Andrew Marcec » Hell Hath No Fury Like A Cinephile’s Scorn For Remakes

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Cinephile’s Scorn For Remakes

Jun 03, 2009 | 1 Comment | @andrewmarcec

This summer’s film lineup offers an excellent reprieve from hot summer days with their current list of “blockbusters” hitting screens. “Star Trek”, “Angels and Demons”, “Drag Me To Hell”, and “Terminator Salvation” are just a few that have been release and have earned incredible numbers. The lineup is bittersweet however, because come fall America will be put through a horrendous gauntlet of remakes and reboots.

This has been nothing new for several years now, and many film goers are actually getting excited for them. It started slowly, “The Ring” took America by storm and introduced us to just how terrifying Eastern cinema can really be. After that well had dried and then going back to produce several sequels to those films, Hollywood moved on. It’s next victim was something worse than just a lowly remake.

Suddenly remakes for franchises created in the 1970s and 1980s were falling prey to the money hungry jaws of big budget production companies and no-talent writers. Films like “The Fog”, “The Amityville Horror”, “Friday The 13th” all have new and “modernized” versions of its former self. Why is this becoming such a huge trend? Why do people want to the same films that are easily picked up from video stores, Netflix, and film revivals? Are viewers spoiled? Have we as an audience gotten so used to dazzling special effects and poor dialogue that we feel if the film stock is a tad grainy it is them deemed “unwatchable”?

Many people of our generation have an unwavering beef with black and white film. They lose interest within seconds of the title showing, claiming “they couldn’t get into it” or “there was no plot whatsoever”. Some films, of that era could stand to survive an update. However, if “Casablanca” was ever in queue for this treatment, many would swear off film forever. Upon scouring the internet one day, Meh, from horror-movies.ca found a list of seventy films that were set to be remade within the next few years. This list is incredibly depressing, and below are just some of the films that have been deemed “classic” and “cinema changing” that will be getting the remake treatment.

Army Of Darkenss

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes

The Birds

Battle Royal

Creature From The Black Lagoon

The Crazies

Child’s Play

Children Of The Corn

The Gate

The Host

Hellraiser

Nightmare On Elm Street

Plan 9 From Outer Space

Predator

Poltergeist

Suspira

Total Recall

The Wolfman

These are just a few of the films detailed. You can read the full article [here], or at click the link at the bottom of this article. Notice a trend here? Stephen King films and films that have been cult classics and inspired horror films for the past thirty years take up the majority. Sadly people will never go back and watch the original version of these great films. If given the chance I’m sure many of our generation would call these original films “boring” and turn them off within fifteen minutes.

Films like “Total Recall” and “Predator” are still highly watched original films! Why the sudden urge to go back and retell this story? There are several reasons for why remakes are booming at the moment. First off, the reason so many foreign films get remade is due to that fact that we are lazy. A majority of people will claim that “they don’t want to read a movie”, if they did want to, they claim they would “read a book”. Obviously neither of those two things are happening, yet when they watch the remake they get the smug satisfaction of being able to call themselves “cultured”.

Second, we are lazy storytellers. Looks at how many films that have been released in the past five years that actually have original plot lines and story arcs. If you named anything from the major cinema, chances are you can say “oh, that film reminded me exactly of this film”. We are lazy storytellers.

This trend of remakes needs to end! Let’s ask for our writers to step up to the challenge and dig deep into the story, creating well rounded characters and interesting plot twists. However, if you like the current trend of remakes, then you will love next summers rendition of “Where’s Waldo”.

Read the full list [here].

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1 Comment to “Hell Hath No Fury Like A Cinephile’s Scorn For Remakes”

Kira
Jun 4th, 2009

Some of those remakes made me so sad! I mean, you can’t remake Hitchcock! (Didn’t we already prove that with the crappy Psycho remake?) And I can’t get over the Where’s Waldo movie. I heard about that and it made me laugh. It’s a guy who hides in a striped shirt. How do you make that a movie?