Film remakes: do they ever succeed?

[The Piper]

the scouse one is the good one

Isn't it always

[philipsfrog]

I did like John Carpenters The Thing, The Fly and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo more than the originals

[SammiValentine]

Isn't it always

is rice

[RallyCola]

in most cases, the original material is often regarded better than the remake. That may be because it is in fact better but also because too often, nostalgia and the idea of originality count too much in the mind of a critic.

Now, what are we willing to call a remake? Is Michael Bay's Transformers a remake of the 80s cartoon? Is Batman Begins a remake of Keaton's 89 batfilm? Is that itself a remake of the Adam West 60s flick? Is an american version (ala The Departed, Vanilla Sky and The Ring) a remake of the foreign film? Is Evil Dead 2 really a remake of the first or do we go with the business story behind the brief retelling? Where do we stop?

To me, given the broadest definition of a remake, which is a movie that is more than just inspired by a previous movie, the most successful remakes...that is movies that I believe are better than the one that inspired them are (in no particular order):

Casino Royale
Scarface
Ocean's 11
Vanilla Sky
3:10 to Yuma
The Departed

I could list The Fly and True Grit but it has been so long since I saw either original that I can't say if the more modern movies are so much better.

[Tara Emory]

For a while I've been pondering that instead of remaking movies that were good to begin with, they really should remake movies that were terrible bombs in the first place.

Did you ever see a movie that had a few things working, and yet they screwed it up, but if they just fixed, this, this that, and that other thing, it would've been great. Or it was a crappy movie that was based on a great book. Those are the ones that would make great remakes. Maybe even moreso if you picked remakes made from _notorious_ cinematic bombs...

[south ov da border]

For a while I've been pondering that instead of remaking movies that were good to begin with, they really should remake movies that were terrible bombs in the first place.

Did you ever see a movie that had a few things working, and yet they screwed it up, but if they just fixed, this, this that, and that other thing, it would've been great. Or it was a crappy movie that was based on a great book. Those are the ones that would make great remakes. Maybe even moreso if you picked remakes made from _notorious_ cinematic bombs...

I like... a short list for them to remake

Strange Days
Howard the Duck

[robertlouis]

I like... a short list for them to remake

Strange Days
Howard the Duck

If by Strange Days you mean the Katherine Bigelow film with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett, no way.

You shouldn't mess with a Bigelow movie. That lady knows exactly what she's doing.

[robertlouis]

For a while I've been pondering that instead of remaking movies that were good to begin with, they really should remake movies that were terrible bombs in the first place.

Did you ever see a movie that had a few things working, and yet they screwed it up, but if they just fixed, this, this that, and that other thing, it would've been great. Or it was a crappy movie that was based on a great book. Those are the ones that would make great remakes. Maybe even moreso if you picked remakes made from _notorious_ cinematic bombs...

That, Tara, may be a statement of the bleedin' obvious, but it hits the nail right on the head. Most remakes are anaemic attempts to cash in on a far superior original in the hope that the new generation haven't seen it yet.

[south ov da border]

If by Strange Days you mean the Katherine Bigelow film with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett, no way.

You shouldn't mess with a Bigelow movie. That lady knows exactly what she's doing.

I loved the film--- only reason I was mentioning it is because of it not doing well in the box office. I personally agree with you on it shouldn't be touched but stranger things have happened.

[Stavros]

I think there is a difference between remakes of films in the same language and those which are taken from other sources: the remake of The Ladykillers - one British the other American- didn't work; Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is a vastly superior film to The Magnificent Seven yet the Sturges films is pretty good and has some great performances, especially from Steve McQueen. The Departed, by contrast is a poor copy of Infernal Affairs. Where the remakes succeed, as I think has been said before, is where the technology can take an old story to new levels, which is where we have got with the tedious need to produce Superman, Batman and all that stuff. I think it is telling that the remake of a western, True Grit was problematic, the genre doesn't change much with modern technology -or does it? Can anyone imagine a re-make of The Searchers, or She Wore a Yellow Ribbon? Remaking a John Ford must surely be heresy by any standard...