My thinking is that really good stories should be retold, which is a slightly different idea, though it may involve remaking already good movies.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Sometimes the remake is better, for example.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

The Fly

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Little Shop Of Horrors

Ocean's Eleven

The Departed

Titanic


One can only hope that this remake will bring the same kind of message the original did. a movie for the times.

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I'm speaking of the second remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers of course. The last one was horrible.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

Frankenstein, Dracula, The three musketeers, The Wizard of Oz... in several of these cases it took multiple tries to get it right.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I'm going to see the remake. No doubt about it.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

Not limited to the big screen, either. The revamped Battlestar Galactica is a case study in things gone right on a reboot.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles rescued that story from a horrid third movie with an "internal" reboot.

The Dune miniseries were pretty superior to the original screen version, IMHO.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Whereas I totally disagree--we've had that conversation, I think. Likewise, I prefer the original Humphrey Bogart/Audrey Hepburn Sabrina, but my boyfriend and his mother both like the remake. (I just can't see pining your life away for Greg Kinnear, for one!)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

That one is a tough call. Loved the SciFi series, truer to the books, better effects, etc etc.

Yet the first one took the story and made it more film friendly. And had Sting in it.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

They made another "Titanic" after Cameron's?

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Cameron's was the sixth. Trust me, it was better than all the others.

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That being said, no doubt somebody will remake it in twenty years.

Just because it is a damn fine story, and all that.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

Sting?,

Was that the guy in the blue suit prancing around with a pig sticker, held loosely in his hand, whilst mincing; "I will kill him...."??

Dale

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"Ad astra per aspera"

Oh you young whippersnappers.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

Back to the topic.

I liked the trailer.

"You had better let me go". No more Mr. nice-guy-alien-come-here-to-tell-us if we don't stop screwing around, Gort will fry our collective as.... err, our collective hindquarters.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

That was a joke.

That being said, I've seen some of the others, and I'm not sure I'd agree that Cameron's was the best.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Only if they come with an ironclad guarantee that the writers won't bolix the rewrite, that the director will demand of himself only his greatest genius (a demand greatly aided if he actually is a genius); likewise for the actors; that casting will select actors capable of such self-demand; that the editor isn't an idiot....and so on. Just one broken link is all it takes. No, remakes of Good films are an almost universally Bad idea.

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz

"To complete the picture all the photons can be seen to be synchronising friction on and off throughout the overall cone which itself is synchronised to the equal and opposite reaction of equilateral triangulation"... by a scientificator in ATM, too priceless to be lost to posterity.

Film friendly? The film version was a travesty on the greatest Sci-Fi novel of all time. It was fairly obvious that neither the directors nor the writers had ever actually read the book. Did anyone notice that the "magic rain" at the end was a worm-killer? The film omitted virtually everything of importance to the story. No, I don't see that one as being film friendly. It verges more nearly on the criminally BAD.

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz

"To complete the picture all the photons can be seen to be synchronising friction on and off throughout the overall cone which itself is synchronised to the equal and opposite reaction of equilateral triangulation"... by a scientificator in ATM, too priceless to be lost to posterity.

A really good story told really well may deserve a remake. But, the remake needs to tell that really good story really well.

Too often, good movies are remade because an Ego decides to put his/her stamp on it; that's the "I can do better" school. And, all too often, they fail because they change the original in bad ways. (Think Casablanca with Ilsa deciding to stay behind with Rick. Yeah, that'll work.)

The second school is the "More bangs" one. That is, since we now have far better technical and/or sfx capabilities, let's use them. (Think Casablanca with bombings and shoot outs and car chases instead of plot and character. And, since it's now in color, show lots of blood and gore.)

A properly made remake ignores the egos of those involved and stays true to the original while taking advantage of today's technology. JMO.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

I'm not sure there has been a "right" version of Frankenstein, Dracula or Oz. Not in film, anyway, although there have been a couple of decent BBC versions of Dracula.

I'm still waiting for a right version of The Wizard of Oz, at least, I promise. As to Frankenstein, I'll let you know in probably less than a month.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Ok, so read "classic" or "the one people think about" instead of "right", and you'll probably end up with Karloff, Lugosi and Garland, neither of which where the first attempt at the story.

Another example would be The Three Musketeers where I'm partial to the Gene Kelly 1948 version, which was about the 15th attempt at telling the story and probably the one of the fifty-odd versions made which has been truest to the book.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

It might depend on how old a viewer is. I liked the first one best. I disliked the second one. I thought it was silly.

The first one seemed so realistic, but the second one seemed like a bunch of 1970s actors running around 1970s San Francisco, over-acting. The "invasion" wasn't so frightening when it happened in a big cosmopolitian city, especially a city that was already filled with weirdos and freaks at that time (I lived there at that time). But in the first movie, little Santa Mira, filled with normal people, was cut off from the rest of the world, and that helped make the film more frightening.

I've liked all the Bodysnatcher films so far, although I've not seen the fourth yet.

I thought the third one was a travesty.

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Except for the part where they showed exactly how a pod sucked your life force out and created the new body.

The rest was pretty bad.


Film friendly meant "So somebody who didn't read the book would enjoy the film". It certainly wasn't true to the story, especially in regards to "the voice".

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Well, judging just from the limited artsy preview, we see more people gazing in awe at bright lights through trees. That worked to build tension in "Close Encounters" but it now gets tiresome. Also in the original, though Gort melted a tank and some rifles on landing, Mr. Klaatu managed to shut down the whole planet without firing a shot. But it looks like there's plenty of destruction in this version. That kind of misses the point of the original.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

Exactly. Seems that younger movie audiences today want lots of violence and noise. Lots of shooting and loud booms.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/13287/the-...klaatu-arrives

After Klaatu is shot, Gort opens up a can of whup a, err, starts destroying weapons.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/12663/the-...l-gort-attacks

Klaatu stops him.

Side note, did you know you can watch TV on the Internet?

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

IOW,

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

They got the characterizations right in the series. I could nitpick a couple omissions, but overall, I think they got the feel of it right. William Hurt carried Leto Atreides off a lot more sympathetically and Ian McNeice stole the show.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.