It’s almost a given that remakes suck. Makes you wonder why people keep doing them if no one actually likes them. But then someone says they make a ton of money and take less effort than original stuff and it makes sense. Still, there has to be a reason why remakes suck beyond the fact that it’s a remake. And there is a reason. Often, one very crucial fault that destroyed the whole film. Let’s take a look at some stinkers.
Michael Meyers’ Childhood
Rob Zombie’s Halloween films are beloved by some and hated by others and the people who hate them are kind of right. Why? Well, Sheri Moon Zombie for one. Rob, no offense dude, I bet you could make a killer movie someday, but that day won’t come if you don’t stop casting your wife. Watching her act is like watching a goldfish do algebra. But even beyond personal issues with casting decisions (that kid who plays Mike Meyers is kind of awful, too), Rob Zombie committed an egregious mistake when he took on John Carpenter’s classic – he tried to explain Michael Meyers.
In the history of masked killers on film, of which there are many, Michael Meyers stood out because, as John Carpenter presented him, he was nothing more than the embodiment of evil. He had no identity any more, that’s why he wore the damn mask – he didn’t need a face. He was pure, driven evil. He killed because he killed. He didn’t have a motive, he didn’t have a rough childhood, he didn’t torture animal, no one ever forced him to watch Golden Girls under the stairs, he was just evil. And that’s why he was awesome. And that’s why Rob Zombie failed.
Zombie’s films are entirely built upon Meyers’ sorry childhood and mental collapse and then some crap to do with visions of his mom and a horse. No Michael Meyers I know saw horse visions. He saw William Shatner masks and Jamie Lee Curtis and a bunch of knives. That’s all he needed.
Karate Kid Does Kung Fu
People were making fun of the Karate Kid remake for months before it came out, and the same people who always defend crappy movies used the same crappy defenses they always use, most of which boil down to “how can you judge a movie before you even see it?” which is akin to mocking people for deciding not to eat feces without even tasting it.
Criticisms of casting Will Smith’s son aside, as it seems like Smith and his wife have decided to turn their loins into a Hollywood hit factory, or even the criticisms levied at the film for making all the characters 4 year olds (they’re all 4, right) , the real issue is in that no one does karate in the damn movie. That sounds like a menial complaint when they just replaced karate with Kung Fu, but guess what? That’s still a big deal. You can’t just go for close in your movies. The Karate Kid can’t do kung fu. The Terminator can’t just misalign people’s spines and force them to undergo years of chiropractic adjustments. The Lord of the Rings can’t be about an evil money clip.
Ape Planet
Tim Burton’s original movies are iconic but people love to tear strips out of his remakes. And no remake deserves it more than his Planet of the Apes. The weird bits with Helena Bonham Carter and the whole human uprising thing that somehow needed a supermodel and all that aside, there was one big issue with this movie and you know exactly what it was if you saw it.
At the end of the movie (we’d call this a spoiler if it were possible to spoil something already rotten), Mark Wahlberg’s character gets in his little spaceship and flies back through a hole in space and heads back to where he came from. The real, normal, perfectly usual world where I can assure you that the Lincoln Memorial does not bear any resemblance to a chimp. Except, at the end of this movie, it does.
He went back to his normal time, why is that there? Why are there apes in the past? How does that make sense? WHY DO YOU HATE US, TIM BURTON?
The mind boggles as to why that happened, it makes no sense in the context of the film at all, and it took all the power of everyone watching not to rush the screen in a confused rage desperately clawing at the flickering lights in a mad bid for answers.
Nic Cage in the Wicker Man
The original Wicker Man was as exciting to watch as CSPAN when you’re sleepy so it should have been easy to improve it in a remake. Actually, it shouldn’t have been remade at all as its very existence should make you fearful of an Ishtar remake dropping on us at any time. But never mind that. The fact the original gave just the basic storyline to work with meant it was possible to draw from the source and produce a much better film, but the filmmakers in this case made one error in judgment. And his name is Nicolas Cage.
Cage should have retroactively lost any awards he was ever given with his performance in this film while at the same time winning new ones for unintentional hilarity. It wasn’t just one wrong move on his part, it’s everything he does in this movie that seems completely insane. If it hadn’t all been packaged, edited and released to theatres there would have been a good case for this being Cage literally losing his mind on camera. He dresses like a bear in the movie, he curses out a room full of school kids, he yells about how things got burned and bees and I swear to God I think he drop kicks Leelee Sobieski. Just insane.
Godzilla’s Monster
Not many people know it but Godzilla is actually based on a series of Shakespeare’s sonnets where the monster was originally a metaphor for the power of erotic love between a man and a woman. And how that love sometimes destroys Tokyo.
Traditionally, Godzilla is a dude in a rubber suit and, somehow, he’s still awesome. When American filmmakers sought to make their own version Japan was all for it, except for how they wanted it to be like Godzilla in no way. They refused to let the new monster look like Godzilla at all, perhaps using keen Japanese intuition to figure out how much this thing would suck. So a new Godzilla had to be made. See the problem there? If Peter Jackson had remade King Kong as a movie about a big lemur, people would have taken issue. Sure it’s kind of similar, but so what? Likewise for our terrible Godzilla. The fact they dropped a bajillion dollars on a movie monster that couldn’t look like the movie monster it was supposed to look like shows how smart the people who greenlit this movie were.
Psycho Same Shots
Psycho is one of those movies that pops up time and again on lists of the best horror movies ever. Hitchcock was apparently a huge pain in the ass to work with, but he made awesome movies. So how do you improve on a classic made by a master? Gus Van Sant didn’t know how to answer that question either.
Van Sant’s remake is a shot for shot take on the original, it’s the same movie only it stars Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn and is in color. So really, Van Sant managed to do the nearly impossible by making what is effectively the exact same movie, yet crappier. That’s like being the ugly twin.
Instead of doing literally anything in an attempt to present the story differently, Van Sant did nothing. Good job, Gus. Thanks for wasting everyone’ time.
Courtney Love & Muppet Sexual Assault
Playboy’s Big Dance March Madness Bracket Challenge
It actually says alot about Van Sant when the only different scene on the remake of Psycho is when Vince Vaughn rubs one out while watching that chick up there through a peep-hole. xD
Besides, Vince Vaughn is the type of one dimensional actor (like Ashton Kutcher) that can’t be taken seriously in other roles besides comedy.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention House of Wax. Specially when we never get to see Paris Hilton tits up and mummified in hot goo like it was advertised. That is false advertising right there, which is by the way against the law!!
The Omen remake was shitty as hell. Not even Mia Farrow saved that pile of poop.
I normally really like this page, and I understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween is fantastic BECAUSE of seeing Michael Meyer’s troubled childhood. Now, don’t misunderstand, I deffinitely like the original more than the remake, to say otherwise would be blasphemy, but the faceless horror from 1978 fit the time perfectly, which is why no one questioned it. But these days, kids from abusive homes turn into people who shoot up schools, or become serial killers in real life, and this is a way to show that to people who just don’t understand where these people come from.
As for the acting of Sheri Moon Zombie and Daeg Faerch, I have no problem with either of them. I felt that Sheri pulled off the character perfectly. I don’t know how to really defend a person’s acting ability to someone else, because everyone has their own tastes, but Sheri and Daeg reminded me of people I knew growing up, minus the stripping and murdering (as far as I know).
Now as for the sequel, well, I liked it, but I do agree with you, the weird vision thing, that was a little too weird. The best way to look at it, I think, is that Halloween is how the world views Micahel Meyers, and Halloween 2 is how Michael Meyers views the world. That’s how I made sense of it.
You forgot the most important thing about remaking Pyscho (without even mentioning it was done shot for shot). You do not, I repeat, DO NOT remake a film that has a twist ending.
I hate to be a buzzkill, but “crane technique”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEFTdGTQ-bU
the original karate kid did kung fu. In fact, all of the circular blocks that Miyagi taught? That’s soft form. Karate is hard form. Difference being that Miyagi taught how to redirect an attack, whereas Karate would instead break his collar bone.
I’d actually call bs more on the original, because they broke down a very complex and incredible martial art to “stand on one foot and throw this one kick”.