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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 31, 2011 15:01:57 GMT -5
Holding on to my cane and sitting shakily in my rockin' chair, I say: "Back in my day, we had new movies. No rehashed Casablanca or It Happened One Night, but new movies, written anew for the time. Well, I could tell you of the time that...." And before you fade away, youngsters, explain to me what the appeal to Hollywood execs is of remaking often mediocre movies from only 15 or 20 years ago. I read a couple articles on it before posting here, but I'm not not grokking it any better now than I did yesterday.
And, btw, if you're a young screenwriter trying to somehow get a pitch for an interesting new idea in among all this rehashing of hash, my heart goes out to you.
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Post by Crowfan on Aug 31, 2011 15:16:43 GMT -5
I always thought the remakes were because Hollywood had run out of ideas.
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Post by CBG on Aug 31, 2011 15:18:07 GMT -5
Bottom line: It's the bottom line. Studios used to be factories, cranking out as many as a movie per week. If you had a few bombs, the hits would balance the sheets. Now, so much time is taken in prepping, making, and editing a movie that almost every one of 'em HAS to be a home run. That said, few execs are ballsy enough to go with 'unknown' material, and subsequently re-make the trash that has paid off in the past.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 31, 2011 15:46:18 GMT -5
Yeah, I get that, Scotty, but I read two opposing arguments about the bottom line one in Forbes, and one somewhere else. One argument was this: these are nostalgia pieces for people from 35-50 who have lots of disposable income and they're going to go see these remakes. And, argument B, these are made for teenagers who didn't get a chance to see the first Footloose or Ghostbusters (because they've apparently been kept locked in a box in the basement until now? anyway) and blah blah. But first of all, just because it worked in 1940 or 1960 or 1980 does not mean it will work today, and second of all, both of those arguments can't be true, can they? And second, either it's argument A or argument B. Are they making them for teens (in which case, why not change the title so it doesn't feel like some old thing dragged back out) or for adults?
And there are plenty of wonderful young screenwriters with a drawer full of moving, interesting, new, possible future classics that are waiting tables instead--I can guarantee that without being able to name one. I wish I was a billionaire, so I could give them grants to keep developing their craft.
Maybe what we need is a new studio system, something in between the big guys and the independents, studios that make new movies of a modest budget and hire new screenwriters and inexpensive unknown actors (who I'd rather see than Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow for the upteenth time) and buy songs by new musicians but hire experienced crew. Or maybe that's happening and I'm ignorant of that. I do recognize that there are two levels of indie movies--one with some cash and cachet that get decent actors like John C. Reilly and have good production values, versus ones that really are done on a wing and prayer and mum and dad's MasterCard.
It's just that 99% of what comes out of Hollywood is such cantsaythatwordhere, and I'd love to see well-done interesting movies, and they're churning out what they are, and I'm frustrated. It's creative bankruptcy. It's cowardice. I'm pouting. I don't want to see, Mr Ed, the movie, or Risky Business redone or Splash the animated version.
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Post by TheNewMads on Aug 31, 2011 16:33:23 GMT -5
i actually think movies are about as good now as they've ever been, except for in the 70s, when the old studio system had broken down and the new corporate model hadn't been establisshed yet. the late 60s and most of the 70s saw some EXCELLENT movies, very adventurous and counterestablishment and yadda yadda. the blockbusters are by and large crap but the modern blockbuster is a pretty new phenomenon, before Jaws and Star Wars the "blockbuster" didn't really exist. i guess the progenitor of the blockbuster was the "epic," you know, your cast-of-thousands "ben hur" or "dr. zhivago" type flick, but, you know, those were pretty theatrical, by and large, blockbusters aspired (at least a lot of times) to this kind of "hyper-realism," you know, a look that's more real than real. you know, jaws, the godzilla remake, etc., were all fantastical in some ways but had special effects that tried to pass for real considering that there was some aspect to the movie's premise that was fantasy. you know, given that we're in a galaxy far far away, etc., "star wars" tried to make the fantasy as real as possible.
ok, so in addition to all the stuff about the bottom line and remakes being a safe bet for return on investment, there's also a (rather arrogant, i think) presumption in hollywood that with CGI, they've finally NAILED it, they've finally perfected their ability to simulate anything and everything with no flaws. (they're not the first to think this; anyone who has any of the ray harryhausen special edition DVDs may have seen an ad from the 60s for dynamation," anything the mind can conceive can now be brought to the screen."
well, that's also what they think now, and i think they have this idea that if films have flaws, they have little or no value, so they're actually adding value to old films with older sfx techniques by redoing them with CGI and thereby making them perfect. but they're not right in that belief, CGI still looks flawed, it can often look really good but it's not seamless. and really, you don't want seamless, because people wouldn't even know it's a special effect: like the story where "planet of the apes" won best costumes because the ape costumes in 2001 were so good the academy didn't know they weren't real apes. a real seamless special effect would be about as exciting as a videogame simulating rush hour. really, i think a good special effect is a bit of a blend of trying to appear seamless and realistic, but also calling attention to itself. it seeks to dazzle, not simulate or re-create, be a conspicuous display of virtuosity but not be so deft it actually looks real. reality isn't dazzling, it's banal.
anyway, that's not how the studios think of it so they think they can go back to these old, flawed movies and fix them, not getting that a lot of times the flaws are what make them great. i mean, the quintessence of that attitude is george lucas doing his CGI "special editions" of the old star wars movies, to almost universal derision. he thought he was "fixing" his movies but he was actually ruining them.
another thing i've noticed, back in the 80s, we used to like to laugh at special effects in older movies from the 40s and 50s and so on, because they were using the same basic processes -- blue screen, stop motion, miniatures, etc. -- but in the 70s and 80s those processes were getting pretty refined. now that there's been this paradigm shift into computer graphics, a lot more people seem to look back on those old processes with nostalgia, and someone like ray harryhausen is a lot more revered than he might have been back in the day. people recognize the artistry in old SFX in a way i don't think they did before CGI.
anyway, i'm not really anti-CGI, i think it's a great tool when used with restraint, but i think the studio system is wrong to think of it as a panacea or a kind of end-of-history perfection of the craft of special effects. but they think it is, so they're in a kind of utopian project to go back to all the old, flawed movies and make them "perfect."
sometimes i actually think the remakes DO help, namely in the remakes of a lot of the 70s super-splatters, which really are often very overrated, nihilistic, misanthropic affairs. i think the remakes of "i spit on your grave" and "last house on the left" are vast improvements on the originals, which are basically snuff movies with virtually no production values. the remakes, esp. last house, are pretty thoughtful, engaging thrillers with good writing and sympathetic characters. so it's not all bad, with the remakes. but it's mostly bad.
anyway, i also think the remake thing is also the blockbuster phenomenon starting to feed on itself. the formative blockbusters were great -- jaws, the star wars series, close encounters, poltergeist, ET, etc., i feel privileged to have been a kid and young adult during the time when the blockbuster was in its heyday. and maybe this is a generational thing and i'm just being an anti-smoocher hermit who liked things better in my day, but i just don't think the blockbusters are tenting people's trous the way they used to. it all seems so done and i just don't think people get as excited about the latest blockbuster the way they used to. but, you know, basically, the studios keep pecking the blockbuster button anyway like experimental pigeons, even though it's stopped doling out the fixes of heroin.
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Post by TheNewMads on Aug 31, 2011 16:50:31 GMT -5
One argument was this: these are nostalgia pieces for people from 35-50 who have lots of disposable income and they're going to go see these remakes. And, argument B, these are made for teenagers who didn't get a chance to see the first Footloose or Ghostbusters (because they've apparently been kept locked in a box in the basement until now? anyway) and blah blah. something i remember from when i was doing a review of the "benji" remake/revisioning from a few years ago: the original '74 benji was a LIFECHANGER for me, man, i saw it when i was about five and have seen it a ton of times since then and i just think for a kid's movie it's really just about perfect, it's a wonderful film. anyway, the 2000s remake isn't nearly so good, but i'm sitting there with my notepad and there's a lady about my age with her daughter sitting a few rows back (i'm a friggin' movie geek and still sit pretty much like two rows from the front). so as we're all sitting there waiting for the movie to start, i hear the daughter lean over and whisper to her mom, "Mommy, what are we seeing again?" and the mom goes (and you kinda had to hear the way she said it, you could hear the eagerness in her voice), "It's Benji, honey." seemed like a banal exchange at first but i got to thinking: wait a minute, whose idea was it to see this thing? it was obvious it was a reverse of the usual dynamic where the kid drags the parent to the kids' movie. here the mom, who probably loved the original as much as i did, dragged her own daughter to see the remake, and the daughter apparently could have cared less. do kids these days even care about cute dog movies? anyway, that's the point, these remakes create a demographic crossover, where the older generation sees the movie for the nostalgia value, and (hopefully, it didn't exactly work in this case) the younger generation sees it based on genre expectations, not even necessarily knowing or caring it's a remake. it's a demographic calculation, and it's shrewd, if not particularly high-minded. also, i should have made a move on that chick, that's the other point. the mom, i mean.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 31, 2011 17:02:53 GMT -5
Glad to hear it wasn't the five year old!
I guess it's my age and what you said about the era. I came of age about the moment that Taxi Driver came out and so many good movies were around at the same time. There are good but forgotten movies from then (King of the Gypsies just popped into my head and it has 11 -- eleven! --reviews on imdb I see, while, edit, 2012 has almost a thousand), forgotten because the awards/attention went to the cream of that crop, but the whole milk of it was danged good, too. And I'd take Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge over the River Kwai over 2012 and others of that ilk any old day of the week. So I guess I am just old, and I couldn't give a half a hoot about CGI. I want the camera resting that extra beat on Reilly or Buscemi's or Gabourey Sidibe's imperfect, un-surgeried face, real human face, having a real human emotion. I want to be moved, to be told something about the human heart I didn't know yesterday, to leave the theater thinking.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Aug 31, 2011 17:09:53 GMT -5
and...I'm building up to a rave, here...I'm not saying there isn't room for comedy, too. Groundhog Day made me laugh and think. The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming made me laugh and think. It isn't impossible to do both!
But please don't remake them. They were done. It's over. Move on.
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Post by Shep on Sept 10, 2011 8:13:38 GMT -5
Roger Ebert has the right idea: Why remake the classics? Remake the bad films and make them better!
Sadly it's all about $$$, tried-and-tested formulas, etc. Which is why I rarely go to the movies.
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