Sometimes a premise or plot is actually damn good but the execution is shot for whatever reason, in that case a remake can try to do it again.
See Battlestar Galactica, in the original the 0.001% survivors of a total apocalypse still on the run for their lives stop in the second episode to unwind on a casino planet…:smack:
Well… Green Lantern done with an actual script instead of a random bunch of cgi scenes would be good.
Same with Transformers.
And speaking of comics, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is such a magnificent narrative masterpiece, so horridly adapted.
Oh, and there are adaptations of historical events that I wish were made with the care of an HBO show but in theaters. Alexander, for instance, was just terrible.
Yes, that’s a shame, but it’s finances that drive Hollywood. They are trying to cash in on the success of the original, product recognition is king. I read an article the other day about how good scripts get turned into bad films, and it really highlighted the potential some of them had. Sometimes the director will ignore the original screenplay, and try to produce their own in a fortnight.
**The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension **
FTW: Godfather III
My version: Sofia Copolla’s head gets blown off before she can utter that “heart-wrenching”, non-Academy award winning, could-have-delivered-by-Pony-Express “Dad”…
Avatar:TheLastAirbender
Keep Shamalamadingdong away from it and make it into 3 movies.
The Star Wars “prequels.” With some competent direction, a little more concern for characters, and the plot and less “ohh, ahh, shiny” and less pandering to toy manufacturers and kiddie markets, they could be decent.
Give Lucas time. It’s probably part of the 40th anniversary package.
Definitely Starship Troopers. It will be really, really hard to get past the bad first movie and the increasingly bad sequels, but you could do a movie that is based on the actual book, including the power armor and it would be pretty kicking. Dune also springs to mind. You COULD do a really kicking (perhaps multi-part) movie about Dune and really do a great job on it these days. I’d also love to see a remake of the entire Star Wars saga someday, but with better story lines and plot.
-XT
I’d love to see a high-budget BBC mini-series of Forever Amber that follows the book better than the 1947 version.
No! That was perfection…skinny ties & all.
Or a prequel, The Next-to-Last Starfighter.
I agree, Highlander should be remade. As of four months ago there was a director hired. I would love to see the mythology from the TV series, but with Connor McLeod as the main character.
Tron. No, wait… Tron: Legacy.
The bumped thread about the sequel got me thinking about this. I liked the film okay, but it was such a missed opportunity in so many ways. Mostly, I think, because it was trying to be the original film, instead of trying to do what the original film did.
Lemme see if I can explain that better.
Tron was an attempt to create a fantasy world that reflected the state of the art in computing in 1984, and for all its flaws, it worked on that level. Tron Legacy tried to create a fantasy world that looked like the one in the original movie, but with a better special effects budget. The problem is, it makes the computer world of 2010 look like the computer world of 1984. Where are the landmarks of the digital age? Where’s the Halls of Wikipedia? The Great Bazaar of Amazon? Where are the sleazy back alleys of the pay-for-porn sites, populated by thuggish malware?
When Tron came out, computers were pretty much magic black boxes to most people, but society is a lot more computer savvy now, and a reboot could get a lot of play out of that. Imagine our hero, looking for information, going into a seedy bar to meet with a spyware program. In the background, a monitor over the bar features an earnest-looking site reader, recounting the death toll in the recent server crash in Asia. Our hero sees his contact, but accidentally bumps into a neckless Navy missile control program, who takes a swing at him, and a brawl erupts, until the local Task Managers arrive to break it up, forcing a restart on the more surly customers, and sending the rest on their way.
I’d keep the first movie in continuity, but it’s remembered as a fabled golden age, contrasted with the degraded modern era. At the climax of the second act, when the protagonist finally puts on the glowy pajamas and frisbee outfit from the original, it’s like a knight in literally shining armor showing up to kick ass and take names.
Tron himself would, essentially, be MalwareBytes.
Not a movie, but rather a TV series: Sliders. The idea of a small group of people randomly sliding between alternate realities could’ve been so damn good…
Where do I sign up? I WANT to see this. 
But you’ll pry my Daft Punk Soundtrack from my cold, de-rezzed hands.
Heck, if we are doing TV shows then Terra Nova and Falling Skies would be high on my list of do-overs. As for remakes, I wouldn’t mind seeing a new version of the original Star Trek series with new actors playing Kirk, Spock and McCoy and doing some of the old installments as well as new adventures.
-XT
In my version, all dialogue will be replaced by Daft Punk.