I recently read someone commenting on Groundhog Day, saying that Bill Murray relived the same day over thousands of times in order to win Andie McDowell - and how nobody had ever put that much effort into gaining so small a reward.
I’d like to remake Moonraker and have the new version actually follow the book of the same name. It’s one of, if not the, worst Bond film, while book was one of the better Bond books. The film completely jettisoned everything from the book except the name of the villain and the notion of having something to do with rockets. I’d make it with a dark, serious tone and film it as a period piece set in mid-50’s England, since that’s kind of important for Drax’s plans and motivation.
I’ve long felt it’d be interesting to film most of the Bond books straight, pretty much as Fleming wrote them. Although even Fleming admitted that they were pure fantasy (and Fleming couldn’t write believable American gangsters to save his life), they’re overall darker and more believable than the movies. Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me were arguably the worst, and both were written by Christopher Wood, who would go on to grace us with the even worse Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins*.
To be fair, Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me wouldn’t make a great film, and Fleming nixed the idea, anyway, only selling the rights to the title, rather than the story.
*Although, oddly enough, his own novelizations of his Bond films are much better than his screenplays.
Totally agree, starting with the insertion planetside as in the book, the troopers actually using tactics and wearing the jumping combat armour.
the movie was a travesty.
If “Rainbow Generations” (my “Just OK American Novel” in progress) ever became a movie, it’d be a combo of Juliet-Juliet and Romeo-Romeo.
Not a movie, but I would remake Happy Days as a dark and gritty drama about the 50’s Milwaukee suburbanites dealing with a biker gang called the FONZ. And by the end of season 1, there’d be no mystery about why Chuck wouldn’t be around anymore.
So, basically another re-make of The Running Man?
I’d watch it, I loved both TRM and Gamer.
As a 50’s Milwaukee suburbanite, I’ll admit there was nothing darker and grittier than deciding between going to the German pub for a Doppel Bock, and (bonus time!) a German restaurant for Schnitzel und Sauerkraut.
Do you’re ripping off Alex Sanchez, one of the most popular teen authors writing today, and you expect no one ot notice? Good luck with that.
I wouldn’t necessarily remake Contact, but I would definitely reshoot the ending scenes so they match the themes in the book.
Timothy Olyphant?
I think Jon Hamm is the probably the manliest man in U.S. film and TV today.
Hmmm. I can see it.
There was a godawful (in terms of historical accruacy) 1940 film of Brigham Young (based on the man, not any particular source) starring Dean Jagger in the title role and Vincent Price as Joseph Smith. I think he’s long overdue for a biopic or miniseries. Not sure who would play him (pic when he was relatively young) but it’s a great role: Young was without qualification brilliant, charismatic, and a born leader, but also corrupt, greedy, and prone to hyperbole that often came back to haunt him. The Mormon trek west is one of the most underutilized stories in U.S. history save for in a few Mormon produced films; I’d love to see an objective version.
The Count of Monte Cristo, because though there have been many versions none of them measure up to the original material. A tall order, I agree, but I feel it’s time.
The Secret Garden, the old one is not bad, the updates are pure treacle. I want something with atmosphere and some of the bleakness of the older version, house servants that are harsh and a manor house that’s intimidating for true! I see a Tim Burton version, with Johnny Depp as the hunchback. No treacle, please!
Inspired by the fact that it is always on the TV in the UK when there is a public holiday (and a running joke in my family where if someone walked in on another member of the famiy watching it, the question would always be asked - “has Steve McQueen escaped”) - I have long harboured a desire to remake The Great Escape.
I would remake it in a pretty straight way right up until the point of the escape itself. At this point, with money no object in my fantasy film, I would make two endings for each of the major characters that gets out. One where the character escapes for good, the other where they are recaptured/killed.
I would then have a feature on the DVD to randomise the endings, so when you start watching it, you never know who is going to escape and who isn’t. Obviously, it would mean that continually reshowing it at Christmas, Easter, Bank Holidays, etc, on TV would be worthwhile.
The game in our household was working out who each character would be. I think we’d worked out that Brad Pitt would be McQueen, George Clooney would be James Garner, Russell Crowe would be James Coburn, Ewan McGregor and Gael Garcia Bernal as the tunnellers and Robert Carlyle as the jockey that goes wire happy.
Yeah, if I were given the reins to make this film, I would bankrupt the studio and make a film that never made a return.
OMG! I (seriously) had NO IDEA!!! The title is a total asspull!
Ooh, goo done, me to. I’d also remake Alien 3 per the first Aliens 1-6 Dark Horse series, featuring a grown up Newt kicking ass.
There are a lot of horror and action films over the last few years that came out with the silly PG-13 rating in order to maximize viewers. I’d remake them all into R. Off the top of my head, I know there were Japanese horror films, a Die Hard movie or two, a Predator or AvP movie that suffered from wanting to get those snot-nosed punks into the theater.
I’d remake the Village, which I still think was a creepy and decent film, M. Night’s last good movie. Near the end, when the crazy guy falls into the hole after the blind girl dodges him, there was a scene where he’s dying and looking up at the sky out of that hole. The only change that would have made the film a good horror film with a great ending would be if one of the creatures actually looked down at him from the edge of the hole
Sin City. It needs Jessica Alba’s nudity. WTF at playing a stripper without stripping??
The last two LOTR movies would be remade to be closer to the book. I’d still leave out the Scouring of the Shire though.
There was a remake of Pulse, a Japanese horror movie about 5 years ago. That looked so scary in the trailers but the actual film was a huge letdown. They actually showed the ghosts doing things. They “sucked” the life out of people, but it was more like they sucked a breathe out of them. People were still alive afterwards! They became “sad” and eventually killed themselves, but like any good monster movie maker knows, once you show the scary thing then it’s not scary anymore. Knowing that all the ghosts did was scream in people’s faces like a drill sergeant for a few seconds and then leaves isn’t that scary. The remake would be more like The Ring, where the screen cuts away and a horrified corpse is left so you don’t know WTF they did to the person but you’re pissing your pants
I’d remake almost every video game movie to make the plot almost exactly like the game. It may make the movie worse, but everyone knows video game movies are like the gay uncle nobody in the family talks about. Video game movies are travesties that lose money. They are badly acted and suck. Over a decade of this crap and we’re still getting easily excitable movie makers trying to push their “vision” of the game using new characters, new plots, and barely a resemblence to the source material. ENOUGH FUCKERS!! I’d remake films to be like the game. Every character is there, every plot twist is there, hell even throw in some god damn random battles. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within would be a live action 10 hour trilogy of Final Fantasy VII. Mortal Kombat wouldn’t have some stupid ghost ship to an island where people fight and not bleed, and Street Fighter would have fireballs and sonic booms with absolutely no explanation of how people can do that except that they are really really good fighters, and it wouldn’t have a Belgian trying to play an American trying to pretend like he’s the main character of the game. It’s Ryu, it’s always been Ryu. I’d keep Silent Hill the way it is since that was the best video game movie ever made.
References to the ghost ship (and Shang Tsung’s island) were in the game series.
Biting my thumb to the idea of video game movies being EXACTLY like the video games. You’ll notice that many of the best video games had entirely absent plots. What’s the plot of Mario Brothers? No really, what’s the plot? I’ll wait.
What pains me, is when you have things where the original really did have a solid plot, and they even followed it 80% of the way (like Wing Commander) but then arbitrarily changed details that didn’t seem to need changing, like redesigning all the ships everybody used (like Wing Commander). Let’s not talk about the whole Pilgrim thing. I didn’t mind the plotline, but a lot of people evidently did because it didn’t actually have any relation to anything in the games (although it COULD maybe explain why they used Blair’s DNA to help create the Black Lance supersoldiers…)
Also, there was a fireball in the Street Fighter movie, but it happened at close range, and you had to be paying attention to see it because you didn’t see it directly. Ken (IIRC, it coulda been Ryu) used it against Vega (I think) as a finishing move at the end of a fight. Mostly he does the pose, you see Vega flying, and briefly you see the fireball’s light reflected on the good guy’s shirt.