Or think it’s a DirecTV ad.
The 1990s animated series Reboot is getting a reboot.
I could be wrong about this but wasn’t the proposed Creature from the Black Lagoon remake going to be an environmentally themed sci-fi thriller that had the creature going on a rampage to protect his rain forest lagoon home from being further destroyed by greedy business interests?
Remo Williams, The Adventure Begins!
Come on Remo, it’s been 30 years, man. You must be rested by now!
Of course, it was a terrible movie, but if that were enough to stop sequels from being made, the movie houses would stand empty pretty much all summer long.
I want to see Blade Runner done Darker & Edgier.
They talked about remaking Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Cannibal the Musical several years ago.
There have been several movie versions of King Solomon’s Mines, all as far as I know have been terrible. Nearly all, as far as I can see, have felt the need to add a White woman as the love interest: it is interesting to see that 20th/21st century movie adaptations are actually more racist than the 19th century book! (In the book, the love interest was a Black woman, who falls in love with a friend of the narrator).
It would be neat to see an actually faithful version made.
I think we’re as likely to see a new version of King Solomon’s Mines as we are a new version of H. Rider Haggard’s other masterpiece, She.
I finally got to see Merian C. Cooper’s version last year. It’s amazing to see, especially colorized. You can see how the imagery influenced Disney (The Evil Queen in Snow White definitely gets her look from Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) and Harryhausen (who lifted an avalanche sequence for Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and adapted the Throne Room for his own First Men in the Moon), but there’s no doubt that the “resonance” the elements of the plot had for earlier audiences really isn’t there anymore. Attitudes towards other cultures and our relationships with them have changed, and the twilight of colonialism world that Haggard wrote for is gone. The more recent versions of She and Solomon’s depart more from the novel than earlier films did, and I think that it’s not all due to the usual causes of auteur variation.
Haggard was one of the better writers, in that he treats all his characters with dignity. He’s got black heroes in his works, and even interracial romance, but there’s still condescension and hidden assumptions of the relative values of different cultures in there (he’s the originator, in She, of the White Queen of the Non-White People trope). You could film his stuff as Period Pieces, I think, but they might make people uneasy.
I dunno - the theme in King Solomon’s Mines is very clearly anti-colonial; for example, when the three explorers are leaving the Kingdom, the new King basically tells them that they are the only three White guys who are welcome to come back, in a speech that is surprisingly contemporary.
—King Solomon’s Mines, pages 279-280
Reading this novel usually surpises people with its modernity in terms of racial issues - Haggard very clearly sees his Black characters as equally potentially noble as his White characters. What I think modern audiences may have difficulty is not that, but a different issue - that Haggard quite clearly views violence as inherently ennobling, for Blacks and Whites alike. The things he admires about (for example) the Zulu culture, are exactly the things that modern people would deplore: its penchant for aggressive warfare, its military discipline. Of course, these are just the characteristics that Haggard admired in his own culture.
In She, the non-White folks She ruled over were quite different from the “noble” proto-Zulus of King Solomon’s Mines - they were a sort of Morlocks. I can see that not going over very well.
It was my recent reading of the intro to the Penguin edition of She that pointed out Haggard’s colonialist assumptions and glorifications, and the subtler racism. Before that I was unaware of it – after all, he has the noble Zulu Umslopogaas, there’s a budding (but significantly unresolved) interracial romance in KSM. In People of the Mist there’s a main character who’s a black dwarf (how unlikely is THAT in a turn-of-the-century novel?) who isn’t treated like a clownish figure (think of him as a black Tyrion).
Nevertheless, Haggard could no more escape the assumptions of his culture and time than we could, I don’t think a straight adaptation of any of his works would go off completely well today.
I don’t get it.
On the one hand, you say his colonialist assumptions were so subtle that you didn’t pick up on them from actually reading the books - until you read an essay by someone else pointing them out.
Yet on the other hand, that because of these colonialist assumptions, a modern audience would reject a straight adaptation?
This presupposes that modern audiences, as a mass, are more sensitive to such nuances than you are - and would perceive them even through a movie adaptation. Frankly, I credit you with more sophistication in these matters than the movie-going public, and not less. 
How about a quirky, dark remake of Popeye, centering on Wimpy and being released either unrated or with an NC-17 rating?
Also, a remake of The Last Temptation of Christ as a comedy and titled Absolutely The Last Temptation of Christ.
Tell that to the makers of Final Fantasy XLVII!
Haven’t got the time to discuss this now.
But – On the surface, Haggard has moments that look suspiciously enlightened
But he has underlying assumptions of cultural and racial superiority that aren’t always obvious
and I do think they will ultimately make the audience uneasy.
Film the noble Umslopogaas. I think if you show the adventurers fooling the natives with their knowledge of eclipses (and of dentures) you won’t get the effect you’re looking for.
The funny thing about that is that Haggard was merely re-using for fictional purposes an actual historical incident.
I dunno if one can reasonably convict Haggard of subtley poking fun at natives in a racist manner because he re-used a trick that actually worked in real life.
American Gothic with Gary Cole struggled with a low budget and needed help with the scripts but the episode with the greedy lawyer was great TV. As an example of ‘dark drama’ with an ambiguous (to put it mildly) protagonist it was probably ahead of it’s time but coming after The Sopranos and Dexter the world is ready for the remake.
Meanwhile I always wondered whether Xena: Warrior Princess could be done more seriously? Take away the humour and I suspect it would fall apart but the basic premise appealed from a dramatic viewpoint: Woman becomes a fighter to defend village. Rises to leading an army. Seduced by power and the concept of “Attack is the best form of defense” becomes the very thing she was fighting. Renounces her old ways and attempts to atone by doing good despite being met with fear, suspicion and hostility wherever she goes.
There are historical precedents for female warrior / leaders (for example Boudica) and the show could retain some light fantasy elements. I’m thinking along the lines of the UK production **Robin of Sherwood **(retitled Robin Hood in the US) from the 1980s. That was the show with Michael Praed as Robin Hood and music by Clannad. I reckon it could be done.
Both ‘my’ remakes will struggle to match the original casting.
TCMF-2L
Forest Gumpier
Some of the 70s films with updated social commentary perhaps.
Soylent Green? Logan’s Run? They would have to avoid becoming CGI filled summer blockbusters to work though.
That they made sequels to Psycho didn’t prevent them from doing a remake. It should have. I’ve never seen the Flesh Gordon sequel, but I have read about it, and seen some pictures, so I’ll pass.
My understanding is that the parts they cut out for the re-release were lost. I haven’t looked recently, but the last time there was no version of the original available. I saw this in its original theatrical release, and I saw the VHS version back a while ago, and that version is a total mess.
Strangely Flesh Gordon may be the only case where a porn remake of something was better than the non-porn Flash Gordon remake (except for the soundtrack.)
Here’s one - a remake of Oh, God with Lewis Black in the George Burns role. The John Denver character is gay, and Lewis shows up to endorse his wedding.
Then he loses it at some fundie picketers outside the church.
Then you can have a sequel, Son of Oh God, where Lewis’s son, works in the supermarket, gets locked in the freezer, and emerges in three days (well, two actually.)