THE RANKING

Team Empire tackles remakes. Yes, we have run out of ideas.

Movie remakes

Chris: I want to remove some of the stigma surrounding remakes. Usually, when you say, “Oh, that’s a remake,” people roll their eyes. “The remake is never as good as the original.” I want to prove that can be the case, and sometimes it can be even better than the original.

Dan: There are lots of reasons to do remakes, aren’t there? Is it a genuine attempt to improve the original? Is it switching genres, like doing Fistful Of Dollars instead of Yojimbo? Is it a film you didn’t see because it was made in another country? Is it a generational thing? Perhaps with King Kong, for many kids, the 2005 King Kong will be the one they go to first.

Nick: I like the Peter Jackson King Kong.

Chris: Isn’t received wisdom that it’s bloated and self-indulgent?

Nick: Just because there’s an hour before they get off the boat does not make it bloated or self-indulgent.

Dan: I love it. It’s Lord Of The Rings meets

King Kong.

Helen: It’s back on the upswing. I feel like people were sniffy about it and are back onto it. It has a lot of really, really good stuff, like the V-rex fight.

Nick: That is maybe the most fun action sequence out of anything Peter Jackson has ever done.

Dan: But yeah, there are lots of reasons to do remakes. Just do it for the right reasons.

Nick: Which is, “Because it’s hot IP.”

Helen: The danger comes when studio execs go, “We’ve got this hot IP, what can we do with it?” You sometimes get remakes that are ill-conceived in the extreme. The best remakes are actually films that people have maybe name recognition for, but were not that good. Van Helsing would be a good film to remake because there’s nothing wrong with the idea of Van Helsing trotting around hunting creatures. The problem was everything else in the film. So just do it again, but better this time.

Chris: King Kong is a remake of both a terrible film — the 1976 John Guillermin film is horrendous — and a stone-cold classic. Is that unusual, that filmmakers remake classics? What can they bring to it? How can they elevate it? Or is it simply, “This is an old black-and-white movie with stop-motion dinosaurs, how can we update it for a new generation”?

Helen: I think every time technology takes a big step forward, certain filmmakers will go, “This is our chance to do Clash Of The Titans with modern effects.”

Nick: The effects on the remake were maybe worse than the original.

Chris: You can believe the Medusa in the original Clash Of The Titans, but you can’t quite believe Sam Worthington.

Nick: A few of my favourite remakes are action films or sci-fi, where you can really amp up the effects and use modern technology to make something scarier or more exciting.

Dan: Compare the two versions of The Fly.

The same idea, based on the same short story, effectively. Except what Cronenberg did with it was something that could really only be done in the mid ’80s, as opposed to the late ’50s, exploring the idea of a combination happening on a genetic level, rather than just a head swap. Nick: The Fly is terrifying in a creepy Twilight Zone kind of way, though.

Helen: And there are generational stories as well. A Star Is Born is the classic example. We’re on version number five. There have been four

A Star Is Borns and the original, What Price Hollywood?. And each one slightly tweaks the story to give it a little bit of modern edge to slightly reframe it.

Chris: I love that idea, that a movie can be remade multiple times in different eras by different filmmakers. Look at the contrast between Don Siegel’s 1950s Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, with its great Kevin Mccarthy ending. That was at the height of Mccarthyism, and American panic about a Communist invasions. Twenty years later, you’ve got Philip Kaufman’s really creepy and unsettling version, which is post-vietnam and is still drenched in paranoia but has a psychosexual vibe, and a fear of the other seeping in.

Nick: And a dog with a human face.

Chris: I’d be quite happy with someone remaking Seven Samurai every ten years. Which is essentially what happened with The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond The Stars and all the movies they’ve inspired, like A Bug’s Life and Galaxy Quest. But there still seems to be a stigma about remakes. Why shouldn’t Jonathan Demme be able to say, “Okay, John Frankenheimer made The Manchurian Candidate. I want to apply my own take and taste to that”?

Nick: We get attached to films. You love the music, you love the acting, you know it shot for shot. If someone announced today that they were doing a Jaws remake, we’d all be outraged at the notion of it.

Helen: I do think there are some films that should be sacrosanct.

Nick: Like Action Jackson.

Helen: Of course. But there are films that we, as a society and as a civilisation, should lock in a box and nobody should touch those.

Dan: Why? Why not remake Jaws as a sciencefiction film out in space?

Helen: I’m totally up for a reimagining. I’m totally up for something inspired by Jaws. I just don’t think you should call it Jaws.

Dan: I would call it Space Jaws.

Chris: But if they did announce tomorrow that there was a Jaws or a Back To The Future remake, the original doesn’t magically cease to exist. So would that diminish the original in any way? Why would we be up in arms about a remake?

Dan: I don’t think anything should be in that box Helen mentioned.

Helen: Really?

Dan: Yep. I don’t think anything is sacrosanct. A great remake brings something new and interesting.

Helen: Looks like we’ve got a Barb Wire fan here. Dan: Honestly, better than Casablanca. It’s like saying that Blue Monday was a tune that could never be remixed, but there have been loads of remixes and some of them are really good. So if someone has a better concept of remaking Jaws than the one I just said, then go for it. I’m sure Spielberg would be happy to see someone do something really interesting with it.

Helen: Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating slightly with the sacrosanctity of the box. But if you come for the king, you best not miss. Because if you thought the public reception to Robocop or Total Recall was bad, God help you if you do a bad job with Back To The Future.

Chris: Those remakes were bad, though.

Helen: You can change what a film is about when you remake it. His Girl Friday, one of the greatest remakes, added an entire romantic subplot to The Front Page. That adds something brilliant to the film.

Chris: It’s about avoiding slavish dedication to the original, I think. The way that John Carpenter did with The Thing, which is both a remake of

The Thing From Another World, right down to the logo, and the original short story, Who Goes There? The original movie is a very good but very hokey slice of ’50s sci-fi where the bad guy is a giant carrot. Carpenter took that basic premise and remoulded it into something a little colder — well, a lot colder — darker, and violent, with fewer carrots knocking around and more mutating dogs.

Nick: What about directors remaking their own stuff? I approve of that. Michael Mann probably did the most radical gloss-up, of Heat from L.A. Takedown.

Chris: That may be the biggest gulf in quality between the original and a remake. L.A. Takedown is terrible.

Nick: It’s a better title. I hope they have the same dialogue, except the line is, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you’re not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the L.A. takedown around the corner.”

Chris: It has a lot of the same dialogue, but delivered by actors who are nowhere near as good. The lead actor was Scott Plank, and it’s Plank by name, Plank by nature. And it’s half the length. It was a 90-minute TV pilot.

Helen: Hang on — does that make The Untouchables a remake? Because if so…

Chris: That’s an adaptation of a TV show.

Dan: Yes, L.A. Takedown didn’t exist as a TV show.

Chris: You’re literally Mannsplaining right now. But you’re right, Michael Mann remade L.A. Takedown as Heat, and it’s hard to believe the same director did both.

Nick: Hitchcock did two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. The second one is bigger. He did that before Gus Van Sant could get to it. Chris: George Sluizer directed The Vanishing and its not as good English-language remake.

Nick: Michael Haneke remade Funny Games.

But no-one’s done it three times. It’d be hilarious if a director just kept remaking the same film over and over again.

Helen: Some have, but not as strict remakes.

Dan: This is true. John Carpenter keeps remaking Rio Bravo.

Chris: I want to see someone remake Gus Van Sant’s Psycho shot for shot.

Dan: In black and white. But there’s a grey area with remakes, which is new versions of source texts. So I would argue that the Coen Brothers’

True Grit is a remake of the Henry Hathaway movie, but they would say that they were creating a fresh adaptation of the Charles Portis novel.

Helen: The problem with taking filmmakers’ word for it on that is that a lot of the stigma of remakes means that filmmakers claim any word other than “remake” be attached to their script. So it’s not a remake, it’s a reboot. It’s a reimagining. There are cases which are definitely new adaptations. Casino Royale has no shared DNA with the 1960s film of the same name. The Lord Of The Rings is a re-adaptation and not a remake of the Ralph Bakshi cartoon. But with

True Grit, we’re entitled to call it a remake.

Dan: It’s about perception. Most people know

True Grit as the John Wayne movie. So when you create a new film and call it True Grit, you’ve got to accept that’s how most people know it.

Chris: It’s intriguing to me that so many great filmmakers have mounted remakes. The Coens. Chris Nolan. Tim Burton. Peter Jackson. Martin Scorsese has made two high-profile remakes. Sergio Leone. Cronenberg. Carpenter. Spielberg. Soderbergh.

Helen: Ocean’s Eleven is absolutely what you want from a remake. It’s a film that has even more cool than the original. It’s got a really sharp script and the most charismatic cast maybe ever assembled.

Dan: It’s such a slick, economic film as well. It doesn’t mess around.

Nick: The original coasted. “Here are some really cool people, that’s enough.”

Chris: Yeah, the original has Sinatra and Dean Martin and all those guys, but it’s lazy. It’s absolutely one of those movies that should be remade because there’s the germ of something brilliant there. And Soderbergh turned it into a modern classic. Because, as I said, some of the greatest filmmakers of all time have decided to have a go at reworking previous movies.

Helen: It used to be like Motown, where people would sing the same songs over and over until you find one that really hit. It was like that in the studio era. You know, remakes are as old as

movies. So the idea is not, “Is this untouchable?” so much as, “Do I have something to add to this? Do I have something to say? Can I see a different way to do this?”

Dan: People might be more sensitive about remakes today because everything’s available. We’ve all got Jaws on our shelf. And we will watch it with our kids, if and when we have them. It’s gained a kind of permanence.

Chris: Isn’t there a chance they might think it’s a bit quaint?

Helen: There is that element, even with Star Wars, where kids will find them just weirdly paced. And there is probably a point where you need to look at them again. You have to keep it at a pace where kids can absorb it.

Nick: There’s another thing, which is subtitled films and world cinema getting remade. Most people don’t seem to want to watch subtitles, which is why you get The Departed, an inferior version of Infernal Affairs. And you get True Lies, the pumped-up Hollywood version of La Totale. Even Insomnia.

Helen: What was that fantastic line from Bong Joon-ho last year, about the hurdle of the one-inch barrier of subtitles? It really isn’t much of a barrier, so it is frustrating to see films remade in a lesser fashion. The Birdcage isn’t bad. Three Men And A Baby isn’t bad.

Nick: 12 Monkeys is a remake of La Jetée.

Dan: Well, that was a short film made entirely of still photographs.

Chris: Hollywood has a propensity for remaking films from France and South Korea and Japan and Italy. And not just Hollywood — Sergio Leone remade Kurosawa, of course. Is there an element of cultural appropriation going on here?

Helen: Well, not only did they take inspiration from Kurosawa, but he took inspiration from Hollywood. Bollywood has taken loads from American cinema. There’s a Turkish Star Wars out there that’s basically a very low-budget remake. The thing that people are wary of is when the Hollywood version eclipses and sucks up all the oxygen available to the original. And I think that does happen. I think you probably see The Ring on more shelves in stores than the original Ringu. The Departed has sucked up some of the oxygen of Infernal Affairs.

Dan: I’m in two minds about it. Let The Right One In is a masterpiece, and Let Me In is a very interesting new translation, moving into Reagan’s America. So it’s not totally without merit or value, but I think it’s very rare when the American version is superior to the original version.

Chris: Right, enough squabbling. Let’s vote!