Well said. My memory of Remo Williams is pretty hazy, so I can’t speak for that one, but the idea of making a fixed-up version of Buckaroo Banzai seems bizarre to me. If you did that, it wouldn’t be Buckaroo Banzai anymore. The result might be a competent film, but it probably wouldn’t be very interesting.
When I saw BB back in 1984, I was astonished that such a weird and unusual film made it through the production process without being Hollywoodized and filled with cliches and worn-out tropes. A large part of the magic of that movie is that it exists at all.
Sometimes adding more money and better actors can completely fuck up a project. For instance: Dark Shadows(original) - 1225 episodes Dark Shadows(remake) - 0012 episodes
Not so much a remake as a mashup: I want to see the story and cast from Coco but with the wooden-puppet visual design and framing device from The Book of Life. The latter was beautiful but the plot was just silly.
As a movie that exists on its own terms, I like this movie just fine. But it just doesn’t capture the full wistful and melancholy nature of the book. Sure, you get the fire escape scene and Holly meeting up with Doc, and it’s got some iconic visuals and good lines, but it just doesn’t do it for me as compared to the novella. How the hell do you adapt this book by the great Truman Capote, and leave out the single most important character and relationship that enlightens as us to who Holly really was, and how the man who loved who more than any other felt about her? Of course, I am talking about the bartender Joe Bell.
Judge Dredd. Sure the 2012 remake was good, but it also undersold the world too.
The first Judge Dredd oversold the world. As well as being massively miscast, and breaking the one rule of Judge Dredd (never remove the helmet) in first five minutes. He was also supposed to be tall, like 6 feet 5 tall. So it was 60s Eastwood, not 80s Stallone.
But they threw in cameos and everything else in that movie. Throwaway references to full movies worth of content, Angel brothers themselves is a movie.
What it should be is a full universe of at least series. Dredd in himself has 6-10 movies. But Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Ro-Busters/ABC Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock and Slaine too. Then there’s the lesser ones such Dr and Quinch and the Ballad of Halo Jones (both Alan Moore at his early best, V for Vendetta times, he also wrote 51 Future shock stories). Garth Ennis, Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett cut their teeth on series in the 90s, Ennis doing a LOT of Dredd and some Strontium Dog.
Sidetrack: apparently one Christopher Kempke published a bunch of short stories about the magic teleportation superpower world a couple of years before Gould. Is it supposed to be related, a coincidence, or…?
The original Dark Shadows series is one of my all time favorite TV shows. That being said, I really liked the Ben Cross remake. I’m hoping that someday they’ll do a Game of Thrones style series with at least seven seasons.
Not remade, but I’d love to see the special effects redone in a bunch of movies that were pretty good in their own right, but seriously marred by the poor FX. If George Lucas can retool his past movies and they added new effects to the first Star Trek movie long after its release (not to mention doing new effects for TOS), then they ought to be able to fix these:
The Ten Commandments Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 version of his epic pageant featured state-of-the-art effects that, to this day, still stand up pretty well. Except the animated Pillar of Fire scenes used to show the Egyptian Army being held back, and to represent The Finger of God writing the titular Ten Commandments in stone. It’s good animation, but it’s still really obvious animation. You could easily replace those effects with CGI.
I also wouldn’t mind if they used CGI to simply “clean up” the rough edges of the greenscreening and matting in some of the other scenes – when the guy swings the “flag” at the “setting of the obelisk” scene, the flapping edges of the standard are really obviously getting lost against the background to be superimposed on.
The Hunt for Red October - the primitive CGI used in this film was embarrassing even at the time (MAD magazine’s parody shows Tom and Jerry riding on a torpedo), and look even worse today, dampening any value in re-broadcasting the films. Use modern, up-to-date CGI to make those depth charges and torpedos look like The Real Thing instead of cartoons.
The Last Starfighter – great little effects film made sort of in response to Lucas’ Star Wars films, but before CGI technology was really mature. I love it in spite of its shortcomings, but even the creators hoped to do better. Still images I’ve sen of the spaceships looked great (and the makers even made test reels for Lucas to try to convince him to use CGI for The Return of the Jedi), but when you see them in motion they look fake. I suspect they skimped a bit for the action scenes in order to keep computing time and expenses low, and only used really long render times for those showy “still” images.
So instead of remaking the film (which was excellent as it was, especially Robert Preston as an interstellar Music Man), just re-do the CGI to bring it up to date.
Eddie and the Cruisers was a really neat idea, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing. I don’t know offhand how you’d remake it now though, as the idea of the “artist who has to disappear because he’s just so misunderstood in his own time” — could that exist in the age of Interwebz? Possibly.
Another great premise that didn’t quite pull through well was Premonition. 2007, Sandra Bullock finds she’s living the days of a week out of order and no one else seems to notice.
I agree. What’s especially amazing is that some kid on his home PC could now do a better job with free software like Blender. So it would take a pro no more than a few weeks to model and render every effects shot in 4k.
Okay, I called up my local library and borrowed a copy of ST4:“The Whales,” and with an open mind, watched it. Admittedly, it was not as bad as I supressed remembered, and my rating (from 1 - 10) swung four points from a 2.5 to a 6.5.
I realize now that it was trying to be a social commentary in a larger sense, and whales were just the en vogue environmental cause at the time ('86). They could remake the same movie with better special effects, a little better dialogue, and something including global warming, supervolcanoes, or other natural disasters (like POTUS hair). The whole “time warp” thing seems a little contrived too.
So, it wasn’t as bad as my memory was trying to make it out–but it could be re-made better today with some better CGI and updated global threats.
Tripler
I’m calling @What_Exit out: what was your part in the movie?
Reposted:
The scenes on the USS Enterprise CVN-65 were filmed on my USS Ranger CV-61. They needed a bunch of sailors milling around the hangar bay for a scene where Chekov is trying to run for it. I am one of those milling around sailors. But as I can’t even determine which one, so maybe not. In other words, maybe a minor set prop.
But I love that Star Trek movie more than any other, watching them film several of the scenes is a huge bonus, but I love the comedy of that one. My favorite episode is “Trouble with Tribbles”, so I like the fast paced light-hearted ones. Also, like Nimoy I was part of the Save the Whales movement early.
