Remake any movie, it shouldn’t matter. I’m not recalling a case of a remake that was substantially better than the original, though I can think of many that turned out worse. There’s nothing wrong with giving a story another shot at film adapation, but I’m curious on what basis people think a movie* should *be remade. If it’s just saying that the original version was flawed it hardly seems to be justification for another attempt with a low chance of any improvement.
Rebecca because it would give a new generation a chance to gasp at the evil glory that is Mrs. Danvers.
Ah! How about a remake of “World War Z” that doesn’t completely discard the stories in the book?
From all accounts (haven’t watched the original myself) the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven was substantially better than the 1960 Sinatra version.
“Rat Pack” - Sinatra, Sammy Davis jr, Peter lawford, etc.
“Brat pack” - Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, etc.
Fantastic Voyage begs to be remade, with modern digital effects, and without Raquel Welch.
Red Planet Mars was a poorly made execution of a mind-blowing concept. Well, in my estimation, it was an OK execution, but other people think it was a terrible movie. I figure it must be execution, because the idea that an intelligent species is communicating with us via radio, and they had a messiah who lived at the same to as Jesus and delivered almost word-for-word the Sermon on the Mount to them, and they’re coming to visit earth, only it might all be a hoax from a [del]Nazi[/del] disgruntled ex-Russian space program guy, is the greatest concept ever.
They’d want to change the planet from Mars to something more believable to have intelligent life - a planet in a nearby star system or something - but it could be a great film.
That’s a good example. The original would qualify as a low budget made for TV movie. I don’t think it was the first ‘ensemble heist’ movie though, so what qualifies that one to be remade other than it being poorly done. After all, the list of bad movies is much larger than the list of good ones.
Krull. My grandson and his friends love it, but it would be so much better with today’s CGI (and a rewritten plot).
When this subject is raised my favorite mention goes to Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Yep, indeed one of the worst movies even made, but I always thought that alien technology was just about the best idea for zombies to rise and do havoc in an apocalypse. Plus, as even Roger Ebert noticed, the final speech of the alien leader actually made sense explaining their reasons for their attack.
Updated with current special effects and a rewrite and a remake would do much, much better than the original. (I would have the aliens make the zombies more intelligent and to concentrate first on almost dead or dying leaders or influential people)
There’s an unspoken assumption that the remake will either have better effects, or that people desire that a remake will be done to make it better than the original.
Certainly there are plenty of films that would benefit from better effects. even before George Lucas started tinkering with his original Star Wars trilogy, there was a version of the 1950 SF film Rocketship XM with new scenes shot in the 1980s to fix up the look ( Rocketship X-M - Wikipedia ). I’m sure there are other films that people would like to see at least some effects shots redone for – Lucas is one of the few filmmakers who could go back and do this (Spielberg, with E.T. is another). the Hunt for Red October, for one film, would certainly benefit from such a treatment – the early CGI looks cartoony today, and pretty much did at the time, as well. I think the earlier CGI in the Last Starfighter has a crude charm, but the film might attract more viewrrs if they redid them so they looked more realistic. There’s a short version of the opening credits for The Day the Earth Stood Still on YouTube that uses newer footage of the earth and the moon to get around the "clouds in outer space’ and “cloudless earth” pre-Apollo tendencies that I wrote about in Teemings.
As for remakes that were better, how about John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, his version of Moby Dick, Harryhausen’s version of The Mysterious Island (over the 1929 fiasco), the Merian C. Cooper version of She 9which, it must be admitted, is better than its successor as well), the Daniel Craig Casino Royale? Peter Jackson’s King Kong is light years ahead of the de Laurentiis version from 1977 (and I think it can hold its own against the original, which I love, but that’s another debate). That most remakes are abysmal I won’t deny, but it’s not universally true. Some later versions of Frankenstein and Dracula are better in many ways than their predecessors (although, again, some are bloody awful)
Dr. Doolittle. Won’t somebody please do this correctly? You’d have to re-write Bumpo a bit, but overall an excellent story there.
The Scarlet Letter.
The Harry Potter movies. Just as soon as an actor comes along who can begin to produce a decent Dumbledore.
They would do a CGI Raquel Welch
**Remakes that were better than the originals.
**
The Thing
The Coen Bros version of True Grit was better in almost every way to the original John Wayne version.
Nolan’s Batman movies (more a re-imagining)
The Fly
Little Shop of Horrors
That’s all I got off the top of my head.
Yup, make the actual book.
Did you know that Ryan Reynolds recently dropped out of the remake? Think about that for a minute. A Highlander remake staring Ryan Reynolds. <shudder> There were apparently people who thought that was a good idea. I say we round up every last one of them and chop off their heads.
It will be 15-20 years before those get remade.
Ben Hur
The Departed
The Maltese Falcon
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock did a remake of one of his own movies)
Ocean’s Eleven
Scarface
3:10 to Yuma
“Drat Pack”: Vincent Price, Jonathan “Dr. Smith” Williams and Snidely Whiplash.
I think we get to count the CAPTAIN AMERICA movie. And, by a narrow margin, THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR.
Yes, and yes. A Kid in King Arthur’s Court wasn’t even that great of a movie with the help of Daniel Craig and Kate Winslet.
I do see how making I, Robot a movie could be difficult. It’s really a series of short stories; you would have to work out a way to connect them all.