# Movie concepts that only work once **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 19, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011 "2008-04-19T15:53:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2008, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/21 "2008-04-19T21:17:09Z")
Destroying the Death Star. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/22 "2008-04-19T21:21:57Z")
I don’t think they can do \*Forrest Gump \*again…the first time was cool, after that, CGing a major character into historical events will just seem gimmicky. ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2008, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/23 "2008-04-19T21:26:28Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim] I nominate _The Crying Game_. The “secret” is out. [/QUOTE] Damnit, I came here to post that! 😛 And I’ll go with Sixth Sense and Blair Witch Project as well. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2008, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/24 "2008-04-19T21:34:35Z")
[QUOTE=ivylass] I don’t think they can do \*Forrest Gump \*again…the first time was cool, after that, CGing a major character into historical events will just seem gimmicky. [/QUOTE] Except that it had been done before _Forrest Gump_, in _Zelig_, and was already gimmicky by the time of _Forrest Gump_. But Robert Zemeckis seems to be more interested in technological gimmicks than in a good script, so there you go. ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2008, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/25 "2008-04-19T23:30:39Z")
[QUOTE=Baldwin] Except that it had been done before _Forrest Gump_, in _Zelig_, and was already gimmicky by the time of _Forrest Gump_. But Robert Zemeckis seems to be more interested in technological gimmicks than in a good script, so there you go. [/QUOTE] I think it was _Citizen Kane_ that did it first, but without the benefits of CGI. ---
**Author:** ![Satellite\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Satellite\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satellite_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/26 "2008-04-20T00:42:23Z")
another by M. Knight… **The Village** S^G ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/27 "2008-04-20T01:04:44Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Did _Cloverfield_ even come close to making the kind of gross that _Blair Witch_ did? [/QUOTE] Depends how you define close, but Cloverfield made about $165 million worldwide, compared to Blair Witch’s $250 M or so. ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/28 "2008-04-20T01:12:38Z")
[QUOTE=Baldwin] Right – it resonates thematically with the rest of the movie, but isn’t really important to the plot. If Dil had had a vagina, the rest of the story would have still worked. [/QUOTE] I put Citizen Kane in the same camp, only its even less a big deal knowing beforehand than Crying Game. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/29 "2008-04-20T01:43:17Z")
They remade _The Jazz Singer_. But hearing the lead character break into song seemed a lot less impressive in 1980. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Them](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@The\_Them](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Them)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/30 "2008-04-20T04:18:29Z")
_April Fool’s Day._ A reasonably nicely done slasher-kill-the-hedonistic-teenagers movie, but the gimmick will NEVER work a second time. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/31 "2008-04-20T05:18:13Z")
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn] Agree- it always surprises me when people view the big (actually shriveled) surprise as a key plot point that ruins the movie- its a shocker to be sure, but it comes in the first half of the film and is just one aspect of the secondary plot of the film, nothing at all to do with the main plot. It doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the movie if you know the surprise beforehand, not one bit. [/QUOTE] I also challenge the OP’s premise that an “unexpected” plot twist must be a complete secret for a movie to be appreciated. If a movie is well-made, it shouldn’t matter that much whether you know the “surprise” plot elements or not before seeing it. People still see Macbeth, even though everyone knows he gets his head chopped off in the end. For this reason I personally don’t mind “spoilers,” which even have their own HTML tag. If you tell me that the _Stepford Wives_ is about a town where all the wives are automatons, I still might want to see it. And if I saw the first version, I’d gladly see a remake if I had it on good word that the cinematography and direction were good. There’s a lot more to a movie than plot. In fact, most remakes aren’t very good precisely because all they focus on is the plot. They could be much better if they went beyond that. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/32 "2008-04-20T05:36:26Z")
Fight Club - most of Palahniuk’s (and Fincher’s) little tricks would be cliche and tacky now that they’ve been done once. That’s the genius of Palahniuk’s work, if you ask me. > [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > ‘Recovered footage’ has been used as a concept before, but I don’t think it got the mileage that Blair Witch did. After that film, I don’t think people would buy it in another. It seemed to be all the rage after the Blair Witch Project, IIRC. Even George A. Romero, a man not given to copycat flops, put out [a movie based on ‘recovered footage’](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_the_Dead) as recently as this February that, well, flopped. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the recovered-footage concept can “work”–but it was highly-anticipated at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it made its debut, meaning that a lot of people seemed to think it was still a workable idea. > [@Raygun99](#): > > Depends how you define close, but Cloverfield made about $165 million worldwide, compared to Blair Witch’s $250 M or so. I wouldn’t call that “close”, especially when you consider that $250 million went a little further in 2000. ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/33 "2008-04-20T19:02:39Z")
[QUOTE=guizot] In fact, most remakes aren’t very good precisely because all they focus on is the plot. They could be much better if they went beyond that. [/QUOTE] The thing about a lot of remakes though is, familiarity with specific plot twists aside, they seem to take the attitude that because the original was something of a hit and because the plot is therefore already known, they don’t have to try very hard. I’m all for remakes once a movie has given you inspiration to remake it, but use that inspiration as a reason to come up with something fresh to say (or a fresh way to say it), not to sit on your ass and let familiarity do the work for you. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/34 "2008-04-20T21:40:20Z")
[QUOTE=Satellite^Guy] another by M. Knight… **The Village** [/QUOTE] You know he was [nearly sued](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E5D8123CF935A3575BC0A9629C8B63) for stealing the plot from a children’s book, right? Apparently it can be done at least twice! ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2008, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/35 "2008-04-20T21:55:46Z")
**The Wizard of Oz.** ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/36 "2008-04-21T20:04:26Z")
_ **Memento** _ leaps to mind. It would be difficult to make another “backwards” movie without being derivative and redundant. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/37 "2008-04-21T20:20:05Z")
> [@](#): > > Memento leaps to mind. It would be difficult to make another “backwards” movie without being derivative and redundant. Except, of course, if people don’t know of or don’t remember the original. Just as **Forrest Gump** stole the introducing-your-character-into-historical-footage thing from **Zelig** , **Memento** used the same story-told-in-reverse-chronological-order thing from Harold Pinter’s **Betrayal** : > [@](#): > > Pinter’s semi-autobiographical play examining the surprise attraction, shy first steps, gradual flowering, and treasonous deception of a woman’s extramarital affair with her husband’s best friend; the entire story is told from the husband’s point of view, with the scenes in precise reverse chronological order. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085234/plotsummary](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085234/plotsummary) ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/38 "2008-04-21T20:20:09Z")
[QUOTE=The Them] _April Fool’s Day._ A reasonably nicely done slasher-kill-the-hedonistic-teenagers movie, but the gimmick will NEVER work a second time. [/QUOTE] And yet someone [tried](http://imdb.com/title/tt1018817/). ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/39 "2008-04-21T21:04:53Z")
[QUOTE=kunilou] **The Wizard of Oz.** [/QUOTE] What, you mean the Black & White Kansas/Color Oz gimmick? But that’s not a movie concept, and a remake of The Wizard of Oz could be done. After all, the Judy Garland version of The Wizard of Oz was also a remake. However, if I had the rights to the Oz books I wouldn’t bother remaking The Wizard of Oz, I’d jump straight to The Marvelous Land of Oz, and Ozma of Oz. But I wouldn’t mash them together as per “Return to Oz”, what would be the point of that? Oh, and “The Land of Oz” has a Gender Bending Twist Ending! \ ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011/40 "2008-04-21T21:11:38Z")
While the entire movie _The Sixth Sense_ concept wasn’t remade (a boy see dead people), the premise and twist of having a main character along with the audience discover that they have been dead was done very effectively in _The Others_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-concepts-that-only-work-once/446011.md?page=3)