In recent years cinema has taken it upon itself to become shit scared of taking a risk, even when said risk could bring great rewards (I'm talking box office returns here) of course the risk could fail and wind up costing the studio.
But this fear culture has led to wave after wave of remakes of films that stand alone and do not need upgrading. A recent example of this is the ghostbusters remake starring several of Hollywood's more prominent comedienne 's such as Melissa Mccarthy, Kristen Wiig and a few other Saturday Night Life cast members. This in itself isn't a great issue, but when the original is a great example of cinema then a remake/reimaginig is not a welcome prospect.
Having waited for the first trailer in anticipation that it would stand alone and not ruin the memory of Dr. Peter Venkman, Dr. Ray Stanz, Dr. Egon Spengler and Winston Zedmore, I was disappointed to see that they have gone for a more slapstick approach.
Admittedly this is only the first trailer and I hope that the end product lives up to its predecessor, however, I am not holding my breath.
Recently I watched another remake, this time it was 'point break' the film that helped propel Keanu Reeves from a time travelling stoner who always expresses shock, awe, appreciation and happiness in the same manerism ("Whoa") to being on the cusp of future action stardom, was remade as an update for the modern day extreme sports crowd, where only a small part of this film includes any surfing. the characters and even some of the story remains the same, so the lead is Johnny Utah, the big bad is Bodhi and even the shot in the original film where Utah chasing after Bodhi hurts his knee and empties his gun into the sky makes an appearance, although in the remake it's just feels corny and unnecessary, like the director tried to make a love letter to the original and failed miserably.
And this is my main issue, as a child of the 80's these films will always resonate with me, but the remakes do not inspire the same wild eyed joy of the first time I watched them, nor do they inspire the wannabe film director in me to do the same thing.
Honestly as a film fan of all genres I am happy to watch any movie and some of them inspire me as something that I have never seen before. These are usually the films where a risk has been taken and for a change I am watching something original.
Many studios seem to copy one another and if an idea has worked then you end up with multiple franchises that are all in the same vein, an example of this is the future based dystopia The Hunger Games, which was a best selling book series that the spawned trilogies for other book series of a similar vein, namely The Divergent Series and The Maze Runner series also.
I wish the bodies at Hollywood would start taking notice of what their predecessors did in the 80's, movies like Indiana Jones worked and there is no reason that similar movies couldn't work today. A few years ago I heard that an adaptation of the game series uncharted was in development, however this has constantly stalled, and more recently another game series, the rejuvenated Tomb Raider series is also being muted as soon to be in development, along with Daisy Ridley reportedly cast as Lara Croft.
Anyway my original point is that remakes of great movies should be left well alone and not bled dry of any future revenue, but movies that weren't particularly great could be remade if done to a better standard than the original.
Signing off and climbing down off my high horse,
Ze Bear.
