I thought the movie captured some of the main points of the book well. I have no problem if a movie does not mimic the plot of the book. A movie should be visually intriguing. Take, for instance, Blade Runner. The plot is not much like the book (super-duper condensed version MAYBE) but I love that movie to death, as well as the book.
I would like to remake Event Horizon. I think I just need a decent script. That movie had a lot of wasted potential to be a great horror flick.
Ishtar.
It could only get better.
Which one? If you think Starship Troopers, then I have to disagree with you mightily – its philosophy is 180 degrees from that of the book, and its interpretation off scenes vastly different.
Your implication seems to be that the changes were made so that more impressive visual scenes could be shot. My claimn is that it’s perfectly possible to shoot very impressive visual scenes that are much closer to the book – the changes were not necessary for that reason. If your claim is that the movie needn’t slavishly follow the book, I say that some variation is allowable and even necessary – a book and a film are two different art forms, and the form certainly affects the content. But the vast changes in these cases seem to me indefensible on that point. And if the director and screenwriter made the changes just to show that this is their work of art, my question still stands – why buy the property (and give audiences the expectation of same) if you were going to change it? That’s like a published bringing out an edition of an author’s work, but re-written by himself to suit his own tastes. That kind of thing DID happen, with alarming frequency, 100 years or so ago. But it pissded off the authors and the public, so they don’t do it anymore.
Dune. Lynch made a beautiful, ridiculous movie. I’d like to see a beautiful, true-to-the-book movie.
The Sci-Fi Channel’s attempt a year or so back wasn’t bad by any stretch, but it still fell short. Maybe if Peter Jackson loves Frank Herbert’s books as much as he loves J.R.R. Tolkien’s… One can only hope.
In light of James Coburns death, it occurred to me that the Flint films would be worth re-making. In like Flint and Our Man Flint would certianly be better than the recent Bond films.
And since I’ve brought up campy 70’s spy movies, Modesty Blaise might be worth it as well.
Starship Troopers is my favourite book of all time. I loved the movie, but other than its following the chronological order of events, it misses many of the major points of the book.
Paul Verhoeven said they wanted to make a “buddies at war” film, harkening back to the days of films like Kelly’s Heroes, where the good guys are a team that lives, bleeds, and breathes together. It’s hard to do that, he said, when all your stars are running around sealed up in suits of powered armour. Never mind that the suits are central to the whole existence of the Mobile Infantry there, Paul…
In addition, while you catch glimpses into the totalitarian world in which Johnny Rico lives, most of that comes from Mr. Raczak’s lecture at the beginning of the movie and is forgotten once the action scenes commence. Many of the deeper parts of the books are Rico explaining from his point of view how the humans, who have by this time spread throughout the galaxy, see their nature and responsibilities differently depending on where they live and what they do.
The movie tried to make a love triangle thing to appeal to adolescent audiences (it worked; anything with Denise Richards at least cathes my eye), but that changes it from being a serious futuristic war movie into just another action movie based on a great book. In the book, Carmen and Rico never get together, Dizzy is a guy who dies in the first chapter, and everyone assumes Doogie Howser’s character is dead after they hear the Bugs have destroyed the military intelligence labs on Pluto where he is stationed.
Personally, rather than remaking Troopers, I’d try to be faithful with an homage: John Steakley’s Armor.
That, and I’d re-do Exit to Eden without all the stupid Dan Akroyd/Rosie O’Donnell crap in it.
I’d like to remake Treasure of the Sierra Madre, only set it in the future in the asteroid belt. I’d like to do this so much, in fact, that I have already written the screenplay. If anybody knows anyone with a few million dollars burning a hole in his or her pocket, please let me know.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
The old, old, old, black and flickering white one was very well done but it really needs a reworking.
Let’s just forget the one made by ?John-Boy? from the Walnuts? (I think it was him) and Ernest Borgnine…
I don’t think the current culture of the United States would make it a hit though…
I vote against remaking films simply because they could do them with better special effects. So what if the effects aren’t current state-of-the-art? What you’ll end up with is the usual boring and flashy CGI special effects with everything that made the movie great removed.
The first film that comes to mind for me is Fletch. A first-class thriller, and all you had to do was film the damn novel. It’s a film script, anyway – all dialog – so all you have to do is prune it down a bit and let it rip.
I vote against remaking films simply because they could do them with better special effects. So what if the effects aren’t current state-of-the-art? What you’ll end up with is the usual boring and flashy CGI special effects with everything that made the movie great removed.
The first film that comes to mind for me is Fletch. A first-class thriller, and all you had to do was film the damn novel. It’s a film script, anyway – all dialog – so all you have to do is prune it down a bit and let it rip. The dialog was so intriguing that in the first edition, the first few paragraphs were shown on the cover of the book to draw you in.
I think there is a Fletch remake in the works. My understanding is that Kevin Smith (who is a fan of the author’s and a good director for dialogue) is making a version with Jason Lee as Fletch. Personally, I always thought Tommy Lee Jones would have been great in the role, but he’s probably too old for it now.
I have two that are not widely known (to my knowledge): I Wake Up Screaming and Shoot the Piano Player.
The first is Betty Grable’s only non musical role and Laird Cregar is really, really creepy as a bad cop.
The second is a Truffaut film which can make you laugh and cry - it would have to stay a tragedy to be great.
As RealityChuck pointed out above, there are books that would translate directly to film, if only they had the chance.
My first nomination for a remake directly from the story would be Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson. Start with a voice-over of the “technical boy” speech as Johnny walks through the streets, show us the ninja and his special thumb, put the big fight up under the dome where it belongs, …
Bell, Book, & Candle- also set modern day, though instead of Jack Lemmon as a beatnik warlock perhaps Elijah Wood as a warlock who wants to be a rapper. The Stewart/Novak roles would go to Hanks/Ryan, of course.
I would like to re-make Apocalypse Now, ony this time instead of being set in Vietnam, have it set in Africa, one or two decades before World War One.
I can see the main character trying to go up a river like the Congo, only to find the man he was being sent to rescue (maybe the administrator of an ivory collecting station) has gone so far beyond the uncaring brutalization of the natives that he had become an actively malignant force. Instead of Brando’s star-powered turn, I would like to see the Kurtz character be smaller, as if the horror of his current state has shrivelled him, turned him into a pale shell of a man who still remembers that he was once civilized.
I doubt that anyone would be interested in such a film, though. maybe I could write it as a short novel…
The Grapes of Wrath I hear was a critically acclaimed film in its time. But if you read the book, the film realy softens it all. The book’s downer ending is killed.
The Steppinwolf theatre troope did an excellent stage version that rocked. It could be adapted for the screen.
Are you listining Gary Sinise?
somebody back me up?
THE POSTMAN. This time, actually film the damned book. And if Kevin Costner gets within a mile of the studio, shoot him.
I add my vote to FLETCH. What burned my bacon on that one, more than anything else, was this: In the book there were two completely different crime conspiracies going on (drug pushing and murder/insurance). The ONLY connection between the two crimes was that Fletch was involved in both of them. Fine.
But in the movie by SHEER COINCIDENCE the bad guy in one conspiracy turns out to be the bad guy in the other. The studio’s logic was obviously 1) the audience is too dumb to figure out two unrelated stories in one movie, and 2) all business executives in movies are drug pushers anyway (this was the early eighties).
Oh, how about remaking the MALTEDSE FALCON? Except I don’t want a real remake. Just replace the female lead with someone who can act.
Fifteen Iguana
My standard answer is The Killer Inside Me. The novel may be Thompson’s best, while the 1976 movie of the same name with Stacy Keach in the lead role is easily the worst of the various film versions of Thompson’s novels (Coup de Torchon, or Clean Slate, based on Pop. 1280; The Getaway – both versions; The Grifters; After Dark, My Sweet; Serie Noire) I’ve seen; I’ve yet to find This World, Then the Fireworks or Hit Me.
While any remake done now would have a tough time steering clear of Lynch/Tarantino screwed-up-for-its-own-sake-ness, it’d be worth the risk to redeem the book from its previous cinematic fate.
I’d like to see THE VAMPIRE LESTAT and or QUEEN OF THE DAMNED remade as a miniseries in which there is time to delve into the sideplots and be more accurate to the book.
I’d also like to see a remake of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD that introduces a few more characters than the original did. It would also be more free to address the themes of incest and miscegenation than the original movie. (My choice for casting: John Lithgow as Atticus, Whoopi Goldberg as Calpurnia, Rue McLanahan as Atticus’s sister, Billy Bob Thornton as Ewell, and Donald Sutherland as [name eludes me, but he was the white farmer who feigned alcoholism in order to live with his black mistress and their children].)
A definitive version of HUCKLEBERRY FINN that’s not filmed as a children’s story and not overly self righteous would be great. My cast: Ving Rhames as Jim, an unknown as Huckleberry, Billy Bob Thornton (again) as Pap, Gerard Depardieu as the Dauphin, Robert Duvall as the Duke, and Ned Beatty as Colonel Grangerford.
I’d like to see THE VAMPIRE LESTAT and or QUEEN OF THE DAMNED remade as a miniseries in which there is time to delve into the sideplots and be more accurate to the book.
I’d also like to see a remake of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD that introduces a few more characters than the original did. It would also be more free to address the themes of incest and miscegenation than the original movie. (My choice for casting: John Lithgow as Atticus, Whoopi Goldberg as Calpurnia, Rue McLanahan as Atticus’s sister, Billy Bob Thornton as Ewell, and Donald Sutherland as [name eludes me, but he was the white farmer who feigned alcoholism in order to live with his black mistress and their children].)
A definitive version of HUCKLEBERRY FINN that’s not filmed as a children’s story and not overly self righteous would be great. My cast: Ving Rhames as Jim, an unknown as Huckleberry, Billy Bob Thornton (again) as Pap, Gerard Depardieu as the Dauphin, Robert Duvall as the Duke, and Ned Beatty as Colonel Grangerford.