Girl Ghostbusters stinks. For 70 million reasons.
Which makes me wonder… is there such a thing as a good remake?
I’d argue in favor of Nick Cage’s “Gone in 60 Seconds” over the very boring 1974 original, but outside of that, I’m at a loss. Chime in with your favorite remake in the comments.
There was a ponderously boring black-and-white version of “The Razor’s Edge” years before the well-made Bill Murray version.
(I don’t even know if this officially qualifies as a “remake” example. They both were based on the same book, but in radically different ways. Same would go for various takes on “A Christmas Carol.”)
“Airplane!” was a remake of a film called “Zero Hour!” and borrowed the characters and basic plot. (On the DVD, they show a couple of shots side by side; they line up almost exactly.) The directors of “Airplane!” bought the rights and simply added comedic elements and played up the badness of the original.
Mind you, I’ve never seen “Zero Hour!” but “Airplane!” is one of my favorites.
Do reboots count? If so Batman Begins was far superior to the previous entries.
I liked High Society (1956) much better than The Philadelphia Story (1940) even though I normally prefer Katharine Hepburn to Grace Kelly.
The Thomas Crown Affair. While I haven’t seen all of the original, I like that in the remake what Crown did was of minimal danger to others. The decoy thieves weren’t armed, for example. And we see Crown actually steal the Monet himself, so he’s personally taking the risk. In the original, they’re robbing banks with live guns (but from what I saw, I don’t think Crown was doing this, he just planned and bankrolled the operation – but I could be wrong). This makes it possible for Crown to be a sympathetic character, rather than the scumbag the original movie made him be (as a general rule, I won’t watch movies that lionize criminals). And of course, Rene Russo’s tits are nice to look at. I DID like that the original didn’t have a happy ending (she betrays him, but he doesn’t show up; he escapes).
From what I’ve experienced, which version of a song, movie, etc. someone tends to prefer is the one they saw first. So “kids today” who like a song that’s a remake, tend to prefer the remake over the original; and I know of at least one such song where I feel the same.
I think the Cohen Brothers remake of True Grit was pretty well done.
A special category, or at least an asterisk, goes to movies remade by the original director — i.e., Alfred Hitchcock’s two versions of “The Man Who Knew Too Much.’ (“Let’s say the first version was the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional,” he said.)
I read that Stephen King liked the remake of ‘The Shining’ better than the original Kubrick version.
Dishonorable mention goes to remakes that are shot-for-shot copies of the original. I heard that the color “Psycho” was like that, but I didn’t see it.
Sidebar: in the art world, Leonardo daVinci was forced by circumstances to remake his painting, “Madonna of the Rocks” (one version is in London and one is in the Louvre). There’s no consensus on whether the remake is better than the original, so this does not help with the thread.
Well, yes, there are good remakes. But Hollywood’s approach to them is all wrong these days. They can’t really do a satisfactory remake of a movie that was perfect (or at least beloved) the first time around. See: Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Seven, Psycho, Red Dawn, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the list goes on and on)
However, sometimes filmmakers find an old movie that is flawed but has a great concept and that can lead to a wonderful remake. See: Little Shop of Horrors, Ocean’s 11, The Man Who Knew Too Much
Another thing that can work (but can also fail if done poorly) is to take a foreign film and put an American spin on it. See: The original The Magnificent Seven, The Departed, The Bird Cage
I think what it comes down to is your motive and effort. “If we remake a movie everyone already likes, of course they’ll come see the new one, we’ll turn a great profit” is bad and will fail again and again.
“I love this movie, but I think I can improve it” that’s better. It’s why Cape Fear worked even though it doesn’t fit any of the categories I listed above. Maybe Ocean’s 11, too. I never saw the original.
The 1959 Ben-Hur was arguably better than the 1925 original, even though the first one had way, way more steamy nudity. Both are head, shoulders and torso better than whatever is likely to be trotted out in 2016.
This is worth watching:
I was very disappointed in the remake of The Good The Bad and The Ugly. I think it was because Clint Eastwood’s “Blondy” was recast as a black lesbian woman in a wheelchair but when I saw Duco was played by a GE refrigerator that identified as a Loblolly Pine tree I just couldn’t finish watching it.
I’m with Joey on the “leave it alone if it was great to begin with”. Two glaring examples that come to mind are “Arthur” and “Inspector Clouseau”. Neither remake should even have been considered. I did like Adam Sandler’s “Mr. Deeds”, but only because of John Turturo’s character.
I never saw the original Italian Job but I did see the remake and it was a great movie.
The Fly and The Thing, great updates of my teenage weekend and late night tv fodder.
As for The Shining, that was a mini series written by King so he might be biased, I like the original more.
Remakes of foreign films does seem a different category, as even The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is a remake of Yojimbo (?).
3:10 to Yuma was good, but actually had never heard of that title, much less seen an earlier version.
Tied; when John Ford and John Wayne remade Rio Bravo into Rio Lobo, or was it the other way around?
I’m amazed how long it took to get to “The Thing”! YES, The Thing is proof you can do a great remake. The Fly, too.
I would have been fine with a female Ghostbusters team but I HATE that they rebooted the universe, and now whenever you refer to Ghostbusters you have to say which year you’re referring to. They should have made the ladies a separate franchise team in a different city, with the originals cameo-ing as their own roles.