Since my rant about remakes several months back, there have been several new remakes announced, and here are some of them: Barbarella, Short Circuit, Valley Girl, Girls Just want To Have Fun, Total Recall, Predator, Alien, Footloose, My Bloody Valentine, The Crazies, Clash Of The Titans, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Scream, Red Dawn, The Karate Kid, Park Chan-Wook's unreleased new film, Thirst. In fact, those were all announced within the past two weeks.
I understand that remakes have occurred throughout the history of cinema (what is The Magnificant Seven other than a remake to The Seven Samurai? What is The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly other than a remake to Yojimbo? Even Hitchcock remade his own movies: The Lodger, and The Man Who Knew Too Much for example), but usually there's a reasoning behind it. For Hitchcock, he wanted to improve on a film that he felt had potential yet was shot in a point in his career where he was still a novice; once he acquired all the skills he'd needed to be a master, he remade his film to perfect it. In regards to Magnificant Seven and Good, Bad..., it was a matter of transitioning a near-perfect story into popular genre so as to maximize its storytelling potential (Westerns were pretty much the rage in the 1960's when these remakes were released) as the originals might have been a challenge to more the conservative American audiences in the 1950's when they were originally released. And the remakes are just as highly regarded as the originals upon which they are based.
Can the same be said for the spate of remakes that have been released over the past five years? Let's name some: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, The Hills Have Eyes 2, Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, The Stepford Wives, The Invasion, War Of The Worlds, The Omen, The Women, The Honeymooners, SWAT, 3:10 To Yuma, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I Dream Of Jeannie, Herbie: Fully Loaded, The Taking On Pelham 123, etc. etc. (these were the only ones I could think of without going through Amazon or IMDB, but merely using my own memory and experience). Of these films, how many of them were actually worth the experience of watching them (sure, Pelham isn't released yet, but do the trailers really look that interesting?) I would say, of that list, maybe two were worth watching (and, to a point, are at least comparable to the originals).
In an age of Blockbuster, Netflix, and Hulu, is it really necessary to remake (or "reboot" or "reimagine") films? Are these films even in need of being remade? Is a film like Alien or Predator or The Thing so bad and incoherent and unprofitable as to warrant being remade and improved upon? (The easy answer is "No, of course not. Don't be an idiot"). In an age where Wall-E is hailed as a technical and storytelling classic, it makes sense to remake Short Circuit, but it's still uneccesary (even with "Greg The Bunny" and "Robot Chicken" scribe Dan Milano writing). And when it comes to horror films, it seems common for a remake to appear every few years (hell, I thought the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake wasn't that bad).
But why does it seems as if, of late, a remake is being announced every three to four days (and I'm not even pulling that rate out of my ass)? Well, the current troubled state of the economy is one factor; despite a stronger-than-expected first quarter for this year, theatre attendance is still down about 7-8% as compared to last year (the struggling economy is not the only factor, but also the proliferation of HD-quality home-theatre systems, and the ease at which one can rent or buy films or stream them online).
Audiences seem to know the films they're going to attend, and (especially in the summer) these films are tentpole features, event films, or movies that benefit from incentives such as 3D, IMAX, or digital projection. However, sometimes not even these are incentive enough for audiences (just observe the steep drop-off in the second week after the release of Watchmen back in March).
What to do with dwindling ticket sales and competition in the home-theatre market? Well...repackage old films with new stars, new directors, and similar (if not the exact same) stories, then release it into theatres.
That's all well and good, and I can understand why studios would want to repackage their films to new audiences. But I think it'd be vastly cheaper to release the originals in revival theatres or in an event-worthy DVD or Blu-Ray release. Imagine the amount of money spent to acquire the rights to a movie like, say, SWAT, pay a hefty price for the stars (especially Colin Farrell back when he was making consistent, event films), spend more money for pre-, production, and post-production, and then another $15 million or so (on average) on marketing. And then the movie flops, it's rushed onto DVD, and then slowly and quietly disappears from all memory. Does that make any fucking sense? To release an inferior product whose short- and long-tail both fail to impress? Whether or not a film a film is well-known enough or cherished enough to warrant a remake or adaptation, any studio that has any options on any outside product is quickly speeding up production to adapt it to the big screen (cases in point, the film "adaptations" of Stretch Armstrong, Ouija, Monopoly, Clue---yet another remake---Battleship, Candyland, Where's Waldo, and---somehow, in some way, for some reason--- Bazooka Joe. I am not making ANY of these up).
In the case of Twentieth Century Fox Studios, the remakes and reboots are efforts to retain the rights to their properties: reboots to the Daredevil and Fantastic Four franchises are in the works so as to prevent the rights to those characters from reverting back to Marvel (the X-Men Origins films are likewise attempts by the studio to retian their rights to the characters...however, Fox has major, MAJOR management and development issues that have resulted in horrible films for the past few years). So, in this case, remakes, reboots and sequels are released to ensure that rights to characters and storylines are retained. Is that a reason to make a film? By all acocunts, NO.
So what happens now? Here I am, for one, an exhausted filmmaker who is depressed with each new story about a remake, prequel, or batshit insane concept (Stretch Armstrong; Bazooka Joe) not for the childish reason that "it's raping my childhood" or some such bullshit that most fanboys on AICN whine about constantly, but simply because I've ideas for films that could be made cheaply, quickly, and could produce a respectable audience (Porn Fu practically sells itself and already has a small fanbase waiting for it to get made...too bad it can't garner the $1 million dollar it'll need....and that's a low estimate!) And I know that there are dozens of people I know, and thousands of people I don't, that have more elaborate, epic, and interesting ideas for films than I who, if they had even a quarter of the money spent on these remakes and bullshit prequels, could produce something unique and beautiful and personal.
I miss the personal touches to films, the feeling I'd get watching an early Scorsese film like Who's That Knocking At My Door or Mean Streets, a film that reads like an autobiography and which wasn't factory-made to meet a deadline or placate a fanbase. What happened to that type of filmmaking? What happened to those types of films? Films that would be made and released into theatres where they'd simmer for a few months and find its own audience? These days films are lucky to receive two months in a theatre before being sent in to be released on DVD. The turnaround is insane! The near two-year run of Titanic seems to be the last long-run release, and that was over twelve years ago! That is the highest-grossing film of all time, but if released now would remain in theatres for three months, thus cutting off its total gross by at least half.
The short-tail return, the first two weeks' gross after release, is the name of the game here. How the fuck did that happen? And why? It's hurting audiences, it's hurting theatres, it's hurting studios, and it's just going around and around in circles. Maybe this is the new trend in filmmaking, and if it is then it's something I for one have to get used to, otherwise I'm going to run into a whole heap of trouble.
All that being said, I just want Where The Wild Things Are, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World to be released already!
In slightly more personal news (but not much and not really):
My friend's father got me the name of an entertainment lawyer, as wel las the Volunteer Lawyers For The Arts, a firm of freelance entertainment lawyers. There is a $150 1-day crash course seminar on July 10th about fundraising and investing that I'll be attending not only for Porn Fu but also for a documentary I'm helping to produce (I might have to go to Mexico in August for it, but I'm hoping I won't have to do so).
Goodbye David Carradine (aged 72).
Sources:
http://www.joblo.com/commando-remake
http://www.joblo.com/scream-reboot-really
http://www.joblo.com/wheres-waldo-movie
http://www.joblo.com/barbarella-rising
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/06/barbarella-robe.html
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/06/scream-to-be-rebooted-as-a-trilogy-courteney-cox-and-david-arquette-in-discussions-to-return-.html
http://www.joblo.com/total-recall-remake
http://www.joblo.com/musical-valley-girl
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41295
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41279
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41210
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118004377.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41278
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19719/1/I-NEVER-THOUGHT-I-WOULD-REGRET-RODRIGUEZ-LEAVING-BARBARELLA/Page1.html
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19715/1/KURT-WIMMER-GETS-HIS-ASS-BACK-TO-MARS-FOR-TOTAL-RECALL-REMAKE/Page1.html
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19714/1/IF-YOU-BRING-BACK-THE-SAME-ACTORS-PLAYING-THE-SAME-CHARACTERS-IT039S-NOT-A-REBOOT/Page1.html
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19713/1/YEAH-THIS-ONE039S-A-BIT-OF-A-STRETCH/Page1.html
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19664/1/ALIEN-PREQUEL-INDEED-HAPPENING-WHEN-FOX-WINS-WE-LOSE/Page1.html
http://www.collider.com/2009/05/29/exclusive-tony-scott-confirms-carl-rinsch-is-directing-alien-and-its-a-prequel/
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19628/1/IN-SPACE-NO-ONE-CAN-HEAR-YOU-SCREAM-BECAUSE-THEY039RE-REMAKING-ALIEN/Page1.html
And so on and so on...
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2 comments:
"In an age where Wall-E is hailed as a technical and storytelling classic, it makes sense to remake Short Circuit"
Not really. WALL-E is a technical and storytelling masterpiece. Short Circuit was a cute film that only got worse with age. "Cashing in" on a better movie isn't a sensible move, IMO. It's only going to upset people.
I know. I was being facetious (something which is difficult to portray on an online forum).
I think a remake to Short Ciruit would be nothing more than a cash-in, and I hate the very idea of remakes simply to make bank on a prior work.
Short Circuit is exactly what you described: cute, but dated and is now irrelevant. Let's just leave it as a quaint memory of the 1980's.
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