Remakes

mrbaseball · #1 06-16-2007, 02:42 PM

About a month ago I got the DVD of Double Indemnity. I hadn't seen it in a million years and was really looking forward to seeing it again. It was better than ever! I really like this movie and the 3 main players MacMurray, Stanwick and Robinson were all fantastic. The guy who played the boss of the company was however laughably bad [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]This is the classic film noir in my mind. Stanwick is the perfect ice cold double dealing dame. Edward G. Robinson gives maybe his best ever performance and MacMurray shakes off his My Three Sons/Flubber/Shaggy Dog personna in fine fashion.

Anyway this DVD came with 2 disks. I didn't even look at the box and after watching I popped in the second disk hoping for some neato extras. But the second disk was the 1973 made for TV version starring Richard Crenna, Samantha Eggar and Lee J. Cobb. UHG! I watched maybe the first 20 minutes just out of morbid curiosity. The dialog was almost word for word and Crenna was remarkably bad really making me appreciate MacMurrays seemingly effortless performance all that much more. The one scene I saw with Cobb was okay but I couldn't watch anymore.

How and why would they remake this! The orignal was just about perfect. I can see remaking a King Kong for the technology but nor something like this one. Why would a classic like this ever warrant a remake? Or even The Longest Yard for that matter?

metsandfinsfan · #2 06-17-2007, 01:43 PM

Longest Yard remake was excellent imo

mrbaseball · #3 06-17-2007, 03:59 PM

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Longest Yard remake was excellent imo

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Really? I thought it was horrible and throughly unneccessary. Comedies generally aren't remade and there was certainly no reason to remake this one. The original holds up well. I thought the remake was just stupid and not stupid in a good way.

Blarg · #4 06-17-2007, 04:18 PM

Yeah it's always an impending huge disappointment when things are remade. It rarely works out well.

I feel the same way about colorizing a film or see a pan and scan version.

diebitter · #5 06-17-2007, 04:32 PM

Remakes: So unnecessary. IF it was a great film in the first place, why remake it? IF it was terrible or average, why bother?

I guess the only remakes that have any merit are where you take the essence of the first and give it a wholly different setting. Fistful of Dollars was an excellent film and remake of Yojimbo. Django was a decent movie, and a remake of Fistful of Dollars. The recent King Kong had some parts that was a vast improvement on the original (the emotional connect Anne had with Kong, for example, or the terrifying natives), but others where it didn't work too well (the dinosaur stampede was really for the kids, and far too unrealistic and CGI for adults to buy into).

So some remakes I guess are worthwhile, but most are pointless at best (The Omen), destroying the memory of the original at worst (Wicker Man/Get Carter/Alfie/Psycho/etc).

mrbaseball · #6 06-17-2007, 05:16 PM

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Fistful of Dollars was an excellent film and remake of Yojimbo

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Never saw Yojimbo but I think that foreign language films are different from just remaking a classic (ie Double Indemnity). In the case of foreign films I think it's okay. Redoing those for your own particular culture seems fine to me.

Blarg · #7 06-17-2007, 05:29 PM

If there's a significant change. Going from Samurai to cowboy was good enough.

ChipWrecked · #8 06-18-2007, 08:55 PM

The Omega Man has been remade with Will Smith in the Charlton Heston role. The picture has another name now which I forget.

I call heresy, but will try to withhold judgment until I see it.

Kimbell175113 · #9 06-18-2007, 09:04 PM

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The Omega Man has been remade with Will Smith in the Charlton Heston role. The picture has another name now which I forget.

I call heresy, but will try to withhold judgment until I see it.

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I Am Legend (the title of the book that the Heston film came from)

Remakes can be good:

The Thing
The Fly
The Departed

Blarg · #10 06-18-2007, 10:30 PM

Omega Man itself was a remake of the film version Vincent Price did first, called The Last Man On Earth. Very good, too! As was the book.

Btw I don't like the idea of Will Smith in this at all. He doesn't have the existential bona fide's even a lunkhead like Heston managed to pull off. Omega Man's main character seemed tailor-made for Heston. That bitter face, with its downturned grimace and cruel nose, that great voice, are just made for an angry, brooding, self-pitying character entirely abandoned by life but tragically still besotted by the least glimmer of hope that comes along. Will Smith is too chipper and happily gliding in the updraft of his youth. His temperament is just juicy with happiness and positive energy. I have no doubt he could be a better fighter and physical specimen than Heston and still find a way to get his ass completely kicked by him. You just can't replace that kind of bitter!

This is a very downbeat story. I see Smith and I can't help but like the guy and getting ready to smile.