RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media REMAKES (are they worth it?)

This weekend I watched one of my favorite Westerns, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. For the first time, it fell in my eyes... why? Because, for the first time, I'd watched it back-to-back with THE SEVEN SAMURAI, on which it was based. I'd seen the Akira Kurosawa film once before and was impressed, but thought it went on too long. This time I found an increased appreciation for it. And right after, the next movie I pulled out was the remake. All of a sudden, I could see what came from where, what had been added, left out, changed completely, and which scenes now seemed "forced", "awkward", or just didn't make much sense! I'd never thought it about it much before, and let little things slide because the film as a whole works so well. But I was really surprised at the problems I found with it-- now, after all these years!

By the way, the biggest "change" may be that 2 of the main characters in the original (the young man who looks up to his older colleagues and falls in love, and the wild, cranky ex-farmer who fights for acceptance, played by Toshiro Mifune) were COMBINED in one part (Hort Buchholz), while the leader of the bandits, who was virtually faceless in the original become one of the biggest personalities in the remake (Eli Wallach's "Calvera"). Typical "Hollywood" rewrite!

By comparison, when YOJIMBO was remade as A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, Sergio Leone kept so close to the original, in places it was almost a shot-for-shot redo-- except with LESS humor. (Gonna have to pull THEM out next! After 23 years, I STILL get a kick out of having a VCR...)

One remake that wasgreat was Lord Of The Flies.
Not only did they manage to capture the same ambience as in the original, but some of the actors even looked like the originals.
A must-see film.

The recent "Insomnia" wasn't bad.

Re The Magnificent Seven: Anybody catch the TV special a while back where they sat James Coburn down and ran the version of his character's introductory "duel" sequence from Seven Samurai? Evidently he hadn't seen it before.

I think the magnificent 7 is one of the few remakes that is a classic. The remake of Cape Fear was good as well, if not quite the original (I saw the remake first but still prefer the original).

There's no point in remaking classics generally though (see the Psycho remake for that one. tried watching it once, gave up and put on the original after 20 minutes) as you can only screw them up. What we need are remakes of bad films that had a good idea behind them. there must be hundreds of those.

I awlays think of THE MALTESE FALCON as a prime example of a "good" remake. In the course of 8 years, the book had been filmed 3 TIMES under 3 different names. only the 3rd version, directed by John Huston (and starring Humphrey Bogart)is generally remembered at all! John Huston was interviewed shortly before his death, and he said "There's no point in remaking a classic. The thing to do is take a film that was done badly, go back to the source material, and do it RIGHT."

I'm STILL waiting for PLANET OF THE APES... :)

I agree with that!
But try and tell Hollywood!
They always wanna bet on something they know has succeeded already!!!!

Man I love Yojimbo..that's my favorite Kurasawa film....

Just watched it for the 3rd time today. what a fun flick!

"The inspector is leaving. An official was killed in another town 20 miles over."
"He seems very calm for such news."
"He hasn't heard yet."
"Really. Did YOU have the official killed?"
"Maybe..."

--and--

"Why did you come here? Is this a STORY you wrote??"

Heh..

Remaking foriegn films isnt necessarily a bad thing but sometimes I wonder why they remake old Hollywood films!
Sometimes it works,sometimes it doesnt!

In the days of yore, they used to take silent films and remake 'em as sound movies. Later, they'd take a B&W film and remake it in color. Later still, they'd take a big-budget theatrical epic and remake it for TV... which didn't usually go over too well, when you compared the finished look due to the budget drop! These days, they take old TV SERIES and do MOVIES about them! This started with GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (on TV) which led to STAR TREK (on the big screen). Instead of "Why revive something that failed?" it's "We can make money on this old idea without having to pay anyone for new ideas!!!

And of course, now they do remakes of old movies for the theatres AND for TV... sometimes at the same time! But when they start remaking movies that were made only a couple years earlier, it seems there's a shortage of ideas... or of courage in presenting new ones.

I know of AT LEAST 14 different film versions of THE THREE MUSKETEERS (not counting sequels). And to me, only the 12th really holds up as a "classic"!!! (That's the one Richard Lester did-- with Michael York, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, Geoffrey Bayldon, Faye Dunaway, Roy Kinnear & Raquel Welch! WHAT a CAST!!!!!)

You're right about DRAGNET-- there've been 3 movies based on it so far! (The one with Jack Webb & Ben Alexander, the 2nd one with Jack Webb & Harry Morgan, and the 3rd one, with Dan Ayckroyd & Tom Hanks-- AND Harry Morgan, which made it an "official" sequel! Never saw THAT coming...) The 2nd, incidentally, was intended as the pilot for the revived 60's series-- but somehow, it wasn't seen until the show was on the air for 2 years...!

But, I was really talking about reviving old series that had been cancelled years before. While this had happened over the years with "licensed" characters-- ELLERY QUEEN, SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE SAINT come to mind-- I believe the first time an original TV show (created for TV) which had ended was brought back from the dead. According to Sherwood Schwartz, creator of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, the networks had NO interest in reviving something that had died years before. Imagine the SHOCK when it became the highest-rated TV movie ever (up to that time)!!! THAT sure opened the floodgates, didn't it?

Damn shame Irwin Allen didn't jump on the bandwagon while both he AND Guy Williams were still alive... wasn't it?

Remakes only work depending on the subject matter. If you're only remaking a classic just to cash in on the name, then it's bad. But if you actually have a fresh take on the material, or if you're remaking a bad movie in the hopes of doing it better the second time around, that's fine by me.

Personally, I'd love to remake Xanadu and turn it into a good old-fashioned madcap romantic comedy.

"Personally, I'd love to remake Xanadu and turn it into a good old-fashioned madcap romantic comedy."

Oh man, I SAW that when it came out! Strangely, to date, the only Gene Kelly movie I've ever seen. I was nuts about Olivia Newton John-- and was a huge fan of ELO's music as well.

Of course, if you did this, you'd have to get JACKIE CHAN to star in it... otherwise it just woulnd't be right!