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Why Remakes Aren’t A Bad Thing

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Hollywood is in the middle of a re-make buffet. All you can eat for $10. Whether it’s the A-Team, Karate Kid or a Nightmare on Elm Street, everything is up for a remake. The usual reaction to the announcement of each new remake is a chorus of groans and people asking why Hollywood doesn’t have any new ideas. Where’s the originality? Why don’t they focus on producing high quality new movies. But I think everyone is missing the point. The quality of a movie has nothing at all to do with it’s originality. There’s No Such Thing As Original When boiled down to their core elements all stories are derived from one of 7 basic plots. Those plots have been labeled in a variety of ways by different people over the decades, but they are: overcoming the monster; rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy; rebirth. Since all stories are derived from such a small range of plots, nothing can be completely original. So any claim to originality must come from the specifics or details of a story. But even there if you look at each genre, the stories are composed of common tropes and archetypes. So how original is anything anyway? Arguing quality based on originality is a flawed premise. In fact there is a strong literary history to taking an existing story and re-telling it or adding to it. Perhaps the most obvious example of that would be Arthurian mythology which was told re-worked and re-told over decades. Much of our classic literature involves elements taken from previous works. Shakespeare borrowed not only from history but from other sources including an old Italian tale for Romeo and Juliette. But Remakes Are Inferior to the Original! Are they? What about the Bourne Identity? Was it inferior? What about Scarface (actually a remake of a 1930s movie)? The Fly? The Thing? The Magnificent 7? The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3? Cape Fear?

Cover of The Philadelphia Story

Without remakes we wouldn’t have had High Society, which was a remake of The Philadelphia story, which was itself an adaptation of a stage play. It’s probably true that the majority of remakes are inferior to the original movie, but the majority of movies released each year are of poor quality, so this isn’t something inherent in the remake itself. It Depends On the Creators Fundamentally whether a movie is good or bad depends on the writer(s), director and stars. This is true whether it’s a remake, adaptation or original work. It is possible for the creators to take a remake and move in a new direction with it. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an excellent example of that. While the original is considered a classic, the remake is actually closer in tone to the book. Remakes Are Getting In the Way of Good Movies! No, they aren’t. If the remake is a good movie then obviously it’s not getting in the way. And if it’s a bad movie? Well the odds are that the creative team would still be making a bad movie even if it wasn’t a remake. Related articles by Zemanta

Nightmare on Elm Street Film Clip (screenhead.com) Hollywood goes back to the future with 80s remakes (telegraph.co.uk) Believe It or Not, Someone Is Remaking Godzilla Again (nymag.com)

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April 20 2010, 3:49pm | Comments »

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Wolfman Is A Cheesy B-Movie Dressed In Furs [Movie Review]

http://io9.com/5470219/wolfman-is-a-cheesy-b+movie-dressed-in-furs

Set in the nineteenth century and strongly influenced by the classic 1941 Wolf Man, new movie Wolfman epitomizes the historical hair-and-hat movie. But recreating the mood of an old-fashioned flick isn't enough. Like the iconic Lon Chaney, Jr.'s character in the 1941 Wolf Man, Benicio Tel Toro's character Lawrence has returned to the ancestral manse to have a showdown with his father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins in high camp mode). Preserved from the original movie are Lawrence's encounter with a werewolf that leaves him with an urge to bark at the moon, gypsy magic, and a beautiful woman who (almost) tames Lawrence's savage beast. Also preserved from the original is the look of the wolfman, who is more like the Incredible Hulk than the boys of Twilight. He gets muscled, toothy, and hairy, but retains his basic human shape, including his artfully shredded Victorian outfits.

While the classic vampire story brings our ancient beasts into the city, there to tangle with the ladies, the classic werewolf tale goes the other direction. Our human returns to the country, goes monstery, and tangles with his family or parent figures. Lawrence's conflict with his father John is at the heart of this tale. The "prodigal son" has returned from America (or London? continuity issues abound here), where he's a famous stage actor, for his brother's funeral. Immediately the manly, gun-toting John reminds Lawrence about how he was always "weak" and so forth. Basically it's Victorian jock dad vs. theater nerd kid. And poor Emily Blunt, the hot widow of Lawrence's brother, is sort of wandering in the background looking milky and wearing a lot of black dresses.

Over the course of the film, we discover that John has been torturing his girly-man son for years. When Lawrence was a teenager, John sent him to an insane asylum where he was waterboarded and injected with weird drugs. As soon as he goes wolf, John sends him back to the same place - and we get a lot of gross and seemingly extraneous scenes of insane asylum torture. Again, insane asylums are a classic werewolf story trope, which Ben Templesmith evoked masterfully in his recent series Welcome to Hoxford. But unlike Templesmith's story, Wolfman approaches the material limply, giving us a rote "asylums were really awful and dirty in the Victorian era" bit and nothing more.

All this abuse has left Lawrence very broody and prone to chest-baring, which is one of the fun parts of Wolfman. Del Toro knows how to throw down with the hooded looks, and he's always fascinating to watch. But he looked awkward in his period garb, and the dialog was so stilted that no amount of acting could rescue it. And instead of creeping terror, this movie relies entirely on cheap "boo! gotcha!" shocks. Some of these problems may be the result of what many critics have called a troubled production. Director Joe Johnston was called in after a last-minute crew switcheroo, and he continued to fire and hire key players on the production up until the very end. Plus endless reshoots resulted in significant eleventh-hour changes to the movie. As a result, you get a Wolfman that's all over the place and bland at the same time.

Admittedly there's something flat-out cool about the way Wolfman doesn't try to do a "modern twist" on the werewolf story, especially when so many urban fantasies from Buffy to Twilight have reinvented werewolves as hipsters and shirtless lovemuffins. This movie is no Wolf, with ancient wolfy battles transposed onto publishing industry infighting; nor is it trying to go the American Werewolf In London route, making werewolves into "realistic" guys. And like I said, that's a good thing: It's refreshing to see a movie whose special effects are gothic rather than realistic, and whose characters do a ton of non-ironic brooding. But sadly, the movie winds up being unintentionally cheesy rather than an interesting homage to the past.

That said, there are few nods to our contemporary post-colonial sensibilities - unlike in the original, the werewolf who bites Lawrence is not a gypsy, so there's no hint that the beast comes from evil ethnic outsiders. And Sir John has a seriously badass Sikh manservant named Singh, played with snacky intensity by Art Malik. Plus there's a Man Of Science from Scotland Yard, played by the always-delightful Hugo Weaving. Honestly, if the filmmakers wanted to give us an original take on the classic myth, they would have done well to make Weaving and Malik our main characters - every time one of them walked on screen I wanted to howl, "More of this!" If you're looking for a monster movie that gets under your skin and offers an original approach to an old legend, Wolfman isn't it. But if you want a fun, cheesy B-movie that's basically an excuse to watch hunky guys get feral, then Wolfman will satisfy. Just don't expect too much.

February 12 2010, 2:30pm | Comments »

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Forbidden Planet Reboot Could Become a Franchise [Forbidden Planet]

http://io9.com/5411316/forbidden-planet-reboot-could-become-a-franchise

J. Michael Straczynski is revealing more details about his remake of Forbidden Planet. Not only does the script call for more action than the original scifi classic, there may be plans in the works for more Forbidden Planet movies. Babylon 5 creator Straczynski is still at work on the screenplay for Forbidden Planet. He elaborated a bit on his earlier comment that his remake is "not exactly a prequel." He explained that, while we will witness the fate of the Bellerophon, the ship whose crew vanished on Altair IV 20 years before the events of the original movie, it will be as a counterpoint to the story of the crew of the C-57D and their encounter with Dr. Morbius and Altaira. While this new concept calls for more action than we saw in the original, Straczynski says the script's basis on The Tempest is first and foremost in his mind. But the big news that, if Straczynski's movie takes off, we may be seeing more Forbidden Planet. Says Straczynski: "Warners is very excited about it, thinks it's a big franchise for them and a huge budget, so they're very much oriented toward getting it done." Babylon 5 creator reboots a sci-fi classic ... and a sequel? [SCI FI Wire]

November 23 2009, 2:40pm | Comments »

Eoghann Irving's Lifestream

Why Remakes Aren’t A Bad Thing

Wolfman Is A Cheesy B-Movie Dressed In Furs [Movie Review]

Forbidden Planet Reboot Could Become a Franchise [Forbidden Planet]

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