Remakes

It's come to mind that the most angered inducing sentence to a movie community is "[Insert movie here] is being remade!" To hear the comments is like scary and at times sad for if they were real and together they would be carrying torches and pitchforks marching to studios chanting something to "Stop remaking movies you pieces of shit!" or something similar. My opinion on remakes has always been that they are NEVER inherently bad. Each and every movie, no matter how perfect it may be, always have something that can be expanded on or tell a different point of view. However, after the news of The Crow being remade hit the interweb and the extreme torches and pitchfork mentality really flared up I must feel I should expand on my view a bit. So I'm going to touch on my thoughts on The Crow remake, a remake that sucks, a remake that could've been better and a remake that's awesome.


Alright, some thoughts on The Crow remake is I don't mind it. Don't get me wrong, I do like the original but at times the dialogue was a bit stilted and sometimes the acting floundered a bit. Those were rare times to be sure but they were there. Then there's that business with Brandon Lee's death that unfortunately made people brought this movie up to THIS BE BEST MOVIE EVER LOLZLLZLLZLZZLLZ status....I have my views of death making everything unnecessarily better but that's another day. So I think a remake wouldn't be all bad especially with the talk of a gritty, realistic documentary type approach would be, at the very least, a good try. Now yes, I know that Stephen Norrington is approached to direct and yes, in the span of one movie he put Sean Connery into retirement, angered Alan Moore to the point of insanity and erased the memory that he directed Blade, which was awesome. So if this does get off the ground with Norrington, I'll await with baited breath, not torches and pitchforks.

The remake that sucks

A good remake does two things: Honors the movie from which this was remade and does something new as well. The Hitcher does neither and that's the path that 90% of remakes choose, especially horror remakes. These are the reason remakes are so hated, which is understandable to an extent. I mean it's easy to do a shot-for-shot remake than doing anything else because people will come for The Hitcher '86 is well-known in horror and it'll make a few bucks. That's capitalism at work, can't fault people for that. It just that that mentality is bad and not conduive to gaining trust on something so precarious as a remake. And don't forget that remakes are not a new phenomeon. The Maltese Falcon was a remake and look at that!

The remake that could've been better

Yes, I know what I'm saying here but you must admit it does something new with the story even if it falters in honoring the original. Also, I may be kinder to this since while I do admire the original, I am not that big of a fan. Now, while I may like Michael Myers being an absolute template of EVVIILLLLLLL!!!!!! You got to hand it to Rob Zombie for he had the balls to remove that absolute and gave a backstory to Myers. You have to at least admire the balls for Zombie to just do it for good or for ill to his career. Yes, it does falter when the backstory's over and we realize that Scout Taylor-Compton is nowhere near as good as Jamie Lee Curtis at her worst and the ending goes on for way too long. But this remake tries to be different just like the 9% of remakes.

The remake that's good

John Carpenter's The Thing is what 1% of remakes do: honor the original and do something new and do it well on both counts. It also helps that original movie wasn't that great. It had two great scares but that's about it. Also, the original alien was almost comical. It was like some sort of plant thingy that was barely scary, so there was a lot of room for improvement. But Carpenter did at least honor the location, the finding of the spaceship and the crazy scientest character of the original movie. This is what remakes should be!

So even though most remakes suck, some great movies have been remakes. Lesson here is that don't hate on remakes just for they exist, hate on remakes when they suck...which, admitedly the average is quite high.