Necessary and Unnecessary Remakes

Cafe Society
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I’m sure we’ve done this before, but what the hell.
Sometimes you look at a remake of a movie and wonder why they went to the effort. I kinda feel that way about all the current Disney Live Action remakes, but not as strongly as other cases, where I REALLY don’t understand the reasoning.

On the other hand, sometimes a remake comes along that blows away previous versions and becomes a leader in its own right.

I expect that for a lot of people, there will be disagreement about which category a remake should go in.

Unnecessary Remakes

Gus van Sandt’s Psycho – shot-for-shot like Hirchcock’s, so what’s the point?

Total Recall – is a tube through the center of the Earth really more believable than a trip to Mars?

Robocop – toning down the satire is just what this film needed

The Jackal – Because, you know, the film directed by Fred Zinneman was just too unbelievable

The Wicker Man – Really, words fail me

the Flight of the Phoenix – just being able to recast some parts with women ought not to be the justification for making the film

The Trouble with Charley – let’s take a breezy, fast-moving action/suspense/romantic comedy (Sidney Lumet’s Charade and make it a slow-moving dud.

King Kong – the 1976 de Laurentiis version managed to get everything wrong, except for the effects work of Carlo Rambaldi and Rick Baker.

The Day the Earth Stood Still – you know you’re in trouble when the CGI Giant Robot looks worse than the one played by a big guy in a mostly leather suit.

Clash of the Titans

Necessary Remakes

The Maltese Falcon – John Huston’s take on the noir classic seems to perfect and obviously the way to film this that it blows the two previous efforts out of the water.

King Kong – I know a lot of folks will disagree, but Peter Jackson’s version was aimed right at me. I loved it as a necessary remedy for the 1976 version, and I think it stands up next to the 1933 original.

The Lord of the Rings – I like Bakshi, but his version of Tolkien just didn’t work, even after you allow for all his setbacks.

I haven’t seen them, but they don’t seem like a good idea:

Ben Hur – did anyone see this?

The Magnificent Seven

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Seems like “necessary” just means “good.” If it was good, it may not be necessary, but if it was bad, it was definitely unnecessary.

The first good remake of a good movie I always think of is True Grit. Both cover some parts of the Charles Portis story, both skip others, and both make up new scenes out of whole cloth. Both versions are well worth watching. (If I had to pick one as the better, I’d go for the remake, because 12-year-old Maddie Ross was played by an actual 12-year old and not a 22-year-old, and still managed to act circles around her."

Unnecessary includes almost every movie version of a past popular TV series (whether the movie was a financial success or not.) Among those, I include The Beverly Hillbillies, 21 Jumpstreet, and the current CHiPS.

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The remake of Vanishing Point was not only unnecessary, but insulting. The movie completely misses the point of the original, adds in contemporary motifs like shock-jocks and paranoid anti-government conspiracies, and provides a motive (absent in the original) for Kowalski that happens to make even less sense than no motive.

The remakes of:

The Andromeda Strain
Rollerball
Death Race 2000
The Stepford Wives
The Manchurian Candidate

and in TV:
Kolchak The Night Stalker

all miss the point of the originals. They try to give a new spin on the original and make them fit with current times, but all failed bigly. Why add time travel to The Andromeda Strain? Why add microchip mind control to The Manchurian Candidate?

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Poseidon - what a waste!

Day the Earth Stood Still - ditto

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Arguably one of the few Good movies to come out of a TV series was The Fugitive.

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Halloween. The first one, though iconic is really only good because it was one of the first of the genre, which is to say, it’s really not a very good movie. We’re all so used to slasher films(and by “used to” I mean “sick of”) there really was no need to revisit it and on top of that it was crap in its own right.

The Wicker Man wouldn’t have been unnecessary if they hadn’t totally blown it. They took a creepy classic and practically made a spoof of it.

As far as King Kong, I’m in the opposite camp as the OP. I enjoyed the DeLaurentiis version but the Peter Jackson one not so much.

This may be a different situation as I’m not really familiar with the genre, but don’t different people keep making the same superhero movies over and over again? For instance, haven’t we had something like four Spidermans in seven years?

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We need a remake of Reflections in a Golden Eye with anthropomorphic CGI animals. And a Hip-Hop sound track.

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Both remakes of Dark Shadows-the television remake had coherency, class actors and a good budget(the exact opposite of the original), and the movie was Depp being Depp again.

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Worst has to be Psycho. Why bother if you’re basically reshooting the original?

I halfway agree about Poseidon, though anything that puts Emmy Rossum onscreen is worthwhile.

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I wouldn’t consider films like these remakes of the previous films but rather different takes on source material from another genre that’s famous in its own right.

In this vein, the Coen Brothers’ version of True Grit was neither necessary nor unnecessary, just different. Nothing can compare to John Wayne’s portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in the first version, but I think the other characters, especially Matty, were portrayed in a much more interesting way in the recent version.

The 1933 version is my favorite movie of all time, and I hated the 1976 version. IMO, Jackson’s version was entertaining but suffered from Jackson’s penchant for Wretched Excess. Having Kong fight three Tyrannosaurs while falling down a cliff tangled in vines in my book was just too over the top.

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About this–I haven’t seen the same name remake, but I liked it when it was called Battle Beyond the Stars, The Three Amigos, and A Bug’s Life. (And of course the original Seven Samurai.)

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I’m going to disagree with you on 21 Jump Street. It was extremely good satire of the genre you mention, and sends up buddy cop movies almost as well as Hot Fuzz does. 22 Jump Street is also an excellent sequel satire.

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How about some Disney movies?

Race to Witch Mountain was in no way an improvement to the classic Escape to Witch Mountain.

However

That Darn Cat was a worthy remake of That Darn Cat!–it is funny and clever, and frankly the original drags quite a bit.

(Don’t have strong enough memories on Freaky Friday vs. Freaky Friday or The Parent Trap vs. The Parent Trap, if anybody wants to wade in on those or others.)

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I recently watched the remake of Steel Magnolias, and was sorely disappointed. It was the same exact story line.

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I keep hoping they will remake The Last Starfighter, Dreamscape and Enemy Mine, but especially Starfighter.

It’s such a good story and is just begging to be applied to online gaming.

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…not to mention getting better CGI treatment

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What about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory vs Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? In Charlie, at least, the technology existed to do the squirrel scene instead of a goose scene.

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I’m going to say that every remake of “The Fantastic Four” has been necessary but none have been successful.

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Well, they missed their chance to make them Ben Her and The Magnificent Se7en.

Whatta waste.

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I agree that Dreamscape would be a great choice for a remake. I’d also like to see someone take on Streets of Fire.

I was thrilled when Hollywood remade Clash of the Titans and Fright Night, but both movies turned out to be forgettable.