My Beef With Remakes

Does my non-existant fanbase remember that time I ranted about sequels?

I seem to recall promising a post about remakes at some point, right? Of course I'm right; I'm just humoring you. Anyway! How I feel about remakes is sort of similar to how I feel about sequels, so that should make for a shorter post. Lucky you, non-existant reader! Okay then. Let's crack this topic open, shall we?

The first thing to ask yourself when dealing with a remake

Is is necessary? Here's what commonly happens with remakes. Filmakers look at the old movie and play it safe by simply rebooting it with up-to-date special effects. That's what I'm against. What's the point of doing that? If you want to expand on a movie, by all means, I'd rather see a sequel than a fucking remake, i.e. the same movie again. Why should I go to the theatre to see a movie I've already seen? It's one thing when doing a remake to borrow from the original, in fact there are a few cases where remakes suffer from being too drastically different from the original.

Ahem

But of course, I'm probably making no sense at all, so I'll go and fetch an example of both for you.

You've seen this movie right? The Thing From Another World, or just The Thing released in 1951 is a movie about explorers at the North Pole who discover alien life. It's based on the book Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr. published in 1938 (there's some trivia for ya). It's a great movie. That acting is top notch and it's suspenseful despite not being the most original idea. Just over 30 years later, John Carpenter blesses the human race with:

Now, if you haven't seen this movie and you're reading my blog, you're making a mistake. Promptly turn off your computer, find this film and prepare your nerves for what the tagline promises. This is the quintessential well-done remake. This movie is everything I want to see in a remake. John Carpenter had a lot of respect for the original movie, and while this isn't technically a remake, I don't give a shit, I'm going to call it one because it uses the same name. Unlike the first film, this one is much more true to the novel. The beast, rather than plodding along, aimlessly, hides inside it's victims before horrifically revealing itself in top-of-the-line, show-stopping special effects. Keep in mind while you're watching it that everything you see on screen was captured directly on camera. A sort of dying art, if you ask me, but that's for another time. After seeing this movie, I never thought I'd see another one, but sure enough...

I honestly couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this poster. How could this be? I'll admit, the trailer blew my mind and I thought it was a decent film at best, but still, why even make this? Of course, this producer is obsessed with remakes. As you may have noticed above the title, he is responsible for the Dawn of the Dead remake (which was actually not bad) along with classics such as Slither, The Last Exorcism, Bring it on Again (really?) and the soon-to-arrive Robocop remake.

Why, God, why?

This movie is the quintessential bad remake. All it is, is a total reboot of the 1982 version. And who expected it not to be? It's not like it couldn't of been. Of course it isn't technically a remake of the 1982 version... dammit, I didn't want to get technical like this but, I'll explain what I'm talking about. The 1982 version, The Thing is technically a sequel to the first. They find footage from the first expedition which was what the first movie was about, and the first infected host is from the first expedition as well. Now, the 2011 The Thing remake is not actually a remake of the 1982 The Thing, but rather a prequel and is technically a remake of the 1951 The Thing instead. This would all be a whole lot fucking easier to wrap my head around if they weren't all titled the same fucking thing. Speaking of which, I should take a moment to say that I was very much against naming the 2011 version of The Thing, 'The Thing.' Why name it something that's been used twice? It works for the '82 version seeing as how that was the first remake but for this one it just complicates things. Why not call it Who Goes There after the original novel? That's a hell of a lot creepier than The Thing. But I'm getting way off topic here. The point is... what was the point again? Oh, right! This movie has no purpose to exist. All it did was take the '82 movie and give it CGI which, in my humble opinion, actually looks worse than the '82 version which had no such crutch.

See that? I think that may actually be good. The first one by now, does feel pretty dated. My hope is, and I know that it won't be like this but, that it won't be a total reboot. Maybe have the classic "WOLVERINES" or the "AVENGE ME!" scenes, but I don't want to see Red Dawn rebooted.

I think something should also be said for time limits on remakes. Why remake a movie that only just came out? Case in point:

And

But, hey, I'm going to let this one off the hook. After all, it met every other thing I've been talking about on this list. It was new! In fact it was better than the original! The only complaint is what a slap in the face it was to the people who worked on the first one. I do understand why it was made, Marvel trying to set the record straight after the first 3 Spidermans fucked up the series' continuity. But that cannot be said for:

And

Now, I'm pretty harsh with romantic comedies and how they're always the same but seriously, these two movies are the exact same thing. So close to being the same, in fact, that I think it's fair to call Friends With Benefits a remake of No Strings Attached. If you don't believe me, seriously, just look at the tagline for No Strings Attached, or go ahead and watch them for yourself (I don't recommend doing that). These came out literally, within months of each other. How did we let this happen? Did people forget that they only just saw this movie? I'm utterly dumbfounded! And worst of all, they were both complete successes! So, good fucking job, humanity, you may as well just bend over and ask Hollywood to fuck you because you just told them that that works.

Humanity is Cartman now.

Trying to wrap all this up

Remakes should only exist to expand upon or fix up a dated film. They so often rather than introduce the old film to a new audience, cause a new generation to forget about the classics and further dig itself into the CG-loving, creativity-hating hole that it's in. Remakes are worse than sequels because there's even less imagination going on. At the very least, a sequel is a new plot, but a remake is just the same thing twice. They're the last downfall of creativity in cinema. Like I said, I don't always hate remakes, I just think there's a limit on what can/should be remade.