Maybe if Hollywood stopped trying to remake successful movies and instead remade previous failures they might find better luck. There are plenty of movies with great concepts and horrible execution
That's not how things work. You won't get somebody invest his money into something that failed before. A farmer doesn't plant the smallest potatoes from the last harvest, he plants the biggest. Always in hope to get even bigger potatoes in the future.
+Juan Pablo Munoz A good example of where Hollywood did just that was with the "Judge Dredd" remake. It was a gamble, because many still had a bad taste in their mouth from the original. They pulled it off, though, and now the remake is considered a bit of a cult classic.
I love the remake of The Mummy (1999) because it does have the basic story points of the original with Imhotep being cursed, being resurrected, and trying to resurrect his lost love. But it took that idea and expanded upon it by having Imhotep doing more with his powers. It also developed characters a lot more and it did a lot more with it's story. Not to mention that there is a lot of great action scenes and a romance that doesn't feel forced. All of these things is what the 2017 remake got wrong.
idk why the hell they had to do that sucky end in the second one though I just would have had anck su namun maybe hesitate and Imhotep get pulled in too far for her to reach him and look back at the good guys and just jump in after Imhotep or anck su namun get killed on the way to help him. leave it as a tragic love story for them that was always inevitable. i just hate that she ran away. its the one thing i hated that the bad guys cant have true love also.
@@scaccu Imhotep was scary enough in the 1999 movie. No, he isn't as scary as actual horror antagonists, but given the tone of the film... I found it enjoyable, anyways. It was one of my favorite films as a kid but I would have to rewatch it as an old one to properly rate it.
I think it's unfair to say that De Palma's Scarface doesn't bring anything new. The De Palma film was something of a political essay. Montana was chasing the American dream and his "say goodnight to the bad guy" speech was a summary of the film's message; Tony is no more villainous than those who run the country. Regarding my favorite remake, I would say Werner Herzog's Nosferatu is just as brilliant as the original Murnau film. Herzog adds his own voice by emphasizing the tragedy of Dracula and he makes the argument that his existence is not some force of evil but a force of nature.
what i like a bout the 83 scarface is it feels like the whole movies done a ton of blow before you seen it. its got all these intense highs and lows and its just a feverish mess its awsome. for a 3 hr movie it does not feel its length its not slow or plodding it just rams thru the station
Jeff Bridges didn’t know why the Coen Bros. thought True Grit needed a remake until he read the book and realised how similar the book is to Coen Bros filmography.
I've said that for years but try and convience the stuido heads of that. I think they should be focused on movies that did middle of the road or fizzled but had a good core concept. Something a good director of today could really sink their teeth into and/or something people living today might not even remember or heard about.
Well take movies like The Fly and The Thing. Both were based on movies from the 50s, had generally the same idea (man turns into a demented fly-creature, alien can mimic people/animals), but presented them in different ways, making it more of a body-horror thing.
True and I for one am so glad they didn't do that little human head on a fly body thing. No matter how good the effects could've been there is no making that no look silly today.
@@lespion7411 The Force Awakens is essentially a re-make pretending to be a sequel. It's the exactly same plot as A New Hope. It sadly doesn't have any of the strong characters.
Yes. I saw it as a kid - well, maybe 14 or 15. It scared the hell out of me, and I loved Leonard Nimoy as an actor. He had such presence. I saw Nimoy on stage in Equus and I thought he was better than Richard Burton in that role . . . but I digress. Yes, the 78 version kicked ass. Well acted. Perfect film for it's time.
Some REMAKES that I LIKE are Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Nosferatu The Vampire (1979), The Thing (1982), Cat People (1982) and Scarface (1983). However, THOSE are OLDER remakes, and not part of this shitty current Hollywood remake TREND, which I pretty much DETEST.
I think one thing that's inherently flawed in Hollywood thinking (and that of the general audience that eats up and demands remakes and reboots) is the notion that newer is better. This is of course quite a silly assumption to make just as "older is better." The 1907 version of Ben Hur is stagey and dull though historically interesting. The 1925 and 1959 versions are themselves their own movies (though the 59 version does borrow more than a little from the 25 version) and both take the source material seriously and create a good film. The 2016 version has no redeemable qualities and why it was made is a mystery.
I don't think whether newer is better is something that keeps the executuves up at night or is of any relevance to them. Fact of the matter is, after a while, the commercial potential of a product is exhausted. You can't keep making money from selling fresh copies of The Mummy from 1999 any longer, even though people have favourable memory and feeling associated with that film, they had fun watching it back then, but aren't really compelled to pay for it again, it never had the kind of depth that invites repeat viewing. So to turn that positive emotion into new money, you need to make a new movie, and the executives don't care whether it will be crap, it only has to be good enough for people to part with their money once again, just once. Enough good stuff to make a 30 second trailer and then pad it out to a couple hours.
It is an inherently flawed way of thinking. Unfortunately, two facts will continue to perpetuate this: 1) love of novelty is hardwired into our psychology, and 2) most movies cannot avoid having a visual look strongly reminiscent of their time. Everything from the filming technology to shot selection to actor accents to fashion to special effects combine to make most movies feel 'of their time' and for various reasons most viewers are disdainful of that. It really is too bad that so many aren't willing to give old movies a chance, but at least there's a sort of perverse karma there, since in 50 years most of today's movies will have been dismissed and forgotten in the same way.
I don't think audiences are demanding remakes. Once in a while the desire to remake a movie comes from a director or writer (usually when the original belongs to a time that's become fashionably retro) - but for the most part it's movie industry executives that drive the endless cycle of remakes and reboots. They're always trying to minimize the studio's financial risk by coming up with concepts that are certain to succeed. If a movie was a hit the first time, then surely the remake will succeed as well.
Sometimes a remake happens because the studios think they have their finger on the audience’s pulse or they aren’t willing to take a risk on a project and decide to go with a “safe” bet. Other times it’s because the copyright is about to expire and they don’t want to lose the rights to whatever they’ve been sitting on for years.
raven lord the hobbit could have been almost as good as Lotr if it had the same amount of prep but it ended up being rushed out and ruined by the studio. There’s a really interesting video series about it on RUclips called The Hobbit A Long Expected Autopsy by Lindsay Ellis
@@VicenteTorresAliasVits That is a very fair question. I think a more accurate way to phrase it would be to call it under appreciated. It was held in very high regards by critics and the movie going public on its release, but it does feel like it has been forgotten at times.
Great actor indeed. Albert Rosenfield will always be one of the best characters ever made for television, like so many other characters from Twin Peaks.
Literally binge watched the entire channel the past couple of weeks, finally catching up a fresh upload the day it was published. Huge fan here... Of the lava lamp.
Not one mention of David Croneberg's The Fly? For shame! I forgive both you and lava lamp, but The Fly had damn well have an upcoming episode, or I'll sit here and type, while doing nothing.
Honestly though, the solution to all of these bad remakes is : more shaky cam. As of now I can still understand some of what's going on in modern movies.
This mostly comes down to 2 things: money and control over the spiderman IP. Sony had to keep making the damn things to keep control over spiderman. Also, spiderman was one of the few instantly recognizable superheroes in the pre-mcu world, and so was at least a guarantee that they'd get their money back. At least with the merging back into the MCU there seems to be the possibility of broader, and newer stories. I do have hope for the animated Spiderman coming later this year, though. It looks fun.
The most amazing notion of a remake coming out and being superior to the original is The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart; it was made because the original film was no longer viable to the filmgoing scene due to Hayes Code restrictions, so a lot of subtext and allusion had to be employed, and in essence, is a lot smarter film, making the audience look for what’s going on with the characters under the surface. Also, it’s a technically better film under first-time Director John Huston, so right there you have two reasons. Plus, and here’s the rub that I throw towards people who say all modern Hollywood does is remake classic films, not only was The Maltese Falcon (1941) ONLY ten years removed from the original film, it was the SECOND remake of the film, with Betty Davis’s Satan Met A Lady being released in 1936, again for reasons of “decency”, but it’s near universally agreed that the 1941 film, which propelled Bogart to leading man stardom, is the superior film in all perspective.
@@handsomebrick that was due to films being lost and destroyed rather frequently or not doing well with audiences, movies were added to and had reshoots frequently that occurred even after they were released. There's several different cuts of king Kong, with the original cut being completely lost.
Also consider that the film industry was advancing so rapidly in those years relative to today. I wouldn't really consider pre-WWII in the same conversation as modern remakes for that reason. Going from silent movies to talkies, B&W to color, all while throwing in new filming technology, directors exploring new shooting techniques, the Hays code, the studio system, and the societal upheaval of two world wars and the Great Depression and you have an atmosphere much more conducive to multiple retellings of the same story, that can each have their own spin on it.
@@handsomebrick Until TV started buying feature films and especially before VHS many older films, even a handful of years old, were completely unavailable to the average viewer. Now, a film which is more than half a century old can be instantly available and far more "of the present" than a 5 year old film would have been in 1950. The explosion in the internet and media generally also means that a current audience can hardly miss the fact that a new film is a remake, whereas much of the audience in, say, 1965 might not have been.
Odd that you didn’t explore the “Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven” story. Surely ripe for another angle about how remakes/reboots/reimaginings happen, when even cross-cultural themes are adapted to new audiences. The examples you give are pretty much just separated by time: old films repackaged or reimagined for a new audience. However, the magnificent seven is an example of a film reimagined for a different culture altogether - separated not just by time, but by ancestral culture. I’d have included that, or at least another example of it.
You raise a good point. But perhaps this doesn't quite overlap with our common conception of a 'remake' (even though it technically is one). I will just say that a cultural adaptation will often be more immune to many of the pitfalls outlined in the video. Due to its very nature of being adapted to a new culture it's already reimagining things and will be less prone to feeling like a rehash, and the fact that foreign movies usually have a smaller audience means that fewer people will be familiar with the original at all. This does bring up the interesting scenario of how audiences view the original if they see it after its adaptation (effectively making the original, foreign version the "remake" in their eyes). IMO the whole cross-cultural topic probably requires its own separate discussion to do it full justice.
Cross-cultural remakes work very well in the western genre but don't seem to be as successful in horror, even though there are many more examples of Japanese horror films remade by Hollywood.
@@Kevin_Street There's a very good reason for that. Japanese and Korean horrors have a very different tone to Hollywood's horrors. Hollywood focuses heavily on the monster and uses the story to make the monster seem more scary. The Asian horrors tell a story and use the monster to make the story more scary. The perfect example is the grudge. The original Japanese film is a story about a "curse" where people fall victim to someone else's problem (the grudge!). It starts off with a tragedy and the movie shows how this one tragedy goes on to affect everyone's life and by the end the entire town has fallen victim to the original grudge. It's a cautionary tale, and the monsters are metaphorical - they represent a grudge that is literally eating everyone up. Now move over to Hollywood. Well if you say "the grudge" you forget the original word and concept. You just think of the creepy kid and the hand in the hair. The horror is fully focused on this one character whereas the original is exploring the effects on an entire town. Both versions explore the story and the visual horror, but it's about how those things are used. It's the reason why the best horror movies are the ones where the monster represents an idea and isn't just a physical thing. It's easy to remember the graphic horror of The Exorcist and The Thing (my favourite horror movies) but they were used to support the story and the idea, not be the main spectacle on their own. Some recent western horrors have been able to do this well such as The Babadook or It Follows, but for the most part the west is too caught up in making a monster so they can sell toys or get royalties for jumpscares or something.
Dear Mr Schmidt. I’ve been a fan of your videos now for a while. Your take on the movie industry has been thought provoking and I take note of a lot of what you say. I don’t know if you would ever be interested in doing something like this but I would be very interested in hearing how you speculate on upcoming movies. Honestly, seeing the early previews of the upcoming Joker film is what made me think of making this request. Thanks again!
Some REMAKES that I LIKE are Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Nosferatu The Vampire (1979), The Thing (1982), Cat People (1982) and Scarface (1983). However THOSE are OLDER remakes, and not part of this shitty current Hollywood remake TREND, which I pretty much DETEST.
The 1978 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a pretty fantastic horror-thriller. Also, I also do enjoy for various reasons: Horror of Dracula (1958) The Thing (1982) The Mummy (1999) Alfie (2004) Dawn of the Dead (2004) King Kong (2005) True Grit (2010)
Sometimes it's just updating visuals and script for a modern audience, as with Bodysnatchers. No harm at all in that sort of remake, provided enough time has elapsed.
I think it's interesting how there's a noticeable change in acting between films, even across a brief divide of 1968's True Grit and 1978's Body Snatchers. It's like the acting in the former (and earlier films) is more melodramatic, put-on, but also like the actors are playing to an audience, it's very showbiz-y. This also comes across in the music, and the obvious studio sets and lighting.
@@larknix3111 Thanks! I think it's interesting to try and find where the change occurred. It's funny but it does seem a big chasm, dividing how films were and how films became and have stayed. And yet it happened in a short space of time. I think it's fair to say this occurred in the 60's. It's funny that even certain directors changed in this. Look at Kubrick's films all the way up to Doctor Strangelove. From 2001 onwards, the style and acting and presentation, inc editing becomes more naturalistic. Films like The Graduate marked a sea change, as did Midnight Cowboy. Westerns seemed to be one of the last hangover genres, with all of Wayne's films up to his last, The Shootist, in 1976, keeping that manner. And other films like Paint Your Wagon had that. On the whole though, Eastwood seems to have been instrumental in updating the Western, bringing aspects from the Spaghetti Westerns he'd made. And along with others like Little Big Man, The Missouri Breaks, and McCabe And Mrs Miller changed it for good. In fact I think the only hold-out was the Disaster movie, with Irwin Allen churning out the same style up to 1980.
I feel I’m the only person who liked the Nicole Kidman body snatchers. As a kid, I loved the first two. Watching the later film, I felt a similar sense of dread that the other two gave me. Also the ending, where her husband reads the newspaper and all the crime and suffering that’s going on in the world, implying that maybe it would’ve been better for the human race to allow the snatchers to control them.
I liked the Total Recall remake, but then it wasn't supposed to be a Total Recall remake. I've said it before elsewhere, but the Director wanted to do another film based on the same book. The studio wouldn't fund it however, unless he named it Total Recall and put in a few key moments from the original movie. I'd say this has happened with other remakes too. The studio thinks they can make more money with a recognizable title.
You know, after careful consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that in the modern age of social media and the paranoia of constantly being watched, a new ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, if done well, could be made. Imagine the plot of the human race being assimilated, but with the added narrative changes one could make with the setting of modern day. Everything being posted on social media, for better or worse. People being able to contact one another. In the age where everything is public, it would be interesting to see how what was originally quite a quiet and reserved invasion, would take place now.
I thought of that recently myself, with the twist being that everyone wanted to become a pod person and share a collective consciousness, rather than resisting it and retaining individuality. Modern culture seems all about documenting and posting all the details of your life for the world to see and share. We used to value our privacy.
Great video Georg*, as always, but what about spiritual remakes? Films like "Blow Up", "The Conversation" and "Blow Out", having pretty much identical setups (An obsessive media pro discovers a controversy in his work) but all three explore different realities for their protagonists. All three have similar beats, and similar conclusions. Spiritual remakes. There are countless others like that, that make you question if there really is any originality in the craft, or whether originality is really important. What are your thoughts on those?
Bruh, I have seen and listened so many movie reviewers (I KNOW, you are not doing "classical reviews"), BUT although many are quite talented young chumps, YOU ARE BY FAR my favorite right now and I have only seen couple of your videos only! The way and style you bring stuff to a final point, man... And your calm and respectful style is the best!
The core concept of the original Robocop was the ambiguity between Robocop being a conscious man trapped in a machine body, or a lifeless machine simply using a dead man's brain as a processor. That is literally the very cornerstone of what Robocop was about. It was perfectly woven into the story and it gave the story deeper meaning. Robocop 2014 completely missed the point. It presented no question at all, simply putting the hero into a machine body and sending him off to catch the bad guys. A complete and utter writing failure.
The core concept of the new robocop is how to beat a human conscience and soul so that it fits the demand of the company that uses him. The struggle between corporate and personnal Identity is present throught Gary Oldman 's character who is at first driven by altruistic motivation but because of the pressure of his boss agrees to beat Murphy's identity and free will and make him a robot before finding a redemption. In a sense the scientist is the main character of the movie.
I saw Jeff Goldblum in the thumbnail and thought you would talk about The Fly (1986). It is probably my favorite remake of all time. It really does a good job of making you go through an emotional rollercoaster, while at the same time, using wonderful/modern practical effects.
That’s an example of the newer version being superior, in my opinion. I like old Battlestar, but it tried too hard to shoehorn in stuff like disco and other things that really date it badly for some episodes.
I would love a video about The Fly and The Thing remakes and how they improved upon the original concepts. Those seem to me like prime candidates by your standards, George.
12:39 SPOILERS: The Thing (2011) certainly feels like a remake of the 1982 film, but it's technically a prequel; it ends right where the 1982 film begins.
That was bad. Often when Hollywood remakes foreign films, they inevitably change the key ingredient that made the original stand out. The remake of Insomnia, while well liked for the most part, completely ruined the ending that made the original stand out. Same with that forgotten Kiefer Sutherland film The Vanishing, which took a great film and did a typical "Hollywood ending" that killed it. Or Quarantine changed the scariest part of the original [REC] which was the supernatural element- granted, building their marketing campaign on the final shot in the film wasn't such a great idea either...
The Vanishing's remake is even more baffling considering it was directed by the same person that directed the original but he decided to change the ending completely. I don't get it.
Yeap, I can't wait for a remake of Game of Thrones, that could potentially follow Martins vastly superior writing and be good after the third season, only 20+ years to go.....
some remakes I have loved: The Fly, The Thing (80s), BSG, Westworld and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s)....they all stand on their own, elevating the concept.
No mention of parodies? Aren't they a kind of remake/reboot/re-whatever? I love movies like Dracula - Dead and Loving It, Robin Hood - Men in Tights, Spaceballs... actually, all of Mel Brooks' movies, I guess. And Hot Shots!, Shaun of the Dead, Galaxy Quest. I could go on and on. A parody inherently brings something new to the table, namely humor. Though obviously many of them fail to do so well. There's also Epic Movie, Superhero Movie, Meet the Spartans, and so on.
I'd say that the big difference between good and bad parodies is that good parodies, like Hot Shots! and Spaceballs, takes tropes from the original movies and makes fun of them while still being fun for those who haven't seen the original. Meanwhile bad parodies like Epic movie and Meet the Spartans just drops a bunch of pop culture references without context in between random gross-out jokes. I wish hack comedy makers would learn that disgusting things doesn't automatically equal funny.
Black Dynamite will always be my favourite parody, sometimes it's so close to its source material you almost forget it is a parody at all, it's more of a tongue in cheek love letter in many ways.
Georg, in the 90s there were lot of movie adaptations of classic television series. Like, A LOT. Some of these were pretty good (Maverick) while some were mediocre-to-bad (The Flintstones). Any thoughts on these?
My favorite remake done right is Peter Jackson's King Kong. It reintroduce a new view of the classic film in a new scope. It paid tribute to the original while portraying it with developed characters and visual effects. I love King Kong.
Love this channel!! Keep up the great work. The smooth voice with insightful points while a lavalamp quietly bubbles really gives off a "intellectual discussion with a good friend in a comfortable setting" vibe. Your videos are great to watch!
Note how most of the movies which were successfully remade were originally before the late 60s-70s, when mise-en-scène/cinematography/direction, special effects and acting were mainly borrowed from theater.
Great video. I'd like to clarify that THE THING (2011) and THE PREDATOR (2018) aren't remakes nor reboots. They were advertised that way supposedly to attract viewers who weren't familiar with the originals, but the former is a prequel (even though it manages to recycle the original's plot) and the latter is a sequel. The original ROBOCOP had a couple of scenes related to the title character's internal conflict of wanting to hold on to his human side, but the script writers never really went anywhere with that. The sequel spent a lot more time on it... only to forget about it half way through. The 2nd sequel didn’t even mention it! The remake does develop that aspect, which is why I prefer it.
I really enjoyed this video and listening to your views. I agree (minus some minor details where I see it a tad bit different). I think overall it isn't easy to get a Remake right. If you just copy it is boring. If you change too much and the wrong things it is bad. Some special remakes manage to be both boring and bad. But focussing on the meaning and idea of the original and putting it in another context (f.e. new political views in a culture) and using new narrative and technical ways of telling that story is a good way. But often that means fast cuts and giving everybody a mobile phone they never freaking use when in danger instead of reflecting how cultural pov changed.
The 2011 "The Thing" was a prequel, NOT a remake. It ended right where the 1982 movie started. The worst thing about it was the horrible CGI. EDIT: By the way, excellent video as always.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that gets irritated when you hear a critic say that The Thing 2011 is a remake. It's something that the movie critic Mark Kermode has said about the movie. He also said that Samuel L Jackson's Shaft movie from 2000 was a remake, which it clearly is not, because Richard Roundtree's Shaft makes a couple of cameos in the movie, Samuel L Jackson is playing the nephew of 70's Shaft. It sometimes makes you wonder if they've actually seen the movie they're criticising.
Yes, it can certainly be irritating. With The Thing (2011), I saw the same "review" copied and pasted all around the Internet, saying it was a remake and making remarks that led me to believe the original author had not seen either movie. I actually enjoyed Shaft (2000), but luckily avoided the reviews at the time.
I view it as a direct prequel. Watching the making of etc, the goal of the writers and director was clearly to show what events led up to the 1982 movie.
@@Rod_Knee But the writers are not adding anything new, they are just adapting the concept nad hacking in plot events to make it a prequel. Much like The Force Awakens was a remake of 'A New Hope', same plot, same planet destroying plot device to fight, same start of a droids going to a desert planet with information a powerful enemy is chasing. It may be set years after the original trilogy and a type of sequel but it's still a remake.
You're right that neither movie added anything new to the narrative. However, I view The Thing 2011 as a prequel and The Force Awakens as an (inferior IMO) sequel. I'd have enjoyed both much more if either had added something new, but calling them remakes conflates them with movies like "The Big Sleep", "A Star is Born" etc. To me, it's like saying 1994's Scarlet was a remake of Gone with the Wind.
Personally, I don't think the 80's Fly is really superior to the 50's Fly or vice versa, .. . they're just made in DIFFERENT ERAS, that's all. And whichever version one prefers probably depends on WHICH of those two eras one is more partial to. It's a matter of GENERATIONAL BIAS.
@@ianfindly3257 I love movies from the 50s. There's plenty of film noir that rarely translates to our era. I just thought the original Fly was an unintentional comedy. There's nothing scary or creepy about it. It's no Hitchcock. Cronenberg took it to such a completely deeper, freakier level. Just MHO. Calling it generational bias is an easy criticism, but it's just wrong.
Eh, nice try at bandwagon mentality, but no. TFA and Star Wars are two completely different movie - the only similarities (that made a bunch of morons scream "rehash") are cosmetic.
@@Strugen. Again, nice try, but it's like people trying to use a decontestualized bit from something Mark Hamill said to "prove" that he "hated" _The Last Jedi_ . Abrams never admitted to "remaking a movie & giving it a different name". Also, there's no need to rely on anyone's statements: _Star Wars_ 1977 was entirely Death Star-centered. Bar the death of his uncles, Luke basically doesn't have an arc: at the end of the movie he's the same guy he was at the beginning and, in fact, the only one who has something of a character arc is Han Solo - but that arc won't really pay off until _Empire_ so it's kind of irrelevant. In _The Force Awakens_ SKB is there just to have something to blow up at the end: Rey's journey, her character arc, her relationship with Finn and Han Solo and - marginally - KR are the core of the movie. Also, Finn has a character arc, so does Han and so does Kylo. But, because there is a sand planet, a spherical weapon of mass destruction, a protagonist wearing white-ish clothes and a bad guy in black robes, a bunch of internet morons decided they were entitled to call it a rehash.
@@Strugen. So, you try (and fail) to talk about Star Wars, you get schooled because of your complete inability to produce even a single argument in support of your bandwagon-mentality based theory and you try to get out of it by calling people "nerd"? You should've told you were 12, I would've simply ignored you :-)
It's remakes of foreign films that piss me off. Like, Let Me In or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Both inferior and only seem to exist as a way of making money off morons that can't read.
Exactly, it's comparable to the live action Disney remakes of animated movies that only exist because people are nostalgic for the old movies but are too spineless to publicly admit that they like animated movies.
As a Swede it frustrates me to no end that whenever a Swedish movie reaches some kind of popularity abroad Hollywood has to do a remake just because they think Americans are too dumb to read or understand something from a different country than their own.
Krull, Forbidden Planet, Heavy Metal, Barbarella, Enemy Mine, Shogun Assassin, Baron Munchausen, Labyrinth. I think all of these would benefit from a competent makeover and still carry their essence.
Barbarella is essentially a meaningless Sci-fi soft core porn flick as much as I love it. Not sure a remake can add to it's legacy as it's plot is essentially the main character being sexually abused in various Sci-fi/fantasy ways but it all being played as a cheesy flick. Can't see that going well in today's environment and the title character essentially had no character to be interesting to see further adventures. As fr the rest, it would depend on what the director and writer have in their minds to explore the concepts. Baron Munchausen's "moral" that fantasy is as important as reality and keeps us young can't really be re-told and add much to that concept.There isn't much of a creative reasosn to remake it, except to "Modernise" the film.
Heavy metal could do with a sequel done in the same style as the original, an anthology of loosely connected stories, each done in a different style of animation. The sequel we got, heavy metal 2000, wasn't bad, but it was a single feature-length story. I used to have the issue of heavy metal where they debuted a lot of simon bisley's concept art and ideas for the film, many of which didn't make it to the finished product, which is a shame, as they were pretty cool.
I support remakes, but usually only if the original was flawed or just “ok,” but could be done better. My favorite example of this is the 3 films “Escape, Conquest, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes from the 1970’s. Each of these films had some good ideas, and while not terrible, these films did have plenty of flaws all throughout them and hence “could have been done much better.” And the reboot/remakes Planet of the Apes prequel films pulled that off in spectacular fashion! The Apes prequels took the general storyline stencil of the 3 aforementioned 1970’s movies and improved them, doing some items all over again yes, but greatly improving and expanding on them and thus ultimately giving audiences us 3 much better films than the originals, remakes in the forms of “Rise, Dawn and War of the Planet of the Apes.” Maybe it’s a bit simplistic thinking but that’s how I feel, the only reason to remake an IP is if you can improve upon it some way. However, when the filmmakers got everything not just right, but damn near perfect the first time around, there’s absolutely no reason to remake it. Because you simply won’t be able to improve upon it. And in my view, just some original movies that were perfect the first time around and never should’ve been remade are the original versions of - Ghostbusters, Total Recall, Robocop, and my all time favorite movie - Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan, as the remade versions of all of these were absolutely terrible in comparison to the originals.
True Grit was a masterwork, everything about it was superb, photography direction acting and everything else was just wonderful, Young Hailey was robbed for the Oscar, I have never seen a newcomer master a part so well.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing the big budget shot-for-shot Hollywood remake of "Sex lives of the potato men" and how it fits into the extended Star Wars Spiderverse.
we're approaching some kind of movie concept singularity... the age of the Pre-Boot; where a film's remake is in development before the original / previous attempt has been released.
I sometimes think of remakes the way I think of songs being covered by a number of different singers. There are countless versions of My Funny Valentine, but I have my favorites. It doesn’t make any one version the definitive one. If you look at A Christmas Carol, most people like the 1951 version best but there were several before that including silent versions and of course many since. In the long run (particularly if the film is based on some other source material like a book or short story) then the interpretation of the original is always going to be what makes the movie special. In the case of True Grit and in the clips that you showed, it’s an indication of how closely both films stuck to the dialogue used in the original novel.
Once again, you offer a really great break down on what makes a good remake. I have four rules myself. 1. I feel that about every 30 years there is an opportunity to make a remake of a good film, as long as it is not just a "rehash" as you say. 2. Don't remake truly iconic films that aren't asking for a remake. That could be everything from The Godfather to Caddyshack to Apocalypse Now. 3. Sometimes there are really bad movies that were based on good material and absolutely should have another version made. I'm thinking of movies like Dredd vs. Judge Dredd. 4. Don't remake a foreign film that was well done recently just to make it in a new language and be more commercial and with a bigger budget. If you've ever seen the American version of The Vanishing vs the original European version, that's exactly what I am talking about.
Your intellectual understanding of cinema is obvious and I hope it translates well into the effectiveness necessary for actual film production. Best of luck with the Kickstarter campaign.
MGM is dipping into the highest grossing films from its Orion pictures library. 1. "The Hustle" a Female remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. 2. The Addams Family, but this time it's animated. 3. A new sequel to the original RoboCop 4. Bill and Ted: Face The Music All to be released next year or 2020. Then they'll have ran out from not pacing themselves. Outside of their Orion Pictures stuff there are things like a remake of "Child's Play" and one of "Valley Girl". Plus 2018 MGM gave us a remake of Deathwish, Tomb Raider, A Star Is Born, and Overboard
True Grit is one of best remakes ever! I don’t particularly care for the main adult actors yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone did wonderful with the language. The young girl was cast perfectly as was the original.
One important factor in the success, commercial and artistic, of a remake is how much time has passed since the original, although time here is really just a crude metric for familiarity. If the bulk of your audience has little or no familiarity with the original, then they will judge the remake on its own merits. If the audience is very familiar with the original, then they will inevitably compare the original to the remake. Knowing that, the filmmakers won't be able, if the audience is very familiar with the original, to get away from the original creatively speaking, and the remake will feel dull and derivative.
Remakes aren't just good, but essential. Every generation or two needs to be reintroduced to some of the best stories humans have produced with the most current tech to improve it. The old mummy, fly, and thing pale in comparison to the remakes. People go back and watch older movies when new ones come out that they like as well.
Love your commentaries, you are the only person on RUclips that makes his video to the point. I grew up with both Bodysnatchers the original had me not wanting to go to sleep but the remake really scared the shit out of me. Scarface on the other hand I only saw the original on late night cable when I was about 13 but the remake is part of Hollywood history. ROBOCOP??? They totally missed the point and I agree any Robocop without any humor just sucks. Thanks for your commentary. By the way, Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman have all had remakes. WHY haven't anyone remade Creature from the Black Lagoon?
I love invasion of the body snatchers (1978) , scared the shit out of me when i first watched it . I still think about that film every now and then and it still freaks me out. The exorcist is the only other 'horror' film that i think about.
![ARGENTINA vs. PERÚ [1-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xtI25ENDDSY/mqdefault.jpg)
This video was great but I prefer the original.
Nice
🤣🤣🤣🤣
This comment was great but I prefer the original
@@dezmundo1251 That joke was great but I prefer the original :)
@@benjammin8184 This sequel joke was ok... but I prefer the first one ;)
Maybe if Hollywood stopped trying to remake successful movies and instead remade previous failures they might find better luck. There are plenty of movies with great concepts and horrible execution
Great point
That's not how things work. You won't get somebody invest his money into something that failed before. A farmer doesn't plant the smallest potatoes from the last harvest, he plants the biggest. Always in hope to get even bigger potatoes in the future.
ZeroFPV Oh I know they won’t do it
+Juan Pablo Munoz
A good example of where Hollywood did just that was with the "Judge Dredd" remake. It was a gamble, because many still had a bad taste in their mouth from the original. They pulled it off, though, and now the remake is considered a bit of a cult classic.
+George Sidiropoulos
Yes, it is!
The Blob, The thing, the fly, horror masterpieces, all of them remakes.
and all of them nouns :D
@@KaltatheNobleMind nothing more terrifying than a noun.
The Noun, coming soon. A remake of every thing.
The greatest remake of all time is probably 1963's Cleopatra.
Ben Hur (1959)
I love the remake of The Mummy (1999) because it does have the basic story points of the original with Imhotep being cursed, being resurrected, and trying to resurrect his lost love. But it took that idea and expanded upon it by having Imhotep doing more with his powers. It also developed characters a lot more and it did a lot more with it's story. Not to mention that there is a lot of great action scenes and a romance that doesn't feel forced. All of these things is what the 2017 remake got wrong.
The 1999 The Mummy is also a really fun movie, while the 2017 one is not.
idk why the hell they had to do that sucky end in the second one though I just would have had anck su namun maybe hesitate and Imhotep get pulled in too far for her to reach him and look back at the good guys and just jump in after Imhotep or anck su namun get killed on the way to help him. leave it as a tragic love story for them that was always inevitable. i just hate that she ran away. its the one thing i hated that the bad guys cant have true love also.
maybe in 2017 they just wanted to take the story in another direction. I like all of them.
idk, mummies are classic horror villains, i've never ever enjoyed to the fullest the comedic take of the 90-00 saga.
@@scaccu Imhotep was scary enough in the 1999 movie. No, he isn't as scary as actual horror antagonists, but given the tone of the film... I found it enjoyable, anyways. It was one of my favorite films as a kid but I would have to rewatch it as an old one to properly rate it.
I think it's unfair to say that De Palma's Scarface doesn't bring anything new. The De Palma film was something of a political essay. Montana was chasing the American dream and his "say goodnight to the bad guy" speech was a summary of the film's message; Tony is no more villainous than those who run the country.
Regarding my favorite remake, I would say Werner Herzog's Nosferatu is just as brilliant as the original Murnau film. Herzog adds his own voice by emphasizing the tragedy of Dracula and he makes the argument that his existence is not some force of evil but a force of nature.
Ricardo Cantoral Herzog also captures the same dreamlike feel in a new way.
what i like a bout the 83 scarface is it feels like the whole movies done a ton of blow before you seen it. its got all these intense highs and lows and its just a feverish mess its awsome. for a 3 hr movie it does not feel its length its not slow or plodding it just rams thru the station
I think the best remakes are remakes of movies that weren't insanely successful
Exactly, then there's room for improvement. There's no point fixing something that isn't broken.
Jeff Bridges didn’t know why the Coen Bros. thought True Grit needed a remake until he read the book and realised how similar the book is to Coen Bros filmography.
I've said that for years but try and convience the stuido heads of that. I think they should be focused on movies that did middle of the road or fizzled but had a good core concept. Something a good director of today could really sink their teeth into and/or something people living today might not even remember or heard about.
Well take movies like The Fly and The Thing. Both were based on movies from the 50s, had generally the same idea (man turns into a demented fly-creature, alien can mimic people/animals), but presented them in different ways, making it more of a body-horror thing.
True and I for one am so glad they didn't do that little human head on a fly body thing. No matter how good the effects could've been there is no making that no look silly today.
Five years ago it seemed like we were getting direct remakes once a month. Now most of those spots have been replaced with soft reboots-sequels
That's because a reboot is just a remake in different shoes.
tbh I think having sequels to old films is better than remaking them we already have some good examples like Creed and The Force Awakens
Sea boots
?
@@lespion7411 The Force Awakens is essentially a re-make pretending to be a sequel. It's the exactly same plot as A New Hope. It sadly doesn't have any of the strong characters.
1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a masterpiece
Yes. I saw it as a kid - well, maybe 14 or 15. It scared the hell out of me, and I loved Leonard Nimoy as an actor. He had such presence. I saw Nimoy on stage in Equus and I thought he was better than Richard Burton in that role . . . but I digress. Yes, the 78 version kicked ass. Well acted. Perfect film for it's time.
Some REMAKES that I LIKE are Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Nosferatu The Vampire (1979), The Thing (1982), Cat People (1982) and Scarface (1983). However, THOSE are OLDER remakes, and not part of this shitty current Hollywood remake TREND, which I pretty much DETEST.
I think one thing that's inherently flawed in Hollywood thinking (and that of the general audience that eats up and demands remakes and reboots) is the notion that newer is better. This is of course quite a silly assumption to make just as "older is better." The 1907 version of Ben Hur is stagey and dull though historically interesting. The 1925 and 1959 versions are themselves their own movies (though the 59 version does borrow more than a little from the 25 version) and both take the source material seriously and create a good film. The 2016 version has no redeemable qualities and why it was made is a mystery.
I don't think whether newer is better is something that keeps the executuves up at night or is of any relevance to them. Fact of the matter is, after a while, the commercial potential of a product is exhausted. You can't keep making money from selling fresh copies of The Mummy from 1999 any longer, even though people have favourable memory and feeling associated with that film, they had fun watching it back then, but aren't really compelled to pay for it again, it never had the kind of depth that invites repeat viewing. So to turn that positive emotion into new money, you need to make a new movie, and the executives don't care whether it will be crap, it only has to be good enough for people to part with their money once again, just once. Enough good stuff to make a 30 second trailer and then pad it out to a couple hours.
It is an inherently flawed way of thinking. Unfortunately, two facts will continue to perpetuate this: 1) love of novelty is hardwired into our psychology, and 2) most movies cannot avoid having a visual look strongly reminiscent of their time. Everything from the filming technology to shot selection to actor accents to fashion to special effects combine to make most movies feel 'of their time' and for various reasons most viewers are disdainful of that. It really is too bad that so many aren't willing to give old movies a chance, but at least there's a sort of perverse karma there, since in 50 years most of today's movies will have been dismissed and forgotten in the same way.
I don't think audiences are demanding remakes. Once in a while the desire to remake a movie comes from a director or writer (usually when the original belongs to a time that's become fashionably retro) - but for the most part it's movie industry executives that drive the endless cycle of remakes and reboots. They're always trying to minimize the studio's financial risk by coming up with concepts that are certain to succeed. If a movie was a hit the first time, then surely the remake will succeed as well.
It'$ $uch a my$tery....
Sometimes a remake happens because the studios think they have their finger on the audience’s pulse or they aren’t willing to take a risk on a project and decide to go with a “safe” bet. Other times it’s because the copyright is about to expire and they don’t want to lose the rights to whatever they’ve been sitting on for years.
Who will take care of Lumpy?!
Mala, now the Itchy is dead.
With any luck, the oncologist.
I think Jackson's Middle Earth adaptions show both sides of this. LOTR was a masterpiece. The Hobbit was a cash grab.
raven lord the hobbit could have been almost as good as Lotr if it had the same amount of prep but it ended up being rushed out and ruined by the studio. There’s a really interesting video series about it on RUclips called The Hobbit A Long Expected Autopsy by Lindsay Ellis
Or potential masterpiece fcked by the studio.
BattMarn "Lindsay Ellis" pass.
raven lord The Hobbit was a far more complex scenario than just being a "cash grab". M
@Finn MacCool No...it really didnt.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is such an underrated masterpiece. I adore this remake.
The final shot still gives me chills
Totally agree, although I wish it were shorter.
How is it underrated?
@@VicenteTorresAliasVits That is a very fair question. I think a more accurate way to phrase it would be to call it under appreciated. It was held in very high regards by critics and the movie going public on its release, but it does feel like it has been forgotten at times.
It's the best version, in my opinion. Really haunting, bleak and holds are a lot of truth.
Bit disappointed we didn't get a quip about The Thing from Another World (1951). Worth watching. Love me some fast-talking 50s dialog.
yes, glad you mentioned this. Carpenter's remake of the 1950s one is an example of how to do a remake the right way
Also, the 2011 film is a prequel.
Stories can be re-told and still feel completely original if they're told from a different point of view.
unless they are not
execution trumps content every time.
That's how Obi-wan did it
Yes - for example, how many times have various Shakespeare stories been re-told?
So true overall. A strong case in point is the recent drama movie A Star Is Born.
"Murr prrbrr frrmrr. Gerrt terrmer murr."
-Every line from Rooster Cogburn in the True Grit remake.
11:37 R.I.P. Miguel Ferrer
Amazing that Ronnie Cox outlived him. Remember that line: 'We're young and he's old and that's life.'?
Great actor indeed. Albert Rosenfield will always be one of the best characters ever made for television, like so many other characters from Twin Peaks.
Literally binge watched the entire channel the past couple of weeks, finally catching up a fresh upload the day it was published. Huge fan here... Of the lava lamp.
That is not really a compliment. Just go out and buy a damn lava lamp then.
no hassle are you dumb?
Not one mention of David Croneberg's The Fly? For shame! I forgive both you and lava lamp, but The Fly had damn well have an upcoming episode, or I'll sit here and type, while doing nothing.
When I saw a young Jeff Goldblum in the thumbnail I was getting ready for some hand dissolving action with my morning coffee.
@@cazazzadan "Better watch out, he eats chocolate bars"
Word unheard? Lol your name alone makes you less than human
I knew there was a reason I was up at 3am
Its because you hadn't gone to sleep yet.
I was really confused by this, as it's 7 pm. Then I googled London Time, and it makes more sense lmao.
@@Eirik_Bloodaxe duh
Futa?
Insomnia? Cause I'm never asleep before 3. Getting to sleep before 5 even when waking up at 8 is a rarity for me, but 3 hours is enough for me.
Honestly though, the solution to all of these bad remakes is : more shaky cam. As of now I can still understand some of what's going on in modern movies.
You didn't mention the trend for remaking films, when the paint isn't yet dry on the old one, e.g. Spiderman.
3 Spiderman remakes in 15 years? Wtf?
Indeed. TASM wasn't necessary. It just repeated ideas from the Raimi films with no real update.
Homecoming was necessary in my mind.
The last one is way above the first 2. And not just because younger aunt May.
Raimi had the best Evil Dead
This mostly comes down to 2 things: money and control over the spiderman IP. Sony had to keep making the damn things to keep control over spiderman. Also, spiderman was one of the few instantly recognizable superheroes in the pre-mcu world, and so was at least a guarantee that they'd get their money back. At least with the merging back into the MCU there seems to be the possibility of broader, and newer stories. I do have hope for the animated Spiderman coming later this year, though. It looks fun.
@@ChrisHarperBooks yet another unfortunate side effect of our flawed copyright/IP laws.
The most amazing notion of a remake coming out and being superior to the original is The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart; it was made because the original film was no longer viable to the filmgoing scene due to Hayes Code restrictions, so a lot of subtext and allusion had to be employed, and in essence, is a lot smarter film, making the audience look for what’s going on with the characters under the surface. Also, it’s a technically better film under first-time Director John Huston, so right there you have two reasons. Plus, and here’s the rub that I throw towards people who say all modern Hollywood does is remake classic films, not only was The Maltese Falcon (1941) ONLY ten years removed from the original film, it was the SECOND remake of the film, with Betty Davis’s Satan Met A Lady being released in 1936, again for reasons of “decency”, but it’s near universally agreed that the 1941 film, which propelled Bogart to leading man stardom, is the superior film in all perspective.
Oddly remakes were pretty common back then.
@@handsomebrick that was due to films being lost and destroyed rather frequently or not doing well with audiences, movies were added to and had reshoots frequently that occurred even after they were released. There's several different cuts of king Kong, with the original cut being completely lost.
Also consider that the film industry was advancing so rapidly in those years relative to today. I wouldn't really consider pre-WWII in the same conversation as modern remakes for that reason. Going from silent movies to talkies, B&W to color, all while throwing in new filming technology, directors exploring new shooting techniques, the Hays code, the studio system, and the societal upheaval of two world wars and the Great Depression and you have an atmosphere much more conducive to multiple retellings of the same story, that can each have their own spin on it.
Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of the 1931 version.
@@handsomebrick Until TV started buying feature films and especially before VHS many older films, even a handful of years old, were completely unavailable to the average viewer. Now, a film which is more than half a century old can be instantly available and far more "of the present" than a 5 year old film would have been in 1950.
The explosion in the internet and media generally also means that a current audience can hardly miss the fact that a new film is a remake, whereas much of the audience in, say, 1965 might not have been.
Odd that you didn’t explore the “Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven” story.
Surely ripe for another angle about how remakes/reboots/reimaginings happen, when even cross-cultural themes are adapted to new audiences.
The examples you give are pretty much just separated by time: old films repackaged or reimagined for a new audience.
However, the magnificent seven is an example of a film reimagined for a different culture altogether - separated not just by time, but by ancestral culture.
I’d have included that, or at least another example of it.
I think a Fistful of dollars is a better example.
You raise a good point. But perhaps this doesn't quite overlap with our common conception of a 'remake' (even though it technically is one). I will just say that a cultural adaptation will often be more immune to many of the pitfalls outlined in the video. Due to its very nature of being adapted to a new culture it's already reimagining things and will be less prone to feeling like a rehash, and the fact that foreign movies usually have a smaller audience means that fewer people will be familiar with the original at all. This does bring up the interesting scenario of how audiences view the original if they see it after its adaptation (effectively making the original, foreign version the "remake" in their eyes).
IMO the whole cross-cultural topic probably requires its own separate discussion to do it full justice.
Cross-cultural remakes work very well in the western genre but don't seem to be as successful in horror, even though there are many more examples of Japanese horror films remade by Hollywood.
the bruce willis remake is good too
@@Kevin_Street There's a very good reason for that. Japanese and Korean horrors have a very different tone to Hollywood's horrors. Hollywood focuses heavily on the monster and uses the story to make the monster seem more scary. The Asian horrors tell a story and use the monster to make the story more scary. The perfect example is the grudge.
The original Japanese film is a story about a "curse" where people fall victim to someone else's problem (the grudge!). It starts off with a tragedy and the movie shows how this one tragedy goes on to affect everyone's life and by the end the entire town has fallen victim to the original grudge. It's a cautionary tale, and the monsters are metaphorical - they represent a grudge that is literally eating everyone up. Now move over to Hollywood. Well if you say "the grudge" you forget the original word and concept. You just think of the creepy kid and the hand in the hair. The horror is fully focused on this one character whereas the original is exploring the effects on an entire town. Both versions explore the story and the visual horror, but it's about how those things are used. It's the reason why the best horror movies are the ones where the monster represents an idea and isn't just a physical thing.
It's easy to remember the graphic horror of The Exorcist and The Thing (my favourite horror movies) but they were used to support the story and the idea, not be the main spectacle on their own. Some recent western horrors have been able to do this well such as The Babadook or It Follows, but for the most part the west is too caught up in making a monster so they can sell toys or get royalties for jumpscares or something.
Dear Mr Schmidt.
I’ve been a fan of your videos now for a while. Your take on the movie industry has been thought provoking and I take note of a lot of what you say.
I don’t know if you would ever be interested in doing something like this but I would be very interested in hearing how you speculate on upcoming movies. Honestly, seeing the early previews of the upcoming Joker film is what made me think of making this request.
Thanks again!
The 1932 Scarface was so old by 1983 that a simple update would suffice.
Some REMAKES that I LIKE are Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Nosferatu The Vampire (1979), The Thing (1982), Cat People (1982) and Scarface (1983). However THOSE are OLDER remakes, and not part of this shitty current Hollywood remake TREND, which I pretty much DETEST.
The 1978 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a pretty fantastic horror-thriller. Also, I also do enjoy for various reasons:
Horror of Dracula (1958)
The Thing (1982)
The Mummy (1999)
Alfie (2004)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
King Kong (2005)
True Grit (2010)
I'm still waiting for the next re-reboot of Predator.
@@jr2904 I'm the next step in human evolution? WHEEEEEE!!!!
Yes. I am #actuallyautistic and I deem such a concept messed up and problematic.
@@gamehero6816 and borderline insulting on how they portrayed it (like you I am also on the Spectrum)
The British Professor X is dropping that knowledge.
*"NUFF SAID"*
The X-Men reboots are better than the originals
Sometimes it's just updating visuals and script for a modern audience, as with Bodysnatchers. No harm at all in that sort of remake, provided enough time has elapsed.
Barbwire is a great Casablanca remake. That is how you remake Citizen Kane. Just make a movie that is entertainingly stupid.
Sharknado is my favorite Casablanca remake, but Barbwire's good too.
I think it's interesting how there's a noticeable change in acting between films, even across a brief divide of 1968's True Grit and 1978's Body Snatchers. It's like the acting in the former (and earlier films) is more melodramatic, put-on, but also like the actors are playing to an audience, it's very showbiz-y. This also comes across in the music, and the obvious studio sets and lighting.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cin%C3%A9ma_v%C3%A9rit%C3%A9 probably because of this movement
@@larknix3111 Thanks! I think it's interesting to try and find where the change occurred. It's funny but it does seem a big chasm, dividing how films were and how films became and have stayed. And yet it happened in a short space of time. I think it's fair to say this occurred in the 60's. It's funny that even certain directors changed in this. Look at Kubrick's films all the way up to Doctor Strangelove. From 2001 onwards, the style and acting and presentation, inc editing becomes more naturalistic. Films like The Graduate marked a sea change, as did Midnight Cowboy. Westerns seemed to be one of the last hangover genres, with all of Wayne's films up to his last, The Shootist, in 1976, keeping that manner. And other films like Paint Your Wagon had that. On the whole though, Eastwood seems to have been instrumental in updating the Western, bringing aspects from the Spaghetti Westerns he'd made. And along with others like Little Big Man, The Missouri Breaks, and McCabe And Mrs Miller changed it for good. In fact I think the only hold-out was the Disaster movie, with Irwin Allen churning out the same style up to 1980.
i really enjoy your shtick george
I feel I’m the only person who liked the Nicole Kidman body snatchers. As a kid, I loved the first two. Watching the later film, I felt a similar sense of dread that the other two gave me. Also the ending, where her husband reads the newspaper and all the crime and suffering that’s going on in the world, implying that maybe it would’ve been better for the human race to allow the snatchers to control them.
I liked the Total Recall remake, but then it wasn't supposed to be a Total Recall remake. I've said it before elsewhere, but the Director wanted to do another film based on the same book. The studio wouldn't fund it however, unless he named it Total Recall and put in a few key moments from the original movie. I'd say this has happened with other remakes too. The studio thinks they can make more money with a recognizable title.
Neither of the films is anything like the original story
You know, after careful consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that in the modern age of social media and the paranoia of constantly being watched, a new ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, if done well, could be made.
Imagine the plot of the human race being assimilated, but with the added narrative changes one could make with the setting of modern day.
Everything being posted on social media, for better or worse. People being able to contact one another.
In the age where everything is public, it would be interesting to see how what was originally quite a quiet and reserved invasion, would take place now.
I thought of that recently myself, with the twist being that everyone wanted to become a pod person and share a collective consciousness, rather than resisting it and retaining individuality. Modern culture seems all about documenting and posting all the details of your life for the world to see and share. We used to value our privacy.
Great video Georg*, as always, but what about spiritual remakes? Films like "Blow Up", "The Conversation" and "Blow Out", having pretty much identical setups (An obsessive media pro discovers a controversy in his work) but all three explore different realities for their protagonists. All three have similar beats, and similar conclusions. Spiritual remakes. There are countless others like that, that make you question if there really is any originality in the craft, or whether originality is really important. What are your thoughts on those?
The 1969 True Grit was beautifully shot.
Hi George, getting in here while there are few comments. Love the channel, keep up the good work
He won't answer you anyhow, too busy snatching bodies.
And snatches,
Bruh, I have seen and listened so many movie reviewers (I KNOW, you are not doing "classical reviews"),
BUT although many are quite talented young chumps, YOU ARE BY FAR my favorite right now and I have only
seen couple of your videos only!
The way and style you bring stuff to a final point, man...
And your calm and respectful style is the best!
The core concept of the original Robocop was the ambiguity between Robocop being a conscious man trapped in a machine body, or a lifeless machine simply using a dead man's brain as a processor. That is literally the very cornerstone of what Robocop was about. It was perfectly woven into the story and it gave the story deeper meaning.
Robocop 2014 completely missed the point. It presented no question at all, simply putting the hero into a machine body and sending him off to catch the bad guys. A complete and utter writing failure.
But then they would've had to include the subtext of the struggle of corporate vs. personal identity! /s
The core concept of the new robocop is how to beat a human conscience and soul so that it fits the demand of the company that uses him. The struggle between corporate and personnal Identity is present throught Gary Oldman 's character who is at first driven by altruistic motivation but because of the pressure of his boss agrees to beat Murphy's identity and free will and make him a robot before finding a redemption. In a sense the scientist is the main character of the movie.
I saw Jeff Goldblum in the thumbnail and thought you would talk about The Fly (1986). It is probably my favorite remake of all time. It really does a good job of making you go through an emotional rollercoaster, while at the same time, using wonderful/modern practical effects.
I honestly enjoy the True Grit remake more than the original!
George, hola from San Antonio, TX. Please continue your videos! The humor, the insight, the psychology is great!
The last time when I was this early, is when I was this early.
Stumbled upon your channel just a few days ago. Great stuff! Looking forward to going through your videos.
It’s not a movie, but the 2000s Battlestar Galactica has got to be one of the greatest remakes
That’s an example of the newer version being superior, in my opinion. I like old Battlestar, but it tried too hard to shoehorn in stuff like disco and other things that really date it badly for some episodes.
Right up until the disjointed unsatisfying ending. If only they could have kept it as fresh as the first few seasons.
I would love a video about The Fly and The Thing remakes and how they improved upon the original concepts. Those seem to me like prime candidates by your standards, George.
12:39 SPOILERS: The Thing (2011) certainly feels like a remake of the 1982 film, but it's technically a prequel; it ends right where the 1982 film begins.
Thus, taking away any mystery for the next film.
A. Delta, the 1982 film is a remake of the 1951 film "The Thing from Another World".
0:38 The discomfort of the lava-lamp when thinkng about The Predator is obvious.
Still thinking about those beans
I've been away from your content for too long. Glad to see your style again, it's good stuff.
worst remake is the Oldboy remake.
That was bad. Often when Hollywood remakes foreign films, they inevitably change the key ingredient that made the original stand out. The remake of Insomnia, while well liked for the most part, completely ruined the ending that made the original stand out. Same with that forgotten Kiefer Sutherland film The Vanishing, which took a great film and did a typical "Hollywood ending" that killed it. Or Quarantine changed the scariest part of the original [REC] which was the supernatural element- granted, building their marketing campaign on the final shot in the film wasn't such a great idea either...
They do that even when they remake Hollywood films, like The Omega Man.
The Vanishing's remake is even more baffling considering it was directed by the same person that directed the original but he decided to change the ending completely. I don't get it.
@@tylerskiss yeah I think that's more a problem with adaptations in general, and not remaking foreign films in particular.
Yeap, I can't wait for a remake of Game of Thrones, that could potentially follow Martins vastly superior writing and be good after the third season, only 20+ years to go.....
I have not seen 'The Predator,' does that mean I win?
some remakes I have loved: The Fly, The Thing (80s), BSG, Westworld and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s)....they all stand on their own, elevating the concept.
No mention of parodies? Aren't they a kind of remake/reboot/re-whatever?
I love movies like Dracula - Dead and Loving It, Robin Hood - Men in Tights, Spaceballs... actually, all of Mel Brooks' movies, I guess. And Hot Shots!, Shaun of the Dead, Galaxy Quest. I could go on and on.
A parody inherently brings something new to the table, namely humor.
Though obviously many of them fail to do so well. There's also Epic Movie, Superhero Movie, Meet the Spartans, and so on.
I'd say that the big difference between good and bad parodies is that good parodies, like Hot Shots! and Spaceballs, takes tropes from the original movies and makes fun of them while still being fun for those who haven't seen the original. Meanwhile bad parodies like Epic movie and Meet the Spartans just drops a bunch of pop culture references without context in between random gross-out jokes. I wish hack comedy makers would learn that disgusting things doesn't automatically equal funny.
That should be a separate video, but it's a good idea for a separate video.
Black Dynamite will always be my favourite parody, sometimes it's so close to its source material you almost forget it is a parody at all, it's more of a tongue in cheek love letter in many ways.
Great parody needs affection. Great parody Airplane! is actually very serious in its plot and script and its parody is a filter it is shown.
I've always thought Zardoz was a movie that could stand a solid remake. There were great ideas there that didn't entirely materialize.
Georg, in the 90s there were lot of movie adaptations of classic television series. Like, A LOT. Some of these were pretty good (Maverick) while some were mediocre-to-bad (The Flintstones). Any thoughts on these?
Flintstones was great fun though.
@@GetToDaChoppa-k5r Didn't it kill Kyle MacLachlan's leading man status in movies? Or was it Showgirls that did that?
I Just love you're wit and humor! It cracks me up every time!
I thought "Vanilla Sky" was a good remake of "Abre los ojos".
Yeah, it surpassed the original IMHO!
@@DOSkywalkR Because Tom Cruise's character wasn't as deformed as the original?
I’m addicted to your video essays. Good job ! 🤘🏼
My favorite remake done right is Peter Jackson's King Kong. It reintroduce a new view of the classic film in a new scope. It paid tribute to the original while portraying it with developed characters and visual effects. I love King Kong.
After 70 years, the effects still looked awful to me. CGI is just not good.
Love this channel!!
Keep up the great work. The smooth voice with insightful points while a lavalamp quietly bubbles really gives off a "intellectual discussion with a good friend in a comfortable setting" vibe.
Your videos are great to watch!
haha this guy is great
Note how most of the movies which were successfully remade were originally before the late 60s-70s, when mise-en-scène/cinematography/direction, special effects and acting were mainly borrowed from theater.
What's the song at the end of the video?
Do It Again by The Chemical Brothers
@@richkeyworth85 Thank You!
Great video. I'd like to clarify that THE THING (2011) and THE PREDATOR (2018) aren't remakes nor reboots. They were advertised that way supposedly to attract viewers who weren't familiar with the originals, but the former is a prequel (even though it manages to recycle the original's plot) and the latter is a sequel.
The original ROBOCOP had a couple of scenes related to the title character's internal conflict of wanting to hold on to his human side, but the script writers never really went anywhere with that. The sequel spent a lot more time on it... only to forget about it half way through. The 2nd sequel didn’t even mention it! The remake does develop that aspect, which is why I prefer it.
Christ almighty the Predator was shite.......
I really enjoyed this video and listening to your views. I agree (minus some minor details where I see it a tad bit different). I think overall it isn't easy to get a Remake right. If you just copy it is boring. If you change too much and the wrong things it is bad. Some special remakes manage to be both boring and bad. But focussing on the meaning and idea of the original and putting it in another context (f.e. new political views in a culture) and using new narrative and technical ways of telling that story is a good way. But often that means fast cuts and giving everybody a mobile phone they never freaking use when in danger instead of reflecting how cultural pov changed.
The 2011 "The Thing" was a prequel, NOT a remake. It ended right where the 1982 movie started. The worst thing about it was the horrible CGI.
EDIT: By the way, excellent video as always.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that gets irritated when you hear a critic say that The Thing 2011 is a remake. It's something that the movie critic Mark Kermode has said about the movie. He also said that Samuel L Jackson's Shaft movie from 2000 was a remake, which it clearly is not, because Richard Roundtree's Shaft makes a couple of cameos in the movie, Samuel L Jackson is playing the nephew of 70's Shaft. It sometimes makes you wonder if they've actually seen the movie they're criticising.
Yes, it can certainly be irritating. With The Thing (2011), I saw the same "review" copied and pasted all around the Internet, saying it was a remake and making remarks that led me to believe the original author had not seen either movie.
I actually enjoyed Shaft (2000), but luckily avoided the reviews at the time.
I view it as a direct prequel. Watching the making of etc, the goal of the writers and director was clearly to show what events led up to the 1982 movie.
@@Rod_Knee But the writers are not adding anything new, they are just adapting the concept nad hacking in plot events to make it a prequel. Much like The Force Awakens was a remake of 'A New Hope', same plot, same planet destroying plot device to fight, same start of a droids going to a desert planet with information a powerful enemy is chasing. It may be set years after the original trilogy and a type of sequel but it's still a remake.
You're right that neither movie added anything new to the narrative. However, I view The Thing 2011 as a prequel and The Force Awakens as an (inferior IMO) sequel. I'd have enjoyed both much more if either had added something new, but calling them remakes conflates them with movies like "The Big Sleep", "A Star is Born" etc. To me, it's like saying 1994's Scarlet was a remake of Gone with the Wind.
I thought the Goldblum remake would be 'The Fly', which was so much better than the original. I forgot he was in Bodysnatchers...
Personally, I don't think the 80's Fly is really superior to the 50's Fly or vice versa, .. . they're just made in DIFFERENT ERAS, that's all. And whichever version one prefers probably depends on WHICH of those two eras one is more partial to. It's a matter of GENERATIONAL BIAS.
@@ianfindly3257 I love movies from the 50s. There's plenty of film noir that rarely translates to our era. I just thought the original Fly was an unintentional comedy. There's nothing scary or creepy about it. It's no Hitchcock. Cronenberg took it to such a completely deeper, freakier level. Just MHO. Calling it generational bias is an easy criticism, but it's just wrong.
Just remake a movie & give it a different name. The Force Awakens
Eh, nice try at bandwagon mentality, but no. TFA and Star Wars are two completely different movie - the only similarities (that made a bunch of morons scream "rehash") are cosmetic.
So when JJ even admitted it himself, I guess he was lying
@@Strugen. Again, nice try, but it's like people trying to use a decontestualized bit from something Mark Hamill said to "prove" that he "hated" _The Last Jedi_ . Abrams never admitted to "remaking a movie & giving it a different name".
Also, there's no need to rely on anyone's statements: _Star Wars_ 1977 was entirely Death Star-centered. Bar the death of his uncles, Luke basically doesn't have an arc: at the end of the movie he's the same guy he was at the beginning and, in fact, the only one who has something of a character arc is Han Solo - but that arc won't really pay off until _Empire_ so it's kind of irrelevant.
In _The Force Awakens_ SKB is there just to have something to blow up at the end: Rey's journey, her character arc, her relationship with Finn and Han Solo and - marginally - KR are the core of the movie. Also, Finn has a character arc, so does Han and so does Kylo.
But, because there is a sand planet, a spherical weapon of mass destruction, a protagonist wearing white-ish clothes and a bad guy in black robes, a bunch of internet morons decided they were entitled to call it a rehash.
@999SickBoy666 nice try for you nerd. You have been watching to many hello greedo videos or something
@@Strugen. So, you try (and fail) to talk about Star Wars, you get schooled because of your complete inability to produce even a single argument in support of your bandwagon-mentality based theory and you try to get out of it by calling people "nerd"?
You should've told you were 12, I would've simply ignored you :-)
I can't wait for the remake of Getting Remakes Right!
It's remakes of foreign films that piss me off.
Like, Let Me In or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Both inferior and only seem to exist as a way of making money off morons that can't read.
Exactly, it's comparable to the live action Disney remakes of animated movies that only exist because people are nostalgic for the old movies but are too spineless to publicly admit that they like animated movies.
Let Me In a fine take on the same source material. I love both movies and couldn't pick one as a favorite if I tried.
Each to his own. I thought it was totally redundant.
As a Swede it frustrates me to no end that whenever a Swedish movie reaches some kind of popularity abroad Hollywood has to do a remake just because they think Americans are too dumb to read or understand something from a different country than their own.
And people are never going to try watching subtitled movies if they just keep making English versions.
Krull, Forbidden Planet, Heavy Metal, Barbarella, Enemy Mine, Shogun Assassin, Baron Munchausen, Labyrinth. I think all of these would benefit from a competent makeover and still carry their essence.
Barbarella is essentially a meaningless Sci-fi soft core porn flick as much as I love it. Not sure a remake can add to it's legacy as it's plot is essentially the main character being sexually abused in various Sci-fi/fantasy ways but it all being played as a cheesy flick. Can't see that going well in today's environment and the title character essentially had no character to be interesting to see further adventures.
As fr the rest, it would depend on what the director and writer have in their minds to explore the concepts. Baron Munchausen's "moral" that fantasy is as important as reality and keeps us young can't really be re-told and add much to that concept.There isn't much of a creative reasosn to remake it, except to "Modernise" the film.
Heavy metal could do with a sequel done in the same style as the original, an anthology of loosely connected stories, each done in a different style of animation.
The sequel we got, heavy metal 2000, wasn't bad, but it was a single feature-length story. I used to have the issue of heavy metal where they debuted a lot of simon bisley's concept art and ideas for the film, many of which didn't make it to the finished product, which is a shame, as they were pretty cool.
You seem to think 'irony' and 'humour' are the same thing. They aren't.
Why do you think he thinks that?
The Fly and The Thing are two of my fave remakes
Your transition from movie to movie is impeccable
I support remakes, but usually only if the original was flawed or just “ok,” but could be done better.
My favorite example of this is the 3 films “Escape, Conquest, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes from the 1970’s. Each of these films had some good ideas, and while not terrible, these films did have plenty of flaws all throughout them and hence “could have been done much better.”
And the reboot/remakes Planet of the Apes prequel films pulled that off in spectacular fashion! The Apes prequels took the general storyline stencil of the 3 aforementioned 1970’s movies and improved them, doing some items all over again yes, but greatly improving and expanding on them and thus ultimately giving audiences us 3 much better films than the originals, remakes in the forms of “Rise, Dawn and War of the Planet of the Apes.”
Maybe it’s a bit simplistic thinking but that’s how I feel, the only reason to remake an IP is if you can improve upon it some way. However, when the filmmakers got everything not just right, but damn near perfect the first time around, there’s absolutely no reason to remake it. Because you simply won’t be able to improve upon it.
And in my view, just some original movies that were perfect the first time around and never should’ve been remade are the original versions of - Ghostbusters, Total Recall, Robocop, and my all time favorite movie - Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan, as the remade versions of all of these were absolutely terrible in comparison to the originals.
I'm glad the other uploads aren't going on hiatus with the podcast
Having never seen the original, I assumed all that True Grit dialogue was pure Cohen Brothers - amazing how it fits into their tone.
True Grit was a masterwork, everything about it was superb, photography direction acting and everything else was just wonderful, Young Hailey was robbed for the Oscar, I have never seen a newcomer master a part so well.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing the big budget shot-for-shot Hollywood remake of "Sex lives of the potato men" and how it fits into the extended Star Wars Spiderverse.
we're approaching some kind of movie concept singularity... the age of the Pre-Boot; where a film's remake is in development before the original / previous attempt has been released.
One of the most under subbed channels on youtube bar none keep up the good work you god amongst men
I sometimes think of remakes the way I think of songs being covered by a number of different singers. There are countless versions of My Funny Valentine, but I have my favorites. It doesn’t make any one version the definitive one.
If you look at A Christmas Carol, most people like the 1951 version best but there were several before that including silent versions and of course many since. In the long run (particularly if the film is based on some other source material like a book or short story) then the interpretation of the original is always going to be what makes the movie special. In the case of True Grit and in the clips that you showed, it’s an indication of how closely both films stuck to the dialogue used in the original novel.
The trouble is, most remakes can be like Westlife's output. Copying songs, but with no idea why they were written.
Once again, you offer a really great break down on what makes a good remake. I have four rules myself. 1. I feel that about every 30 years there is an opportunity to make a remake of a good film, as long as it is not just a "rehash" as you say. 2. Don't remake truly iconic films that aren't asking for a remake. That could be everything from The Godfather to Caddyshack to Apocalypse Now. 3. Sometimes there are really bad movies that were based on good material and absolutely should have another version made. I'm thinking of movies like Dredd vs. Judge Dredd. 4. Don't remake a foreign film that was well done recently just to make it in a new language and be more commercial and with a bigger budget. If you've ever seen the American version of The Vanishing vs the original European version, that's exactly what I am talking about.
The Suspiria remake is my favorite remake of all time. It expands upon the original concept, while faithfully retelling the same story.
Your intellectual understanding of cinema is obvious and I hope it translates well into the effectiveness necessary for actual film production. Best of luck with the Kickstarter campaign.
I think remakes that bring a concept and retell it with a modern flair and ideas.
MGM is dipping into the highest grossing films from its Orion pictures library.
1. "The Hustle" a Female remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
2. The Addams Family, but this time it's animated.
3. A new sequel to the original RoboCop
4. Bill and Ted: Face The Music
All to be released next year or 2020. Then they'll have ran out from not pacing themselves.
Outside of their Orion Pictures stuff there are things like a remake of "Child's Play" and one of "Valley Girl".
Plus 2018 MGM gave us a remake of Deathwish, Tomb Raider, A Star Is Born, and Overboard
As I was about to watch this video I get bombarded by a movie ad about a Pinnochio remake
Great video. I would like to know your opinion of the remake of The Fly from 1986.
True Grit is one of best remakes ever! I don’t particularly care for the main adult actors yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone did wonderful with the language. The young girl was cast perfectly as was the original.
One important factor in the success, commercial and artistic, of a remake is how much time has passed since the original, although time here is really just a crude metric for familiarity. If the bulk of your audience has little or no familiarity with the original, then they will judge the remake on its own merits. If the audience is very familiar with the original, then they will inevitably compare the original to the remake. Knowing that, the filmmakers won't be able, if the audience is very familiar with the original, to get away from the original creatively speaking, and the remake will feel dull and derivative.
Remakes aren't just good, but essential. Every generation or two needs to be reintroduced to some of the best stories humans have produced with the most current tech to improve it. The old mummy, fly, and thing pale in comparison to the remakes. People go back and watch older movies when new ones come out that they like as well.
Love your commentaries, you are the only person on RUclips that makes his video to the point. I grew up with both Bodysnatchers the original had me not wanting to go to sleep but the remake really scared the shit out of me. Scarface on the other hand I only saw the original on late night cable when I was about 13 but the remake is part of Hollywood history. ROBOCOP??? They totally missed the point and I agree any Robocop without any humor just sucks. Thanks for your commentary. By the way, Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman have all had remakes. WHY haven't anyone remade Creature from the Black Lagoon?
Really enjoyed this video Georg. Very clear and well focused, particularly enjoyed your asides.
I love invasion of the body snatchers (1978) , scared the shit out of me when i first watched it . I still think about that film every now and then and it still freaks me out. The exorcist is the only other 'horror' film that i think about.