In a movie- or any story, really- the setting is irrelevant, it can be changed without changing the story. It’s fun to re imagine a movie in a different setting.
“Zucotti Park” the movie.
Manhattan, Zucotti Park, 2011.
Rich runs the American Cafe near the Occupy encampment. It’s the best coffeehouse on Wall Street. Rich knows everybody, and they all mingle at his place- cops and occupiers, bankers and the unemployed, and everyone in between. There is even a room in back where you can buy unpasteurized artisan milk and cheese, if you know how to ask. When a hustler steals the bailout papers from one of the big banks- entitling anyone who possesses them to a government bailout, no questions asked- and a beautiful woman from his past appears with her new boyfriend, the creator of a wikileaks like website, he must choose between cynicism and idealism.
Return to Oz was Wizard of Oz, but seen as dark and psychological and scary.
I’d love to see Murder by Death redone as a serious murder mystery, with real clues and a real solution, but almost everything else the same. Less comedy, certainly less farce…but still witty.
In the same vein, Star Wars done as serious thoughtful science fiction: have a story where the implications of the setting are faced meaningfully. (In a world with blasters, why are they still employing frontal-assault tactics?)
If the joke isn’t obvious, there is a longstanding allegation that George Lucas copied from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress when making Star Wars.
Kurosawa himself seems to have done some copying too - his Throne of Blood is supposedly based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth - admittedly not a movie but the theme and plot transfer to a different setting is similar.
Another famous “retelling” of a prior story is Orson Scott Card’s Homecoming series, a retelling of the Book of Mormon (the book, not the play).
If Card can do a Book of Mormon SF story, I’d like to see a SF Bible. Admiral Joshua and his fleet of Israeli starcruisers struggle to find a new homeland in the hostile Canaan Sector and keep alive the visions of Grand Fleet Admiral Moses. Don’t get complacent though, those Babylonian slaver ships are hovering just beyond the neutral zone.
I’ve mentioned this before: a remake of M set in the immigrant communities of Manhattan circa 1910. In the 1931 original it was the criminal community that banded together to catch the killer. In the remake it would be the various immigrant groups.