The Voices of Reason: Movie Remakes

The Voices of Reason: Movie Remakes
by Various Authors

Inspired by the recent release of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this week the Voices of Reason tackle the topic of movie remakes.

Question: What are the best movie and worst movie remakes you have ever seen, and why?

Vance Macdonald—Worst Remake: After careful consideration of what seems like dozens of legitimate contenders (Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, The Grudge, King Kong, The Wiz), I am going out on a limb with The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Yes, I realize that they are technically sequels, but please, they are really the worst kind of remake—a vapid rehashing of the same territory, adding nothing to the original, created only to milk every last cent out of the concept, all the while falsely presuming to be something new.

While it is true that most examples of these remake-sequels are sterile, paint-by-numbers copies of the original, the Matrix remakes are truly offensive in countless ways. And bonus points for starring the worst bankable actor in Hollywood. (Note: the Matrix sequels will certainly give up their title as soon as Michael Bay attempts a remake of any kind.)

Best Remake: I wanted to pass over this safe pick in favor of something more obscure, but The Magnificent Seven is just too good, in too many ways. Yes, it is a 5-star remake, it has a powerful cast, and it has a legendary film (The Seven Samurai) to show it the path to righteousness.

But more than that, my favorite remakes are the ones that reinterpret the original into a different setting (time, place, culture), which The Magnificent Seven does exquisitely. A Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo) is another fine example of this, but it can't quite match the gravitas of The Magnificent Seven. The samurai-cowboy parallels were made for each other. And the Western genre can thank Kurosawa for some of its finest films.

Steve Finkelstein—Let me list two relatively recent examples of best and worst remakes; strangely enough, they're both based on H.G. Wells novels.

Worst Remake: 1996's The Island of Dr Moreau. One of the main reasons it sucks is because it was totally unnecessary to remake. The first version of the book (Island 0f Lost Souls, 1933) is one of the greatest horror-sci-fi films ever. Therewas an OK second version of the book in 1977. So like we needed a third version?! But that's what we got in 1996, an inept and laughably dull version featuring Marlon Brando in one of his most bizarre peformances, playing the crazed Dr Moreau more like Pope John Paul the XXII. ( I'm not kidding; rent the DVD and see what I mean.)

Best Remake: this year's War of the Worlds. The original 1953 version is a good film, with vivid direction and exciting special effects (for its time). However, it's always been hobbled by uneven acting and writing, which produced some scenes that were unintentionally humorous.

Not so with the Spielberg version. It's an incredibly exciting, apocalyptic piece, with great special effects that portray the alien "death machines" far more faithfully to Wells' book than the original did. There are truly some brilliant directorial setpieces here. I consider it one of the best films of the year.

The film's one drawback is it's sappy happy ending. When Spielberg tackles a film with grim subject matter (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report), he always insists on inserting a happy wrapup. This just fuels the fire of his many critics, who claim that he's an overly manipulative and sentimental film director. Steven, youre a mature artist now; you don't have to do this anymore!

Martell—My favorite remake has to be Ocean's Eleven. I never saw the original, but I can't imagine it being better than the new one. Aside from the stellar cast, it's the dialogue and storyline that always draw me in. No matter where I am, if I catch a few seconds of it while channel-surfing, I'm immediately sucked in for the rest of the film. There's just no getting around it. I've probably seen the last hour of the film 25 times.

As for my thoughts on the world's worst remake, I'm going to go with the world's dumbest remake, and for that, I select the 1996 version of 101 Dalmations. Now here was a worthless movie. I can just imagine the meeting between the ad wizards that came up with this one:

Ad Wizard #1: "Guys, here's an idea—let's do one of Disney's animated films, but with real people!"

Ad Wizard #2: "That's a great idea! Which one should we do? Snow White? Maybe we could get Madonna to play her."

Ad Wizard #1: "No, I'm thinking one of the animal films...do you think we could pull of Bambi?"

Ad Wizard #2: "The whole forest fire thing could be a problem. Plus, I'm not sure where we'd find a trained deer."

Ad Wizard #3: "How about 101 Dalmations? That came out a long time ago. People probably don't even remember it. Wouldn't it be cute to get a bunch of those dogs together? Kids would love it!"

Ad Wizard #1: "Yeah! Those dogs are cute! Let's do it!"

Sure, why not spend a bunch of extra money on live talent, and get rid of all the charm of personified talking animals? I mean, kids don't really like animation anyway, right? Brilliant.

Mark May—Tough question for me because I hate remakes in general. Let's assume that you are not talking about movies that are retellings of earlier movies—Roxanne (Cyrano de Bergerac), Ran (King Lear), Throne of Blood (Macbeth), etc. I'll assume you mean honest-to-goodness remakes like The Bad News Bears, The Manchurian Candidate, The Stepford Wives, Planet of the Apes, The Longest Yard, Psycho, etc.

I was reminded tonight of a movie remake that I had seen and thought was much better than the original: the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I have to give it my vote for Best Remake.

As for Worst Remake, I don't know I could pick just one, so I won't. But what I will say is that many, many remakes would be candidates to appear on Leonard Pinth-Garnell's Bad Remake Theatre. At the end, he would applaud politely, "Wretched. Splendidly bad. Really, really bad. Bravo."

Jeff Lewis—The Best: I can’t think of a movie remade during my lifetime that I was overwhelmed by, but a number of my favorite old movies are remakes, including:

His Girl Friday, the Howard Hawks, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell remake of The Front Page
The Wizard of Oz
The Maltese Falcon
A Fistful of Dollars, an adaptation of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo

However, I’ve never seen any of the original movies, so for me, they aren’t really remakes. On the other hand, there are a bunch of British mini-series remakes that are among my favorite “things you can watch on a DVD that are at least movie length”:

The 1995 version of Cold Comfort Farm, which was a Masterpiece Theater presentation in 1968 (originally it was a book by Stella Gibbons). This is one of my five favorite movies of all time.
The 1995 remake of Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle; the 1940 remake with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier is also great. I enjoyed Bridget Jones’s Diary as well, which is closer to a remake than many remakes these days.
The 2002 mini-series of Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Martin Cluney does an admirable job of playing Robert Donat’s Mr. Chipping (a performance so sweet that Donat justifiably beat out Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler for the 1939 Oscar).

Although it’s a remake of a TV show, I’d also like to mention Harrison Ford’s The Fugitive, which I’m happy to watch over and over again.

The Worst: I try to avoid remakes of movies that I like, because even the commercials for bad remakes make me sad. For example, my feelings when I heard about Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town: glum. Keira Knightly in Pride and Prejudice: woebegone. But my least favorite remake is Little Shop of Horrors. Because I didn’t know anything about the original, I thought it would be something along the lines of Ghostbusters, not a mediocre musical.

Dileep Rao—The worst and best remakes? This is a serious topic. I must first, as a moviegoer, state one plain fact: WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE REMAKES. Nor do we need more television shows that become films. How about some original entertainment?

That said, remakes in general are terrible ideas unless 1) the core idea for the film was absolutely dynamite, but so poorly executed that the idea was lost in the muddling—then, okay, remake the film, or 2) (and this is an extension of Reason #1) if the film was made with such poor technology that the modern remake would do the idea better justice. This is often a poor excuse and has led to several bad remakes.

Remakes in general have the deck stacked against them. We know the original, so the new film treads on that iconography. We also know the story, which makes for no new shakes. Worse, in dealing with this, stupid decisions are often made in the effort to "take a twist" on the old film. Dumb and dumb.

The best remakes have often involved a great talent taking on a role that is better suited for them than the original actor. The worst remakes suffer from the delusion that this is true.

For me, most remakes are genuinely insufferable. I think of the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. This is, easily, the greatest exercise in inanity imaginable. First, the film is a CLASSIC, inarguably one of the most culturally referenced and widely seen films ever. It is also considered by many (though not all) to be a masterpiece. It was in many ways revolutionary for its time and for cinema, given that it switched protagonists and had some unique photographic techniques. This is also the calling card film of a truly master craftsman, director Alfred Hitchcock. The idea that this film needed to be remade in any fashion is absurd.

And yet, it was. Shot for shot. Literally shot for shot, with much weaker actors. Also, in color. I kid you not. Who on earth thought this would be saleable? You can pop a much, much better version into your DVD player for two bucks. Pointless. Mr. Van Sant is a mediocre filmmaker who sometimes rises above that station, but this was a peculiar indulgence of utter stupidity. Ugh.

Okay, time to get to the point. Good remakes: The Italian Job, Ocean's 11, Scarface (was acting ever so operatic and so real at once, my God), The Thomas Crown Affair (middlingly better, though McQueen was a better actor). This list is probably omitting a few, but remakes are dreadful by and large, so forgive me.

Bad Remakes: God, where to start. Psycho, yes. Get Carter, The Magnificent Seven (not a bad film, but come on, we're talking Kurosawa), Planet of the Apes (ugh), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (this isn't a bad film, but it isn't really that good either, it's just weird without having a point or a transformation; that bit at the end is dreadful), Alfie, The Assassin (the utter garbage remake of La Femme Nikita), Meet Joe Black, Mr. Deeds, The Longest Yard...

This list is practically endless, and will extend for as long as Hollywood thinks that past hits are bankable (which they aren't, as mathematical analysis has shown).

To submit a topic for The Voices of Reason, or to be added to the VoR Shout Out List, send an e-mail to martell@babblog.com.