what do you all think about remakes?, such as the upcoming hellraiser remake?

Question

personally i think that maybe 1 or 2 are good, they rest just kill the film and take the esscense of the originals
what do you think?

i think most of them are awful, such as dawn of the dead,physco, there are too many to mention, i just think they take great movies that dont need remaking and make them "too hollywood", and for me it takes away all the essence from the originals

Answer 1

Making pictures is expensive and Hollywood is getting nervous. If a movie flops then it can be a death sentence for the producers. When Heaven’s Gate, a western flopped, Hollywood thought that the entire field of westerns was dead. Luckily Clint Eastwood proved them wrong.

Remakes are a sure fire hit. Even if the plot sucks you will get people to come in just to relive the favorite things they say in the first series. Hollywood still has the idea that if you throw enough special effects at people they will love the movie despite problems in the plot. That may have been true when the second and third Star Wars films came out (Episodes 4 and 5), but it isn’t true any longer.

Look at the movie Transformers; it will be one entire special effect. The major characters are all digital, just like the Silver Surfer is in the second Fantastic Four. Audiences are getting use to special effects and if they are done correctly they fit into the movie seamlessly and so aren’t that noticeable.

A remake of the horror film classics will also allow the producers to use more blood, guts, and gore than the old films. The Exorcist was so frightening that people fled the movie for the toilet to throw up; now days it would earn a PG rating. We have been jaded by so much violence so you can be the remakes are going to be more violent and show more of that violence. This makes Hollywood think that they can get a better movie without having to do anything new. Thus the movie is cheaper, shorter to make, and has an assured audience. Therefore instant box office success; or so they hope.

In some cases like the Shaggy Dog (the Disney Comedy) the remake is a better film in others like the Absent Minded Professor it is practically a new film. But, either way audiences that remember the old film are eager to go to the new one. Popular books also make a sure fire draw, which explains Nancy Drew. There are so many plots in the series that it is going to be hard to do a fresh and original one, but they should try.

I have seen remakes that were better than the original, but with the case of Tom Cruise’s War of the Worlds the original was a better movie. This one had super special effects and Steven Speilberg behind it, but the story didn’t grab you. The story line was closer to the original book, so it took less time to write, but the original story was written in the Industrial Age when battleships were still a new and marvelous weapon. Now days battleships are retired and no longer used for an entire host of reasons (to big, to many crew, to expensive, to easy a target, not enough fire power etc.). A few changes were made in the film like having the equipment buried under the ground, but that change was pointed out in all of 1/5th of a second and Steven Speilberg had to say it in an interview before anyone noticed it.

It has gotten just too expensive to make a film in Hollywood. That is why Vancouver Canada has become the new Hollywood and a lot of TV shows are based there. They also do a lot of movie filming. London has the same problem it is now cheaper to film in Australia than it is to film in London.

With the high cost comes the smash down on creativity. A writer can’t take a bold new step because such a risk has too high a chance of alienating the audience and thus causing the film to fail. So Hollywood churns out remake after remake or goes to past successes and tries to make a movie out of them. This doesn’t always work, but they will keep on trying. Thus you can expect to see a lot of the old horror films come out again in remakes. If you are in them for the gore then you will be seeing a lot more of that, but the old classic horror films are those of the mind. Room 1804 is an example of this. We don’t have mass murderers chopping people into bits; we have a fiendish dark force working against the hero. This makes the film scarcer, but writing it is much harder. It is easier by far to do another Freddy or Jason flick.

Halloween was a good series, but Halloween Two had nothing to do with Halloween One it was a cheap trick to get the fans of the first film to go out and see this new one. That’s why it took so long to make the sequel Halloween Three, which should really have been two.

Just look at how many times Gilligan and the Castaways came back in a movie. It was insane. The original series wasn’t so good, but it was put into syndication so much that everyone has seen it, even children of today. Hopefully though it has been overdone and we will never see an attempt to bring it to the big screen.

If you want good original films then you need to look at the independent films. Only these people are willing to take the chance to be daring and make a film. Some of their work flops and no one ever hears of it, but sometimes they produce a Million Dollar Baby.

Hollywood is undergoing a change and the actor that we know now days is an endangered creature. Video games are getting better and better, the quality in them approaches that of any cheap Hollywood film. Before long the quality will beat that of a Hollywood film made with real actors. Then we will have artificial actors, and Silicon Valley will take over Hollywood. Already half a film is shot in Silicon Valley as they do all the special effects.

In the meantime we are sentenced to a string of remakes in the hopes that somehow they will become the box office super blockbuster. Occasionally someone will get bored and produce something entirely new. The Pirate trio is an example of such. The films had very little to do with the ride, but through some inspiration and original work they became classics.

Personally I am getting a little tired of remakes, but for now the only way to be a success is to have a sure fire success and that means it has to have been tested in the market somewhere, so it is either an adaptation of a book or a remake.

Answer 2

I personally dont like the remakes (I'm talking new remakes, cause old remakes like Cronenbers The Fly are great) and i think they really ruin the classics, i LOVE Hellraiser and I'm prepared for a huge disappointment, lets hope for the best..... By the way i think the reason is that teenagers love movies like the remake of Dawn of the dead, but hate movies like the original Dawn, they find them boring and not scary.... you see its all about the money, you know pleasing the audience

Answer 3

I agree, to a great extent.

Dawn of the Dead- actually, I sort of liked the re-make. I didn't see the remake of "The Hitcher", but Sean Bean as John Ryder??????? Sean Bean is NOT scary, folks. Barney the dinosaur is scarier than that dude. Now compare him to Rutger Hauer- the ultimate actor, who can convincingly play a deranged homicidal maniac.

Hellraiser- the original was AWESOME and brutally scary. Evil. It's hard to match its sheer genius.

I am burned out on seeing all these piss-poor remakes, too. "Chainsaw " (as in TCM) was okay. But the original still blows it out of the water.

I wish that they would come out with some new stuff, similar to the film "Saw" (not Chainsaw- just plain Saw)- the film from like three years ago. It was/is disturbing.

Therefore, I agree that they should stop it. The originals are almost invariably superior.

Answer 4

i think some maybe better remade but some noway like there remakeing rapid jacobs ladder shocker its alive the stepfather the day the earth stood still prom night and more

Answer 5

why would they remake nightmare on elm street? i'd think they'd just make more sequels which would be awesome

Answer 6

i agre with you they should leave the old ones they are brillo. im a big horror fan. leave hellraiser alone i say

Answer 7

I can't wait for the new Halloween!!!