Inspired recreation

Since 2012, audiences at Imax screenings have been offered the onscreen choice: “Watch a movie or be part of one.” The unstated preference is obvious: It’s better to be in the movie, or at least feel like you are.

The desire to be in — or more precisely, to live out — a cinematic event is behind the thousands of fan- made tributes that litter the Internet: recreations of favourite scenes; parodies of popular movies; original James Bond films both straight and spoof. There is an entire industry devoted to Star Trek fan-made productions, from cardboard- cutout quality to those with professional levels of sets, effects and even acting.

The same dream drove grade-schoolers Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala to remake Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1982. ( See story at left.) Its rediscovery in the 2000s was part of the zeitgeist. In 2007, Son of Rambow told a fictional story of two British kids in the early ’ 80s making their own Rambo movie. The following year, Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind featured two hapless videostore clerks who accidentally erase their VHS stock and must “swede” ( remake) a bunch of movies, many of them ’ 80s classics. ( Coincidentally, the last standalone VHS machine rolled off the JVC line that October.)

But there was more going on besides fictional remakes. Hollywood didn’t remake Raiders in 2008, though it did churn out the long-awaited, ultimately disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But major studios were clearly tapping into consumers’ desire for duplication.

Look at the “sweded” films from Be Kind Rewind and you’ll see a blueprint for future Hollywood’s mining of the past: Men in Black ( sequel in 2012), Carrie (remade in 2013), Robocop (remade in 2014), Rush Hour 2 ( TV series in 2016, plus an upcoming sequel), Ghostbusters ( remade, opening July 15).

“I think entertainment is cyclical,” says Zala of the trend, which shows no signs of slowing. Wait, did he say cynical? Currently planned ’ 80s remakes include WarGames, Overboard, Police Academy, Flight of the Navigator, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and, pushing into the ’90s, Flatliners.

“The more esoteric answer is that there’s something with ’ 80s films that was pure and fun,” he adds. “There’s an honesty, even though some were quirky or downright bad. There was less emphasis on produced commercialism.” Who wouldn’t want to recapture Goonies in a bottle?

Still, the urge to remake isn’t confined to amateurs. Every big- time director was once a mere movie lover. In 1998, Gus Van Sant made a shot- for- shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, although most critics agreed he needn’t have bothered. Similarly, Brian de Palma’s Dressed to Kill from 1980 was a note- for- note homage to Psycho. ( Hitch, when told, said: “You mean fromage.”)

Hitchcock had already remade one of his own movies ( The Man Who Knew Too Much), as have filmmakers as diverse as Cecil B. DeMille ( The Ten Commandments), Michael Haneke ( Funny Games), Werner Herzog ( Little Dieter Needs to Fly/ Rescue Dawn) and Michael Mann (L.A. Takedown/Heat).

But why not remake what works? Movies represent a common vocabulary, the way Shakespeare and the King James Bible did to an earlier age. They can be shibboleths; toss out a line from a Coen Brothers movie and see if you reel in a knowing nod or a blank stare. They can represent an emotional shorthand. Take the scene in 2009’s 500 Days of Summer, in which a supremely happy Joseph Gordon-Levitt sees not his reflection in a building window but Han Solo, winking.

In Swiss Army Man (opening July 1), Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, adrift in a wilderness, find a common language in movies, including images from E.T. and Titanic, and the theme from Jurassic Park. In fact, if you could speak in the language of only one composer, you could say a lot with the John Williams thesaurus – fear (Jaws), love (Superman), adventure ( Raiders) and awe ( Jurassic Park). Heck, he even did the five- note alien “hello” from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The newest ’ 80s remake, a decidedly professional job, is the all-female Ghostbusters. The original, now 32 years old, has what Zala calls “honesty on celluloid.” It also delivered the line “This chick is toast,” the first use of grilled bread to mean done-for.

If you’ve ever used “toast” that way, you’re part of Ghostbusters, and it is a part of you. After making the “sweded” version of the movie in Be Kind Rewind, Black’s character gets the original and the remake confused. “Maybe I AM in Ghostbusters,” he says. Maybe he is. Maybe we all are.