Inspired by the Authur remake thread
I’m not a movie buff so I can’t answer this, the only remake I liked was Heaven Can Wait
Almost all the other remakes I’ve seen have paled with comparison to the original.
Batman. The one with Adam West and Burt Ward was beyond bad. Ditto “Superman”.
I’ll nominate John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), as well as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
Perhaps horror and science fiction movies lend themselves better to remakes. Not that there haven’t been disappointments here too.
I thought Charlie and the Chocolate factory from Tim Burton was a lot better than the one with Gene Wilder, even though I like the original.
Then again, they are both interpretations of the book.
Cronenberg’s “The fly” is quite an excellent flic.
came in here to say The Fly and The Thing
I am beaten
From what I’ve heard, the first Ocean’s Eleven (with Sinatra et al) was pretty dire.
Probably the best example – Huston’s The Maltese Falcon was the third adaptation of the book of the same title, and was far and away the best.
the 1939 the Wizard of Oz is definitely superior to previous treatments of L. Frank Baum’s work.
Most people seem to think that His Girl Friday is superior to the original The Front Page with Adolphe Menjou. I’d argue the point, but there it is.
A lot of later versions of films were superior to the original silent versions. moby Dick is, from all accounts, better than The Sea Beast, for instance. I’ll take the pageant of Cecil B. deMille’s remake of his own The Ten Commandments over the original, with its modern-day soap opera parallel story.
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings far outclasses Ralph Bakshi’s
Although you can argue whether Jacksons King Kong is any better than the original, there’s no doubt that it’s better than the 1976 de Laurentiis version
The recent musical version of The Phantom of the Opera is better than any previous version, except Lon Chaney’s 1925 silent version.
The Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon was better than either of the older films.
His Girl Friday was superior to The Front Page
The Bounty, I thought, was easily as good the other 2 movies.
The Quiet American, was quite good. Maybe the first version was a little better or a little worse, but it’s hard to say.
Hands down to Lord of the Rings, as has already been mentioned.
I’ve got to disagree with you regarding Batman with Adam West; it’s a farce, and it’s terrific as far as I’m concerned, pure comedy gold. Besides which, the plot of that made for tv movie is in no way similar to the later Batman feature films other than the title.
I’ll suggest 3:10 to Yuma as a superior remake.
I Am Legend was a pretty good reinterpretation of The Omaga MAn and The Last MAn on Earth.
I am not Cruise Fan but War Of the Worlds was a good remake.
Agreed on both cases.
Chefguy- which Superman do you think was bad?
I’m quite partial to the remake of The Italian Job, but then I’m fond of mindless action movies without a lot of blood. (It’s a narrow sub-genre. ) I’m also not fond of movie conventions from that era. I like only a small percentage of the movies that were released during that time.
I prefer Sorceror over the original Le salaire de la peur, although I’m well aware that that’s a minority opinion.
It was a fun little movie, but the story isn’t very interesting and the guys are just kind of going through the motions. The 2001 version is one of the few remakes I can think of off the top of my head that was MUCH better than the original.
I liked both versions of The Parent Trap.
The original version of Cat People was pretty good, given the nature of its material and the fact that it was made during the Hayes Code era. But it had to leave so much to the imagination that it lost much of its punch and wound up being kinda unwatchable. But the remake was better, more powerful, though it made some missteps. Plus the score by Giorgio Moroder and Nastassia Kinski at her red-hot best were both outstanding.
Ah hell, I was thinking of the George Reeves series on TV, and the old Batman series with the wool uniforms. ::slinks away::
I liked the Pierce Brosnan film “Thomas Crowne Affair” so I rented the original and was surprised how bad it was.
Also, FWIW, I usually think of a remake as a directors conscious attempt to redo a particular film, not a film around a pre-existing book that previous movies have also done adaptations of. So I don’t think a lot of the previous suggestions count.