Memo To Hollywood: Rip-Off, Don't Remake

With news of another CJ7 and Masi Oka's new Defenders coming on the heels of the (relative) failure of Terminator Salvation and (complete) failure of Land Of The Lost, we're left wondering: Are stealth reboots are the way to go?

Maybe we're jumping to conclusions. After all, Star Trek shows that audiences clearly don't have a problem with every franchise makeover that offers itself to them on a CGI-laden, lens-flared platter.

But we couldn't help but notice that Masi Oka's new project about videogamers who end up saving the world after it turns out that the game is more than just a game is oddly reminiscent of 1984 movie The Last Starfighter (in which a video-gamer saves the universe after it turns out that the game is more than just a game) in the same way that Stephen Chow's cute alien movie is "reminiscent" of ET (Oh, wait; he admitted that that was a rip-off). While it's arguably true that there are no new stories anymore, the similarities between these "new" movies and the 1980s originals have gotten us wondering whether ripping off cult favorites is the way forward for Hollywood's nostalgia-struck executives.

Think about it: With all the sequels, remakes and adaptations of much-beloved comics and television shows that make up the summer blockbuster slate these days, it'd be too much to ask for some genuine originality from anyone other than the animators - and, worse, we could end up with something worse than G-Force if they tried - but remaking movies with the serial numbers filed off gives moviemakers the chance to indulge their desire to relive their childhoods without risking the wrath of fans of the same childhood shows, movies and comics they want to revisit. Sure, you lose the brand recognition, but that's a double-edged sword these days: Who's to say that Terminator Salvation wouldn't have been more successful if it hadn't had the weight of the first two movies on its celluloid shoulders?

I'm not suggesting that we wish for a world where everything is Transmorphers instead of Transformers, but I can't help but wonder whether Defenders and CJ7 point to a new middle ground that would allow everyone to keep their sacred cows idealized in memory yet relive them in new forms, unencumbered by expectation, preconception and nostalgia. Put it this way: You don't want to watch a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie without Joss Whedon, but would you be that against a new movie about a teenage girl fighting monsters if she had a different name? - Graeme McMillan

Let it be...

After reading an interesting piece on where the film industry is going, I did a little research and complied a list of all the green-lit remakes. Aside from the little frustration of having to see remake after remake done over the past few years and sequel after sequel, I’m getting a little tired, but the MAIN complaint I have is that not only do some of the films not translate (timely or regionally) but they also take away from what made them so special. Not that all the following films were great in their original form, but remaking a film is like remaking a memory.

Several studies have shown that one of the reasons we rewatch movies is because as humans we have a natural inclination to re-experience times and events we like. We rewatch movies because we know that memory is going to be EXACTLY the same each time. Now, we seem to be steadily moving away from a memory culture into a storyteller culture. Like an old tale passed down from generation to generation, elements of the tales will change. Characters will change, locations will change, motivations will change, tone will change; all of these things will change when a different storyteller gets their hands on it. I’m not saying its necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.

Imagine “Jaws” or “Alien” being remade today; it couldn’t happen. We’ve been exposed to more special effects monsters than H.P. Lovecraft could ever dream. We’re no longer exposed to the fear of the unknown. We hadn’t seen a killer shark before, or an alien, and even in the films themselves we barely saw them. The film was built around atmosphere and characters. I remember my Uncle Buddy telling me when he first saw Godzilla. He was just a young kid at the time. When Godzilla (which we would now consider to be merely a Halloween Costume) popped his head over that mountaintop for the first time, the audience went nuts. People had to leave because of how horrifying it seemed. It was THE FIRST time something like this happened to us as a culture.

In my opinion, that’s what makes a great film. Yes, I understand and appreciate the need for mindless popcorn films, sometimes you just want to watch things blow up and look at awesome battles. There will always be remakes, and definitely retellings; our screen writing teachers told us there are only 28 storylines after all.

Films being remade soon:

The Thing
Karate Kid
Fame
Videodrome
Drop Dead Fred
The Gate
The Evil Dead
The Mechanic
It
Old Boy
Battle Royale
Angel Heart
The Warriors
They Live
The Crow
Red Dawn
Time Cop
District B13
The Host
The Lives of Others (don’t even get me started)
Short Circuit
Red Sonja
Footloose
Top Gun
The Witches

Just let it be, Hollywood. Let it be.

Enough with the remakes. PLEASE.

Universal announced that its going remake Videodrome.

“Why?” is my first , second and third thought to comes to mind after learning that Universal Pictures is going to remake David Cronenberg’s 1983 sci-fi horror film Videodrome. What’s the point? The original film is a cult hit, considered one of the weirdest films of all time, and let’s not forget, the tenth most sampled film in music. An update with someone other than Cronenberg at the helm will most likely result in a generic Hollywood sci-fi horror film, and nothing more. Oh, and did we mention that Cronenberg is not involved in the movie at this point?

Ehren Kruger has been hired to write the screenplay, which will modernize the concept, and according to Variety, “infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller.” Kruger is probably best known as the screenwriter who wrote the American remake of The Ring. His filmography is filled with a lot crappier films, including Scream 3, Reindeer Games, Imposter, The Ring Two, The Skeleton Key, The Brothers Grimm and Blood and Chocolate. We could point out the many reasons why Kruger is probably not the right guy to write a remake of Videodrome, but I think that would be far too obvious.- From /Film