or Not To Be... A Remake.: To Be or Not To Be a Remake...It's actually a ques...: Remakes are nothing new in Hollywood. They've been part and parcel as far as the movie-making business goes FOREVER and almost from the...
To Be or Not To Be a Remake...It's actually a question. I swear!
Remakes are nothing new in Hollywood. They've been part and parcel as far as the movie-making business goes FOREVER and almost from the beginning of the medium as a popular form of mass entertainment. Did you know that Ben Hurr was a remake? Well, it was. Anyway, in the 80's the first big boom of Hollywood remakes started being churned out with titles like D.O.A., The Blob, The Fly, The Thing, and From Here to Eternity just to name a few. We even got one notable big-screen television show remake with Dragnet.
The 90's didn't have as many classic movies being remade, but rather seemed more focused on pointless remakes of old television shows. We had Leave It To Beaver, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hill-Billies, and Dennis the Menace. These were all terrible and most of them thankfully failed financially and critically...Well, except that Flintstones movie. Somehow that thing made a fortune, and I'm sure to this day you'll find some nostalgia goggle wearing fan-boy still convinced that it was quality entertainment, but whatever. Some people like classical music, some people like Rock and Roll, and some people like total shit. We did get a big budget, big screen version of The Fugitive and despite the complete pointlessness of it even existing on any level that movie is a masterwork of the action-thriller genre and it still holds up to this day. A near perfect movie regardless of where it's source of creation came from. Anyway, the 90's did usher in some notable big name movie remakes that got some ink such as Psycho(yes, the Jesus Christ of cinema actually had one of his most popular movies remade), Mighty Joe Young, Body Snatchers(which was already remade to great effect in the 70's under it's full title of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), The Little Rascals, 101 Dalmatians(Ooo, it was live-action this time! Very innovative), Flubber, Steven Spielberg's Always(it's a remake. Look it up. Don't make me do all the work. Geez), and even a television mini-series remake of The Shining(a remake of Kubrick, another cinematic Christ figure to many malcontent basement-dwellers). So, there were a few before the 2000's studied, reproduced, and tried and true EXPLOSION of remakes came down the pipe.
Once again Hollywood can thank the Horror genre for providing them cheap fodder to churn out while gaining big profits. In the early 2000's we got two remakes of movies that many, especially hardcore horror fans, deemed untouchable: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead. Both were made for pennies by Hollywood studio standards and both made A LOT of money. So, some smart suit-wearing chap, who just the previous month was in charge of marketing soft drinks, got the bright idea, after many minutes of polling and number-crunching, that remaking horror movies for cheap is the best way to make quick cash. The remakes already have name-brand recognition, so half the marketing job is done for you, and they don't cost much to make. These movies only have to be successful for two weeks and you're rich! We started importing foreign movies to remake(The Ring, The Grudge, Shutter) and dipped deep into the well of horror-fan-boy love affair movies like The Fog, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hitcher, April Fool's Day, Friday the 13th, The Step Father, Prom Night, Piranha, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left... and the list could go on forever at this point with no signs of slowing down well over a decade later. It's not just horror that got the remake treatment. Alice in Wonderland, Planet of the Apes(TWICE), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Endless Love(!), About Last Night, The Mechanic, Jack Ryan stories(TWICE), and Spider-Man. The point is remakes now are officially good for business and they will never end for quite some time.
Now to my main question: Does something based on previously published material(like a book, comic book, television show, etc) count as a remake? I mean, nobody called Kenneth Branaugh's version of Hamlet a remake of the Zefferrelli Hamlet and that Hamlet a remake of the Laurence Olivier version, right? What about Dracula or Frankenstein? Is the Bella Lugosi Todd Browning directed Dracula really the movie everyone who has ever had a character called Dracula remaking? Well, if that's true then technically Bella Lugosi Dracula is a remake of Nosferatu. Personally, I don't consider John Carpenter's The Thing a remake of The Thing From Another World or David Cronenberg's The Fly a remake of the Vincent Price picture. Both original movies were based on short stories. John Carpenter's film is closer in tone and in creature description to the short story Who Goes There? than the Howard Hawk's movie is. Any of you read the short story that inspired The Fly? I have and it's not very good. The first movie is very good and fun. The Cronenberg movie is a masterpiece of sci-fi and horror, and it's better than the initial movie and the short story on all accounts. The bottom line is, despite some references to the films they are supposedly remakes of(in Carpenter's film the opening title credit is almost identical to the original movie, and Cronenberg knowingly has a line of dialogue, "Be afraid, be very afraid", as a reference to the earlier film) they are not inspired by or even trying to be similar to the original movies. This is why I don't consider things that are based on previously published material remakes if a movie already came before it that adapted the same material. I don't consider Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy a remake or even inspired by the Tim Burton Batman. At all.
So, when the new Carrie came out I was a bit miffed when people kept calling it a remake. Carrie was a book first. Why would you remake a very good De Palma directed horror movie from the 70's when you have an excellent source novel? Especially in the modern climate where bullying is talked about constantly. Well, that was until I sat down and watched the new Carrie. It was, despite being based on a book, a remake of the previous movie. It had the same structure, some of the same dialogue, and almost the same running time! Sure, they did take more of the tone of the book as opposed to the trademark De Palma over the top operatic style, and his very funny and biting black humor(to this day so-called 'fans' of Carrie don't realize that Piper Laurie's performance is supposed to be a bit funny, and is in no way realistic). The Margaret White in the new Carrie is much closer to what I envisioned while reading King's novel. Very real, very fucked up, and very unsettling and a bit tragic. So, despite my new rule about what counts as a remake, it HAS TO come with caveats thanks to movies like Carrie and the Total Recall film. Total Recall, another movie I thought would take more from the source story, but NOPE, it's a remake without Arnold. Same story. Same beats. Same outcome. Same YAAAAAAWN from me. To me if you're going to remake something that's based on a source material that's not a movie why wouldn't you cull that source material for new angles or to include something new or interesting that the previous adaption didn't for whatever reason? A movie like Casino Royale is a brilliant example, and a really rare one, of filmmakers taking more from the source material and leaving most of the built in movie tropes and mythology. And what was Casino Royale? A big friggin' hit that brought James Bond back to life! So, playing it safe, despite what your polling and marketing tells you, isn't mutually exclusive to re-inventing an old property.
So, what do you think? Am I crazy? Is it still fair to consider something that was based on previously published material in another medium a remake if one group of filmmakers already adapted it? If yes, then where do Frankenstein, Dracula, and ANYTHING adapted from Shakespeare fall? It's tricky. I'm not into buzz-words, so I like to make things more complicated. It's a burden.
The 90's didn't have as many classic movies being remade, but rather seemed more focused on pointless remakes of old television shows. We had Leave It To Beaver, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hill-Billies, and Dennis the Menace. These were all terrible and most of them thankfully failed financially and critically...Well, except that Flintstones movie. Somehow that thing made a fortune, and I'm sure to this day you'll find some nostalgia goggle wearing fan-boy still convinced that it was quality entertainment, but whatever. Some people like classical music, some people like Rock and Roll, and some people like total shit. We did get a big budget, big screen version of The Fugitive and despite the complete pointlessness of it even existing on any level that movie is a masterwork of the action-thriller genre and it still holds up to this day. A near perfect movie regardless of where it's source of creation came from. Anyway, the 90's did usher in some notable big name movie remakes that got some ink such as Psycho(yes, the Jesus Christ of cinema actually had one of his most popular movies remade), Mighty Joe Young, Body Snatchers(which was already remade to great effect in the 70's under it's full title of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), The Little Rascals, 101 Dalmatians(Ooo, it was live-action this time! Very innovative), Flubber, Steven Spielberg's Always(it's a remake. Look it up. Don't make me do all the work. Geez), and even a television mini-series remake of The Shining(a remake of Kubrick, another cinematic Christ figure to many malcontent basement-dwellers). So, there were a few before the 2000's studied, reproduced, and tried and true EXPLOSION of remakes came down the pipe.
Once again Hollywood can thank the Horror genre for providing them cheap fodder to churn out while gaining big profits. In the early 2000's we got two remakes of movies that many, especially hardcore horror fans, deemed untouchable: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead. Both were made for pennies by Hollywood studio standards and both made A LOT of money. So, some smart suit-wearing chap, who just the previous month was in charge of marketing soft drinks, got the bright idea, after many minutes of polling and number-crunching, that remaking horror movies for cheap is the best way to make quick cash. The remakes already have name-brand recognition, so half the marketing job is done for you, and they don't cost much to make. These movies only have to be successful for two weeks and you're rich! We started importing foreign movies to remake(The Ring, The Grudge, Shutter) and dipped deep into the well of horror-fan-boy love affair movies like The Fog, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hitcher, April Fool's Day, Friday the 13th, The Step Father, Prom Night, Piranha, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left... and the list could go on forever at this point with no signs of slowing down well over a decade later. It's not just horror that got the remake treatment. Alice in Wonderland, Planet of the Apes(TWICE), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Endless Love(!), About Last Night, The Mechanic, Jack Ryan stories(TWICE), and Spider-Man. The point is remakes now are officially good for business and they will never end for quite some time.
Now to my main question: Does something based on previously published material(like a book, comic book, television show, etc) count as a remake? I mean, nobody called Kenneth Branaugh's version of Hamlet a remake of the Zefferrelli Hamlet and that Hamlet a remake of the Laurence Olivier version, right? What about Dracula or Frankenstein? Is the Bella Lugosi Todd Browning directed Dracula really the movie everyone who has ever had a character called Dracula remaking? Well, if that's true then technically Bella Lugosi Dracula is a remake of Nosferatu. Personally, I don't consider John Carpenter's The Thing a remake of The Thing From Another World or David Cronenberg's The Fly a remake of the Vincent Price picture. Both original movies were based on short stories. John Carpenter's film is closer in tone and in creature description to the short story Who Goes There? than the Howard Hawk's movie is. Any of you read the short story that inspired The Fly? I have and it's not very good. The first movie is very good and fun. The Cronenberg movie is a masterpiece of sci-fi and horror, and it's better than the initial movie and the short story on all accounts. The bottom line is, despite some references to the films they are supposedly remakes of(in Carpenter's film the opening title credit is almost identical to the original movie, and Cronenberg knowingly has a line of dialogue, "Be afraid, be very afraid", as a reference to the earlier film) they are not inspired by or even trying to be similar to the original movies. This is why I don't consider things that are based on previously published material remakes if a movie already came before it that adapted the same material. I don't consider Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy a remake or even inspired by the Tim Burton Batman. At all.
So, when the new Carrie came out I was a bit miffed when people kept calling it a remake. Carrie was a book first. Why would you remake a very good De Palma directed horror movie from the 70's when you have an excellent source novel? Especially in the modern climate where bullying is talked about constantly. Well, that was until I sat down and watched the new Carrie. It was, despite being based on a book, a remake of the previous movie. It had the same structure, some of the same dialogue, and almost the same running time! Sure, they did take more of the tone of the book as opposed to the trademark De Palma over the top operatic style, and his very funny and biting black humor(to this day so-called 'fans' of Carrie don't realize that Piper Laurie's performance is supposed to be a bit funny, and is in no way realistic). The Margaret White in the new Carrie is much closer to what I envisioned while reading King's novel. Very real, very fucked up, and very unsettling and a bit tragic. So, despite my new rule about what counts as a remake, it HAS TO come with caveats thanks to movies like Carrie and the Total Recall film. Total Recall, another movie I thought would take more from the source story, but NOPE, it's a remake without Arnold. Same story. Same beats. Same outcome. Same YAAAAAAWN from me. To me if you're going to remake something that's based on a source material that's not a movie why wouldn't you cull that source material for new angles or to include something new or interesting that the previous adaption didn't for whatever reason? A movie like Casino Royale is a brilliant example, and a really rare one, of filmmakers taking more from the source material and leaving most of the built in movie tropes and mythology. And what was Casino Royale? A big friggin' hit that brought James Bond back to life! So, playing it safe, despite what your polling and marketing tells you, isn't mutually exclusive to re-inventing an old property.
So, what do you think? Am I crazy? Is it still fair to consider something that was based on previously published material in another medium a remake if one group of filmmakers already adapted it? If yes, then where do Frankenstein, Dracula, and ANYTHING adapted from Shakespeare fall? It's tricky. I'm not into buzz-words, so I like to make things more complicated. It's a burden.
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