I like films, I like classic films in particular, but my God what’s happening these day? Okay, its been going on for a long while. It seems to be a never-ending list of films being rebooted, remade, re-imagined and sequels. Now Sequels I get, I can understand, I get the concept and its usually that the studio seen the first film come out and one of two things happen, you get second story that’s just bursting to be told.
Aliens, some say in many respects a better film than Alien, but I would say those people are missing the point, Alien is the classic haunted house movie, only it happens to be set in space,
The alien is the bogeyman, it’s the monster under the bed, in fact its every primal thing you were ever scared of and more so. Ridley Scott was at the top of his game and gave us a genuinely terrifying experience.
Aliens is a terror filled roller coaster ride, it picks you up by the scruff of the next and won’t let go of you till its cuffed you upside the head and left you dizzy. James Cameron took the Alien universe and added so much more to it, Weyland Yutani, Colonial marines, the Alien queen and Sigourney Weaver with a flamethrower and a pulse rifle…
Then, sadly, Alien 3 and 4 came along and diminishing returns set in, Fincher’s Alien 3 was beset by studio meddling on a first time Director’s shoot, Alien 4, I kind of get what they were trying to do, but it was too left field and strange.
Other sequels that I get but started to destroy all that I held dear throughout my life,
Indiana Jones, one and two are sublime, even the last crusade is a solid movie and felt like it had taken the franchise as far as it could, and then we get Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull, for god sake the take you back to the warehouse from the end of the last film and then SWITCH ON THE BLOODY LIGHTS!!, why would you do that?? Talk about ruining the mystique.
So, as I say, I get it, I understand the need for a sequel sometimes, and sometimes you are lucky, but other times you end up with the following,
- Exorcist 2
- Poltergeist 2
- Teen wolf Too
- Robocop 2
- Blues Brothers 2
- Son of the mask
- Speed 2: Cruise Control
It’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea, someone has come along, missed the point of the original and thought “I have written some nonsensical madness, but everyone will come and see it because it’s the second one”. Some Studio exec has gotten greedy, greenlit this bullshit and waited for the cash to roll in, he’s still waiting…
Now, the next three categories puzzle and confuse me, I’ve always looked at them and wondered, hmmm, what’s that really.
So first off we have
Reboots,
So, what exactly is a reboot?
Some people say, it’s the restarting of a franchise mythology and narrative, so bin what went before and start afresh. Like hitting the reset button on your computer, whether that’s a good thing or not I leave you to decide.
Some can work, look at the new Daniel Craig Bond, some great stuff there,
The franchise went from pimped out tired sexist 70’s nonsense to something worth the watching.
Again, for every good one there are so many stinkers out there, The Pink Panther, A Steve Martin reboot of a Peter Sellers classic, let’s not dwell on that too much, and how they got Steve martin in this i will never know.
Superman returns, Bryan Singers tribute to the first Superman, made in 2006, a film with Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor should be great, but the main baddie in the film is a big daft crystal island and Lex prison shanks Superman, I mean come on.
Let’s not talk about how bad Brandon Routh was.
Some say that Henry Cavill was a surprise as Superman, as in how can a man of steel be so wooden, well that’s nothing on Brandon.
The one that really scares me is the rumoured remake of Back to the Future with Zac Effron, dear God no...
Remakes
A remake, it is argued is a generally a movie that uses an earlier movie as its source material and maybe updating that for a modern market, some prime examples of that are,
True Grit, I thought the Coen’s did phenomenal job here, yes it sources the original, but Jeff Bridges is excellent in this. It feels like an old 70s revisionist western and worked on so many levels for me.
There is also the likes of the Zack Snyder Dawn of the Dead, it has some really great moments in it, and zombie purists will say the zombies shouldn’t be running, but I liked it a lot, especially the Johnny Cash intro.
Again though, for every good remake there are so many turkeys out there that scream leave the source material alone, no one has had any sort of deft touch and what is spewed onto the cinema screen should never be…
Get Carter, Sly, you can’t play a gangster the way Michael Caine did, he nailed it, it has some of the best music in it and at its heart is the storm of vengeance that is Carter, Caine was playing the part of his life here. Also, some films are timeless and deal with age old issues, like murder and revenge and the likes, so does that really need to be updated to a society that doesn’t see these tropes as black and white anymore, and is that really a satisfying story?
Arthur, made in 2011 “starring” Russel Brand, and this is supposed to make me forget the Dudley Moore sublimeness from 1981, really, you shouldn’t have bothered.
I think though the worst for me, and it’s a long list, is Psycho, remade in 1998 by Gus Van Sant, I couldn’t out it any better than this quite from Variety –
“Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot, line-for-line, inflection-for-inflection facsimile of Hitchcock’s slasher-shock masterpiece is a remake that was instantly and universally reviled”
Was it a joke on us the audience? Would we be so stupid and venal as to pay to sit through this to the end? Who knows.
Lastly there are
Reimagining(s)
This for me is the worst, the absolute worst of the lot.
Usually just keep the name and bin everything else. However, this is the most contentious of the lot, some would argue that it’s a reboot, not a reimagination of an earlier film, personally I think it’s just a sucky way to deny the original film and come out with some diminished thrown together not very good two odd hours’ worth of crap.
- Tim Burton’s planet of the Apes.
- Charlie and the chocolate Factory
- Race to witch Mountain
These are prime examples of the feeble creative output categorised as Reimagining,
Neal Whiteman in this article sums it up for me when he says this,
“…reimagining is also used by producers and directors who don't have the conviction to use the word reboot, which carries the danger of angering fans of a franchise.”
Spot on for me, creative cowardice and the charge for more money squeezed out of some film that’s been updated to reflect modern culture and no thought give as to whether that’s appropriate to the story or improves it.
I have often argued that perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to films was Jaws, it became the first summer event movie, it made so much money that the following year the same was done again and then followed by other studies, till now we get a load of sequels to franchise movies, but then once a studio runs out of ideas they go back and raid past works, how many times can you redo Spiderman? We live in a risk averse age and so creativity suffers and we get the constant cycle of,
Sequel, reboot, remake, reimagine, rinse, repeat…
And film is the poorer for it.
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Tim Burton is brilliant when crafting a film from his own mind, but abysmal when adapting an existing property. Dark Shadows, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland were all forgettable films (though I love his version of Sweeney Todd).
Most of all I'm sick of Disney making live-action reboots of their own animated classics. We've already gotten Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Pete's Dragon and Beauty and the Beast. And they have live action adaptions of seemingly half of their vault in the works now that Beauty and the Beast made $500 million at the box office.
Its our fault. A live-action remake of a 25 year old animated movie is the top grossing film of the year so far (besting 2nd place by over $100M). If we stopped watching these reboots, they'd have to go back and look for new and fresh things to make.
Ya I'm sick of the live action animated remakes too. They just announced Aladdin w/ Will Smith as the genie! Ugh why just why would we ever need that?
We need to vote with our feet and wallets and stay away from them.
yeah seen that, strange news.
Really Hollywood how many more movies do we need with the same tired characters! Kids movies are the worst. Please no more minions. Though the Toy story movies where all pretty solid. My favorite franchise is The Terminator. As bad as they have all been I have still been entertained. I also really like the Dawn of the Dead remake. RIP Romero.
Romero passing is a genuine tragedy.