Are there any remakes that are better than the original film?

Well, you boys seem to be determined to discuss movies in which lots of people get killed violently so I’m gonna go lurk quietly in the corner for a while while you shoot it out.

I’ll leave you with this:

Can you name a remake that was made specifically to be “better” than the original rather than in the hope of making enough money off the people who enjoyed “the original” to turn a nice profit?

There is the marketing angle, but I think many of these filmmakers are attempting to update a classic film from their youth. I think this was definitely the case with Scorsese and Cape Fear.

As for De Palma’s Scarface, I imagined most of those who saw it didn’t even know it was loosely based on the 1932 film. Hard to even call it a remake, since it bore such little resemblance to the original.

Other remakes are more obvious, such as Paul Schrader’s Cat People, but here again I imagine most of the viewing audience was unaware of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 original.

Not mentioned is the classic Wizard of Oz (1939), which was a lavish update of earlier silent films from 1910 and 1925,

How does one even compare these versions?

Thanks, Dzimas, for mentioning the Wizard of Oz remake! Good point too about how to compare the two films. It’s not impossible of course: one could evaluate a film strictly by its own criteria. Perhaps in this case it would be egregious to compare a film made in 1910 with one made in 1939. One certainly could not expect the earlier version to be in color but, in the context of 1910, the shear fact that it is a motion picture could carry more weight in an analysis than the fact the the 1939 film is (partially) in color. OK… I’ll admit that even in 1910 it would not be unreasonable to expect a bit more from the makeup & costume department, but, on the other hand, the infrastructure of film as an industry had yet to be established. All in all, is it so pat that the 1939 film is a “better picture”?

About “filmmakers are attempting to update a classic film from their youth”… in the cases mentioned I tend to agree. But these are directors are established enough to call their own shots. In so many remake cases I expect that some producer (or junior exec) gets the idea to remake a film based primarily on potential box office.

“Paul Schrader’s Cat People, but here again I imagine most of the viewing audience was unaware of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 original” Yes, Cat People was a big disappointment. It’s where I pretty much stopped paying attention to Schrader for whom I had had high hopes. I’d loved the Lewton/Tourneur (what a team!!) version for years but it wasn’t so much the comparison that killed Schrader’s telling for me… rather it seemed somehow empty of the emotions it was attempting to create and build.

Well, Stu, you bring up an interesting point, but we are discussing popular films and that most popular of “genre”: remakes. So, is it unusual or surprising that most of these remakes would be based on violent films? The thread is about remakes which are ‘better’ than the original – and there haven’t been many, so restricting this even further is “threadilogical” suicide.

Mentioning a remake like Cat People is interesting but not really worthy of exploring beyond the superficial height it aspires to. Need we scrouge for non-violent remakes or just simply discuss remakes in general?

That being said, how about The Getaway remake?

I’ll also throw in (and I’m sure someone else has mentioned it by now), but Herzog’s Nosferatu is a damn fine film … better than the original? Eh, I like it better, but on terms of originality perhaps it suffers. I’ll tell ya though, I can watch Herzog’s version repeatedly without yawning in over-redundancy – not so much with the original, though I like that one as well.

Deckard: I’m right there with you about Nosferatu.

You say: “…is it unusual or surprising that most of these remakes would be based on violent films?”
Yes, actually, I think it is. Take a look at my list for example. Five of the films are, by no stretch of the imagination, violent films… not a gun or any ammo in a one of them:

Waterloo Bridge (1940) dir. Mervyn LeRoy / Waterloo Bridge (1931) dir. James Whale
My Fair Lady (1964) dir. George Cukor / Pygmalion (1938) dir. Gabriel Pascal
His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks / The Front Page (1931) dir. Lewis Milestone
Great Expectations (1946) dir. David Lean / Great Expectations (1934) dir. Stuart Walker
Floating Weeds (1959) dir. Yasujirō Ozu / A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) dir. Yasujirō Ozu

Several of the rest on my list are debatable as far as violent content goes.

You also say “The thread is about remakes which are ‘better’ than the original – and there haven’t been many, so restricting this even further is “threadilogical” suicide.” I think you misunderstand me… If I wanted to discuss non-violent remakes I could easily start another thread (the thought crossed my mind) but I agree with you that it would probably not be a good idea to focus that tight. So, as I said, I’ll lurk in the corner until the shooting stops.

PS: I LOVE your summation of the Schrader’s Cat People and “the superficial height it aspires to”!! That’s IT exactly.

@Stu: I didn’t mean to sound overly critical back there. The 5 films you listed are indeed non-violent, and one can tell immediately that you’re much more steeped in film history than I am (damn you, heh jk). I stand corrected (partially), but I still say that the remakes you mention are exceptions rather than the rule. AND I might add, I think I’ve only seen the Ozu one (can’t remember which, which means I need to see it again) – so, thanks for supplying me with more viewing possibilities.

Deckard: You certainly have a way with words! I’ll take “more steeped in film history” as a nice way of saying I’m older than you. Being on the planet longer has simply given me more time to devote to watching movies but it does not mean that I can think critically better than you or anyone else here. People who are (say) in their 20s, 30’s and even 40s have a great opportunity to watch films change in the years to come. I suspect that those changes will be far more than what I’ve seen in my lifetime. Clearly, the changes have more than begun: since the digital gaming industry now makes more money than the movie industry I suspect that the line between the two will continue to blur until it is nonexistent. Of course the vanguard of that transition will be violent shoot-em-ups because that’s what sells, but once things begin to pan out other styles and genres will return. Imagine a remake of Tarzan the Ape Man in 2090! But I digress…

I must admit that I found my list of remakes in the IMDb & Wikipedia. I’ve seen all those movies but danged if I could remember them all without the web!

When you watch the remake of Floating Weeds look for the red umbrella. Genius!!!

The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978

I don’t know, Cat People was pretty hot when it came out, featuring Malcolm McDowell and Nastassja Kinski in her prime. Too bad it didn’t live up to expectations.

I’m trying to avoid that Cat People remake looks pretty bad, I loved the original too much.
I also thought Herzog’s Nosferatu was an improvement on Murnau’s.

There was also Merhige’s Shadow of a Vampire with Willem Dafoe hamming it up as Max Schreck. I guess you could call it a mockumentary. I enjoyed it.

Speaking of Lewton and Tourneur, I really liked I Walked With a Zombie,

I suppose you could call it a zombie movie for adults.

Dzimas: “I suppose you could call it [I Walked with a Zombie] a zombie movie for adults.” You hit the nail again! I just love recommending it to my zombie-movie-loving friends! HA!

Not everything Malcolm McDowell ever did was to my taste, but with titles such as A Clockwork Orange and O Lucky Man! behind him my expectations were high for him in Cat People. Pretty much the same could be said for Schrader and Kinsky (Moon in the3 Gutter nearly killed my taste for the lovely Nastassja… then along came Paris, Texas!)

BTW: I see McDowell currently has 8 films in production, 2 in development, is filming one and has just completed another!

Anyone seen him in Easy A?

Eddie I: If you feel that way about Nosferatu it’s a good bet you might as well skip Shrader’s Cat People. Plenty of other stuff to watch.

Is there any objective way to discern if a remake of a film is better than the original? If not, what are the criteria you use to decide what makes a movie good.

Nice little slideshow in Salon today about The 10 most compelling on-screen gangsters.
http://bit.ly/cZvcXf

Starts right off with Tony Camonte, “Scarface” (1932), Tony Montana, “Scarface” (1983)

Anyone smell a new thread here?

I would 2nd The Quiet American. It’s a very well crafted film with great performances all round. Great location filming, a real fitting score and all held together nicely by the narration of caine.

The 1st adaption very much is a product of it’s time and didn’t even seem to have much staying power when it was even first released. It is also utterly and atrociously disloyal to the the source material in spirit with it’s lack of anti-war sentiment.

Ditto The Quiet American

yeah. I’ll say Paul Schrader’s CAT PEOPLE (1982), with Nastassja Kinski. My favorite film of all time. Kinski in her best performance, Schrader makes AMERICAN GIGOLO (also by Schrader) look like AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, beautiful cinematography & production design (especially the dream sequence), and an unforgettable musical score by Giorgio Moroder. (oh, very amazing mythology, too.) Schrader’s most unusual since MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (also by Schrader, too).
Any one famliar with an anime/manga series called FRUITS BASKET? It’s sort of like the atmosphere of CAT PEOPLE.

Just found this thread and enjoyed the Stus and Deckards posts. I now have a bigger film list to get through thanks. I thought I would join and have a go myself. I have recently been trying to educate my friends about what good films are. And not just them thinking the next big blockbuster is the best film ever. Luckily they haven’t seen many films other than what comes out at the multiplex and only if it is an actor they like is in it. I have tried making them watch the originals of films before they see the remake. Which is hard as one friend said regarding subtitle. “If I wanted to read I would get a book”. But he did in the end watch both Let The Right One In and Das Experiment. Two films which he is going to see the American remake. I think I might of made a mistake and got him to watch the remake first and then the original and see what he preferred.
Any more suggestions let me know and I will force it upon him to see.
Cheers.

Does anyone have any updated information on the proposed remaking of Seven Samurai, Ikiru or Rashomon 2010?

edit not that I think anything particularly good would come of them other than maybe bringing focus to the original after the remake is sufficiently lambasted…It seems at least one remake appears every year. And there are some films that, in the past, were considered so sacred, that no one would dare remake them. Now, film companies don’t care if the original film is sacred to moviegoers – they remake it anyway, and ‘bling’ it up so that today’s audiences won’t think it old-fashioned. And very frequently, they mess it up by doing so. But it’s a tired argument, I know.

This post called to mind a debate I have had with a friend off and on throughout the years……. why don’t filmmakers remake bad movies or misfires with good ideas?

I’m sure that there are major industrial concerns (piggybacking on the reputable name of an old film or something might be a better business move)….. but really, it’d be nice if they’d take noble failures (because of budgets, lack of talent, studio interference, whatever) and improve upon them with a more thoughtful remake.

Instead of a sequel…. I would have been content with a straightup remake of Tron. I think you could improve upon a movie like Michael Curtiz’ The Walking Dead, or any of the thousand bizarro Karloff movies (The Man who Changed his Mind) that are high concept but low budget.

A misfire like Hollow Man (a psychosexually unsettling take on the Invisible man concept) could definitely be improved.

Excellent idea, Patrick! Can anyone think of some candidates?

I think of the real botches!

DUNE in some VERY long version (re-made of course by Lynch himself and excluding things like Virginia Madsen big talking head)…it would be like a second chance.

Others that come to mind…

There’s probably a good movie to make out of HEAVEN’S GATE. How outrageous would it be to remake that!

Something went really wrong with Jane Campion’s PORTRAIT OF A LADY…one of the killer books turned into a very intert film.

So Martyrs is being remade (by the studio that brought us Twilight, of course).

Says director Daniel Stamm (of The Last Exorcism mehness):

“Martyrs is very nihilistic…The American approach [that I’m looking at] would go through all that darkness but then give a glimmer of hope. You don’t have to shoot yourself when it’s over.

“It plays on things that are familiar — like two friends who can’t be separated, kind of a Forrest Gump and Jenny situation."

I know I’m not supposed to use this word, but ^ that is fucking retarded.

^ I am speechless. That doesn’t make any sense. There was no glimmer of hope in The Last Exorcism. Why do we have to fuck up remakes all the time?

A glimmer of hope? that is fucking ridiculous.

Oh man, I’m about to piss some people off. But I like Soderbergh’s Solaris. lol. Just an opinion.

“would go through all that darkness but then give a glimmer of hope.”
“kind of a Forrest Gump and Jenny situation.”

Sounds promising!

yet another Journey shooting now..Hawaii doubles as Palau

how many have there been since 1959??

I love this thread! Do science fiction and horror movies make for the best remakes? I have to second Invasion of the Body Snatchers, even though a lot of people prefer the original. I also really like the Dawn of the Dead un-make because it doesn’t try to replace anything definitively. It’s just a good zombie movie.

I also love the Solaris remake. It’s beautiful and alienating. I love the original, too, but Tarkovsky isn’t for everybody.

Seconding the needlessness of the Ladykillers remake. I was most curious about the contemporary localization, in which Sir Alec Guinness’s charming, posh musician is translated into Sir Tom Hanks’s Southern gentleman, a perfect mish-mash of Kevin Spacey in Garden of Good and Evil and Colonel Sanders. I never saw the Charade remake, The Truth About Charlie (2002), but I think I’d have a similar reaction to that one, too.

I have not seen the remake of Let the Right One In, but I would like to. Also, I had assumed The Strangers was a remake of the French suspense Them — now I’m reading that it isn’t?

Also. Is Takashi Miike’s horror musical Happiness of the Katakuris an improvement on The Quiet Family (Kim Ji-woon, 1998)? I’ve been wondering.