I’ve been watching The Twilight Zone and got to Nightmare at 2000 Feet. This is one of my favorite episodes even though the creature is a giant teddy bear. When the movie came out in the 80s I enjoyed that version which led to the greatest scene in Third Rock from the Sun.
However, I recall originally, the makers wanted to cast Robert Mitchum as a WWII vet who knew about gremlins from his war experience. I would love to see that version of the story. I feel that that could make for a very compelling movie and not just a TV episode.
I’ve always thought Bad Taste the super low budget early Peter Jackson movie needs a remake. It’s a really funny in a B-movie type way but (Unlike Braindead, his other early movie, where the horror is made by the low budget effects, and would be ruined by a big budge remake) it’s a scifi action movie which is a hard genre to pull off on a budget of $2.50 and a pizza. I’d really like to see what Peter Jackson could do with Bad Taste and a few hundred million bucks. Hollywood is throwing cash at unnecessary remakes left and right why not this one?
Also Starship Troopers. Yes, I get its meant to be a parody of fascism, we all do. But doesn’t mean it needs to be a bad movie, it would be too cheesy for an episode of 90201. You could remake it in a way that doesn’t suck, incorporate more cool sci fi elements of the book (yes i also know it was only turned into an dramatisation of the book late in production) and still be a on the nose parody of fascism. Hell we need more parodies of fascism right now, lots of them. I don’t think we’ll be getting them unfortunately
Idiocracy (2006) should be remade. At a minimum, the grating voiceover narration should be taken out. This movie captured our present plight! Done properly, it could have been a cultural touchstone.
@griffin1977Braindead! I’ve never laughed so hard in a cinema as when watching that film.
Yeah totally it shouldn’t be touched. Being remade with expensive special effects would ruin it.
Bad Taste on the other hand is an action sci-fi movie, the cheesy ultra low budget effects and fight scenes are funny but they could actually be improved by being made for more than the cost of a meat pie.
I’ve read the story. And the ending is great (it’s the main thing) but no one has the guts to put that ending in the movie (and it has been done at least three times already). It needs to be done properly with the story’s ending.
And ditch the Marshmallow Man gremlin while you’re at it, and go with something more akin to the John Lithgow gremlin, which actually you know looked like one.
I would have a TINY bit more respect for the f. (Verhoeven) thing if it had an Only Sane Man (Woman) character, akin to G.C. Mandrake in Dr. Strangelove, who would be able to cast a broader perspective on the madness going on all around him. The entire time I was watching it, I kept wondering why nobody was noticing or commenting on said insanity.
The Shat has always gotten flack for overacting in his first break out roll, but he was supposed to be unhinged, “There’s…something on the wing. Some. Thing.” He had just come out of an insane asylum and was being shepherded back home by his wife which is why no one believed him.
It would almost have been better if he HAD been a teddy bear, it is the Twilight Zone, a mysterious fuzzy high-altitude gremlin makes more rational sense.
Yes, completely. What you said. In a similar vein A Clockwork Orange should end properly as a film so Anthony Burgess’ meaning of A Clockwork Orange is realized. Otherwise the story makes very little sense.
Yeah of the many terrible examples of studio interference the way they ruined the last act of the Will Smith version is the worst IMO. From the moment they introduced another uninfected human in a story where the whole deal was there is only one human left alive, it went down hill so fast. Before that it was great.
Thomas Harris’ first novel, before introducing Hannibal Lecter, was a thriller called Black Sunday. It’s about a blimp pilot who uses his skills to fly a bomb into the Super Bowl.
It was made into a very forgettable movie with Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern and it really needs to be re-done. I would offer if I had any movie making skills, because the film I see in my head is awesome.
You mean, I hope, the voice-over by Roy Scheider. I have long said that the film would be immeasurably improved by taking that out.
I’ve also long said that I’d love to see them film Harlan Ellison’s script for I, Robot, especially now that CGI has matured. The script is faithful to the book, and had Asimov’s blessing.
There are a few movies that I’d like to see certain scenes redone with new CGI technology. I don’t want the whole movie remade, but certain scenes just bother me. Sort of the way George Lucas has been tweaking his “Star Wars” series through the years. Or, even earlier, the way Wade Williams re-shot scenes from the 1950s film Rocketship XM:
Here are the scenes I’d redo:
The Hunt for Red October – redo all the CGI scenes. Even at the time the CGI looked cartoony and abysmal, and it only looks worse, now that we know what CGI can do.
Forbidden Planet – don’t touch most of the movie. The special effects scenes mostly still stand up really well, even after all this time. But I’d definitely like them to redo the “Krell Power Plant” scene, which has always looked like a cartoon:
The Last Starfighter – I love this film, which is a light-hearted send-up of Star Wars and similar films, but I’ve always been disappointed in its CGI effects. I’ve seen individual screen renders of the images, and they looked gorgeous, even back in 1984. But when they actually made the film, it looked like a cartoon. Maybe they were running out of render time, or money, or something, but the reality fell far short of what they had pitched. Don’t touch the live action scenes, but give us the space movie we were promised.
The Thing – the John Carpenter version. Only the (non CGI) animated scenes where the Thing meets its dynamited doom. Carpenter thought that the stop-motion animation didn’t match the rest of the film, so they booted, and cobbled together something to fill the gap. The scene was supposed to show that dog-headed creation leaping out of the body of the “Blairmonster” toward MacReady (Kurt Russell), but still attached by a sort of umbilical. I’ve seen still shots of it. Put that back in, using CGI only to create any needed blur or alteration to make it look more realistic and like the rest of the film.
Nope – the depth charges (or whatever they were – they were bright yellow-green cylinders) being dropped out of the sub were clearly early CGI, and embarrassing. There were lots of other scenes with bad CGI – so many that the parody in Mad magazine had a panel with MGM cartoon icons Tom and Jerry commenting on it.
Alas, @CalMeacham, I’m sorry to disappoint . I was referring to the cheesy synthesizer music plopped in to tell me when something important is happening. The Roy Scheider narrative is unnecessary but it didn’t annoy me. Otherwise I really enjoyed the movie.
The music didn’t bother me, but the voice-over was uneccessary, was completely unlike the original 2001, and didn’t really tell you anything you couldn’t dope out on your own. It felt like a constant insult to the audience’s intelligence.
Something else I’d fix – Ray Harryhausen’s movie The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is a marvel of special effects, and I wouldn’t touch those. But for some reason a lot of the scenes show Sinbad sailing in a completely inappropriate ship. Although one of the very first scenes in the film shows him sailing in an appropriate Middle Eastern ship – a dhow, or something, with a single lateen sail – later scenes show him sailing in an Enlightenment-era European three-masted frigate or something. It shows this even when he’s on the same voyage that showed him in that first, accurate ship.
A lot of the action scenes were clearly shot on a deck that looks like a later European ship, with a waist , forecastle, and quarterdeck, so maybe they subtly shifted from one ship type to the other, hoping we wouldn’t notice. But now that I’ve seen it, it’s jarring.
I can ignore the inconsistency for the close-up shots. But give me the original dhow for the long shots.
No movie with Robert Shaw is forgettable! Even Battle of the Bulge, which I wish I could forget. I actually like Black Sunday, though it really could be remade without a lot of changes. But alas, they would change it, and make it “relevant”, and “edgy”.
. I was referring to the cheesy synthesizer music plopped in to tell me when something important is happening. The Roy Scheider narrative is unnecessary but it didn’t annoy me. Otherwise I really enjoyed the movie.
