We’ll call it “The Grid” and we film is as a comedy set in Santa Monica. Will Ferrell will play Neo and we’ll have Chris Tuciker give Morpheus the Ruby Rhod treatment ala The Fifth Element.
Film it in 2D and convert it to 3D later, if you turn the sound up really loud no one will notice. It’s golden I tell you!
I’m going to make a few phone calls…
I agree with that formula.
I nominate Stand By Me as thus being inappropriate for a remake.
The Carry On Series was wrong for a reboot; they tried it and it flopped like an octagenarian’s boobs. However, I would’ve thought the St Trinian’s series wouldn’t work, and apparently it did - according to kids I know who’ve seen it, anyway.
They should never remake the Maltese Falcon. Luckily they only made it once, and it was perfected from the get-go.
I suppose this is a bit too obvious, but any Monty Python movie.
That’s the first one I thought of too. I don’t even think it would work as well conceptually in a modern setting, a terminator who relentlessly googles his victims and tracks them via GPS just seems geeky.
Planet of the Apes
Another vote for Casablanca and The Planet of the Apes.
I’ll add Guys and Dolls. I doubt that anybody can match the energy and chemistry of Sinatra and Brando, as well as the rest of the cast, in a remake.
Raiders of the Lost Ark and anyone who thinks otherwise will be bull whipped.
If we’re talking franchise-types, I’d say Raiders of the Lost Ark would qualify as “don’t even try it” material.
If we’re including remakes in general, well pop culture history is chock full of examples of bad remakes of course: Psycho, The Haunting, Clash of the Titans, The Longest Yard, etc. Sometimes remakes work pretty well; (Father of the Bride was pretty decent, and A Perfect Murder wasn’t nearly as bad a remake of Dial M for Murder as I thought it would be…hell, I even found myself warming up to the “reimagining” of Charlie/Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But there’s no reason whatsoever to try to remake something like The Outlaw Josey Wales or Ghostbusters or The Princess Bride. Inconceivable!
ETA: I am glad to avoid being bullwhipped.
Risking a whoosh, I just thought I’d point out that the perfect version of The Maltese Falcon (1941) was actually a remake of a remake (Satan met a Lady [1936]) of the original Maltese Falcon, which was released in 1931.
ETA: Modern Hollywood has nothing on that remake frenzy.
2001 and 2010
Because even if you “market the heck out of it,” only so many people are going to pay to leave the house and see a movie they already own on DVD and can watch at home, possibly on a hi-def flatscreen with surround sound. By definition rereleases are a niche thing even if you really enjoy the experience of seeing a movie in the theater. I hate most remakes, but a release is not going to make as much money as a financially successful remake.
In general, period pieces are a bad idea even beyond the normal badness of remaking good movies. Beyond those already mentioned, I’d nominate Lawrence of Arabia as a really bad idea to remake.
How about a movie set on a German sub in WWII? Das ReBoot.
Thread winners.
Remake it, but come at it from a different point of view, say, Laslo’s or Strasser’s or Renault’s. That might be interesting.
Totally disagree here. Rebooting the Indies is precisely what they should have done, instead of waking up the original actors from their slumber in retirement home. Who wasnt embarassed when Marion and Indy reunite in South America
? Man, I could barely watch the screen.
They should have restarted the franchise with a new Indy. IMHO, Viggo Mortensen would have made a very good one (they could also have switched the recurring baddies from Germans to Japanese).
Movies like “The Wizard of Oz” or “Lord of the Rings” or “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” are perfect material for remakes, because the source material is timeless. And the remakes wouldn’t be remakes of the movie, they’re simply using the same source material.
That said, remaking an iconic movie is silly, because you’re just going to embarrass yourself. Instead you should remake middle of the road movies. And as was said, movies that depended on a particular actor’s performance are doubly silly to remake, because you can’t recapture the really interesting thing about the movie.
Harvey
The performances of Jimmy Stewart and Josephine Hull timeless. The thing that makes the film work for me isn’t so much Elwood’s genial eccentricities but that as the film goes on, I develop a grudging sympathy for Veta, and her sense of having Harvey invading her life, as well as her brother’s.
They actually did remake Harvey back in the 1970s. Jimmy Stewart reprised his role as Elwood P. Dowd (could there ever be another?), and Helen Hayes played Veta Louise. It actually worked quite well. John McGiver played Dr. Chumley, and I think they brought back Jesse White as Wilson the orderly.
Looking at IMDB, they did it again in the eighties, with Harry Anderson as Dowd. I never saw that one.