Not me. I can’t understand why major Hollywood studios have this absurd idea of remaking perfectly good films so soon after their original releases. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is another good example of an unnecessary remake (also of a Swedish film). Is it possible that there’s no one in Hollywood with ideas good enough to generate original works?
what ticked me off was that i was in a bookstore and a saw a new book by the writer of let the right one in and it was just renamed let me in…the whole idea was that the title was ripped off from a smith’s song. did the american version not get that or what? im so confused.
This is the capitalistic machine come to bear; if money can be made on the success of another and it is exceedingly easy to continue in the vein of the vampire forbidden love, so then why not remake it.
I saw the trailer for the American remake and it looks surprisingly like the original. I was not as impressed with Let the Right One In as some people seem to be, although the actress who played the little girl was fantastic. Otherwise, just OK.
The American film market really want Americans to spend their money on purely American films. I’m pretty sure that this may be the case when popular foreign films are remade when their originals are as known as they were released or they are continually gaining popularity before they’ve even been made. I made this assumption when I first tried to buy a region free DVD player at Best Buy, I think it was. Of course they had none and I asked one of the employees if they knew if any of the players they had happened to be region free. He said that he wasn’t sure and I waited for about a half hour for a bunch of people to ask around and finally someone told me that they thought that some of their Panasonic models may be region free, but they don’t openly market it. I found this to be alluding to the fact that American money is trying to be kept in America. I don’t know, it may be a stupid assumption.
Ideas come cheaply and the need to jump on properties is a lot more urgent. I’m not in the “blasphemy!” camp at all as we’ve seen in the past, some remakes work well and stand on their own. Ossessione and The Postman Always Rings Twice is one that comes to mind. Those were within three years of each other.
Unfortunately, most Americans are not going to see the original, so at best, the new version may be an opportunity for some people to seek out the original.
It’s funny that this does not seem to apply when the American property is the original, like Blood Simple or Fingers or even the example I posed, which was an American book.
i think it’s stupid on the studio execs part to assume that americans are generally dumb and won’t notice the fact that let me in is a remake of a movie that just came out like, a year ago but hell, what do i know.
this remake is just so obvious. it’s not like theyre remaking some weird japanese horror movie that never got release in the US and no one ever saw. Let the Right One In actually got some really good American reviews and got some really good play in theaters here. I just don’t get the need for remaking the whole movie and releasing it when there’s a perfectly fine film out right now sitting on the shelf.
And if the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo does well in the US with the American remake, I might just have to kill myself. WTF does that say about us? gawd, we’re a bunch of fucking retards.
Rather than repeat things, there are some worthwhile comments on this here
call me cynical, but Let The Right One In felt a lot closer to earlier M.Night films than it did to Berman or whatever other art director it was compared to by many on here and elsewhere.
it was good but it didn’t really hit me.
I’m waiting for LET THE RIGHT ME IN.
yeah…americans remaking swedish books/movies…it doesn’t work out correctly…ie the laughing policeman (1973)…at least the wallander shows on pbs still take place in sweden.
Thats the way it is in Hollywood now. I’m sure people are gonna see this too just because it says: “from the director of cloverfield”. It sucks that the general public won’t most likely watch the original.
from the director of cloverfield? you mean there are gonna be monsters and robots and big giant explosions??
-It sucks that the general public won’t most likely watch the original-
That’s what happens when you sell the remake rights before anyone but festival audiences have had a chance to see it. Alfredson reportedly thinks the Swedish film/TV industry sucks, so he’s off the do a British production of John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
By the way, Sonja, the shorter title did not originate with the remake of the film, but with the publishing of an English translation of the source novel. The publisher thought the title was too long.
whaaaaaatttt? but it’s from a smith’s song!!! ugh!
I guess maybe publishing-types are big fans of the special edition of Viva Hate (?)
Heh. It’s hard to complain too much about an unnecessary remake of Alfredson’s movie if he’s going to do the exact same sort of thing with Tinker, Tailor.
Yeah . . . I feel sort of the same about the film as Joks does. It seemed to me pretty clearly a Hollywood audition reel.
That might be all for the good. Although I am fairly ambivalent about the larger artistic merits of Let the Right One In, I think Alfredson shows some real talent, so if his desire is to bring that to bigger budget productions, then it might be a good thing for him and Hollywood. The best success stories from other countries in dealing with the Hollywood machine it seems are those that seem to want to work within the system and improve it in subtle rather than large ways, and aren’t concerned so much with trying to make Hollywood fit their own personal system or vision. A lot of directors that have been asked to come over seem to not work out for the very reason they were asked, which is they have too much of a distinctive style or too personal viewpoint that can’t be maintained in the different environment of the Hollywood studio system. It’s directors like Verhoeven that are willing to adapt to the requirements system, even if they mock it, that seem to fit in more comfortably and produce good movies, albeit ones that may not be as dynamic or original as their earlier work.
I read that Reeves did not want to remake the film, he himself said it shouldn’t be remade. But somehow they got to him…as long as there are some different scenes and a different “tone” I’m not really worried about anything. That way I can tell people “you still haven’t seen the original. Its much better”
I like Reeves though
I’m just glad Hollywood hasn’t remade anything from my country…………………………so far….
Greg X, good point. though I enjoyed My Blueberry Nights I think WKW had very little care in Hollywood and their system or vision…the film was both a commercial flop and a visionary failure. He didnt introduce anything new to his repertoire (as he has done ever since Days of Being Wild) and wasted a good opportunity to bring attention to his Hong Kong films.
Yeah, Greg, I’m not fundamentally opposed to foreign directors coming to Hollywood (or the UK) to try their hand at working within that system. It seemed to me that someone like Erik Skjoldbjærg should have made a very good Hollywood director, but I seem to have been the only one who liked Prozac Nation. Woo seemed like another one who should have been a natural fit with all his hyperbole and kineticism. Meirelles I still have high hopes for in Hollywood.
Woo is interesting in that I think his visual style was well suited for Hollywood, but his thematic concerns didn’t fit in nearly so well. His Mission Impossible and Face/Off, I think fit in quite well with his older films, but when those ideas are being delivered in large budget films with big name actors, they somehow didn’t seem to suit most audiences, even those that liked his films previously. I have to wonder if that is due to the exoticism being gone or the feeling of being too familiar with those that he was working with to take them as seriously as his older films. I mean Face/Off is as Wooey as Woo can be, but having Cage and Travolta do it put some people right/off due to, I think, the “unbelievability” of the scenario.
I think you were the only one who saw, Prozac Nation, Matt. Nicolas Winding Refn’s Fear X is also worth watching. Not entirely successful but interesting. Some directors are far less suited to going to Hollywood than others.
Despite the superficial name changes, Let Me In looks pretty close to the original though, no? Or have there been big modifications? From what I saw in the trailer, it looked almost a scene for scene remake.
I think part of the Prozac Nation problem was that Wurtzel had become something of a pariah in certain parts of the media by the time the film was made, and was almost forgotten or ignored by the time the movie finally got released. It also certainly didn’t fit with any notion of a “Hollywood” movie given it was driven by inaction as much as action, and couldn’t even really be spun as a prestige film given the cast and story. It was something of a bad choice for a path to success no matter what its merits may have been.
well shouldn’t someone go see the movie to actually test this hypothesis to see if ari’s theory is correct? i’m definitely not going to see it.
(Completely useless attempt, but here goes).
So, my friend Sergio, he met the director of Let Me In . Said, “Say, you’re the guy that’s remaking _Let the Right One In.” Director sez, " Sigh Nooo, I’ve been trying to get Let Me In together for a while, it’s not a remake, it’s an adaptation of the same book. The Swedish one managed to get made first, but I still want to make it the way I saw it when reading the novel."
It’s also worth noting that Let Me In was shot in New Mexico, a decidedly not Sweden-looking place, if I may say so myself. The Swedish movie had a very huge focus on the snowy landscape, the frigid isolation, the crackling ice beneath the characters’ feet…. on that note alone I do not think that the American film can really even try to be the same thing or “remake it”, but only take the story and go its own way.
That said, I think that Let the Right One In was some massively refreshing awesomeness of horror cinema and I do not necessarily think that Let Me In is going to be good or even comparable. But I think the point I’m trying to make is, it’s not only not going to be comparable, it’s not striving to be. It’s not trying to be Let the Right One In , it’s trying to be Let Me In .
(Enter nobody caring and still chalking it up to American greed here).
—PolarisDiB
Yeah, Ari, the producers were originally saying that they were going to make a film that was “closer to the novel” than the original film, but it seems to have ended up pretty flush with Alfredson’s version.
I still haven’t seen Fear X. I need to bump it up in my queue.
Sonja
Did I miss something? when did the americans decide to remake this movie and completely change everything? even the names are not correct! wtf! the title isn’t even correct. BAH!
who’s planning on seeing this trainwreck?