Possibly snobbish IDK

[tilly_stratford]

You know what make me ridiculously angry?

REMAKES. WHO THINKS REMAKES ARE A GOOD IDEA.

Nothing special brought this on, though a quick google certainly gave me more reasons to be angry (NOW WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF REMAKING A HITCHCOCK MOVIE. TELL ME.) Not just movies, but songs too. How many people think Madonna wrote 'American pie' eh? How many haven't even heard my favourite verse, the one about our generation lost in space and Satan on the podium?

Furthermore there is something implied about remakes that says "the original is rubbish and we want to improve it". Does that mean Michael Myers is considered a greater actor than Danny Kaye? Dude, The secret life of Walter Mitty already EXISTS, why spend all this money making a version that will be Kaye- and Karloff-less?

And I know I'm being a total hypocrite too, because without the new Star Trek movie I would never have gone "Hmm, interesting chara- HOLY SHIT UHURA WAS BLACK IN THE SIXTIES TOO AND THIS IS ALL AWESOME" and I'd never learn to love the original series.

But REMAKES BAH.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grayswandir_/]

IAWTP. I mean, if the original was actually horribly bad, then fine (though I can't actually think of any examples where a horrible movie has been remade into a good one), but otherwise, what the heck is the point?

One exception I have to this rule is if the original itself was an adaptation of another work. Like, I don't care if they keep on making new movies about Romeo and Juliet, or Dracula, or The Hound of the Baskervilles. I guess because those don't feel like they're supposed to replace the originals, but just to stand as different interpretations of the originals.

On the other hand, your post has made me aware that I should probably see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, because yay Karloff. :D So, I don't know. Hypocrisy, whee!

[tilly-stratford.livejournal.com]

Yeah, book adaptions are different. They can keep doing that and bring new things to the table, I don't mind. Though I am a little annoyed with all the graphic novel adaptions recently (not including superhero movies, those are great fun if done right) - there's this need to adapt every single work Alan Moore has ever made, what's the use in that when they're pretty much studies in how the comic book format is different to cinema? Though again, there's a lot of graphic novels/comics I wouldn't have picked up if Hollywood hadn't brought it to my attention.

I have this idea though; wouldn't it be fun if Hollywood started doing remakes of movies that don't exist anymore? A lot of celebrated silent movies were lost sixty, seventy, eighty years ago and there's seldom a script left, only some general plot points and maybe a scene or two. We could do remakes and try to get as close as possible to the original product, only with modern effects and obviously colours and sound. Theda Bara's lost movie catalogue, remade!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grayswandir_/]

wouldn't it be fun if Hollywood started doing remakes of movies that don't exist anymore?

Now that would be interesting. It's too bad nobody's doing it; it seems like these days Hollywood is so short on plots that all they can do is remakes and sequels. :P Trying to recreate lost films sounds like it would be a really fun project for anyone who's into old movies.

I was also thinking recently that it would be neat if somebody could create a really good modern silent movie. I was trying to think what kind of film you could make where stylistically it would make sense to do it silent, and wondering how you'd keep a modern audience engaged without sound (or with only a score, anyway). It would be hard to do, but I think it could be really cool. For that, though, you'd definitely need a new story and not a remake of an already-awesome silent film.

[fyrdrakken]

Space leaps obviously to mind -- the utter lack of sound in the void. If you could get some filmmakers willing to go against audience expectations of sound effects, you could show a space traveller (probably a lone one, to eliminate dialogue) carrying out some mission or just day-to-day life.

[shadowgardens.livejournal.com]

I can understand where you're coming from, because the remakes are usually shallow and take away the elements that made them work in the first place. And Hitchcock... I can't think of a single director that could accurately portrayl Hitchcock's creepy atmosphere and terror. His movies are still creepy today, so why not just rerelease them.

But I also kind of disagree. I would be honored to have someone remake my music(If I made music lol). I love hearing a new artists take on a song! The different the better. Unless it's just sampling which is lame.

But I like horror and scifi remakes too, because they bring new light to characters and sometimes improve them or add more special effects. I think the genre is on it's on though. Because regular comedy/drama/romance movies remade are almost always SUCKTASTIC. I was thinking the other day of the remake of The Goodbye Girl and how they took the first's charm and stomped on it 'til it died.

[tilly-stratford.livejournal.com]

Well true, I think differently about music in most cases. As long as you're trying to do something new, it's awesome! Hell, I'm a huge Queen fan, and still I absolutely love The Braid's R'n'B version of 'Bohemian rhapsody' (which you would think would be an impossible act to follow) because it's so completely mind-blowingly different.

But to just release a version that sounds like a poor karaoke attempt and hope that people will throw money your way - that's sort of pathetic.

[shadowgardens.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's irritating to no end. It shows lack of creativity on your part and is just plain boring.

[fyrdrakken]

See, yeah, I get where you're coming from about lack of creativity in Hollywood -- but then, most of the major studio execs don't want anything genuinely new, they want something familiar with a slightly new spin so they think they can predict the audience reaction and get a "sure thing." And multiple retellings of the same story are fairly valid, whether the original tale came from a different medium and may be centuries old or is a movie from a generation or two ago. If there's a new spin to be brought, it's worth trying again.

What really irritates me, though, is the way Hollywood likes to remake foreign films and TV series -- invariably missing much of the point of what made the original versions good in the first place and stripping away the more interesting bits. Assuming American audiences won't tolerate subtitles (or British accents, a more difficult claim to make -- I'm afraid I've actually heard a couple of people coming to a theater to see a French movie changing their minds when the ticket seller warned them it was subtitled), assuming we don't want to see glimpses of how anyone else in the world lives and thinks, assuming we need to have all our entertainment sanitized and Americanized before we'll want it. Which is basically how Americans are able to go about their lives assuming we're the most important people in the world and everyone else wants to be us and nowhere else is at all worth living in or thinking about -- because we rarely get a chance to see otherwise.