henke on 9/5/2011 at 20:00
I realize that all my picks here are quite recent movies, remake em while they're still fresh is what I say!
Outlander (2008)VIKINGS VS ALIENS! Such a great concept that it should be impossible to screw up, yet somehow the fuckers who made this movie managed to completely waste the premise. Instead if takes itself waaayyy too seriously. Maybe when the producers snagged James Caviezel to play the leadrole they felt they had to cash in on the Passion of the Christ-connection and turn the protagonist into some kind of Jesus-figure by the end of the movie. And then there's the brilliant (though some might say "monkey like") Ron Perlman, who is in this and you hardly even notice. Total waste of a great actor. Also there's a scene in the middle where they're getting drunk and running around on shields and it just stops the movie dead in it's tracks.
I think aliens crashing on earth hundreds of years ago is a great concept. Someone in Hollywood must think so too or otherwise we wouldn't be getting that Cowboys VS Aliens movie. But, disapointingly, in the trailer for Cowboys VS Aliens, Daniel Craig is wielding some futuretech that can take out a UFO in one shot. That kinda kills it for me. What I wanna see is an ancient civilization using only the primitive weapons they have at hand to fight an alien invasion.
Wristcutters (2006)Another movie with a great concept: Boy loves girl. Girl doesn't love boy. Boy kills himself. Winds up in the afterlife. Gets a job at a pizzeria. Then finds out that the girl also killed herself soon after he had offed himself. Concludes that she did love him after all and that she must be somewhere in the afterlife too. Boy sets off on a roadtrip through the afterlife to find the girl. Sadly the movie itself isn't that good. It's not bad by any means. But a plot like that deserves a whole lot better.
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf9dbrjuVwE) Trailer
Be Kind Rewind (2008)Actually I want the original cast and crew to remake this one. Jack Black and Mos Def in the lead roles and Michael Gondry directing. It started out as a great concept and hopefully by now everyone involved will have figured out all the things that went wrong when they tried filming it. Do it again! (actually, Gondry, while you're at it go ahead and remake The Green Hornet as well)
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7C8nHAAs70) Trailer
Batman Forever (1995) /
Batman & Robin (1997)I would love to see a Batman movie in the style of the 60's TV-show and these two movies ALMOST did that. Almost. It's like everyone involved didn't quite have the guts to make it
that silly, so we're stuck with something that wants to be campy and cheesy on one hand and a serious modern actionmovie on the other. We are, however, treated to occasional glimpses of what could have been. Jim Carrey as (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIkF_qLWu7I) Edward Nygma and Arnold Schwarzenegger as (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRH-Ywpz1_I) Mr. Freeze have the right idea. They'd both fit right in trading one-liners with Adam West's Batman. It's a shame everyone else in these movies didn't follow their lead.
demagogue on 9/5/2011 at 20:40
WTF, why would you remake a movie that's not even 5 years old?
Anyway, I can just imagine how well Birth of a Nation would go over today.
Seriously though, let's see, I think of some classics that aren't as well known today, but not so set in stone you couldn't remake them or a remake would be like an homage IMO -- Metropolis, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Dr. Zhivago, Maltese Falcon, Blues Brothers, 2001?, Roshomon, Apocalypse Now, Jacob's Ladder?, North by Northwest, Battle of Algiers, War Games?
Then some series that just kind of died but why not a reboot with a new actor -- Rambo, Escape from [City], Die Hard?, Revenge of the Nerds, Smokey and the Bandit or Cannonball Run... Not Rocky though.
Sulphur on 9/5/2011 at 20:43
Good idea, but Hollywood's only fascinated with remaking successful movies, because there's built-in, latent box-office appeal in the public consciousness waiting to be reawakened.
Almost none of those are going to be remade because they were abortive trainwrecks: the beancounters wouldn't approve. But as a thought experiment, this is interesting. I hate remakes with a passion because the remakers appointed usually horribly miss the point of the original movie. However, one movie I'd dearly love to see done right and less mopey/sloppily paced: Alien 3.
Yes, dethtoll, I did say that. Shut up, you know I have a point. <3
Aja on 9/5/2011 at 21:13
I've read a lot of negative reviews but nothing to persuade me that Be Kind Rewind was anything less than a solid, enjoyable and funny film (personally I thought it was great). It was clever, well-acted, and even touching at the end. NO REMAKE NECESSARY
that wrist cutting thing sounds good though.
PeeperStorm on 9/5/2011 at 22:16
The Day the Earth Froze needs an update with modern CG.
When you said "Outlander", I immediately thought of a cross between Outland and Highlander.
demagogue on 9/5/2011 at 23:00
The flip side of this topic are movies that could never be remade, no matter how potentially good.
I think that would be iconic movies where they'd be hopelessly compared to the original -- Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Godfather, Scarface, Good Bad & Ugly, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Matrix, Star Wars of course (o wait =/) -- or vast epics where nobody is going to sit through *another* 3 hours when they got everything you'd want to see the first time -- Laurence of Arabia, Ghandi, Gone with the Wind.
Queue on 9/5/2011 at 23:03
Definitely Citizen Kane. It needs to be shot in color, have at least one car chase scene where the cars flips through the air in slow motion, and a vampire that gives Kane super-powers after being bitten. Oh, it needs to star Keanu Reeves in a duel role as Chuck Foster K. (a loner, and a rapper, who runs the world's biggest social networking-site by day and busts out some wicked tunes by night) and his evil twin.
... and get rid of that "rosebud" bullshit.
Scots Taffer on 10/5/2011 at 00:42
Or how about not remaking movies at all?
Not trying to threadshit, but a serious response to all of this is surely to consider the wealth of unproduced scripts out there as opposed to retelling a story that has already been told well or a good idea that got botched.
While I can sympathise with great ideas mishandled in execution that could've been so much more, I've been a member of a script-reading/writing/critiquing community for over a year now and have hundreds of unproduced specs from established writers, solid ideas just waiting for the right development environment. I'd rather see a hundred of these plucked from obscurity or dev hell than see a remake of Scarface or Lethal Weapon.
Unfortunately the spec environment is a fickle one. Movie execs are willing to take a cheap risk and if you prove yourself then you can go on to take an expensive risk backed by your previous performance (good example is Zowie Bowie's progression from Moon to Source Code), outside of that though, it's bankability and proven dollars hence the plethora of uninspired and unoriginal sequels and remakes traipsing through development at the moment.
Rug Burn Junky on 10/5/2011 at 03:48
Quote Posted by henke
Be Kind Rewind (2008)Actually I want the original cast and crew to remake this one. Jack Black and Mos Def in the lead roles and Michael Gondry directing.
Actually, this has to be done, because if you really think about it, it doesn't get much more meta than that.
Azaran on 10/5/2011 at 03:55
I'd definitely like to see a Batman & Robin remake, one that turns it into a good movie. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life, an all star cast with shitty, cheesy B-movie acting. Make into something good, like Batman Begins & Dark Knight - which were fucking awesome.
