Are all film remakes awful?
Discussion
I sat through the remake of Rollerball last night, I recall loving the original so thought it would be worth a watch.
I was wrong, it was dreadful.
Are any remakes any good? You'd have thought with 20 or 30 years more experience, newer actors, modern special effects, there could be some really excellent films out there. Perhaps because of the lack of effects in older filmsthey had to have better acting and characterisation?
The only remake that anyone here can suggest as being better than the original is Oceans 11; I'm not sure I'm convinced by this. Other remakes are only really nominal ones, like Pelham 123 and Italian Job - share the same name, but no (or very few) plot elements to speak of.
I was wrong, it was dreadful.
Are any remakes any good? You'd have thought with 20 or 30 years more experience, newer actors, modern special effects, there could be some really excellent films out there. Perhaps because of the lack of effects in older filmsthey had to have better acting and characterisation?
The only remake that anyone here can suggest as being better than the original is Oceans 11; I'm not sure I'm convinced by this. Other remakes are only really nominal ones, like Pelham 123 and Italian Job - share the same name, but no (or very few) plot elements to speak of.
3:10 to Yuma
Brewsters Millions
Magnificent Seven
Little shop of horrors
12 Monkeys
Not seen the originals of all those but I like the remakes.
The turkeys do seem to outweigh the good ones though. Apparently there's a remake of Barbarella due next year. The original was pretty different for the time, don't really see what a remake's going to add. And don't get me started on the Italian job!
Brewsters Millions
Magnificent Seven
Little shop of horrors
12 Monkeys
Not seen the originals of all those but I like the remakes.
The turkeys do seem to outweigh the good ones though. Apparently there's a remake of Barbarella due next year. The original was pretty different for the time, don't really see what a remake's going to add. And don't get me started on the Italian job!
markh1 said:
Batman Begins and the dark knight are far better than the ones from the 80's/90's or whenever they were made.
You do know what a REMAKE is don't you? Do you? Really? 
Anyway Batman and Batman Returns are great, BB and dark knight are good and the other two are complete crap.Because generally it isn’t about making a good film, it’s about making money.
You take a successful, well known film and remake it, then bask in it’s reflective glory, receive lots of free publicity and expectant hype. It’s just very lazy mass-market film-making. The key problem is that you are copying an already successful film, which yours is going to be compared to and ultimately the remake won’t be as good.
I’ve often wondered though about how many thousands of films that have been made that had a great story/concept but were never good, popular films. Small budgets, poor directing, casting, acting etc.
It seems rare though that someone picks up one of these films and thinks “that could have been a great film; great story, great characters but the movie was badly made. I’m sure that we could make it much better and do the story justice….”
So much easier to say, “That film was brilliant! Lets just copy it and I version is also bound to be a success!”. The argument that “we’re bringing it to a new audience who never saw the original…” is nonsense – just re-release the original in that case!!!
You take a successful, well known film and remake it, then bask in it’s reflective glory, receive lots of free publicity and expectant hype. It’s just very lazy mass-market film-making. The key problem is that you are copying an already successful film, which yours is going to be compared to and ultimately the remake won’t be as good.
I’ve often wondered though about how many thousands of films that have been made that had a great story/concept but were never good, popular films. Small budgets, poor directing, casting, acting etc.
It seems rare though that someone picks up one of these films and thinks “that could have been a great film; great story, great characters but the movie was badly made. I’m sure that we could make it much better and do the story justice….”
So much easier to say, “That film was brilliant! Lets just copy it and I version is also bound to be a success!”. The argument that “we’re bringing it to a new audience who never saw the original…” is nonsense – just re-release the original in that case!!!
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