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By John Finbarr McGarr The film industry is, after all, an industry; meaning its top priority is to make money. Without money, Hollywood would not exist. So, the most sure-fire way of making a profit is to market films that have been proven to be popular with audiences. This comes in the form of sequels, casting popular actors and reboots of old franchises.
But none of these techniques are as shameless and transparent as the remake-- taking a pre-existing movie and just making it again. Reboots do not cross the same line as remakes, as they somewhat act as sequels, in the hope of restarting the franchise. Remakes, on the other hand, act as though the original is irrelevant, and that the world needs a newer, more updated version. The biggest offender at the moment is Disney, since it is now going through an “anti-renaissance” of remaking all of its old properties. All of their new remakes are huge step downs in quality from the original animated films. The over-reliance on CGI has resulted in characters that were once cut and lovable, becoming creepy and unnerving. Just compare the Robin Williams Genie to the Will Smith Genie. The cartoony style allowed the old Disney characters to be expressive and energetic, but the new 3-D CGI characters look like the antagonists from a horror film. Obviously, Disney knows that a brand new 2019 retelling of Aladdin (1992) is going to rake in much more money than if they just re-released the classic version. Another equally offensive trend at Hollywood is the English-language remake. Films like Oldboy (2003) have had the misfortune to have been remade for western audiences. Aside from being absolutely incompetent in terms of writing, directing and editing, the English 2013 remake of Oldboy acts as a barrier to foreign film. There is an entire world of film outside of Hollywood, and films like Oldboy act as gateways to introduce western audiences to foreign films, due to how accessible and appealing it is. The English language remake prevents this from happening by offering a more inferior alternative for western audiences to watch, just so that they do not have to read subtitles. However, being a remake does not make the film inherently bad. In the film The Thing From Another World (1951), the characters unite together in order to fight off the titular villain. However, in the remake, The Thing (1982), John Carpenter took the film in a new direction; by having the characters grow divided and lose their trust in one another, due to the Thing’s shapeshifting abilities. By doing this, he made a new story entirely and allowing audiences to have different viewing experiences when watching both films. Sometimes, being a remake enhances the film’s quality. It is rare for a director to remake their own film, but that didn’t stop Michael Haneke from remaking his German-language film Funny Games (1997), which acts a satire of modern horror films and the audiences that watch these movies. In Funny Games (2008), the same criticisms are made, but the fact that he remade it, shot-for-shot, adds to the critique of the lazy, workman-like process of the Hollywood horror industry. This makes the concept of remakes are a little more complicated than the simple idea of them bastardizing the original. It has been proven that Hollywood remakes can be of quality, with films like True Grit (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and The Departed (2006), with the latter even winning the best picture award at the Academy Awards. But then the concept of a remake gets blurred with films like Heart of Darkness (1993) and The Revenant (2015). Heart of Darkness is based off of the 1899 novella of the same name, which was previously adapted into the more famous Apocalypse Now (1979). It could be argued that Heart of Darkness is a remake of Apocalypse Now, but another way to look at it is that Heart of Darkness is a re-adaptation of the source material. A similar problem arises with the story of Hugh Glass, whose story was adapted into Man in the Wilderness (1971), which was then adapted into a 2002 novel by Michael Punke, later being adapted into The Revenant (2015). Again, it could be argued that The Revenant is a remake of Man in the Wilderness, but another argument could be made that The Revenant is more of an adaptation of the novel. While Hollywood is trying its best to make as much profit as possible through remakes, there are many cases in which a remake proves to be of quality. Remakes can be seen as no different than the adaptation of books and television series into films. They should be thought less of a “copy and paste” job and more of a reinterpretation. While remakes can be offensive and shameless, with the right director and writer, a remake of a film can stand up to the original - the film industry needs to learn more from directors like; John Carpenter, Michael Haneke, the Coen Brothers, David Fincher and Martin Scorsese.
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