How can they do remakes of great movies? Or songs? Or whatever? I have this rule which states:
If you are not going to do it better than the first one, don't do it!
What is so hard about this rule?
We were in the car listening to the radio the other day and heard the most boring version of Forever Young ever. It was totally dull. I have no idea who it was, but if I find out, they lose a notch. Alphaville would be turning over in their grave. And they may not even be the original authors of the song, but they did make it great.
With music, there are always people doing remakes. U2 did I Am the Walrus. I suppose that was not so horrible, but it was still kind of lame. There were two movies which came out about the same time where they did Twist and Shout, a song that just sucks to begin with. Okay. Enough on the Beatles. (The movies were Back to School and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.)
Back to Movies
Why would you remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Force people to see the original, because they are not going to see anything better.
King Kong is just the best. What does Peter Jackson do? He does an homage to the original by including everything he could from the original plus adding his own pukefest. I think Peter just lost it when he did Return of the King. He figured the audience wants to be in the theater seeing people say farewell for hours and hours.
Psycho. They did the exact same movie. They changed about a half percent of it. How can Vince Vaughn live with himself after that? Don't they realize that they are just duplicating something that cannot be duplicated?
I think there needs to be a meter on greatness and once a movie has achieved a certain perfection then it cannot be redone. Once it makes it on that list, that's it. People have to see the original or they do not get to see it redone. No laziness here! Then, what does that do? It forces the movie industry to come up with... Oh no! Not that! Originality?! What is that?
So I propose the Greatness Index, a list of movies which they cannot redo. And much like the writer's strike I want actors to join with me on this great cause. May the classics remain. May the new interpretation not be allowed... May originality be the new norm.
The start of the proposed list:
- Star Wars IV - VI (They can remake I - III all they want)
- Jaws (just the first one)
- Apocalypse Now
- The Wizard of Oz
- The Matrix (just the first one. No excuse for the sequels)
Lots of controversy already I can tell. People are just chomping at the bit to get a CG Jaws in there...
4 comments:
Heaven forbid the CG Jaws!
I back your Proposal completely with movies. Music is a little iffier for me. Todd shares your view though, he has said almost the exact same thing. I enjoy hearing a song re-interpreted. Even if it isn't better, sometimes it is cool because it is different and other times it is cool because it is so terrible. And unlike movies, they only last 3 or 4 minutes.
I agree 100%
From what I hear, Jaws was accidentally a success. As I hear it, Senior Spielbergio wanted to plaster his nasty mechanical shark throughout the entire movie. But couldn't get the prop to work. So he had to (gasp) improvise and use spooky music and rely upon people's imaginations.
Turns out people did a much better job imagining horror than he could do in filming it.
So yeah... CG would likely be a waste.
And... maybe i should watch jaws some day - as I've never seen it.
Yes. I agree that there should be a list of untouchables: great films that are adopted into the Film Canon, as it were. Actually, Jonathan Rosenbaum (film critic for the Chicago Reader) has a great book arguing just that.
As for Jaws... Mr. Spielberg owes his entire career to his editor on that film, Verna Fields. SS was destined to be flushed, as Michael mentioned, because he didn't have a contingency for fx gadgetry. But no one hears about the editor who saved the day. To be honest, I often wish she hadn't...
From what I understand, Gus Van Sant was intentionally trying to recreate Hitchcock's Psycho frame-by-frame. Kind of an interesting idea and homage to Hitch... but it kind of just makes you want to watch the original, which is undoubtedly a masterpiece (and exploits the MPAA's hyper-paranoia with... what? remarkable editing?)
A few more to add to the list:
Anything by,
Woody Allen
Godard
Jacques Tati
Orson Welles (although I have to admit a shy interest in Wong Kar-Wai's upcoming version of Lady from Shanghai).
Oh, and Night of the Hunter. Never. Ever.
!
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