So then: remakes. (josh's longwinded rant #5673)
I'll preface by saying I will, every single time, rather see a new and original story than a remake. Rare is the remake that I love (or even enjoy), but I do watch a fair few, in the interest of trying to keep an open mind and give everything a shot. When I was younger, I used to HATE the very idea of remakes. I'd throw phrases around like "ruining my favorite movie" and such. But that movie isn't ruined...it's still right on my shelf. Likewise any book to film adaptation.
Storytelling and entertainment has been a part of our culture since the beginning of time. Forms change, but the basic concept doesn't. The role that film plays in our lives was played by theatre 200 years ago (and before that, and to this day, etc). Theatre was an extension of people sitting around the fire trading stories (many of the folk tales that we know today, changed as time changes everything). There are theatres still doing Shakespeare productions, and what HE did was rewrite a lot of popular stories of the day. Can we say "no one should ever stage Hamlet again"? Can we even say "no one should ever FILM Hamlet again"?
Even in that, most productions miss the point. Shakespeare was't striving for high art; he was telling stories in the language of the day (albeit brilliantly) using symbols and motifs that meant something to the audience he was trying to reach. How many Shakespeare productions are set in different times, but preserve the language? Sort of digressing here, but my point is this: sometimes stories need, or maybe just deserve translating into the modern pop cultural lexicon. If a movie made in the 70s talks about Led Zepplin, it DOESN'T mean the same thing to you today as it did to the audiences in the 70s. Time changes everything, and nuance is sometimes important.
In the Star Trek reboot, there's a scene where young Kirk steals a car and plays a Beastie Boys song. The car, to 2009 audiences, was clearly a classic car. The song was a good 15 years old, from our perspective. From Kirk's perspective, they're BOTH relics from hundreds of years ago, but the choice of something older, but that most people would recognize (rather than something from 2009) puts the audience in the exact right frame of mind. Anything older, and people might not recognize it. In 10 years time, that scene will NOT mean the same thing to people watching it for the first time. In 50 years, why not remake it so it means something to the audiences of 2061? If the story is important, it should stay around, and not all tellings are "timeless" (though some certainly are).
Maybe the problem is most remakes are done by studio hacks. People who care about the art of storytelling rarely do remakes, because they have their own stories to tell. Perhaps if people started making better remakes, they wouldn't have the same connotation that they do today.
Again, Scarface was a remake, exactly the sort I'm talking about. Taking a 30's gangster movie, and transporting it to the 70's. Wizard of Oz?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000875/ Not the first film with that name on this list (actually, that new film? A prequel directed by Sam Raimi? Sign me up!) Does any film need a remake? Probably not, doubly so for crappy horror films, which I do love. The Hellraiser remake does sort of make me sad...they had Clive Barker on board, read his treatment and said "no thanks". Oh well...what could have been...
Music is a good comparison...people remake songs ALL THE TIME. Hell, I've done covers myself. Check the programs for your local symphony for the past 5 years. 90% of the time they're playing the same 10-15 pieces. Over. And over. And over. But I could, off the top of my head, name at least 15 cover songs that I enjoyed more than the originals. There is, and always has been a place for this sort of thing in our culture, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But let's put that back in the hands of the artists.
