Editorial: The Day the Cinema Stood Still!
Posted by Ben Bruce
Obsessed With Film has been hunting high and low for new potential writers for the site relaunch in late July/August. Today we bring you an article by Ben Bruce, as he discusses the current Hollywood trend that is seeing remake after remake released on to the big screen.
By the way, this is also the reason for the lack of posts, but be sure to stick with us because we got some great stuff on the way…
So they’re currently remaking The Day The Earth Stood Still (You can watch the trailer here). Shocked? Of course not. By now we’ve been so bombarded with remakes that it’s become second nature to us all. We expect every summer to see something we’ve seen before repackaged, rebranded and re-jigged, because in essence the studios have become a) lazy and b) scared to gamble.
But I’m probably wrong to point fingers at TDTESS, because like I say it’s been going on for a long, long time; but what the hey, it made for a snappy title, and I’m an opportunist.
Remakes have been churned out for years. King Kong is now on its third film outing, the first remake hitting our screens in 1976. The Blob is apparently in pre-production for its fourth jaunt. What those two share in common is that there has been a steady decline in the quality of the film with each incarnation. Yes there are those who will now be up in arms about how great the new Kong was, but people, you’re wrong.
Jackson took a monster movie, gave it a heart (aww), and left us with a dancing side attraction. I’ve had three sittings with the new Kong, and I’ve never reached the end. I never will. You could argue that Jackson was simply trying to make a family film, just like they did with Godzilla, but a monster movie should have a monster as its main antagonist. JJ Abrams showed how easy that is with Cloverfield, which to my mind is the film of the millennia so far.
Some remakes work. Cape Fear is a fine example, as is The Fly, and my own personal favourite has to be The Thing, both versions of which are fantastic. John Carpenter, the director of The Thing of course is no stranger to remakes, but Carpenter did something that people seem unable to grasp these days.
He made remakes his own.
Assault on Precinct 13 is in essence a remake of Rio Bravo, something that Carpenter gave a massive nod to when crediting John T. Chance, John Wayne’s character in Rio Bravo, as the editor. Carpenter had been obsessed with doing his take on the story, but as the Westerns were pretty much dead and buried by the mid seventies, Carpenter had to re-think the film. What he created was a superb exercise in tension and atmosphere, something completely lost by the recent “re-working” of Assault on Precinct 13, which is less a remake, and more a stealing of title, something that happens all too often these days.
And here is where the final problem with remakes lie. Modern remakes are lazy. Carpenter had to remake The Thing and Rio Bravo, and to do so he added something that was lacking from the originals, be it the time line, or the atmosphere. He made them that little bit extra special. Now we want to rebrand things for a lunchbox. We want King Kong to be kid friendly. We want War of the Worlds to be spectacular, without looking towards creating that feeling of hopelessness perpetuated by the book. I fear the same is going to happen with The Day The Earth Stood Still, but I could of course be wrong.
Yet my main gripe, and it should be yours, is that films are about telling a story. Yes maybe it needs telling in new and inventive ways, but that shouldn’t just mean prettier pictures. Re-hash the tale, make it better, not more generic, or better still, give us new stories. I want to go to the cinema and be amazed and awe struck by what I’m seeing, hearing and being told. I can’t do that if I know already that the decision rests with me.
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I don’t think you fully grasped the concept of King Kong. He is supposed to be a monster you sympathise with which in turn is what makes his demise tragic. The feeling you’re supposed to get at the end is a sense of loss not victory.
I can assure you Tino, that point was not lost on me, however, hark back to the original, and definitive King Kong, and lo and behold, he’s not someone you’re meant to sympathise with, he is simply a beast acting on impulse, hence his violent attack on the native village, his biting to death of a New Yorker, and his dropping of the woman he realises isn’t Ann Darrow. He’s not lovable in the original, which is what I was criticising as the failing of the remakes. When I try and grasp the concept of King Kong, I grasp the original concept, and not the concept Jackson gave us. Unless of course you found the parts I mentioned from the original “lovable?”
I personally find the great ape in the original King Kong a lovable beast; a hell of a lot more appealing than the screaming manipulative humans around him.
I’m loathe to support the idea of remakes, but I agree that if done with compassion, creativity and commitment to not besmirch the original concept they can be fine things (as The Thing, Yojimbo, The Magnificent Seven and Scarface all show). Taking an old idea, story or concept and remoulding it has been done through all artforms through all the ages (there has never been a totally original artwork. Everything is influenced or inspired by something). My main gripe with remakes are that modern mauinstream film production goes for them out of uninspired greed. If they went at them with imaginative enthusiasm, which is all too rare, then the results would be much better.
Mostly a decent article, but this paragraph strikes me as completely wrong:
“Remakes have been churned out for years. King Kong is now on its third film outing, the first remake hitting our screens in 1976. The Blob is apparently in pre-production for its fourth jaunt. What those two share in common is that there has been a steady decline in the quality of the film with each incarnation.”
First of all, while Jackson’s Kong wasn’t great, it was definitely better than the 70s version. OK, that version had its moments and Jackson’s was way, way too long, but I don’t think there’s a great deal of comparison personally.
As for the Blob, what are you talking about? There have only been 2 versions of the movie so far (the 50s original and the 80s remake). Beware! The Blob was a sequel, not a remake (though, like most sequels, it did tell much of the same story). While the 80s remake wasn’t great - that dumb biological experiment subplot came from nowhere, the tentacles on the blob - it was very entertaining. Not only that, but the reason it was made - showcasing much more advanced makeup effects that are still very effective today.
While I assume the new remake will be CGI-heavy, it will again hopefully showcase things that simply weren’t possible with physical effects, and the blob is a concept that’s got a lot of possibilities not yet explored on film.
As for remakes in general, I’m very much of the opinion that remakes are only good when they come from an artistic, not commercial, reason for existing, and the artists involved aren’t afraid to take chances. The Fly, The Thing, Fistful of Dollars, Magnificent Seven, Nosferatu the Vampyre and The Departed are all superior remakes because their makers were trying to make something different and they believed in the final product. Most other remakes, from Psycho to Prom Night to The Jackal suck because they were cashing in on an established name for a quick buck.
Remakes are hard for a lot of reasons. At what point do you change so much to be different that you essentially create something new, which would actually be good in some cases. I think most people come at remakes of what has to be in common with the original instead of what ideas made the original awesome.
In the defence of remakes…
I’m preparing myself for an onslaught of abuse here but I personally believe that the remake of Dawn of the Dead is a far better movie than the original (don’t get me wrong, I love the original, I just think Snyder took the concept and made a better movie around it).
I will now assume the foetal position as lots of heavy e-objects are thrown at me…
I see your point aphexbr about Beware! The Blob, but I stick to my guns that the third pre planned one counts, so there’s definitely more than two. As regards the more recent Kong’s we’re definitely going to have to beg to differ on that, I really feel that Jackson’s version of King Kong is without a shadow of a doubt one of the worst films put together. Ever. (See the scene where the crew are being eaten by giant bugs.)
I know what you’re saying about remakes and the motivations behind them, and essentially that was the argument I was trying to make, I do feel studios are lazily relying on the whole “We’ve got CGI now, that’ll make it better,” argument, when sadly, it doesn’t.
I must admit, I’m glad I’ve got comments coming in, because it would appear I’ve hit a few nerves and got people talking!
I personally think a remake can only be succesful if it takes the genre and swizzles it round a little bit. Why was Aliens so bloody good? It took a super intelligent creature and and turned it into a bunch of mindless critters who got into a scrape with some marines. Nobody thought of that - it worked a treat. The new King Kong I enjoyed but Jackson seemed too obsessed with apeing his 1930s obsession. Cloverfield the film of the Millenia I almost agree - I prefer my monstor flicks where we discover the nature of the beast at the same rate as the characters in the film. Shoot me down but thats why I liked Jeepers Creepers so much!
Cloverfield film of the millenia, Snyders DOTD better than the original, someone liked Jeepers Creepers so much….?? Is it the 1st of April? Am I missing something?
Cloverfield may be film of the millenia for some but this one is only 8 years old. I once heard somebody say Trainspotting was the film of the last one, that must have been on April 1st but each to their own!
@Keith Lynch: I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was better than the original, but the Dawn remake was definitely a top notch movie. I also enjoyed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake (mainly due to R. Lee Ermey), and although it was vastly inferior to the original, it was enjoyable.
One remake I forgot to mention I also love - Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. I prefer the 1970s version to the 50s original. I also have a soft spot for the cheesy but enjoyable remakes of House On Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts. Sadly, most remakes are horrible (e.g. Invaders From Mars, The Fog, the assembly line of pointless carbon-copy remakes of Japanese movies…)
@Ben: We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one! I enjoyed the hell out of Kong’s bug sequence, my main problem with the movie is that it told an 80 minute story in 3 hours. Then again, I’ve been a Peter Jackson fan since the first time I saw Bad Taste in the 80s, so maybe I just get what he wanted to do a little better than most.
Sadly, with motivation it’s not even just “let’s remake it with CGI”. their motivation seems to be mainly to use the title as a marketing tool. Many people - especially younger audiences - have heard of the likes of Halloween, The Fog, Black Christmas, Prom Night,
House Of Wax, When A Stranger Calls, etc., but haven’t actually seen them. So, the studios buy the name and make a nearly-unrelated movie around it. They nearly guarantee themselves a $20 million opening with this tactic, and while they’re keeping the budgets low, they make money no matter who they piss off.
Bigger budget remakes are a greater risk, that’s where the CGI comes in. They revert to the increasingly untrue assumption that if they throw a lot of effects at the screen, the rest of the movie doesn’t matter. This is when you need a real director behind the camera who cares about the material (e.g. for a non-remake example, Sam Raimi was obviously much more invested in Spiderman 2 than the version of Spiderman 3 he was forced to make - he really doesn’t like Venom. Look at the difference when he was invested in his material!).
Keanu Reeves is Awesome, you crazy bastard, and his movie will be too!
The trailer is much better than I thought it would be because TDTESS, both original movie and in concept, bores me to tears. So, I’m impressed they could even make an exciting trailer from the idea.