It looks as if they’re pretty much ignoring mythology and stealing the plot from the first version, with some stuff taken from the Disney version of Hercules. I’ll withold judgment until I see it, but I’m betting that Beverly Cross’ literate and informed script, with its sly hints at the myth’s sources, has gone out the window.
And, I love good CGI, but the original CooT was not only the great Ray Harryhausen’s last work, it also had contributions from Harryhausen rival Jim Danforth.
I suspect the “remake” will be gorgeous but braindead.
According to IMDB, it’s a “Post-Apocalyptic remake of Casablanca set in a strip club”, so yes, we do have a winner there. I would like to whip up a little hatred for another mutilation of Casablanca, though: Robert Redford’s cack-handed Havana.
I can’t believe *Poseidon *hasn’t been mentioned yet. *The Poseidon Adventure *was bad, the TV miniseries was a stinker, and the movie remake was a bad stinker.
They keep playing a remake of Harvey on one of the free movie channels, with some actor I never heard of trying very unsuccessfully to act like James Stewart and Lt. Drebin as Dr Chumley. Yech.
And then there’s the Jude Law version of Alfie. Double yech.
Actually, Cameron’s movie also contained elements of 1953’s Titanic (which starred Robert Wagner).
Other than the special effects and depiction of the disaster itself, there is little reason to see Cameron’s version. The cheesy throwaway love story doesn’t really work and makes very little real sense. Of course, a nude Kate Winslet redeems it a little, but very little.
This of course, inspired the resurgence of the idea of “let’s take a historic event and stick a sappy love story among it”, directly leading to Pearl Harbor.
Incidentally, A Night to Remember, as perfect as it was, also was guilty of stealing some shots from the German 1943 version of Titanic – literally. Some of the shots of the ship itself were lifted right out of the Nazi version of the film.
Another debacle was Jude Law as Alfie. Jude Law might be many things, but he’s no Michael Caine.
Well, I’d say it’d be better to judge the comic book on which that film was based, rather than the film itself. Unless one wants to argue that the film was so changed from the comic that they’re different entities.
Call me a plebian, but I disagree with this. I enjoyed this movie immensely. We bought the VHS when it first came out and it’s one of the few we will all sit down together to rewatch repeatedly. There’s a reason it was the top-grossing movie of all time until Avatar. It may not have artistic merit for critics, but it certainly has mass appeal.
Actually, I expected to hate it, but was very pleasantly surprised to find that, IMNSHO, it’s a good movie. I was sure the remake would be all screwed up, that the girl’s family would be all dysfunctional and so on, but no. The movie may not have had a superbly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, but it was still sweet and touching.
Dial M for Murder was a great Hitchcock mystery with a great cast. (Checking Wikipedia I see it was on the All-time Top Ten list of mystery films.) There was almost no action in the film; the fun was watching the detective and villain think.
A Perfect Murder with Michael Douglas closely follows Dial M in many ways, but was a completely different kind of movie, and completely disappointing. The climax didn’t involve the detective, just villain and his wife racing aroung the kitchen to see who got to the weapon first. (It was the wife: villain dies: Hooray.)
For reasons I can’t fully explain, the Billy Bob Thornton Bad News Bears remake of the Walter Matthau Bad News Bears outrages me to no end.
Sure, the original Bad News Bears isn’t a cinematic masterpiece, and it’s not going to make many lists of “important films,” but it’s a decent comedy with more substance than appears on the surface, with some excellent performances (being a kid when I first saw it, I didn’t get how amazing Vic Morrow was until after he was dead). It’s one of those films that captures something real about the time in which it was made.
The remake is just vapid, it missed everything that was insightful about the original.