The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle just CRIES OUT to be remade as a live action movie. It was an animated thing made some years ago, but there is no reason in the world this wonderful book can’t be re-made. I always pictured Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Schmendrick. (but maybe it’s too late now. Fairy tale movies are still coming out, but by the time they even cast The Last Unicorn, the genre would be totally passe.)
A movie based on the V.I. Warshawski books by Sara Paretsky. Kathleen Turner was excellent casting, but the movie sucked. Do it right, and cast it right (again).
If I remember right, the book wasn’t much more explicit than the movie. But yeah, I’d watch a faithful remake. Same with Leave Her to Heaven.
The Searchers is visually stunning, but the real story of Alan LeMay’s book deserves to be told. People wouldn’t be all WTF? at Ethan’s quick turnabout at the end.
Has there ever been a realistic movie about Native American society in the 1800’s? Or about western heroes and villains? Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Judge Roy Bean, Buffalo Bill? TV’s Deadwood came close, I think.
There have been remakes of Rebecca but none as good as the Hitchcock version. In fact, Hitchcock tightened up a rambling novel and improved it for the screen.
The remake I want to see is The 39 Steps. This is one of my favorite books, and it would make a great movie if someone would faithfully follow the book. It has a wonderful, intricate plot, suspenseful, clever. The Hitchcock version is bad, and a recent PBS version was also bad. Hint: there is no romantic interest in it.
I don’t see They LIVE! being remade. Isn’t there one scene where the sunglasses-wearing guy walks into a post office and starts shooting the aliens? And of course the human bystanders can’t see the aliens, so to them it looks like some wacko walking in and shooting people for no reason.
We’ve had way too many real life incidents like this: some wacko shooting a bunch of innocent people and believing that doing this is somehow saving the world. Hollywood today wouldn’t want to send that message that it’s okay to shoot people because they might be part of the conspiracy of oppression.
It could still be remade, I suppose, but the plot would have to be very different.
And, I’ve brought this up before, but a movie about the eruption of Pompeii.
They Live is based on an Ed Nelson short story, Eight O’Clock in the Morning, which is really short. It definitely needed some fleshing out if it was going to be a movie, not to mention some action scenes. (The fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David just illustrates how over-padded this film is, though. I mean, fer cryin’ out loud, you have editors for a reason) You can read the story here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43784308/8-O-Clock-in-the-Morning-Ray-Nelson
No scene quite like you describe is in there, but the hero does act like a homicidal maniac. It’s understandable in the context of the story, though.
Stephen King did his own version of this, at greater length, which he titled The Ten O’Clock People, clearly showing his influence.
Agree with “The Conversation.” It would indeed be timely.
“The Searchers” would be harder to pull off (can’t go around hatin’ Injuns that much these days), but if they were to do it, please give the Nathalie Wood character more screen time! (Assuming the remake’s actress would be as easy on the eyes as Ms. Wood in her prime.)
I love the movie, but I’d love to see Roger Rabbit remade with the storyline of the original book.
I’d love to see a remake of Neighbors, the disastrous Belushi-Aykroyd comedy. The Thomas Berger novel it’s based on is a literary masterpiece; it’s one of my all-time favorite books. I’m convinced there is a great film inside that novel that’s waiting to be made.
I was going to mention this one, but as a revision, not a remake. Although it’s not particularly faithful to the novel, I think it’s a decent film that is handicapped by its atrocious, impoverished visual effects. The VFX shots could easily be replaced with new CGI sequences. Of course, that’s not going to happen.
I am surprised I am the first to say *Phantom Menace *and its two sequels. Changes I would like to see:
- Anakin is about 25 years old at the start
- Obi-Wan is about 40 or so
- Palpatine’s plan makes sense
- The Jedi are regarded as old-fashioned and irrelevant by almost everyone
- Anakin never visits Tatooine, and his parentage is never brought up
- The Force is not mediated by midiclorians
- And, of course, no Jar-Jar Binks
This is at least theoretically possible now.
“They Live” With proper special effects we could have the whole country freaked out. We could make War of the Worlds look like a late night infomercial. I’m betting we’d get a permanent conspiracy theorist sub-culture out of it if done correctly. . .
on second thought, best not.
I’d like to see a very faithful and detailed rendition of The War of the Worlds as a period piece as well. No modernization, no steampunk, just 1890s England meets alien tech.
Cowboys versus Aliens has a brilliant premise, IMHO, but they slipped by making the aliens conventionally grotesque. They needed to be alien. Like, say, starfish. And mining gold? They should have been mining something inexplicable, and maybe just collecting the gold as a byproduct alongside other things.
This.. Very much, this. The Lord of the Rings takes place on a continental scale.
They got some things very well: the lighting of the Beacons on the mountaintops, and the falling fight between Gandalf and the Balrog bring shivers to me still.
However…
The lower Anduin in the film should have been the size of the Mississippi, at least. Even above Sarn Gebir it was not something you could wade across. (Though they did very well with the Statues of the Kings.)
The townlands around Gondor should have been green and fertile, with the ruins of farms and orchards, and Mordor should have been a dark rim on the horizon. As it was, it looked like you could ride to Mordor in a couple of hours.
I’m not sure whether this was because they filmed it in New Zealand and they didn’t have a continental-scale landscape, or what, but it just didn’t seem as big as the books.