Anti-Remake Petition

[WingedSerpent]

A few more in the pipeline are:

An American Werewolf In London, Arthur, Barbarella, The Blob (again!), The Birds, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Child's Play, Conan, The Dambusters, Deathwish, Dracula, Dune, Excalibur, Fantastic 4 (again!), Flash Gordon, Footloose, Frankenstein, Hellraiser, Highlander, Last Starfighter, Near Dark, Night Of The Living Dead, Oldboy (with Will Smith!), Piranha, Porky's, Red Dawn, Robocop, Short Circuit, The Thing, The Three Musketeers, True Grit, The Warriors, When Worlds Collide, Working Girl...

Plus, I don't think The Three Musketeers or Dracula really count, being based on classic novels and all.  Classic novels are constantly readapted into movies, even way back in the black and white era.

Add Frankenstein and Dune to that list of pseudo-remakes becuase their classic novels.  You could also add Conan, because its based off of a series of books.  The Thing was also a novel prior to the movie versions.

[Psycho Circus]

Yeah but their not remaking a novel are they? The film adaptations themselves, that are already burned into movie fans memories. Films that were good, did well and made their money. Novels and comics are easier to adapt as you already have a decent story, plotlines, character development all their to exploit. Which is why computer game conversions always dissapoint.

[Torgo]

I have always viewed remaking a movie being the same as a musician coverage someone else's song.

If you can't bring something new to the table or rework it to where your stamp is on the newer version (for better or worse), than there is absolutely no reason to remake it.

Examples of remakes that I liked were John Carpenter's remake of The Thing, the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.....actually that's all I can think of at the moment that I thought worked well.

Come to think of it, I actually liked Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes up until that god awful ending.

[Flick James]

John Carpenter's The Thing is one of those exceptions, and a damn fine film. I'm not against remakes across the board, but what the original poster is talking about is a pretty readily identifiable "syndrome" present in big Hollywood productions in the last 10 years or so. Hollywood is very reluctant to take any risks right now. The dollar and the economy being what it is, and mainstream American still streaming into theatres for some mindless entertainment to take their minds off things, that's exactly what Hollywood is giving them. They know they can slap together a CGI/action-driven flick that contains little more than just that: CGI and action, and people will buy it. This is exactly why you don't see any mention of the crap economy in film. If you were looking at our society from a time machine in the past, with nothing else to judge how society on other than by watching it's movies, you would have no idea that our economy is deeply troubled.

Sorry I got so side-tracked. The great Hollywood hack machine cannot be stopped except through the consumer dollar. It's been said that the petition was pointless and wouldn't do anything. That's probably true, but it was fun to sign anyway, and the point was duly noted.

[The Gravekeeper]

Now I HAVE to write a horror story that's set right smack in the middle of the economic crash. The main character could have just been evicted from their apartment. Then they end up living in a tent (which actually did happen around where I live...those tent cities cause some real problems because while they were illegal these were people with jobs who just couldn't afford to pay their rent anymore) and, I don't know, a werewolf or something starts taking advantage of what it sees as easy prey... Hang on, I'm gonna write this down; it may be ridiculous now, but give me some time to develop the idea and I might come up with something decent.