Recent Movie Remakes?

[Sanhael]

Are movie remakes starting to happen much sooner than before, or am I just growing old?

...The Karate Kid
...The Crow (whoever decided to remake The Crow needs to die horribly)
...A Nightmare on Elm Street
...Tron

I was in high school when The Crow came out. It's only, what, 12 or 13 years old, now? Earlier, I said this in front of someone in her early 20's, and she replied with "What do you mean, only 12 or 13..?"

 

[Perduabo]

The late Charles Beaumont said it best regarding Hollywood and their "ideas".

"Gaining success in Hollywood is like climbing one giant mountain of cow flop to pick a perfect rose at the summit. And its only when you've reached the top and picked that rose that you discover that you have lost your sense of smell."

 

[Mz Chaos]

Hell... they've done 3 King Kongs, 2 Mighty Joe Youngs, at least 3 Journey to the Center of the Earth and we won't even get into how many movies on and about the Titanic.

I'm figuring that somewhere along the line someone said... "Hey, why get a new script? We'll just take a movie that has already been a box office hit... get some newer actors in there... add a little CG and we'll make a mint!"

I wanna see them try to remake "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes."

 

[Goodieluver]

I can see tron. Even tho it when it was made it was groundbreaking in its field visually and story wise

Point being is Hollywood doesn't want to take risks, esp in the current economy. Hell look at watchmen. Warner is now saying it wont dump so much money into an R rated film ever again(after ads, it invested 160 million and box office alone only hit 172 million combined with world wide)

Movie companies want sure fire things and they can judge based off of former sales of franchises how certain movies may sell. Its a very hard market to bring something original in because companies wont take the risk. Sure you have some small and garbage groups(cough lionsgate cough) who will throw a bone at some small producers to put something out but not market.

 

[Marquis De Sade]

Remakes usually suck, yes, but, look at it this way: People use a different cast for the same stage play and those actors usually put their own spin on things, as do the directors. So...

Ah...

Nevermind. I got nothing. Most remakes blow chunks.

 

[Excess]

The problem with remakes is that they're judged by comparison to the original, but since they can't be exactly like the original (ex: same cast) then they're most often judged unfairly. It's basically nostalgia. Not saying that the original might not be better, but it isn't technically better just because it's the original, unlike what many will claim.

 

[Evil Dave]

A film that always springs to mind is the Italian Job. The remake had almost nothing to do with the original and the only real connection was the name of the film and the names of one or two of the characters.

It wasn't a terrible film and was a passable heist movie, good for killing a couple of hours. The problem was that calling it the italian job invited the comparison with original which resulted in it being mocked, at least in the UK where the original is something of an institution. If they'd called it anything else then people would have viewed it with more of an open mind and it would have been judged on it's own merits.

 

[Aimee]

They are doing a remake of The Birds [that's so dumb... it's a CLASSIC]
and also Alice In Wonderland with Johnny Depp ! AHHHHH so excited for that! Tim Burton is amazing. Fact.

 

[Sanhael]

All valid points; my original question still stands, though.

Are remakes starting to happen much more quickly than before?

I'm admittedly a little bit stuck on there being a remake of The Crow. I really enjoyed the original, but it's obvious what crowd they're going to cater to with the new one. And who the heck is going to replace a star who died during the original's filming? Who would *want* that kind of recognition, honestly?