But not with the same cast.
I really enjoy that movie, but its main appeal is the chance it gives to see those particular actors working together, playing those characters.
They could make a different Star Trek movie with a similar plot, but IMHO it would be pointless to try to remake that particular movie.
Good point; being that some of the iconic actors have already passed away, I cannot think of another ensemble that would have/give the same on-screen chemistry they all had together.
Tripler
The ‘reboots’ were good, but lacking in 23rd century chemistry.
Can we remake the subpar Dresden Files TV show into good movies?
Mmm. I think the average Dresden File is too long to make a good movie, I think we should ideally have a series of good miniseries that covers each book. I actually did like what they did with the budgetary limits of the show, but the result was definitely subpar especially due to the horrible, horrible CG.
I’m embarassed I didn’t think of The Last Starfighter first.
As to Hunt for Red October, though, no way. The relatively primitive CGI really don’t affect the movie much at all. I barely noticed it. It’s just not terribly important; the key scenes are the ones INSIDE the submarines, and it’s beautifully done. The film is near-perfect, the cast just outstanding, and any effort to redo it is almost certainly going to fuck it up more than the tiny improvement better CGI would do. You are literally the only person I’ve ever seen suggest it made the film bad.
In the case of Last Starfighter, the visual effect are a huge part of the film. I mean, space combat is the whole point. The rest of the movie could be brushes up a bit too - you can do much better makeup effects, set design, and the like these days with basically the same money, and even by the standards of the day Last Starfighter was done on a fairly modest budget.
You still run the risk of absolutely blowing it (look at the horrifying mess the new Ghostbusters movie was) but TLS is absolutely improveable.
The Wild Wild West. I think the 1960s series was great, and the movie sucked serious dead moose balls. They couldn’t have f’ed it up more. It’s dying for a remake.
The casting was good and so was the steam spider. But somehow…
Those two things were exactly what was wrong with it.
Aye; gotta agree with Czarcasm: the casting and the ridiculous spider were the two biggest fails of the film, followed by the script, the directing and the producer.
Kevin Smith has a hilarious story on his Hollywood experience with the ill-fated Superman Lives movie. I don’t want to give too much away, but it eventually gives a whole lot of insight into the origins of the mechanical spider from WWW:
The idea of a black James West irritated you?
Do you not think that an African-American Secret Service agent, especially one as characterized by Will Smith, wouldn’t have raised more than a few eyebrows in that time period?
It wasn’t that he was black; it was that he was Will Smith. At the peak of his Will Smith-ness, no less.
Which was the exact point, if you saw the start of the film.
Yes, because not only would no one take him seriously in the 1870’s, and he’d never get anything done*, he’s Will Smith in the 1870s! I like Will Smith, but as someone said, Aw HELL no!
Even the fact that the two reunion movies had their own problems (Paul Williams as Dr Loveless Jr? Shields and Yarnell as androids? Atomic bomb? Puleeze!) they were still better than that abomination.
*now, if you wanted to make a different WWW, where a Black secret service agent in the old west works subtly undercover, and uses his outsider status to do his spy magic right under everyone’s noses, that might be good. But it wouldn’t be the James Bond spy spoof WWW.
That stupid metal spider that Jon Peters insisted had to be in the movie(that man needs serious psychiatric help)-where the fuck did the fake Dr. Loveless hide the damn thing until the big reveal?
There was an 80-foot -tall mechanical spider and you’re concerned about the fact one of the characters was black? Also, he was Army Intelligence, not Secret Service, until the end of the movie.
Having just seen The Last Starfighter last year I disagree with the CGI needing an update, besides the awful ground texture in the planet scenes the CGI ships looks like video game graphics (albeit of a decade later) which kind of fits the premise exactly. If you updated the CGI the film would look way more generic and lose some of its charm.
I thought of a couple more.
One Million B.C.
It’s been done with Victor Mature and Carol Landis, versus lizards in rubber suits and elephants in fur coats.
It’s been done with John Richardson and Raquel Welch, versus Ray Harryhausen animated creatures.
It’s time to do it with CGI.
From Hell It Came.
It’s a cheesy, low-budget, 1950’s, B-movie, horror flick. And even by that standard, it’s bad.
It’s the story of a Polynesian prince, who returns from the dead as a demonic tree, which wanders the island, wreaking vengeance on his murderers.
With modern CGI, the walking tree could be done much better. With a decent writer, it’s theoretically possible to make a decent film out of this. (Probably not, but it’s worth a try.)
I’m still waiting for a better remake of Stephen King’s IT. IT was the scariest book I ever read, but the series and movie left me high and dry.
With the exception of The Shining, movies made from King’s books don’t come close to matching the pulse-racing horror of his stories. Most rely on lame jump-scares rather than creating a slow-burn atmosphere of horror. The original Exorcist did a great job building atmosphere.
Help King re-write IT’s closing act (his endings are generally weak) and hire a director up to the task of creating effective horror and IT could be a classic.
In general, most horror movies would benefit from the lesson learned from Jaws. Thanks to a faulty mechanical shark, Spielberg gave the “monster” little screen time. That worked! Let the audience anticipate the horror, rather than showing it. What you imagine is almost always more terrible than what is delivered by special effects.