Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Rejecting Remakes

Ugh! I'm so tired of movies being remade. Movie making people on behalf of the world will you please stop! No more. Uncle. I was struggling for a blog topic since Tuesdays seem to be generally unassigned and then I see the article headline "'Dirty Dancing' to be remade for  a new generation". Blasphemy, I tell you. Blasphemy.

We don't want to see our favorite movies remade. We don't want to see our nostalgic television shows turned into crappy, spoofy movies. Just please stop. So in honor of this monstrosity and the fact that I have nothing else to blog about I give you:

The Top 10 Horrible Remakes.
10. Footloose (2011)- So this one isn't really fair since it hasn't come out or anything yet, but we have all seen the preview (if you haven't consider yourself lucky), and it looks craptastic. They race weirdly painted school buses rather than tractor and the bus blows up, really? Is nothing sacred. 

9. Dukes of Hazard (2005)- In all honesty, I sort of like this movie. I don't remember the television show and there are obvious problems with the movie. But I love Johnny Knoxville so I will not say anything bad about it. However, it stays on the list.

8. Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)- Now we are talking my genre. I was actually a little excited about seeing this remake. In fact, I made my family go see it while on vacation because it was opening weekend. I was behind the new Freddy (Jackie Earle Haley), but I had my doubts how they could work out the story line. My doubts were proven justified by this turd of a film. It wasn't scary. The first NoES was creepy. It was creepy because it was different, surprising, and Freddy was mysterious. Not so much with this. If anything is bordered on being boring.

7. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)- Nobody puts Baby in the corner. Just leave Dirty Dancing alone.

6. Alfie (2004)- I wanted so much to like this. Jude Law is so adorable in it, but  it pales in comparison to the Michael Caine version. Sadly the remake lacks direction or any sort of emotional point whatsoever.


5. Godzilla (1998)- I didn't love the old one, but holy crap. I think the writing is the major downfall of this movie. It misses the campiness of the older version and goes right to bad.  Campy is always a hard genre to remake. You either have it or you don't. Godzilla doesn't.

4. Stepford Wives (2004)- I am thinking 2004 was a really bad year for remakes. The 1974 version was layered, made social commentary, a little creepy, and believable. The new one was a mockery of a genuinely decent film. It was stupid, silly, and not at all faithful to Ira Levin's novel.

3.  Psycho (1998)- This movie proves two things. You can stay too true to the original. Timing the dialogue perfectly to the original film, while a neat idea, make the acting wooden and just basically uncomfortable. And it proves the you should just leave anything made my Alfred Hitchcock alone. There should be a law.

2. Halloween (2007)- Halloween 1978 is my favorite horror movie ever. I wasn't looking forward to this remake, in fact, I was against it. Perhaps you could make the argument I never gave it a chance. But then I would argue you obviously didn't watch this horrible, horrible movie. It lost everything that made Michael Meyers scary. Michael isn't like the other super villains in the first Halloween. The body count isn't high, he doesn't talk, he isn't super human. He is a ridiculously scary escaped mental patient who is patient, motivated, and focused. He lurks and skulks and could be anywhere. In the new one Michael pulls a tombstone out of the ground with his bare hands, is like seven feet tall, and breaks through walls like they're paper. It isn't scary, it isn't suspenseful, it is pretty much just over the top and cliche.

and

1. Mission Impossible 2- I can hear your thoughts, "This isn't a remake. Liz needed another movie to add to her list and chose to pick on Tom Cruise." While technically you are correct this was never billed as a remake I would like to argue it most certainly was a remake. There is a fantastic Alfred Hitchcock movie called Notorious, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Mission Impossible 2 took their plot directly from that movie. In fact there are scenes so close to it in the film I literally looked around at the people sitting next to me in the theater to see if anyone else noticed. This movie gets number one because it is worse than a remake. It is a thief.

*disclaimer- I could have probably filled my entire list with horror movies, but I love them too much to pick on them and this is my list so I will do what I want. :-)

5 comments:

Buddy Gott said...

Nice list, Liz! I totally agree on Halloween. The original was a total classic and it shouldn't have been remade.

Even though it's a different genre, I feel the same way about Arthur. The original is one of my favorites and I just can't bring myself to watch the remake.

Andrew said...

Mission Impossible 2 is one of the worst pieces of crap ever made. We recently re-watched the movies, because my kids want to see the new one coming out at Christmas but had never seen the first three. I thought, maybe, I was just being too harsh on it in my memory, but, no... even my kids let out astonished yelps, "what? That's so stupid!"

I think it might be possible, though, that Superman Returns is the worst remake/reboot ever.

Liz Schulte's Blog said...

@buddy, the new Halloween is an abomination.

@Andrew It is so horrible and Notorious was such a wonderful movie. I sickens me. Funny enough I thought a lot about putting Superman on the list but since I haven't seen it I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you on this Liz, and might I add music re-makes got to go as well?! If it was worthy of making the hit list... OR more importantly, if it didn't, leave it the heck alone! You left a few movies off this list... but one recent horrible re-make is Arthur... PaLEEZE Russell Brand, don't mess with Arthur!
On a side note you made me feel old (which I don't think I am)when you said you don't remember watching The Dukes of Hazard, it was one of my favorites! Now if they re-make The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, Pretty In Pink, Better Off Dead, or Some Kind Of Wonderful... We are going to have some problems!!!

Liz Schulte's Blog said...

No kidding. They better not remake any of those movies, especially Better Off Dead! I love that movie. In fact, I might watch it tonight. I must also add to Mannequin.

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