Why Remakes Are Not Actually A Blight On Society
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By Kellvin Chavez on
August 18, 2009
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Is there anything Hollywood does that raises movie geeks’ ire as much as remakes? It’s practically on a weekly basis now that there’s an announcement about some alleged sacred cow of a property being remade; rebooted, or re-imagined that sends the Internet into an uproar. It’s not strictly limited to the online community either. You can find plenty of average Joes lamenting “this remake trend” and how it signals the utter creative bankruptcy of Hollywood today. I was once in the same boat. In fact there was a time when I was as militantly, angrily anti-remake as they come. But at some point I decided to take a step back from the blind rage and actually think about what it was I was getting so worked up about, and after a great deal of contemplation and soul searching I came to a shocking conclusion:
Remakes aren’t the worst things in the world.
In fact, they’re really not so bad. In even more fact, they are, every once in a while, actually good. The rest of the time, while they are often crummy movies, they’re really quite harmless. Benign. They’re not ruining anything or raping anybody’s childhood and all they signify is that Hollywood is, at most, only as creatively bankrupt as it’s ever been since it came into existence.
A few of you reading this may now be lighting the proverbial torches and digging through the proverbial tool sheds for the proverbial pitchforks to come after me, so I want to stress that I’m not saying this to be controversial. I really do feel this way. I think the hate is misplaced and unnecessary. I also realize that I’m not the first person to say these things, but the perpetual ebb and flow of animosity towards remakes seems to be at the rising stage right now (the latest sore spot is a proposed remake of John Landis’ horror-comedy classic An American Werewolf in London), and the things aren’t going away anytime soon, so I think it bears repeating. And I’ll do that right now: Remakes aren’t as bad as they’re cracked up to be.
Here’s the bottom line, the main reason I just can’t get upset about remakes anymore: beloved movie you’ve got sitting on your DVD shelf, the one you can’t bear the thought of being remade? No matter what Hollywood does with it now, it’ll still be there. Nobody is going to take it away from you when the remake comes out. They aren’t going to outlaw viewing of the original or burn all existing copies or dub over them with the new version of the film. It will always be there for you to re-watch again and again and treasure and cuddle with for all eternity, or at least as long as its in print. No remake, no matter how awful it may be, can change that. The original film may share its title but it’s a separate entity that will live through any remake-related storm.
If anything, a new version of an old or obscure film just helps to insure that it remains in the public consciousness, and generally guarantees that it will stay in print on DVD – often as a spiffy re-release and in some cases being released for the first time. The remake sucks? Ignore it. Some people actually like it, maybe even prefer it to the original? Ignore them. Focus on the fact that you’ve got a shiny new special edition DVD of a film you love and that chances are, somewhere out there, someone else is discovering the original for the first time and becoming a fan. Never mind remakes being harmless, that’s actually a beautiful function that they serve.
Frustration over the perceived ruination of your favorite movie is one thing, but a lot of the anger towards remakes is exacerbated by the fact that some people see them as a.) A relatively recent trend and b.) A sign that Hollywood has run out of ideas. A little historical perspective reveals that neither view holds much water. Remakes have been around since the dawn of cinema and if you think they’re prevalent now you might be shocked to learn that they’ve been plenty rampant in the past, including the golden age of film. Back then they didn’t have home video so your only way to see a movie you loved was to go to the theater. And if it came out years ago, the only way to relive the magic of a beloved film (barring a re-release) was for someone to remake it. There are instances where this happened some half dozen times over the course of a few decades. We don’t have the same excuse now but that actually makes our remakes even more harmless; back then there was actually a chance of a movie being truly overshadowed and forgotten.
In fact there are even some films that are now considered classics that were actually remakes of other films that have long since been forgotten or overlooked. The Maltese Falcon was preceded a decade before by a version that nobody remembers or talks about now, and Alfred Hitchcock directed a superior remake of one of his earlier films, "The Man Who Knew Too Much." This is a recurring problem whenever someone tries to claim that modern cinema is in decline for whatever reason; people tend to forget that the cream rises to the top. All the bad remakes and just plain bad movies of yesteryear are lost in the sands of time, making the good old days seem that much better and the present – where we can’t help but be aware of all the crap piled on top of the rare gems – seem all the worse by comparison.
As for the idea that Hollywood has run out of ideas, I’ve got news for you: we ran out of new ideas long before Hollywood – before movies themselves – even existed. We’ve been recycling not just the same basic tropes but even a lot of the same stories for centuries now. Nothing happens in a vacuum, art included. It’s all just a synthesis and rearrangement of what came before. Obviously you have the pervasively influential stuff like Greek myths and Shakespeare, but how many times have more recent stories like The Most Dangerous Game been repurposed? Or, as my esteemed colleague Devin from CHUD points out in a recent editorial, take some of the famous monsters of filmland as an example. There are literally dozens of movie versions of characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc. Some people seem to really just take issue with the fact that remakes use the name of another film rather than be their own thing. But why pretend it’s something else when it’s obviously a variation on what came before, even if they’ve taken liberties with the material? It just seems like splitting hairs to be upset over a title, and there are much more worthy things to be bothered by.
And finally there’s the phenomenon of remakes that are as good as or even better than the source material. There’s a long history of films like this; the contemporary landmarks are John Carpenter’s "The Thing" and David Cronenberg’s "The Fly," but we also have to remember older examples, like the mutually influential relationship between the westerns and Japanese Samurai films that led to the likes "Fistful of Dollars" (Yojimbo) and "The Magnificent Seven" (The Seven Samurai), or the aforementioned Bogart and Hitchcock films. People are comparatively more accepting of this idea in the realm of music; there are some great and very popular cover songs, which occur when a talented artist applies his or her own unique artistic vision to someone else’s material and turns it into a creative hybrid. Remakes can work the same way. In the hands of the right filmmakers they can actually be special and unique. Obviously this is more of an exception than a rule, and I’d never dispute that a lot of remakes are just plain bad movies, but it’s further proof that the idea of remakes isn’t inherently bad or harmful.
So the next time you hear that some Hollywood hack has announced plans to remake one of your favorite films and you feel your blood pressure start to rise, take a deep breath and consider the fact that, no matter how the finished product turns out, it’s not such a terrible thing after all.
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Tags: remake, News, feature, News |
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