Are remakes successful

[jknight_2000]

It has come to my notice, that Hollywood and TV are continuously trying to rehash old ideas, and attempting to make them seem new. So I like to post a simple question to the board about remakes, and please be honest.

[droidlvr]

I say it should be left alone. The idea is just too loaded. Can only be seen as a horror or some feminist themed satirical in these parts.
Maybe it should be re-imagined somewhere in the Eastern hemisphere.

[dale coba]

I have so many ideas, and little power to compose them, but...

The tension in the original was about whether Joanne would succumb or escape her fate. I would rather there be no question in the viewers mind, that women's fate is to become transformed, or to find out that she has false memories and already has been a robot for some time.

The tension instead is akin to seduction, in a world where everyone seems suggestible and goes along with the social reality. She is rattled flustered, confused, but mustn't show it. She so wants to please that she gradually accepts and celebrates the mass assimilation of women as perfect, mindless automatons, with no preoccupations of Self, no drama except for harmless roleplay. Strong Id, no Superego, and a simplified encoding of her User's Superego in place of her ego.

The conceit, i.e. Stepford is Reality, and somehow victims don't notice, or mind. The audience, aSFr pornocerouses, won't dwell on the ethics. We want to see a celebration of our definition of sensuality, complete with maintenance modes and slightly-stiff walking, orgasms and flailing disk crashes.

"People don't think/act that way" - yes, we know.
Get over it, move on.
This trope provides a prime view on the robot-femininity of women, as seen from an objectifying gaze.
Which I am 100% in favor of, in my porn.

- Dale Coba

[KingJeremy]

In terms of content, I think remakes are almost always welcome. It's more of what we as a group seem to like.

Quality or faithfulness to the original is another question. If you are someone who's sensibilities get upset at the thought of a studio destroying the vision of your favorite film, then you probably aren't going to like it as much.

I don't mind remakes in any genre, rarely do they achieve the qualities that made the original worthy of a remake to begin with but again, I don't get offended by the concept. It's only a movie and nobody is forcing me to watch it.

[1001011001]

Remakes are indicative of a lack of creativity in Hollywood so much that they can do little else these days besides take a previously successful idea and modernize it for today's audiences in the hope that lightning strikes twice.

Even the potentially good ideas are inevitably lost in a flood of special effects gimmickry that assaults the senses blocking out any semblance of quality acting, screenwriting, or directing.

[xodar]

There was no need to remake it, just as there was no need to remake Psycho.
Some movies are better when remade and some are just right no matter when they were made. Certain movies are both well made and original; you can't recapture originality.

[barakuda]

I think certain movies or seies of movie are just begging for a remake.Like the reset of the Batman series has been great because they had a series of real disasters. But if a movie is a classic you shouldnt remake it. the Stepford Wives remake doest really count has the director kept changing the script to make the actors happy. Rumor was Actors and actresses kept threatening to quit. So the spliced together what they had before anyone could quit has john Cusack and his sister already backed out. Funny thing is the cast went on 20/20 and did a interview promoting the movie. Saying its a modern more fun version of the original.

[jknight_2000]

Actually, thanks to everyone who so far participated in this survey. But, Kishin -- I chose that particular movie for a specific reason. The original vision for the remake was to keep the original story intact, and I honestly believed based on the cast selected, it was obvious that could not happen, so the directors decided to change the premise of the movie. As unusual as this sounds the other example were worse failure than this. The Bionic Woman remake didn't last long enough, and the Metropolis remake was a cartoon versus the original Fritz Lang classic didn't make much sense.

But my theory still holds:

All remake are doomed to fail because of the fact to recreate the original you need the right vision, cast, and timing. In the case of the Stepford Wives, it was the perfect physchological thrilller. The remake turned into a comedy of errors. But that leads me to this premise, what makes us believe that a remake of Westworld will not have the same failings.

[The Liar]

the Metropolis remake was a cartoon versus the original Fritz Lang classic didn't make much sense.

That wasn't a remake. That was a movie based on the comic by Osamu Tezuka.

[PowerDroid5000]

I'll have to agree on the "all remakes are doomed to fail", and i believe hollywood thinks the same, to a point where they just won't tell us that movies like "i am legend" and "gone in 60 seconds" are actually remakes. (At least to the younger audiences)

I know there are no robots in these 2 movies , but take a look here on the originals and compare with the new ones:

(gone in 60 seconds trailer) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh6WNRoqLXI

(Last man on earth/ I am legend, the whole movie) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibnpEk4hdjo

PS: I like Will Smith, but, sincerely, Vincent Price is, THE...MASTER.

[barakuda]

Wasnt The Omega Man Also a remake of The Last man On Earth. With Charleston Heston

[PowerDroid5000]

Wasnt The Omega Man Also a remake of The Last man On Earth. With Charleston Heston

Precisely!

[L.W.]

A remake is only as good or as bad as the people involved in the making it.

George Orwell's remake of H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" was amazing. Steven Spielberg's remake of the same material.... well, to be kind amazing in a much different way...

Several remakes of "A Christmas Carol" have been great, each in their own way, several others, not so much....

And as stated earlier the anime Metropolis is not a remake, but an entirely different story that contained some of the images from the original but none of the story.

[xodar]

George Orwell's remake of H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds"

George Pal.

[Rotwang]

Plenty of great movies are remakes of older ones, including some highly regarded classics like the Maltese Falcon.

The problem is that the way Hollywood makes movies, almost guarantees that remakes will be bad.

They pay people to make changes in the story in the mistaken belief that's creativity.

For some it's an ego thing. They are stuck working on an existing property so they are trying to outdo the original, often by applying the "bigger, faster, better" formula or by changing so much, whatever made the original good is now lost along the way. Like somebody once said poetically, they hate the soup until they pissed in it.

Finally Hollywood is willing to crash a movie into the ground if the test screening is negative. Directors have a choice between their movie or their career, so they let the studios "fix their broken movie" so that it will do well in screenings, never mind that the correlation between screenings and the actual movie audience is as trustworthy as a Voodoo doctor exorcising your cancer.

[barakuda]

It depends on what there asking in test screening. Like the new stepfordwives. The audience supposedly hated the ending so they changed it. But that doesnt account for the rest of the movie being crap. You cant have a good ending if the rest of the movie is crap. Now you can ruin a good movie with a crap ending. They needed either a complete rewrite or to scrap the progject. Bau !. it would cost a lot time and money. Option 2. the actors wouldnt have been paid, and we know neither is going to happen.

[PsychoKirby]

I wouldn't really call The Omega Man and I Am Legend remakes of The Last Man On Earth as much as they are new adaptations of the original book. Same for The Stepford Wives. Still, it's a movie telling the same story as an earlier movie, so I guess for all intents and purposes it's a remake.

Anyway, remakes can be amazing. Look at David Cronenberg's remake of "The Fly", for example. And Scarface is almost universally beloved, but most people don't even know it's a remake of a movie of the same title from 1932. Those are the exception to the rule, of course. The problem is that most remakes do one (and often both) of the following: A. Decide to remake a classic movie that's fine enough on its own, and B. Not really care much, almost deliberately avoiding putting in everything that made the original charming. The Stepford Wives is a prime example of this. Good-bye feminist commentary, hello extremely campy levels of comedy.

As for the upcoming Westworld remake, I'm not optimistic about it (assuming it ever gets out of Development Hell). But if nothing else we'd get some nice ASFR content from it.