They knew how to do this in the 80s. Little Shop of Horrors, The Fly, and The Thing for example. All remakes that far surpassed the cheesy originals.
The 80s version of The Blob is terrifying.
I was scared of the colour pink for like 3 years in primary school.
And still holds up. Been showing classics to my horror-interested nieces and nephews and they loved 80s Blob most of all so far.
We need the 80s coke back. Ketamine ain’t doing shit for us.
80s coke was amazing. New Coke barely works and makes it hurt behind my eyes
The best example is The Thing. The original film in the 1950s was awkward af. But the 1980s remake by John Carpenter was chef’s kiss. Then they made a remake of a remake and it was meh.
The 2011 The Thing wasn’t so much a remake as it was a prequel to the remake, telling the story from the Norwegian scientists’ camp.
The 1982 John Carpenter remake opened with the last two remaining Norwegian scientists chasing “The Thing” until it reaches the Americans’ camp. But they’re misunderstood by the Americans. When trying to shoot at The Thing, which has taken the shape of a sled dog, the Americans instead return fire and kill them. Then the Americans explore the Norwegian camp and try to figure out what horrors killed everyone there, while slowly discovering why they were shooting at a dog in the first place.
The 2011 film shows what happened to the Norwegians before the 1982 remake. You’re correct, it wasn’t as great of a film (hard to compete with John Carpenter), but it wasn’t exactly a remake.
It was a weird combination of remake and prequel. It hit all the same story points and barely added anything new apart from Tetris aliens.
You scared me for a second, being only aware of the 80s one I thought you wanted a remake of that lol
Today we see it that way but in the 70s and 80s, the 1950s Thing was hailed as a classic prestige science fiction film. That’s why Carpenter’s version was trashed at the time. It was dismissed as a grotesque barf bag SFX spectacle that completely disregarded what made the original so good.
On a vaguely related note, why aren’t we making more movies that take a Shakespeare plot and just stuff it in a different setting without trying to hide it? Like 10 Things I Hate about you was Taming of the Shrew.
Tell me you wouldn’t watch Mechbeth.
Macbeth… IN SPAAAAAAACE!!!
Profile picture checks out
There have been a bunch: Throne of Blood is Samurai Macbeth. Warm Bodies is Zombie Romeo & Juliette
The Lion King (1994) is Hamlet.
“O” (2001) is Othello.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) is based on two minor characters of Hamlet.
She’s the Man (2006) is Twelfth Night.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is Homer’s Odyssey. Not Shakespeare, but a brilliant modern retelling of one of humanity’s oldest surviving stories. In the same vein as the above mentioned films.
These are all I can think of off the top of my head. Not to mention dozens of modern Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth retellings over the years. Those three alone are the more popular Shakespeare stories for reinvention on the big screen.
Can do other classics too. Clueless is such a fun adaptation of Emma.
I would be so much more interested in Shakespeare if the cast were replaced with giant war robots.
It’s been done a million times: 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, West Side Story, The Lion King, Ran, Forbidden Planet, etc.
How many more versions of Tron do we need?
One more.
- T ron.
- R eboot.
- O h fuck, why did we cast Jared Leto
- N ow we’re talking.
Tron Reboot, fuck yeah make it happen!
I would love to see ReBoot (1994) with modern CG. And also a modernized plot, considering we know so much more about computers and the Internet now.
1994 was when the Internet started to spread publicly around the world and became a thing you could access from your very own home. It was this cool new technology that connected humanity across the globe, but most people didn’t really understand it yet.
So shows like ReBoot captured our fascination with the “Information Superhighway” and built a fantasy/sci-fi story around it. Even if it was horribly inaccurate to how computers and the Internet actually worked.
A group is remastering ReBoot with the blessings of its creators from the original DAT tapes, so they are pixel-perfect HD transfers that one could not have seen on any TV at the time.
Look it up on YouTube. Reboot doesn’t need to be remade, the original masters still looks smoking hot. They recovered the widescreen versions, too.
They’re negotiating the rights to do the same thing to Transformers Beast Wars next.
It needs to be finished. Damn Cartoon Network for cliffhanger canceling them after reviving them from a hasty finale.
Keep em coming. Tron: Legacy is my all time favourite.
I came out of the movie theater wowed and was confused when I went online and saw the reaction.
yes
We just need to disavow Ares and make Tron Ascension as originally intended.
the ones without jared leto of course.
If they just stuck to the original premise it would have been better.
This only works on like mid movies, maybe. You can’t do it with a film like Plan 9 from Outer Space or The Room because the jank is part of the appeal. But maybe an actually good version of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? Sucker Punch, but with a better director?
Mid movies with an interesting premise. That’s the point of OP’s post.
Scarface, Omega Man, The Bird Cage, Thomas Crown Affair, Ocean’s 11, Fist Full of Dollars, Vanilla Sky, Wizard of Oz, The Bourne Identity: all remakes. Arguably, the new Dune movies might be considered remakes of a relatively mid original movie, though the new ones are far more tied to the book.
So taking the 1993 mid kids’ movie Rookie of the Year and adapting it to a modem take where the lead is 19 and plays soccer for Arsenal or whatever, would be what OP means. Or redo the 1993 racist POS movie Falling Down. Or Dave, JFC.
There is no saving Sucker Punch. The fundamental premise of the movie is each rape is a fight scene showing a literal interpretation of a metaphorical struggle. It’s not recoverable.
Why? Why is something so easily explained impossible?
Can it be done? Maybe. But the problem with making a metaphorical struggle a physical fight is that the audience for both is drastically different. Many people affected by rape hold a feeling of helplessness about the event. A Zach Snyder 300 style fight scene is literally about exerting control and overcoming. For a person to make such a drastic emotional pivot begs the question were they were ever feeling at all?
I’m sure many women could take some amount of joy in beating the shit out of their rapists.
how about we gut the premise but keep the badass ninja schoolgirls and campy explosion-filled fight scenes and charmingly dated CGI, and let Angela Robinson direct it
Uh, they remade The Room starring Bob Odenkirk.
somebody PLEASE remake
American Mary
Daybreakerscool ass premises but flawed executions
They remade Dune, and somehow managed to make it worse.
Instead of the corporatization of storytelling, we should be letting artists tell the stories they want to tell. We should engage with our media more critically and stop chasing nostalgia.
Stranger Things did that, for its first season.
It’s Dune. Great book but original movie needed improvement
Nice idea, but you’d never get funding. So lean into it. Instead of remaking flops, demake them. Redo Battlefield Earth or Waterworld on a half million dollar budget. As the world watches your film with effects that would make Sharknado blush they will finally ask “what is art?”
I don’t think Waterworld needs improving, but I recognize that I’m in the minority.
I’m conflicted about waterworld because the special effects were really good for the time but they have dated quite a bit since then.
It’s mostly explosions, as I recall. Is it the miniature work that stands out to you?
A urinal bolted to a wall: The movie
Fuck that, just make more theaters and let drama kids re-enact them with their own creative vision
That’s actually a fairly good take - they could make a bunch of old scripts and make them enticing to license, and couple that with a small fund to seed some ultra small-scale productions (by Hollywood standards). I like it.
Couple that with remakes on whatever gets traction and it could prove short term profitable as well as raise the overall long term value of their vault. (I hate that this analysis is needed, but unless we change copyright law, this buy-in would be a necessary step.)
Or shorten public domain back to a reasonable level.
Better yet, why not create something original?
We could certainly use a lot more Discworld movies.
Because no one watches those.
I think it’s because the way the advertise movies now is terrible. Go look at trailers of the past and it’s always “in a world gone mad only one man can stop the terrorists from blowing up New York” yeah I know it’s cheesy but at least I know what the movies about. These days it’s 300 cuts per minute and now it’s anyone’s guess what genre it is.
Downsizing is the quintessential example of the switch and bait of modern trailers. What an incredibly boring movie that was.
Two words: Easy Money
The upscale did Lisa a little dirty
Dear AI, please upscale this image, but also try to make tons of subtle changes that completely ruin the vibe. Do it in a way that makes it clear that you’ve been trained on lots of images from The Simpsons, but have no idea what the fuck is going on in any of them.
Oceans 11 did that
Lord of the Rings
Dune
Movie mash-ups.
Back to the Future and Tron.
Blade Runner and Hawaii 5-0
Truman and Silo.
Mrs. Doubtfire and John Wick.
WALL-E and alien.
What I wouldn’t give to see a swarm of Xenomorphs tear ass through that ship full of obese humans
Sigourney Weaver was in both movies.
Because nobody will fund a huge production that’s based on something that didn’t do well. Are you nuts? Are you going to go up to people and ask for 50 million dollars or whatever and say we’re going to take this thing sucked that nobody liked and we’re going to redo it.
I mean, they’ve made how many Percy Jackson movies? Pretty sure no one likes any of them.
I thought the black guy was funny if you look at his feet
Why does everything have to be a huge production? Paranormal Activity was an effective horror movie, on a budget of $55K. Most of that went to the main characters computer rig, and hardwood floors for the director’s house, where they shot the film.
That’s an extreme example, but there is no reason they can’t shoot an original idea on a moderate budget, and in fact, they do it ALL the time. The idea that everything is a remake or a reboot is an exaggeration. Look at all the streaming platforms, filled with original material, and begging for more. Obviously, original screenplays are getting shot every day.
