Some of the examples so far that involve specific language or presentation changes are not really remakes as much as edits.
And yeah, if your genre was “80s teen sex comedy” or “wartime propaganda” it’s often hopeless, gotta clean-sheet it.
A very fair point. And something like that applies to a bunch of code-era films: the writing around things you could not directly portray (but a smart enough person would see through) could give good artistic result.
Which BTW is a problem with looking at it from the “woke” angle because, as pointed out, that itself is not the really cringe part.
I don’t really see anything in his reaction that shows it’s meant to be creepy, it’s more like he’s just confused by this older woman in his dorm room. When he then immediately goes to see Jordan, he doesn’t appear creeped out, he’s used that experience to crystalize his feelings for her.
Well, that just makes them both guilty of statutory rape or whatever the legal term is in that situation, right?
But it doesn’t matter, they could fix it all; I only just meant to point out that Real Genius isn’t particularly better than Revenge of the Nerds in a woke context of having aged poorly. It’s still a great fucking movie though.
I see your point, but I really like watching those old films because it clearly illustrates the climate of our society at the particular time the film was made.
Exactly. We can always make a new original property that “does it right”. But many of these tell us what was going on in the culture AND in the industry.
For instance there were a lot of 1970s R-rateds where it’s damn obvious they just threw in “Oooooh, look, bare b00beez!” in the visuals, or “motherf-wording n-word” in the dialog for the sake of it because they now could. Eventually the good writers/directors got over it.
It’s a brief mention, easy to miss, during the scene where Bill and Ted are in the medieval castle. Ted falls down some stairs and out of his suit of armor, Bill thinks he’s dead, and charges at one of the castle guards. Ted saves him by bonking the guard on the head. Bill and Ted then hug and call each other fag.
Today I learned about a new movie. When I hear about the movie Warlock, I think about the 1989 movie starring Julian Sands as an actual warlock.
It’s fantastic. Pretty far ahead of its time in anticipating the evolution of the genre toward more subversive storytelling. Fonda and Quinn are both excellent, and the supporting female characters are actually people who are given things to do!
I watched the original “Bad News Bears” awhile back and boy did it not age well. Bullying, racism, drunk driving, adults giving alcohol to kids… I know there was a remake at some point but I’ve never seen that one.
what? No! Those characters were assholes and their use of the word emphasizes that. Do you really think those characters would be introspective enough to consider whether they shouldn’t be using those words? Not a chance.
Gotta leave Goldfinger out of this discussion. You start eliminating all the problems and … you have no film left. Just keep it as a relic.
As for the OP, I’m actually the other way on some old code-era movies. I get tired of having to over-analyze old movies (“are they supposed to be gay, or British, or is it just…nothing?”) trying to understand the “real meaning”. I wish they’d just show it, and none of this “wink-wink nudge-nudge you have to know the code” storytelling. Did Charlie and Rose have sex in the African Queen? The code says “yes” because she says she loves him in the morning and calls him darling. But…seriously? maybe she’s just naive, and equates a kiss with love. If they didn’t have to hide it in the code.
Remaking a film to remove an eloquent subtext doesn’t appeal to me, at all. For all of its evils, censorship has given birth to some remarkable creativity.
Ah yes, Seth MacFarlane, famous for never using rape jokes in his animated shows.
Revenge of the Nerds is a really bad movie overall and I’ve never met anyone who claims to like it. Yeah, it has some weird rape-adjacent stuff in it, but it’s easily addressed by just not watching a bad, stupid movie in the first place. There’s nothing there that needs saving, unlike the more mixed bag of the Hughes films.
Yeah, Seth MacFarlane was a poor choice, given the parameters of this thread. Lesson learned. Nevertheless, RotN was a good movie at the time, as the type of humor that birthed some of the jokes was acceptable at the time.
I saw RotN in the theater, and I thought it was an inferior teen sex comedy the day I saw it, even at the heyday of teen sex comedies. Or even comedies in general. It’s closer to Police Academy than Airplane!.
But it did make a lasting impression: I still refer to Curtis Armstrong as Booger, no matter what role he does, like the sleezy lawyer he played on The Closer.
