I have been thinking a lot about some classic movies that I have always loved which have never been remade. Sure, some are so amazing that no one dares touch them. Still, there are some that are almost line for line as timely today as when they were made.
The one movie that been on my mind lately is the classic “The Best Years of Our Lives”. It deals with the aftermath of war, alcoholism, disability, a poor economy, parenting, marriages with & w/o fidelity, love and friendships that rise above it all. Oddly enough, every single one of these topics is current given GW2, the Depression, Tea-baggers, and entitled/arrogant customers who are pandered to by micro-managing bosses.
Yes, I know, no one will ever dare try to touch a film that won 7 academy awards and starred legends like Myrna Loy and Frederick March.
It’s the “Great Remakes” part that’s the stumbling block. Usually when they remake a Great Film the remake is awful. Case in point – the recent Day the Earth Stood Still.
That said, and in full knowledge of what I’m asking, I wouldn’t mind a well-done remake of Forbidden Planet. The original had superb effects, many of which still stand up. But it would be interesting to see how it would look with modern effects (some of the Krell Power Plant scenes look way too cartoony) and without the 1950s restrictions on language and sexual content. The problem, of course, is that it would be extremely easy to screw this up.
It’s easier to ask for a remake of a film that’s not great, for obvious reasons. I’d like to see This Island Earth redone for this reason – they dumbed down Jones’ novel where they didn’t outright jettison it completely, and I’d like to see it done intelligently. I’d actually like to see them keep the mutants in, but only if they can manage the almost impossible task of incorporating them intelligently and believably into the story.
With Psycho, they did a scene for scene reshoot. About the best commentary I seem to remember was that people thought it was unnecessary.
With any other remake, people complain that they changed the movie - plot or characters, or updated it from WW2 to Afghanistan, or whatever.
So, if it is shot for shot, it was not necessary, and if it is updated it sucks.
What are the other options, really?
My personal take is that I would love to see some of the old SF/fantasy classics remade shot for shot, but with modern SFX. BUT without screwing up the actual plot and dialog. I really hate it when they decide to take a piece of fiction and change it from the original just to update it for modern taste. If you like it well enough as it was, then leave it. Many of Heinleins books do not make sense updated, they are relics of cold war sensibilities and if you change it to modernize it, it screws up the plot and characters.
I would also love to see a remake of Forbidden Planet,I think it would be quite good.
My idea of a remake: M, the 1931 Fritz Lang thriller with Peter Lorre. And the update would be to set in the immigrant communities of Manhattan around 1905. So instead of the “invisible” community being the criminal underworld it would be immigrants.
And I know there was an American remake of M made in 1951. I’ve never seen it but I haven’t heard anyone recommending it.
You could do them as period pieces.
Having listened to an audiobooks version of Rocket Ship Galileo many times recently, and having seen the film ostensibly based on it, Destination Moon, I wouldn’t mind seeing it done over, closer to the book, despite it’s age. The DM script feels hokey and, i suspect, felt pretty hokey even at the time. And some of the effects are pretty cheesy-looking.
Aside from updating effects and allowing freer expression of Hayes-code era restrictions, i can’t see any point in remaking a "great’ film.
One film that would definitely benefit, for both reasons, is Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man, filmed famously as a low-budget B-movie by Jack Arnold in 1957. The budget precluded a lot of effects work, and some of it looks disappointing even considering the time it was made. But the book also has a lot of sexual content that was glossed over or outright neglected in the original film. A remake would be a distinct improvement, despite the fact that the original version is considered a “classic”.
Movies that are commenting on the issues of their day rarely get remade well. Two recent examples were the remake of The Stepford Wives and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.
Well any Hayes-era film that deals with nudity or sex might benefit from a remake. Frex “Gypsy” the movie about Gypsy Rose Lee. Imagine how much more sense it would make if the strippers actually, you know … Stripped.
Also, remakes can have added meaning in different times. Frex, a remake of “The Children’s Hour” might have some interesting resonances as we seem to be on the verge of allowing gays to serve freely in the military, and gay marriage remains an issue.
Destination Moon was primarily about “how to do space travel”, not commenting on the issues of the day (If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that they don’t even mention “Russia”). You can’t really say that it “comments on the issues of the day”. And God only knows what “The Stepford Wives” remake was supposed to be – I think frank Oz made it up scene by scene, without reference to previous scenes. It’s certainly not supposed to be a “comment on the issues” of any day
It can be done, but that’s rare. I can think of things like His Girl Friday as a remake of The Front Page – the original play and film were very good, but changing Hildy to a woman was inspired.
Filmed plays are remade all the time; Shakespeare is often done in different versions. Both versions of Henry V are great films.
You have to be able to add something that makes the film more relevant. Some of the suggestions above certainly have potential (M andThe Best Years of Our Lives, for instance) because they’re adding something new to the mix.
Not a remake by a good stretch, but if Pale Rider draws on Shane as a reference for some character and plot ingredients and does its own thing with them, I could tolerate a “remake” by those standards for great oldies like:
Night of the Hunter
On the Waterfront
Jim Thorpe All American
In each case, and in others like these, the power of the acting could not be bettered, but the datedness of the production might stand some modernizing.
It would be tough.
There’s no better statement of the main issue than
I was referring to Destination Moon.
Stepford Wives certainly was making references to feminism and reactions to it. I certainly don’t think that’s played out – there are plenty of unresolved gender issues – but Frank Oz didn’t want to make that kind of movie. So Stepford Wives, in my mind, wasn’t a flop because it was a film about an irelevant issue, but because it dodn’t know what the hell it DID want to do.
Remakes of literary adaptations are often marketed as being more true to the original story (usually inaccurately). They’re also popular subjects because the rights can often be obtained more easily from the owner of the book rights than from the owner of the prior film.
I’d lay the blame for the Stepford Wives debacle less on Oz and more at the feet of screenwriter Paul Rudnick and the producers, who apparently wanted some kind of comedy-suspense film, specifically playing to a certain gay/camp cult-following of the original.
A more obvious back-to-the-source remake approach would be to make the wives less the Domestic Goddesses of the original film and more the Playboy-model/pornstar types apparently found in Levin’s original book – though that might be more appropriate to some kind of big budget porn adaptation (if they still make such things). One might even twist the original concept by making the real villain a more shadowy offscreen presence – the Stepford men being more controlled (by their own libidos) than controlling.
I agree that the most justified remakes are those where interesting ideas in the original were hamstrung by limited budgets (See this thread from last year for some examples), not that all low-budget genre films are bad, mind you.