So this week I wanted to rant a little about the excessive number of remakes that have been showing up at the theaters recently. It's hard to believe that Hollywood is so completely out of new ideas that they're remaking every movie they can think of. There's supposedly a Revenge of the Nerds remake being developed by somebody, for God's sake! Tell me THAT'S a movie we need to see a new version of (not that I didn't like the original, because it's not a bad movie, but do we really need a NEW version of it?). Interestingly enough, I actually saw a remake this weekend -- Flight of the Phoenix. It was a pretty good movie, but mostly it made me want to see the original (especially when I discovered the original starred Jimmy Stewart and Ernest Borgnine). I guess the movie studios figured nobody would remember a 40-year-old movie, and so they could pass this one off as something brand new (which it doesn't look like they pulled off, considering how poorly the movie did at the box office this weekend).
While some movies are very obviously remakes (like the recent remake of the classic The Manchurian Candidate), others are more surprising. The recent Queen Latifah/Jimmy Fallon heist comedy Taxi, for example, is actually a remake of a French film trilogy written and produced by Luc Besson, the writer/director/producer of such fantastic films as La Femme Nikita and Leon (AKA The Professional in the US). Which leads me right into the next part of my rant -- Hollywood remakes of foreign films.
The recent trend of Hollywood remakes has mostly been aimed not at old American films, but recent, successful foreign films (the most notable being the string of Japanese horror movie remakes, which started with The Ring, and continues on with films like The Grudge and Dark Water). Admittedly, I do appreciate these films coming out because they introduced me to this wonderful genre of film (and I've since been tracking down the original films, as well as other Asian horror films online). But at the same time they really make me shake my head. I mean, how unoriginal can you get??? The Grudge, for example, while a really good movie (at least I thought so), not only had the very same director as the original Japanes film, but most of the cast was the same as well! Other than the addition of Sarah Michelle Gellar and handful of other American actors, it's basically the same damned movie. Which begs the question -- why not just release the original???
The answer to that I believe is two-fold. Firstly, American audiences are lazy and hate having to read subtitles, so we need an American cast so that at least the majority of the film is in English, and secondly, Americans are so hung up on celebrity that unless there's a big Hollywood name above the title of the movie, they're not going to bother going to see it. Which personally I find completely ridiculous. But don't expect things to change. Now that Hollywood seems to have discovered the wealth of cinema that exists outside our borders, I'm sure that more and more Americanized versions of great foreign films will be gracing movie screens, along with all the remakes of old Hollywood films (did we really need a remake of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, due in theaters next month? I don't think so!).
But I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I mean, look at the even worse trend that Hollywood's latched onto -- turning TV shows into movies!! But that's an entirely different rant that I won't get into here (Dukes of Hazzard, the movie -- I think that says it all right there!). And so I close with this thought -- yes, by and large, all the creativity in Hollywood has completely evaporated, but the good news is, Hollywood isn't the only place making movies. So for those of you who don't mind reading subtitles, there is definitely a whole world of movies out there just waiting to be checked out.
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