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Remakes and Other Such Nonsense

TheLeviathan

By TheLeviathan
in The Sports Bar

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TheLeviathan All-Star

TheLeviathan

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On that note, I know it's always about money, but I've always been disappointed that Hollywood remakes good movies so often when what they should be doing is remaking bad movies that were good ideas and had potential but ended up being a mess.

 

I'd be curious if you had particular movies in mind with this comment.

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nicksaviking All-Star

nicksaviking

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Pet Semetary was a really bad movie mostly due to terrible acting, but it's a really good story and maybe Stephen King's first real psychological horror story as opposed to physical horror. Basically, if you could bring a loved one back from the dead but they would not be the version of them that you remember, would you do it? 1980's filmmaking tended not to be very good at subtlety and introspective thought.

 

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman was another terrible movie as it tried to be a typical comic book movie from the era it was made. I know it was a comic and I haven't read it, but you could tell that the characters were supposed to have depth and individual storylines. The characters were all ripped from historical fiction, ie Captain Nemo, Tom Sawyer, Dr. Jekyll but none of them seemed to be playing those characters straight, or as they would be from their original source material. It was just mindless action with no depth but it is a clever idea that should have been good.

 

There was a really terrible Adam Sandler move called That's my Boy. He played a guy who as a schoolboy had a relationship with his teacher and they had a kid. The movie made jokes about and showed the impact of the incident to Sandler's character, his parents, his teacher and of course the kid as an adult. It also showed how Sandler's character had been a pseudo celebrity due to the incident. The movie was a terrible, terrible and offensively unfunny comedy. But I think it would make a really good story from a dramatic standpoint, particularly the becoming a 15-minutes-of fame child celebrity due to being the victim of something notorious and horrific that you'd never be able to separate yourself from.

 

That Will Smith movie Hancock was a dumb superhero movie but it was REALLY supposed to be about how terrible a superhero's life would be due to alternating between being a celebrity hero and being reviled because your super powers cause so much destruction. I think having a straight story like that, without antagonists and big battles would have been interesting, though I think the horse has already left the barn on that one since both Marvel and DC have now recently addressed both of those ideas, even if rather sloppily.

 

The movie Hair was also terrible, and while I don't know that it needs a remake (from the play) the timing of that movie is just bizarre. It was made in 1979 which was much too late to be relevant to the counter-culture movement and waaaaaay too early for that time period to be retro and interesting again.

 

And of course The Godfather Part III.

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TheLeviathan All-Star

TheLeviathan

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Pet Semetary makes sense.  God knows every other king book has been made into three different versions....

 

I can't remember which one, but one of the sequels was actually pretty good.  I think they made like 8 of them, but people only remember the first one.  Kind of like the 34 versions of Planet of the Apes.  (At least it feels like there are that many of them.....)

 

And yeah, Hancock was extraordinarily dumb.  Like, MST3k should've live riffed that sucker.

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Brock Beauchamp GOAT

Brock Beauchamp

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While we're on the subject of King, we really need a version of The Running Man that resembles the short story. The short story made for a far more interesting premise than the schlocky nonsense we got on film. Not that the film can't be appreciated for said schlockiness but it literally had nothing to do with the short story.

 

Another movie that should be remade is I Am Legend, except this time they need to remember what the title of the film means and why it's the title.

 

I still can't believe they made that movie and missed the entire point of the story, which is laid out right there in the title.

 

Will Smith needs to stop doing adaptations of novels. We can throw I, Robot on the list as well, near the top of the "WTF ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING RIGHT NOW" category.

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Brock Beauchamp GOAT

Brock Beauchamp

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And while I don't believe it should be remade, I'm all in favor of wiping the existence of 28 Weeks Later from the public consciousness. It easily makes my "top five disappointing movies" list.

 

The film was made even worse by the first ten minutes, which had me enthralled, all as a setup so the director could Cleveland Steamer me for the next 90 minutes.

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nicksaviking All-Star

nicksaviking

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While we're on the subject of King, we really need a version of The Running Man that resembles the short story. The short story made for a far more interesting premise than the schlocky nonsense we got on film. Not that the film can't be appreciated for said schlockiness but it literally had nothing to do with the short story.

 

Another movie that should be remade is I Am Legend, except this time they need to remember what the title of the film means and why it's the title.

 

I still can't believe they made that movie and missed the entire point of the story, which is laid out right there in the title.

 

Will Smith needs to stop doing adaptations of novels. We can throw I, Robot on the list as well, near the top of the "WTF ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING RIGHT NOW" category.

 

I agree with The Running Man and it crossed my mind when I made up my list above but then I figured I'd just end up listing a dozen King stories. There was an add for a Running Man type show on CBS last night after the football games. It looked like a reality show where people tried to be fugitives and were hunted by former Marshalls or something like that. No clue if it was any good.

 

I am Legend has been remade so many times including Omega Man. Any of them probably could have had a shot at being good if they'd just stay true to original ending of the novel. Why can't anyone commit to that, it's basically the whole point of the movie.

 

Agree on the Will Smith bit and the sci-fi stuff. Basically every Issac Asimov and Philip K Dick movie has been wasted. I'm guessing every studio is a sucker for sci-fi action but doesn't want to waste time character building and diving into moral complexities. For every Blade Runner there's 20 I, Robots.

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nicksaviking All-Star

nicksaviking

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I'd love to see a remake of King's The Stand.  The TV movie wasn't bad, but it has that schlocky Sci-Fi Channel feel.  That was a really engrossing story.

There was/is a The Stand remake in the works. I think at one time Ben Affkecj was going to direct it.

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nicksaviking All-Star

nicksaviking

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I'm not sure I've seen a remake that I've liked better or even liked as much. Total Recall remake, yuck. The Shining remake, yuck.

Yeah those were bad. Charting Heston's Ben Hur and Bogart's Maltese Falcon were remakes though.

 

I kind of liked Francis Ford Coppola's Frankenstein though. It was the only one that realized the horror wasn't in the monster's actions, but in the monster's dawning realization of what he was.

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Craig Arko Wichita Wind Surge

Craig Arko

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I can think of two remakes that worked really well by changing the settings.

 

The Magnificent Seven, and Star Wars. Though the originals were also amazing classics, one perhaps the finest film ever made. They just suffered in the U.S. because of subtitles.

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