by Joe
It seems like every summer all we get
are sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes. Sure, occasionally we'll
get an Inception thrown our
way, but that's the rarity. The studios still choose to believe
original movies are too much of a risk, while rehashes are the sure
bets (and sadly they're right. Look at The Avengers and
The Dark Knight Rises,
the two highest grossing movies of 2012). I'm here to talk about the
remake: Or, Hollywood's laziest option. Like any movie category or
genre, there are good ones, bad ones, and mediocre ones. In my mind,
if you do a remake it should be an improvement on the original
(effects, character, and/or otherwise). So to make a bad remake you
just have to simply copy the original. We're looking for people who
chose to recreate and revise. So what's what? you ask. Well, let's
dive way too far into this.
Bad Ones:
Making a bad remake is easy because all you have to do is be lazy.
Gus Van Sant did a shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
The thing is, though, Psycho didn't need any improvement. That
movie is near-perfect, hence the confusion.
Adding more masturbation
wasn't going to add anything to Norman Bates as a character that we
didn't already know (and that's all the movie really did). Van Sant
has said he made the movie he did to prevent someone from doing an
even worse remake. But here's the kicker: this was as bad as it was
going to get. If someone else tried to add to the Psycho
tradition (and failed), at least we could say they tried.
The Thing
(2011) was a missed opportunity. I'm going to get it out of the way
and tell you that I did enjoy the movie, but nonetheless, missed
chance at something bigger and better. They marketed the movie as a
maybe-remake, maybe-prequel.
Turns out they were going to prequel.
The sad part is they made a straight remake, with a lazy attempt to
connect it to the 1982 John Carpenter classic. They had an
opportunity to explore this bigger story and show us more, but
instead opted to go with the safe rehash.
The Nightmare
on Elm Street (2010) tried, and
failed so miserably it's not even funny. My friend Mark just kept
screaming “Fuck you!” at the screen throughout the duration of
the movie. It was bad enough that he was trying to hurt its feelings.
They dropped the ball so hard that no one even knows where the ball
is, probably buried beneath all the layers of Earth. They went with
trying to give us more of a back story to Freddy Krueger to get him to
be a more sympathetic character. Only, in doing this they made all
the supporting characters way too flat, and Freddy less than
realistic (especially with the embarrassingly bad make-up).
So essentially, the key to a bad remake is the failure to bring
anything new or interesting to the story.
Re-Imagining:
This comes when filmmakers take a source material and adapt it again.
We saw it with Let the Right One In, based on the novel by
John Ajvide Lindqvist of the same name, when they “American-ized”
it with Let Me In. They cater to the culture with these
remakes. These seem unnecessary at times, and it makes the English
speaking population look lazy for their lack of enthusiasm for
reading subtitles, but there have been successes, like the one
mentioned above.
We can also look at Vanilla Sky (Abre Los Ojos),
Solaris (Solyaris), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
The Departed (Infernal Affairs) and the upcoming Old
Boy (Oldboy). I haven't seen any of the originals
here—except the last on the list—and I probably wouldn't know
they existed if it wasn't for the English-speaking versions. The
movies above are all solid, strong, and enjoyable (in the aesthetic
sense of the word). They key is to get ballsy directors who won't
compromise, out of fear or a want of being accepted. Studios don't
want to alienate the “more sensitive” American movie-goer, but
Crowe, Soderbergh, Fincher, Scorsese, and Lee don't want to make a
shitty movie. And they're big enough names with the talent to demand
the freedom from being forced to water down their flicks. If you want
a successful re-imaging, you need to get a strong, visionary director
who isn't afraid to offend.
Note: I'm not even going to go into Burton's Alice in Wonderland
or Raimi's Oz, the Great and Powerful because these are
bullshit fake sequels/remakes. But they would fall into this
category.
Getting
Creative:
Akira Kurosawa was putting out great samurai flicks like Yojimbo,
Seven Samurai and Sanjuro. Most of these movies involved
badasses coming out of the woodwork and fucking shit up. Samurais
would mess with the locals and use corruption to their advantage.
Sound familiar? Like Westerns? Guy like Sergio Leone took the basic
plot or concept and reworking it into a different genre. Seven
Samurai became The Magnificent Seven. Yojimbo turned into
A Fistful of Dollars (later to be remade again as Last Man
Standing). This falls in line with doing remakes correctly
because it's not a straight copy, but rather the directors and actors
have changed the setting enough to successfully steal the original's
basic idea with the end result of making it their own.
Then again, it also comes down to whether you're making a good movie.
Vantage Point, for example, is terrible. They took a
bare-bones idea that we've seen recreated again and again. It's the
multiple first person perspective, so we see the same even over and
over from different (DUN DUN DUUHHH!) vantage point. The first time I
saw this was in Kuroawa's Rashomon (1950).
Run Lola Run
pulled it off as a fast-paced action movie. It's Always Sunny in
Philadelphia did it as a comedy in the “Who Pooped the Bed”
episode. Before movies, you can get a good taste of it in Faulkner's
As I Lay Dying. At this point in time it's not so much a
remake as it's a recycled “Ugh, this multiple perspective bullshit,
again?” But Rashomon is a masterpiece. Watch it right now.
Lastly, we've got the more obscure remakes buried under piles of
raunchy shit comedy. These are so far disconnected from the original
source that the filmmakers are trying to gather a whole new audience
(even thought they'd probably hate them anyway). I'm talking about
Out Cold as a thinly veiled Casablanca.
“Damn it,
Sam! I told you never to play that song again! (So turn Weezer's
“Island in the Sun” off!). And there is how
Old School is
a comedic remake of
Fight Club. But that's already been
discussed in depth, so we won't go into that.
Good Ones:
Guidelines to merely improve is difficult to follow because it's so
broad. But at the same time, it's so broad that there is a lot of
options to choose from. We see an updated setting in the Ocean's
movies. Soderbergh assembled a cast of modern day Rat Pack with
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and others.
They took the idea
of a heist team and plopped it into the current state of Las Vegas,
making a whole new set of great movies. A lot of people these days
don't realize these movies are remakes, which is a sign you're on the
right track (especially since they made a great trilogy [and I'm
thinking I made a mistake a couple weeks ago when I didn't include
this on my list]). I (shamefully) have never seen the original
Ocean's 11. But at the same time, I don't feel like I need to
because I have these new and improved updated one. They've done
something right in building their own expansive fan base on a
borrowed premise. It shows that they have made movies they can truly
call their own.
You can look to True Grit (2010) by the Coen brothers. A lot
of John Wayne fans came out to see the updated flick, and a lot of
them were more than disappointed in what the brothers put out. I, on
the other hand, loved Jeff Bridges mumbling gibberish more than
Wayne's western drawl.
You could call this a re-imaging since it was
based on a novel, but the 1969 movie has such a strong hold in the
world of film that the new one comes off as a straight remake. The
Coen brothers have such a strong voice they were able to put their
personal stamp on it.
The Fly (1986)
is a great example of updating for technology. The original was in
black and white and suffered from the lack at really being able to
gross the audience out. That's why it was so nice to see a man like
David Cronenberg come along and really squeeze all the possible pus
blisters out of this movie.
Then
we get to the (possible) best remake ever done, Rob Zombie's
Halloween. Here is an
example where they took every aspect of the original and elevate the
quality. The story of Michael Myers was developed more, making the
movie as a whole more engaging and scarier. The gore was upped and
made more realistic, again making the audience feel the terror even
more. The actors did a better job, as there was more growth in all
the players across the board.
The key to making this the most
successful remake, though, was getting Rob Zombie to write and direct
the flick. They got a bright guy who loves and understands horror
movies to redo a classic one. A true filmmaker, if you will. Zombie
upped the story and used camera techniques to tell a better story. He
used shaky-cam for the first act, steady-cam for the second, and
dolly tracking for the third bloody act. This creates an embedded
subconscious feeling in the viewer. Zombie was the perfect pick to
make this original homage.
Now, my
top/bottom five:
Top:
Honorable
mention- Cape Fear
Ocean's 11
Let Me In
The Fly
The Departed
Halloween
Bottom:
Wicker Man
Total Recall
Planet of the Apes
The Nightmare on Elm Street
Psycho
