I posted a thing on my dumb Tumblr thing about how awful the Stallone Judge Dredd movie was, and a lot of people asked me if I’d seen the 2012 Dredd with Karl Urban. I hadn’t, and didn’t intend to, for reasons that will become clear shortly. So many people recommended it to me, though, and it had such a great group of creative people behind it, I gave it a chance … and I loved it. Here’s what I wrote about it this morning:
I hate reboot culture. I hate that studios remake movies that were perfectly fine the first time around, simply because they’re too afraid to take a chance on something new, different and unproven.
That said, in an instance like Dredd, where the original film adaptation was a catastrophic failure of flaming shit, I should be willing to make exceptions.
I should be, but I’m usually not, because I’m stubborn. So when I posted about how I didn’t want to watch the 2012 version of the film, about two dozen people urged me to reconsider. I decided to take a chance (you know, like studios won’t), and watched it last night. I am so glad that I did, because I loved everything about it. A lot of fans fixate on Dredd never taking off the helmet, which I understand, but I don’t think that’s its strongest selling point. What I loved about it was how it felt like a proper motion picture adaptation of the 2000 A.D comics I read in the 80s, and the Games Workshop games I played from that universe. The city blocks felt massive. The Judges felt powerful. The relationship between Dredd and Anderson felt real. She didn’t need him to save her, even when he was trying to. The design of the entire picture, from the costumes to the sets to the little details like graffiti was pitch-perfect. And the photography was sensational.
I felt like it started to wobble a little bit in the third act, but like I originally wrote yesterday, I was on board by that point so I was willing to go along with it and let it be. I’m guessing that there won’t be any sequels, or we would have heard about it by now. If that’s the case, it’s a bummer, because I’d like to see these characters and this universe again … but maybe it’s for the best that this film can simply exist as its own thing, without being tainted by a sequel that lets us down (OH HAI THE MATRIX). Or maybe it’s a tragedy that Dredd won’t get its Aliens or T2. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.
So now I’m thinking about other movies that missed the point of their source material (Running Man and The Shining come to mind, though they stand on their own in their own glorious ways), and trying to figure out what other pictures I’d remake, if I could pass a universal law that requires two new movies be made for every remake, because I am a powerful, tyrannical king.
Following these rules, what would you remake, and why? Show your work.
As long as we’re discussing great source material made into truly awful cinema, how about a remake of “Damnation Alley?” Only this time try to stick closer to Zelazny’s story. Great novella, horrible film. (Although a lot of the elements made it into Fallout 3, so maybe it wasn’t a complete waste. (While we’re at it, with the right touch the Amber series would make a kick ass film series.)
I’d remake “Condorman”. Because nobody remembers it, or can even get to see it very easily, and despite it being cheesy and ridiculous Disney nonsense, it’s nevertheless quite fun. So why not make it again, this time during the Superhero and Spy phase we’re in right now, and with a bit more care. I’d keep it partially a comedy and a bit slapstick, but, staying away from the Dark and Gritty, I’d give it a bit more gravitas too.
For the uninitiated, Condorman is about a comic book artist who gets the opportunity to be his own superhero creation when a Government Agency need a civilian to meet with a defecting Russian spy. Hilarity ensues.
I still think Condorman is brilliant! It would be really difficult to cast a remake, as Michael Crawford was perfect – he IS Condorman. Even the hilariously bad special effects only add to the movie’s charm! Had a good score too, as I remember. I’m going to have to watch it again now – fond memories!
Whenever I imagine my remake, there’s an Australian actor I have in mind named Frank Woodley (and in my version he leaps from the Sydney Harbour Bridge instead of the Eiffel Tower).
It’s now on Netflix… and yes, fond memories of this one ^_^ (its not gunna be a turkey if I re-watch is it?)
I remember not only seeing Condorman at the movies but leaving the theater and having Condorman Crunch at Baskin Robbins lol
I remember Condorman. I brought it to movie day in 3rd grade and our teacher wouldn’t let us watch it. Then some other kid brought it the next week and we watched it. I hated Ms. Mullin.
I would maybe remake Duel to the Death. It is the most amazing kung fu movie ever, and it’s beautifully shot but the plot is a pile of nonsense. It would be great to remake it with a sensible plot and quality camera quality.
I’d like to see a version of “The Giver” filmed that is true to the book.
Later this year (August I believe) Disney is releasing a reboot of their classic “Pete’s Dragon”. I fucking LOVE “Pete’s Dragon”. I’ve seen it at least a hundred times over the course of my 37 1/2 years (granted, that’s true for almost all Disney films, really). I’ve seen the trailer and I have to admit, I’m kind of excited.
But I’m holding my breath also, because I’m really hoping Disney doesn’t fuck this up and that, at the very least, they include a tribute to Helen Reddy’s “Candle On The Water” from the original. Because if there isn’t…there will be angry letters written. Many angry letters.
There’s nothing wrong with “remake culture.” All culture is remake culture.
It’s like Ebert said: no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short.
Of course, you know this better than anyone, Wil. The real issue is that Hollywood is not really in the business of making art. That’s secondary. They’re in the business of making bank. By any means necessary. It’s why Batman V Superman will continue to metastasize. They sell laundry detergent first and if they can spritz a greasy sheen of faux art on top, all the better to sleep at night.
Also, film and television (and most big video games) are design by committee. The whole notion of the auteur is generally overblown and in my view, frankly fawking ridiculous given that a typical film can easily feature 10,000 people in the credits, and then, of course, all of the uncredited slaves in South Korea or Bulgaria.
There is no such thing as a defining creative vision in most large scale corporate entertainment. And then, never subversive in any real way. For that type of perspective, you still must rely on books or any small, singular production free from the censorial self instinct of the collective.
So, really, I never, ever, ever expect anything but pew-pew, zoom-zoom, and boom-boom from large scale corporate entertainment. If I am occasionally surprised, that’s swell. But generally, large corporate entertainment vectors feature exceptional world class technicians with the willingness to quisling and subjugate any independent inclinations to the sponsor’s neutering will. Indeed, to internalize and adore the compromise. Pretty, but empty.
There should be absolutely no limits to remaking anything and everything. Endless reboots, endless mutations, endless recasting. Most of these IPs are silly to begin with. I side with the pirates.
The problem is not remakes. It’s WHO is doing the remakes. Cowards, quislings, and yes men (and yes ladies).
In this regard, the Internet is superior in every way to corporate sausage. I will take Laser Fart any day and every day over your typical Judge Dredd. Red Letter Media or Blame Society does Star Wars better than anyone.
I want to watch Web series, street theater, YouTube mayhem, improv everywhere. Techno Viking is superior to Judge Dredd.
I’m Spudnuts.
And I approve of this post, pierced nipples, and chicken and waffles.
Tip your server.
Ender’s Game. The movie did the best it could in the time given, but missed one of the most important themes from the book.
You wanna talk remakes? How about this…
All swords, no muskets. For fawk’s sake, they’re MUSKETEERS.
If they used muskets instead of swords, that movie would have been seven minutes long.
Logan’s Run
^^ THIS! I’m nostalgic for the original, but it has some problems. I think a modern film could deal with the concept of this bpok/film better.
if anything needed a remake – all the Mortal Kombat series…i think it could be BETTER!!! that is really my only thing.
and i can’t believe they are remaking ben hur. COME ON 🙁
Land of the Lost. I love Wil Ferrel, but the movie was just so far off the mark from the show… I don’t even have the words to express my disappointment.
The Last Unicorn. The old animated is good in its way, but if you’ve ever read the novel you’ll know why I want it remade. There’s the obvious reason, such as the fact that with modern graphics we could really bring the world to life in a way that the old animated couldn’t (see Lord of the Rings), though I’d really want to avoid getting into such a graphics bender that the story became bloated and strange (see The Hobbit). But mainly, it’s because the book isn’t about a pretty unicorn, a bumbling magician, and a noble Prince, and yet in many ways that’s what the movie makes it out to be. I remember how surprised I was to read the book, after adoring and rewatching the movie as a kid over and over again. The magician isn’t bumbling and ridiculous. It’s a pretense he wears to hide behind, and behind the pretense is a very interesting character. The same can be said of all the characters in the movie. The movie essentially took the surface-level seeming of each character in the book, and stopped there. Took scenes that were poignant and made them mere distraction (like the scene with Cully’s band and the conjured Robin Hood). If you haven’t read the book, I recommend it. I’d recommend the movie, too, but would love, love, love to see it remade well.
Seconded. I’ve seen reports that there’s a live-action version of the film “in development,” but I’ve seen nothing concrete. I liked the animated version, but felt it fell short of the book. If it should come to pass, I’d certainly watch it. No matter how good it might be, though, I’d certainly lament the fact that Christopher Lee would be unable to reprise his role as King Haggard.
… Still not sure how I feel about America providing the soundtrack to the animated version… :p
Westworld.
Yul Brynner was iconic in that role and I still remember when his mask came off. I was a kid, but that creeped me out for a long time. Yet, despite the fact that Westworld’s concept has become more relevant, it’s a movie that hasn’t held up well. The story of Westworld would have the ability to be powerful today if it could be written by someone who has a more comprehensive understanding of AI and of course the modern technology to allow the viewer to suspend disbelief instead of laughing at the robot fight scenes of the original (which had all the production value of an episode of the 6 million dollar man).
Yul was amazing, but the script’s treatment of the dark side of AI and the ethics surrounding manufactured life were simplistic even for the time. By today’s standards, they’re just silly.
There’s just so much grist to work with. Its a classic Deux ex Machina gone bad, which is a concept that can be incredibly powerful. 2001 a Space Odyssey, and Solaris (which had a decent remake) are also expressions of this concept. Given our current understanding of AI and artificial life ethics, I have to believe that good writers could put out a script for a Westworld remake that would permanently curl your toes. Just last week, Microsoft brought an A.I. online to learn from humans. Within days, people had taught it to be violent, foul mouthed, racist, sexist, and pro-Trump.
By way of comparion – Rollerball was a brilliant scifi movie that retained its relevance because it was not about science and because its production, though now dated, was so masterful that it remains an outstanding period piece with relevance and merit despite a handful of dated technological concepts. Rollerball was about the human struggle for identity and personal freedom which are things humans have understood for millenia. Rollerball should never have been re-made. The scene of the feckless mean-spirited people blowing up trees to Albinoni’s Adaggio is IMHO among the most powerful scenes ever put in a sci-fi movie. Westworld could be that good if done in light of our current understanding of physics & robotics & technology ethics. Westworld is just waiting for a brilliant young idealist to turn it into a modern classic. It would take the right writers & producers to stay true to the theme and not try to turn it into a summer blockbuster. But… it could be done. The potential is most definitely there.
Solaris is an expression of a Deus ex Machina gone bad? Certainly Lem’s novel and Tarkovsky’s movie are not at all about this. In your defence, I can barely remember a thing about Soderbergh’s remake – which tells you something about what I think of it (ie. ok, but forgettable) .
I went straight out and bought the soundtrack. Thought the planet visuals were good to look at too.
But, yeah. I thought it sort of shot wide of the original. Word was it was explicitly a remake of the movie; I wish they’d tried instead to do a better job of staging the book.
In the lead-up to the release of the remake, Lem was reported as saying “he hated Tarkovsky’s movie, but he hoped he died before Soderbegh’s version came out!”
A TV show in in the works with HBO, should be aired later this year or next year. Great cast too. really lookingforward to it, and i think we might see more of the other worlds too, not just westworld, which is great
Oops. Sorry @Tom and @vorropohaiahVorropohaiah
I didn’t see your comments. I just saw the youtube vid and got excited and came here and posted before checking. (hangs head and blushes)
😉
Holy friggin crap. They’re remaking Westworld as an HBO series… this year…
OK, two things:
1.) Now I don’t feel like such a spaz for suggesting that it was a story with potential.
2.) The timing is just creepy. I had no idea. … just went to youtube to see if I could find some clips to see if I was being too harsh on the original. Up comes a trailer for the “Upcoming HBO Series.”
Permagrin Achievement: unlocked
It looks like Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris are playing the leads – and a very solid ensemble. Hell, “Solid” is an understatement. Someone is spending a buck or two on this thing.
Can’t wait….
Dune is ripe for a movie reboot.
Maybe as a tv series/mini-series. Its a little too odd and expeansive as a movie. Also we can get some of the other books
they definitely did a miniseries of this it was mostly ok but “Gurning” Halleck was awful…
All right, you have a point. An HBO/Netflix miniseries a la Game of Thrones would probably be perfect.
Not a remake just use the 6hrs of footage from the original to make a miniseries
yep – the design, feel and some of the dialogue from the movie are still breathtaking – even if it strays a long way from the books. I love the training scene at the start: ‘moods a thing for cattle and loveplay – not fighting – arm yourself for death!’ (or something) then that cool fighting robot trainer thing – genius.
I think I’m in the minority but I’d like to see Battlestar Galactica remade as the fun, swashbucking adventure with a touch of mythology that it originally was, rather than a heavy handed, gender-bending treatise on religion and the meaning of life…
Speaking of bananas…. I hear your gonna get some new ink, im sure you like your artist! just saying… im a good friend of “Niki Norberg” (one of platet earths best tattoo guys) , he travel a lot to Cali so if you want i can huck you up with him. Google him at least 🙂
Love everything about you man! The Burrito, your books (read them 5 times each), keep doing what you do!! and i hope you and your loved ones are happy and safe! and may the Kings loose against Wachington in the play off 😉
Love / Johan Bjorn
ps, sorry for my crappy spelling 🙂
Shame you cant introduce the cast of Big Bang to Dredd. Imagine the fun that could be had with them going to an English Comiccon (or DST in Birmingham England – where as Urban is Bones and Dredd there will be judges turn up in costune) and meeting the Judge Dredd costume group and then the whole group trying to do judge costumes.
I’d remake “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” (AKA Riverworld) by Phillip Jose Farmer. The people at SyFy who tried (twice) to adapt the book completely missed the point of the book. Twice.
The book was about historical characters interacting with historical characters from different time periods. The SyFy folks completely missed that; instead, they introduce a set of vanilla viewpoint characters, so the movie becomes historical figures interacting with non-entities. It needs to be re-done right, by someone who read more than the back cover of the novel.
I don’t really consider re-adaptions to be remakes. It’s a misconception that hurts the film’s chances. As you learnt.
The book Blood and Chocolate is a really fun teen werewolf book. The movie Blood and Chocolate was absolutely horrible. Nothing like the book. The only things connecting them are the title and the character’s names. Well, that and the fact that they’re all werewoves. It’s like taking Star Wars and setting it in a tea-house Imperial Japan but leaving the names the same. The original setting was an average American town. The movie switched it to Bucharest, Romania. It went down hill from there.
Winter Dance by Gary Paulson was made into the horrific movie Snow Dogs. The book is one of my favorites of all time but it was like they took one scene from the book to make a whole unrelated movie. Oh, and this was an awesome time to make a movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. With cute puppies. If they made an actual movie of the Iditarod and treated with the proper respect it would be phenomenal.
“The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.” It’s a perfect series for modern production. From its origins as a series of radio scripts written up to and past their production deadlines, it’s mostly a connection of brilliant ideas, lines, and visuals rather than a deeply considered storyline. It can easily be broken apart and reassembled to suit the needs of a movie or premium-cable series while retaining its identity.
The movie was…sweet. It felt like a memorial to a beloved creator and collaborator, and I enjoyed it on that level. But between the radio scripts, the books, the game, etc there’s just so much terrific raw material there.
Oh, absolutely!!! I love the original radio scripts (listed to them in their entirety dozens of times). I was so excited when the movie was announced, but was supremely disappointed. I agree that it felt like a memorial to Douglas Adams.
The movie was actually finished before Adams died, just still in post-production. He co-wrote the movie script. He made changes every time he adapted the work – from radio to books to TV to movie – each media has it’s own quirks, and he was flexible enough to be awesome in all of them. Also, sometimes times change, and sometimes writers just think “I’d like to do this differently”. I’m not saying that the movie is genius, it just irks me that people call it an “adaptation” of Adams work, when it IS Adam’s work.
I have to agree with you on Running Man and The Shining. The originals were so far off from the book, that I never bothered giving the remakes a look. Being a HUGE Stephen King fan, I think that a lot of the movies made from his books could get a redo, but most would end up having to be mini-series (a la The Stand) to do them any justice. I adore Doctor Sleep, but am a little scared that they are making it into a movie (if I can believe some brief thing I saw on Facebook)
There was a remake of The Shining that was a 2-part made for TV movie like It and The Langoliers. It aired around the mid-90’s and I think King said that it was far closer to his vision than Kubrick’s film. It was pretty awesome.
It was actually a King production, as he detested Kubrick’s version.
Running man as an HBO series…draw it out, show the world, big backstories of the stalkers and runners and other parts. Goollllld.
How about the 1983 sci-fi/fantasy epic Krull? I think at the time it was seen as a cheesy Star Wars rip off, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for Krull. The original had a fantastic film score and lovely scenery, and would have been even better with first rate special effects and sets.
Have the remake switch things around a bit. Prince Colwyn is kidnapped by the Beast (who takes on the form of a ravishing evil queen bee) and must be rescued by Princess Lyssa. Lyssa recruits an unlikely band of misfits (including many women whose husbands died defending Krull from the Slayers), plus a renegade Changeling who has seen the error of its ways. With a bigger budget + CGI, we could be treated to an even more extravagant Black Fortress and grand set piece battles between the Slayers and the armies of Krull.
Krull has one of my favorite lines from any movie ever made:
“Fame? Nah, it’s an empty purse. Count it, go broke. Eat it, go hungry. Seek it and go mad!”‘
Heh, just found this: http://www.theonion.com/article/obama-receives-classified-briefing-likelihood-krul-52581
The remake of Doc Savage has been on and off for years, so make it. The original was too much like the TV Batman, only it came out a decade after that went out of style. There has yet to be a good pulp novel adaptation, and it’s past time. And while you’re at it, remake John Carter (and call it A Princess of Mars).
This one is a bit touchy. I would remake The NeverEnding Story. This has nothing to do with my opinion of this film. I love The NeverEnding Story! It was a favorite of mine as a child and I still watch it every couple of years and share it with my own kids. However, the author of the book (Michael Ende) was unhappy with it and there were some parts from the book that weren’t in the movie. I’d simply like to see a version of this movie that was either true to the book or at least approved by the author.
I would like to see a remake of Catwoman after the appalling neutered mess that was the Halle Berry/Sharon stone movie.
I read that book when I was a kid after I saw the movie. The film covers the first third-to-half of the novel. It gets seriously dark after that point, and would make a very interesting movie. It’s very long though, I’m not sure a single feature-length film would cut it.
I’d remake the running man for sure. The book was awesome, the movie was a travesty.
And I’d remake highlander. Despite it being a good cult classic, it could’ve been so much more with a better budget.
I always though Puppet Master could make an awesome horror remake if done with a better budget, providing they didn’t CGI everything and used really really cool animatronics instead. The original plot was actually pretty awesome.
Masters of the universe
I would go dark and possibly even go with a Shakespeare style of language. Ps no Prince Adam or Orko bullshit
I think that Stalker is ripe for a remake. While the original movie is very fine, I think there are good reasons for a remake:
the movie is somewhat inaccessible to modern audiences, being over 2.5 hours long and in Russian
the original material (Roadside Picnic by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky) is rich and relevant
The remake could more relevant to contemporary western issues – the struggle to find meaning and happiness in a world which is sometimes capriciously difficult and filled with emptiness, sadness and suffering.
Masters of the universe
I would go much darker and possibly use Shakespeare style language. Get rid of the Prince Adam bullshit
Westword TV series by HBO.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475784/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
DIGITAL HIGH FIVE!
I think I would probably redo Sergei Lukyanenko’s The Night Watch. The original film was pretty good as a film on its own, but it sort of missed the point of the books and ended up with a sequel that made little sense. Following on from the original story in the books could be a fantastic film series.
Blade Runner is another movie that didn’t exactly follow its source material, but then it’s so great in its own right that it shouldn’t warrant a remake. Ever.
And Starship Troopers, for that matter, I think excelled on the source material, although it did fall foul of the Law Of Sequels.
++1 for Condorman. I must watch that again, haven’t seen it since I was a kid
I think Spidey and Superman need to be remade taking the source material much more into account. It seems to be happening on the former score, thankfully.
A third reboot/retelling of Spiderman’s origin? Please, no!
(Actually – are we at the point where we can just skip superhero origin films entirely? Just – tell us a story about X hero; if really necessary, just do a 5-minute flashback to the origin. Don’t tell us yet again how Spidey or the FF got their powers (especially if you’re going to do a really bad job of it, like the Fantastic Four…)
I believe that the next Spidey movie won’t be yet another origin story. It’ll probably have some origin elements to it because you need the set the table first, but I doubt that a substantial amount of time will be spent on it. Plus I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it is covered in Civil War.
^This. Absolutely. I am almost half a century old and these origin stories are part of the social fabric. We all know them. There’s no need to reboot Spiderman or Batman or Superman or Hulk etc etc. Just tell us a great story using some of the awesome storylines from the last few decades. There’s no shortage of source material.
I´m not talking about an origin necessarily, but a story which more accurately depicts the tone of the comic books. An adaptation of ANY Ultimate Spidey story would work for me.
I’d love a remake of “Ragtime.” Milos Forman’s ’80s film adaptation bastardized E.L. Doctorow’s brilliant novel, including discarding plot elements, expanding minor plot elements, and creating a major new character. The film is not bad [terrific cast, charming Randy Newman score], and has some charming elements, but it lacks the novel’s drive. Side note: A magnificent stage musicalization was done in the ’90s — Doctorow hated the film so much that he required several songs be written BEFORE granting the stage rights, for songwriters to prove they would handle the novel properly.
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper.
It was made into a movie called “The Seeker” that just obliterated any sense of the original book. The only things that were kept the same were some of the names. Most of the people involved with the movie had never read the books. Some admitted to skimming them, including most of the screenplay writers. Only one writer and two actors had read the whole book – one of the actors had read the whole series. They completely destroyed everything good about the books with the movie. They also added a subplot about the main characters twin being trapped inside a gumball machine since presumably birth, none of which was in the books.
A movie of this series done with the same attention as literally any other book adaptation would be better.
Sky is reportedly planning a TV adaptation. I can only hope it’s better than the steaming pile of crap that the movie was. I love that whole series, and after reading about the changes made in the movie, I’m never watching it.
I read an interview with Ian McShane online when the movie came out, and he admitted to trying and failing to read the book. It was “really dense.” But if only one of the screenwriters had read the book, I guess he was in good company. But the insanity of it all just makes my brain hurt.
Robot Jox!
Beastmaster, sans Marc Singer and actual animal death due to mistreatment. Go back to the orginal Andre Norton novel.
Now that George Lucas has no control over “that franchise”, why not remake the prequel trilogy from scratch. Redeem that potentially quite compelling backstory from that awful shower of shit that was served back in the early noughties. Make it less CGI heavy, try adding some continuity, and maybe even encourage the actors to well, act. Could be good, Force Awakens was alright.
I would love to see a LOTR/Epic fantasy film version of the recent Elfstones of Shannara on MTV. This time have real Trolls, Gnomes, The Witch Sisters, Wisp, a brave and not a jerky Crispin, more variety of Demons, Stee Jans and the Legion Free Corps, less steam punk and more fantasy elements, the massacre at Drey Wood, the Reaper there till the end, and some full scale battles like those in the Terry Brooks masterpiece to name a few things lol. Oh, and I would personally like to see a remake of The Beastmaster!
I love remake culture! Our whole culture was built on “based on” (insert plug for Public Domain here/ranty lament that Big Entertainment has destroyed the concept). But whoever makes the remake has to get what makes the original thing it’s based on so great, and add to that greatness in the new thing: refine it, feature it, make the audience love it the way the maker of the thing loves it. If the maker misses the mark for any reason, whether it’s because they’re exploiting a property they don’t understand for the money, or think they’re “improving” the property while ignoring or just not getting what makes it great, the creation in question doesn’t gel and it won’t be a success, and it will make Wil and Telzey and thousands of angry voices on the internet very unhappy.
I love that Doctor Who was made by a fan who had an idea of what Doctor Who could be, and he made it. I love that the Justice League cartoon series was made by a fan who remembered how much he loved Super Friends as a kid and was shocked to see how awful it was when he watched it as an adult, so he remade it the way he remembered it. I love that the same story is told by the fan who made Battlestar Galactica: he loved the show as a kid and was shocked when he saw it as an adult and it didn’t hold up, so he made a version that was as good as he remembered it. I love that The Venture Brothers is a cynical, mean-spirited, hilarious modern remade of Johnny Quest. I love every version of Sherlock Holmes that’s out there, be it Sherlock, Elementary, or those crazy movies made by Guy Ritchie. Ritchie’s Man from Uncle was very nearly pitch-perfect, except he completely missed what was wonderful, beloved by the fans, and essential about Ilya Kuriakin and as such completely screwed up that very important 50% of the magic of the original show… which is why the movie flopped. If you don’t get what’s magical about what you’re basing the remake on, if you’re not a fan, you’ll fail.
The remake I’d love to see is, I kid you not, Frederico Fellini’s 8 1/2, except I want the director to be a woman director and the whole sexist plot gender-flipped. We set it in Hollywood, not Italy, but it’s still about a director at the end of her career making a cheesy scifi movie looking back and thinking about the men (and women, why not!) she’s loved and lost. Fellini had a sign stuck to the camera so he could see it while he was directing, “Remember, this is a comedy”–it would be a comedy, but a dark and snarky one. The movie is a train wreck of horrible 1960s sexism but it still needs to be remade because it’s also hilarious, delightfully coarse in all the best ways, and riveting.
This is a fantastic point, and thought-provoking. Thanks!
Hollywood has produced remakes for most of the past century. Silent films were remade when the talkies came in. If not for remakes we wouldn’t have some of the classic versions we love. For example, Humphrey Bogart’s turn as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.
I didn’t read through the first 169 comments, so I’m just going to assume that at least half of them suggested remaking one of the Star Trek movies and casting Wil Wheaton as one of the leads.
RIGHT?!?!?!?
He’s gonna have to do that during down time between seasons because (imaginary) Wil’s gonna be in a spin off featuring that dynamic duo of Captain Robin LaFleur and Dr. Wesley Crusher having fabulous adventures together, with a great deal of Thin Man-esque smart and witty banter as the feature draw.
The Greatest American Hero –
It was a perfect, campy, what would happen if that kind of power dropped on a regular human?
I think today, when everyone is involved online-socially instead of personally-socially, that it would tell a very different story.
I’d also go the route of having a 2nd or 3rd generation Latina find the suit, as it would give us a chance to see the story outside of the mainstream paradigm. Not in an “apologize for oppression” way, but in that when you’re looking at someone who is now imbued with alien power – even though they’re human – wouldn’t it be great to see it from the point of view of someone that is labeled as an “alien” even when they aren’t.
Also, I’m keeping the theme song.
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj03eaCjPjLAhVlk4MKHfZxBrgQtwIIHDAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DB4JCehDOy54&usg=AFQjCNE47vesW-C0Bly2drTSoKfFyPD4og&sig2=488S7NtFIrGpptNRSBXzFg
Childhood Favorite book that was a TV(?) Movie — My Side of the Mountain.
Far to little self reliance and exploration taught to kids. Too much helicopter parenting & fear of “free range children.” Much like the Zach Weinersmith “Augie & the Green Night” kids book, this book had a kid that really wanted to continue to pursue what he wanted…and to the extreme, made it happen.
Sure, after 27 days and Wild, everyone would expect the kid to be dead and molested, but what if he was truly remote, and it was fantastic and it was a story of achievement despite age and expectations?
Jebus…I need to do write this now.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064708/
A Conan movie that is true to the Howard stories. The first Conan the Barbarian (AKA Conan meets the Flower Children of Set) was the best of the three, The Jason Momoa version was the closest to the original Howard vision, but the story was crap. Both had some good points, and I really liked the character of Conan as portrayed by Momoa, but the whole packages were disappointing. Conan the Destroyer was crap, end to end.