I agree with you on the '70’s The Three Musketeers but… oh man, BOTH remakes of King Kong, especially that overlong mess by Jackson were so, so bad! Neither can match the original for it’s uniqueness and it’s adventure.
I enjoyed both Willy Wonka/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory films, for completely different reasons.
I also make this distinction before using the term “remake” when referring to movies. Most people, however, don’t make the distinction.
12 Monkeys was miles better than La Jetée…
Casino Royale (2006)
True Grit (2010)
Both better than originals that were also very good, IMHO.
A tougher question, one that would narrow down this list so far by like 90%, would be:
Movie remakes that are quality movies in their own right that are not both adaptations of the same novel or play.
Point of No Return, a remake of La Femme Nikita, was a solid effort.
The American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was done well.
I saw the original once. With its dated special effects, I thought it was rather silly, actually. It really doesn’t hold up well, IMHO. The modern one with Jeff Goldblum slowly turning into a monster is a much more interesting movie.
De gustibus non disputandem est
Just 'cause you didn’t like it doesn’t equate to “it really doesn’t hold up well.”
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 95% rating:
You beat me to it. Wilder was more light-hearted, Depp was closer to the Wonka of the story.
About this…
I’ve ocassionally heard people say that Gene Wilder’s Wonka was creepy. I don’t get that at all. I don’t think Gene Wilder could be creepy if his life depended on it.
Johnny Depp’s Wonka, OTOH… now that’s creepy. Depp himself made fun of this in some crappy parody movie that I had the misfortune of watching (I think it was just called “Adventure Movie” or something like that.) It featured a bunch of characters drawn from several recent movies (X-Men, Snakes on a Plane, and a couple others). Wonka sends out the golden tickets to round up them up, but it turns out he’s a total pervert who just wants to molest them. So the characters escape through a closet into a Narnia-eque land, and… that was around the time the missus & I decided to walk out of the theater. It was really bad.
Yeah, not creepy at all. The candy boat scene is disturbing in an I’M FREAKING OUT, MAAAAAAAAAAANNNNN way that is very much a product of its time. But that isn’t really down to Wilder so much as to the music and camera work.
A Song is Born (as opposed to A Star) from 1948 was a remake of Ball of Fire (1941?). Same plot, but a musical. I prefer the remake, but they’re both good. The problem is both films are so similar that people seem to prefer whichever they saw first.
The 2004 remake of George Romero’s ***Dawn of the Dead ***was quite good- not as horrifying as the original, but much written and acted.
I would agree that, while Jeff Bridges wasn’t quite as good as John Wayne (though his Rooster Cogburn was an interesting creation in his own right), the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit was generally much better than the original.
So, I’ve never seen the 1927 Hitchcock-directed version of The Lodger, but the 1944 version with Laird Creggar and Merle Oberon is fantastic.
The new TMNT movie is way better than the original ones from the early '90s. And it’s a pretty kick-ass movie too.
I also enjoyed the remake of George Romero’s The Crazies, although I remember the original to be very disturbing.
I made an absolute fool of myself when I started a thread here ranting about an American remake of the Swedish classic Let the Right One In before it came out. It was called Let Me In and after I saw it I thought it was pretty wonderful in its own right. Since then I’ve kept my stupid mouth shut and will never again rant about a remake until I’ve seen it.
I loved both versions of Girl With A Dragon Tattoo and wish David Fincher and Rooney Mara would do the other two books.
Agreed. I’d never seen the original prior to the remake, but went back and watched it afterward. I was nearly unwatchable, while the George Clooney remake was a blast.
I wouldn’t consider that a remake, but more of a parody. And a LOT more fun!