by Brian.


Remakes are both the smartest business decision and biggest insult that the cinema has ever received. While the warped mind of a front-office executive views the idea of a remake as a solid business venture (it made money the first time, why not have it make money again?), to anyone that views film as a form of artistic expression, remakes are murder. Not only do they discourage audiences from exploring the wealth of older films, they disgrace the art form by lowering the canvas to that of sheer mimicry. The unfortunate result is that either these current filmmakers get undeserved credit for piggybacking a real film and calling it their own, or the entire industry gets blamed for a lack of originality. While the occasional remake pays off (Ben-Hur both times, The Maltese Falcon on its third try), making a worthwhile gamble for financiers, the overwhelming majority begs to be undone; exchanging time lost in the theater for free rentals at Blockbuster instead.

Shop Around the Corner, Night of the Living Dead, The Mummy, The Blob, The Haunting, Sweet November, Jules and Jim, Gone in 60 Seconds, Bedazzled, Father of the Bride, too many classic film noirs, and yes, Planet of the Apes should never have been touched. Although some of these films weren't great films, in the very least they had originality on their side. What happens when these films get remade? Inevitably today's Hollywood can't step up to the Dream Factory forefather of yesteryear, yielding a mediocre performance of material done better elsewhere. What appalls me most about these remakes are the chosen source materials. When you take on a remake of the Audrey Hepburn/Humphrey Bogart/William Holden picture Sabrina directed by Billy Wilder, where can you possibly take it? Did Wilder miss prime territory in his screenplay that you feel you can cover with greater skill?

This trend amazes me to no end. No offense to Mr. Pollack, but he's no Billy Wilder. No offense to Mr. Savini, but he's better suited as a make-up artist than a director. In great hopes of offense, Jan de Bont you are not Robert Wise, you are not even a motion picture director. You are a cameraman! And not even a good one! ACCEPT IT! How can these people think they can one-up Hollywood's legendary directors? The best evidence of this apocryphal mindset is the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. Maurice Elvey's The Lodger, Tommy Lee Wallace's Strangers on a Train, Jeff Beckner's Rear Window, and Gus Van Sant's Psycho (HAH!). They all have such a ring to them don't they? Certainly, with such big names attached, these remakes would surpass the slipshod antics of old Hitch, who is nothing more than a silhouette and a TV persona. There are plenty of bad movies out there, some with good stories executed poorly. If we must remake, why not update these? Too many of my examples are "remakes of classic films." Why not just see the classic film instead? It must be classic for a reason.

It's worse on TV. Remakes of Roman Holiday, 12 Angry Men, Stagecoach, and On Golden Pond all prove that NBC, ABC, and CBS do indeed rot your brain. As usual some of the worst film-crimes do not happen in the theater at all, but on TV where millions of people watch as they eat their dinner every night. Although I wasn't even alive to see it, I miss the old days of live TV, when the stories were original and the excitement was contagious.

Still though, there are some stories that are famous for being remade. Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur's The Front Page has seen four iterations and My Fair Lady has legions of borrowings and inspirings. Perhaps the king of the remake however doesn't hail from Hollywood at all but Stratford Upon Avon. Shakespeare's work has spawned unthinkable amounts of filmic translations, some more successful than others. If you look closely you'll find that My Fair Lady and The Front Page also originate in stageplay form. From this I can only speculate that the entire trend of remakes stem from Theater, where a run will last only so long then fade back to paper form until another producer comes along with another production. While the process makes sense in the realm of theater, we must realize that film is a permanent medium. Once you make a movie, barring any catastrophes or fascist outbursts, it stays with us forever. A play is performed then vanishes, whereas a film can be seen ad infinitum. Once it's done once, doing it again is redundant.

I'm just a viewer though. From my personal 90 minutes of boredom, I can only imagine how straining actually producing the remake is, knowing that what you're doing will undoubtedly be compared to a much better film. If just watching these remakes questions one's role in life, I wonder how several months of work on such an artistic void must feel. If life is too short to watch remakes, how do people find the time to make them?


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