What Do You Think Of Movie Remakes?

[naomi24]

So often movie remakes seem to be a pale imitation of the original so I wonder why the makers bother. I watched a recent version of 'Little Women' - well, I tried to watch it and after about 20 minutes gave up on despair. When something is a classic, like the 1949 version of the story which stuck faithfully to the book, I have my doubts that any other production can ever out-perform it. I feel the same way about music. New versions of classic songs are rarely an improvement.

Now a new version of the supreme classic West Side Story is hitting our cinemas. The wonderful Spielberg is in the driving seat and it's reputed to be better than the original. Wow!! Can that really be? Fingers crossed.

[LadyCG]

The Keira Knightley film remake of the BBC's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was awful imo.

Hitchcock remade his own movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much. I've not seen the 1934 or the 1956 version but my late Great Grandfather had a non-speaking part in the remade version.

[Mozz71]

As has been said, there are few remakes that surpass the originals.

Planet of the Apes
Ocean's 11
Scarface
12 Monkeys
The Thing
The Fly

There are probably more, but I can't think of them right now.

[paddywak]

I've watched many remakes and I've quite enjoyed most once I'd blocked out the "original" though I found the bad ones to be very bad,I do hope nobody decides to remake Bladerunner one of my fsvvourite films as I can't immagine anybody but Ruttger Haur doing "tears in the rain"

[burlyshirley]

I agree with naomi about the Colin Firth Pride & Prejudice, the best I've eve seen and if it come on TV again, I will watch it, again ! The one with Keira Knightley was pants !!

[Hopkirk]

Any remake of a John Wayne film has got to be an improvement. Rotten actor, he played himself.

[Ken4155]

I do wish someone will do a remake of The Dark Tower. The original was absolute trash.

[davebro]

//Any remake of a John Wayne film has got to be an improvement. Rotten actor, he played himself.//

“Just one more question, Pilgrim. How far up your ass do you want my boot?”
― John Wayne

[Khandro]

"Fill your hands you sonofabitch!"

[naomi24]

Hopkirk, I agree with you about John Wayne. He is always John Wayne. I feel the same about Martin Freeman. I watch him playing Bilbo Baggins and think Dr Watson. He's always Martin Freeman to me. Similarly I watched Renée Zellweger in 'Judy' and thought for all the world that I was watching Bridget Jones playing Judy Garland.

[Untitled]

"I do wish someone will do a remake of The Dark Tower."

the source material is almost impossible to film unfortunately... i believe there were talks with amazon to make it a streaming series which is more promising but still... i don't think you could adapt those books without making something completely different to them...

[Ken4155]

Untitled, how is the source material almost impossible to film.? I honestly cannot think of anything i read which would not be possible to satisfactorily portray on film. CGI would take care of the most problematic, surely.
At least 3 films could be made from the series but the director of The Dark Tower (a so-called fan of the books!) crammed a brilliant story into a mish-mash of a film, leaving out two of the most important characters - Eddy and Odetta. Just wish a true fan of the books had done them proper justice.

[tonyav]

Can't wait to see the re-make of West Side Story to see how it matches up to the original. The re-make of True Grit was definitely better than the John Wayne version.

[jno]

to each his or her own but I think the 1949 Little Women is the worst of the lot. June Allyson's got no charisma at all. I find Katherine Hepburn too mannered, so it's Winona Ryder for me. The recent one was pretty good but I didn't like the jumping around in time.

But The Maltese Falcon was the third attempt and by far the best.

dannyk, Charles Laughton?? You mean Michael Redgrave?