I’m sure I’m not the first one to ask this, so apologies in advance but: Richard Dreyfuss was around 40 when ‘Stand By Me’ was filmed in 1986; Wil Wheaton is now about 42. They played older and younger versions of the same character.
Question: why not re-film the Dreyfuss scenes with Wheaton now and edit them into the original movie? And have Wheaton redo the narration?
I guess the only point is that it would be kind of cool to have an older actor narrating the flashback story of his actual, younger self. And I can’t imagine it would cost much to hire Wil Wheaton for a couple scenes and some narration.
Maybe include the re-edited version as a hook to sell a new anniversary Blu-Ray edition or something.
This is a preview reel for someone who has managed to film his younger self interviewing his older self:
And, of course, what you want is vaguely similar to the movie *Boyhood* in which the actor of the main character is the age given in the film from the last day of first grade to the first day of college.
What you’re thinking of is what George Lucas did with Star Wars, replacing Hayden Christiansen with whoever the hell was Anakin in Return of the Jedi. Well, not exactly the same idea, but similar concept, changing the film to make it more consistent.
I actually agree with you that it would be cool to reshoot the scenes with Wil Wheaton and issue it as a special, updated edition, but given how much fan hate comes from changing classics it probably would be unnecessarily controversial.
I came in here to post the Star Wars incident but you beat me to it. I don’t think that the reshoot was controversial in and of itself; the problem is that Lucas then withdrew the original version. If he had instead kept the original version in circulation, or better yet allowed viewers the choice of which version to see (which is trivial to implement on DVD and later media formats), it probably would have been seen as a nice, “Oh look, that’s cool!”-type bonus.
I’m sure Wil Wheaton isn’t in any hurry to involve himself in yet another thing that will make people hate him. But I agree that it would be an interesting thing to do.
Aside from George Lucas screwing with his own creations (and the people who tinkered with Ernie Fosselius’ Hardware Wars in response), I don’t know of too many cases where anyone went back and made changes in older movies.
One case where they did was the 1950 movie Rocketship X-M, which was rushed into production to “scoop” the George Pal/Robert Heinlein movie Destination Moon. As a result, the effects were rushed. So in the 1970s, Kansas City distributor Wade Williams bought the rights and re-did the special effects, putting in new miniature shots to take the place of the overused V-2 footage.
Besides that, some fan (I assume) re0made the opening titles for The Day the Earth Stood Still in color. Not only do we get color galaxies and nebulae, but the shots as we approach the moon no longer show those unscientific clouds in outer space (although the maker of this might not have even had that in mind – he just used available Apollo photos, not noticing that they fixed an inaccuracy):
For reference, here's the original opening. Note the "space clouds" at 1:30
As for cases where actors reprise roles at different ages using older footage, the most relevant example I can think of is the episode “The Days Dwindle Down” from the TV series Murder, She Wrote, where they used scenes from the 1949 movie Strange Bargain for the flashback scenes of this 1987 episode of the TV series, and got actors Harry Morgan, Jeffrey Lynn, and Martha Scott to reprise their original roles (new actors played the parts of actors who had died, including a pre-Titanic Gloria Stuart taking the deceased Katherine Emery’s role.)
In the Deep Space Nine episode “Blood Oath” (1994) they got Michael Ansara, John Colicos, and William Campbel (who’d played Klingon commanders in the original 1960s TV series) to reprise their roles as Kor, Kang, and Koloth.
They got Ansara back as Kang in the Star Trek Voyager episode “Flashback” two years later.
Actually, there are plenty of cases of getting actors back to reprise roles, or appear in cameos. But my referencing the “Murder She Wrote” episode was MORE than this – they actually used the old movie footage in the episode. I don’t think most cases of reprising roles (like the Ed Asner case or thiese Klingon cases) qualify on that score.
Before Nimoy, Kelly, and Doohan passed, they could have re-shot/inserted at least one “phase” of the crew aging in TOS “The Deadly Years”…but then they’d have to explain why Kirk got so fat…and then lost all that weight
Likewise they could have re-shot Dustin Hoffman and re-inserted scenes in “Little Big Man”…but Dustin hardly ages !
Something else just occurred to me: I believe in the original Stephen King short story, the Wil Wheaton character, as an adult, runs into Ace, the character played by Keifer Sutherland. Maybe film a brief scene between them for a really cool and updated finale!
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? shows a couple of early Bette Davis movies to illustrate Baby Jane’s failed movie career (they were roles Davis had cited as her worst).
Mad Wednesday/The Sin of Harold Diddlebock used footage from Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman as part of Diddlebock’s (played by Lloyd) past.
