Basically that’s what they did with Ocean’s 11. The original Frank Sinatra version was shit. But it was a good idea, a crew of super cool dudes get together to rob a casino.
They remade it and it was very successful.
The Thing has a similar origin.
But it’s rare things like that happen because Hollywood execs usually need an existing property with good numbers to greenlight a movie.
For a second I thought you were trying to say that The Thing (2011) is a better remake of The Thing (1982), but then I remembered that 1951 version exists.
Funn enough Ocean’s X is also the opposite example since they didn’t stop just making more of the same.
Original thing was pretty good.
The one from the 50’s, good as it was for the time, is now overshadowed in the popular consciousness by Carpenter’s. Ironically, it seems like the former did quite well at the box office whereas the latter bombed and only over time has it grown in popularity.
I would consider Carpenter’s to be a sequel of sorts. It takes up after another crew has been already destroyed by The Thing. It gels well with the idea that the 50s movie is about post WWII paranoia (kill everything that looks different on sight). While Carpenter’s, while being a bit closer to the source material, is about cold war paranoia. Everything, even those who you trust the most, could be a shapeshifting monster. The movie even ends on a cold quiet unresolved and presumably eternal face-off.
Carpenter’s is closer to the original short story, too.
Ghost in the Shell was an unnecessary remake of a fantastic original animation that was improved by the series that followed it. There was never a need for a live action version.
Ghost in the shell was decent. They paid incredible attention to the art direction and casting ranged from perfect to acceptable. I can’t remember a single scene but their rendering of 90s retrofuturism sincerely blew me away. Maybe modern cinema has tainted me but it really wasn’t terrible.
It could have been an acceptably decent movie if it wasn’t trying to be part of the GitS franchise. As a GitS fan I hated it, but I wonder if it could have been more fun to watch if I was unfamiliar with the series. I remember thinking the same with a lot of movies based on books I hadn’t read like Percy Jackson, the movie became a lot worse after reading the source material.
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Absolutely, there’s a lot of stories that would have been better received as their own original IPs. Unfortunately, it’s a lot safer to make a sequel so you can count on sales from the pre-established fanbase. Another good example I always go to is the Thief video games, where I got my username. The reboot dramatically changed all the mechanics and ditched a lot of what made the first games so engaging, very little aside from a few proper nouns has any resemblance to the original. It could have been a decent stealth game if it sold itself on its own merits(it certainly wasn’t terrible) but as a Thief game, it justifiably got fans upset.
I loved that movie! I thought they did an excellent job, and it gave us more cyberpunk content, which there is not nearly enough of.
tbh I would have loved a well done live action version of GITS. With a Japanese cast, international subtitles, and a new offshoot plot that expands upon the original film. Bring in a remastered version of the original animation’s impeccable soundtrack. I absolutely think it’s possible, but it’s far outside the realm of “make cheap movie make big money” that the majority of film studios operate on today
You mean take actual risks???
No, none of that for my profit margin
Movies are being made to mitigate risk. Take a polar thing and just do that again, that’ll suck people in right???
God forbid they do something new and interesting with the material, that can’t possibly work.
The only time I can think of where a remake ended up working out was with the recent planet of the apes movies. Where, you know, they took the premise and did something new and interesting with it. But even THEN, there was a completely different remake that failed to innovate outside of the last few minutes and those were confusing are best.
But the remake doesnt make much money tho
All that Disney live action remake bullshit somehow makes money otherwise they would have stopped.
That said, I’m eagerly awaiting Netflix’s take on ATLA
The superhero movies would say otherwise.
They make the studios a lot of money with a very similar formula.
I was talking about disney remakes. Anyway what are the super hero remakes ?
I know the Disney remakes are considered a flop by Disney standards but I thought they still pulled in a big chunk of change?
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I mean, shit on production companies all you want… but if I was selling a product and people were finding easier and easier ways to simply copy it for free then I might get a bit… risk averse…
Word War Z.
Have it actually be a mocumentary with interviews. Once people start talking switch to the scene. It is a collection of short stories. Would be fun.
Or make it a mini series.
Personally I thought the book was good, but I don’t think an adaptation to a movie format is the right move. Maybe a mini series would be best.
Hmm, miniseries could work. I stopped reading the book because it felt like a screenplay. (And the movie is unrelated garbage.)
Yeah I’ve never read the book but I’ve heard the movie was literally just a generic zombie movie that had nothing to do with the book.
It wasn’t even that it was a generic zombie movie, it was a particularly shit zombie movie.
Nah, it was fine for people that didn’t read the book.
Didn’t read the books and can’t remember much of the movie but one thing.
The way the zombies moved as a fluid.
That was the best depiction of horde behavior I have seen. The thought that they climb over obstacles by climbing over each other was brilliant and scary.
The zombie ant hills are burned into my mind as well. So fucked up and terrifying.
I only read the book afterwards. Leaving the theater I thought, “Wow, what a shit zombie movie, what’s with the zombie tower. Anyways I want ice cream.”
After reading the book I thought, “Wow, this makes the movie seem even worse than I thought, adapting this would’ve been way better. They didn’t even follow the same in-universe rules!”
I thought it was a fantastic zombie movie! I just need to make sure to not read the book now. lol
Nah, the book is great, definitely one the best zombie fictions out there. It even spawned a pretty great fan fiction that addressed one of the hanging plot threads.
I didn’t buy everything from it but it’s best to just consider them as separate properties and judge them on their own merits.
District 9 with Zombies.
Please God yes
There definitely wasn’t nearly enough of people talking switch in the movie.
Virtually every single bad adaptation can be directly traced back to studio interference.
Movies like LoTR only happened because the studios thought it would be a colossal flop, and so left the directors and producers alone.
If you want great movies, the studios need to leave the producers and directors the hell alone.
Counterpoint: Game of Thrones. The studio would have been happy to give them a few more seasons to develop a better ending. It’s the creators who gave up and phoned in the ending we got.
George RR Martin is the creator of game of thrones, not the show runners.
Oh wait, the original example was lotr, which also was based on books lol. Nevermind me, carry on.
LOTR was based on a trilogy that was finished looking before the movies were made. Starting a TV show and hoping the source material would be finished in time for the end was a, um, bold move.
Even ignoring that, Martin was helping them continue it without a book to base the story on and was pushing for 10 sessions, the show creators wanted to move on and start working on another project instead and we got what we got…
And they promptly lost said projects.
Good
Got it
George RR Martin was a consultant on seasons that had not yet been written as books. He told the writers where he wanted the story in the books to go, and where to take the story in the show. I doubt it’s true, but a lot of fans were speculating that he made the end deliberately bad (Arya kills the Night King, Denarys goes crazy, Cersei and Kingslayer reunite to be crushed by the collapsing Red Keep, Bran becomes king) because he wanted the show to be worse than his next two books. @
My head Canon is that that was the actual ending he planned and because it flopped so hard the last books will never happen
No man, that specific ending can be made to work. But you need good writers, several more seasons and good taste to do that. Martin gave DandD a finish line, but they had to figure the trail and make the run. They just suck at that so bad that it almost killed their entire careers, got them dropped from the job they had lined up and poisoned everything they touched for 5 years. Netflix just gave them the “3 body problem” adaptation. I’m sure it will be good because the thing is already written, and they are usually good at coloring between the lines. Just not good at coming up with new original or creative stuff.
He said in interviews that he was pushing for 10 seasons, I don’t think he intentionally fucked up, I think he did what he could with two showrunners that were tired of doing their job and couldn’t accept that someone else would take the reins.
The only problem is that GoT didn’t have any more source material, as Martin didn’t finish the story (think he still hasn’t?).
The creators were in constant touch with GRRM. They knew where he intends to go. The ending we got could be done better if things were fleshed out over a longer period of time.
You’re assuming GRRM knows where he intends to go. Or more importantly, how he intends to get there.
We know he has a specific destination in mind. It’s well established that he had an outline for what was originally a trilogy. It’s why the first book is heavier with hints of (for example) Jon’s lineage than the others.
How to get there has clearly changed, and GRRM might not know how anymore.
Also, low bugets makes the directors extra creative. They need to make the most of what they have. In my opinion, a well written plot trumps special effects every time.
For all the bad you hear about studios though, there are plenty of stories of movies that were saved by the studio because the director was off the rails and had no idea what to do. Here’s a list with a couple:
https://collider.com/10-movies-that-were-improved-by-studio-interference/#easy-rider-1969
Most of these are a stretch. They didn’t like psycho so they underfunded it. Hitchcock finances the movie, takes a pay cut along with the actors. Somehow this is positive interference…
Writing is the only thing that matters. I point to “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Amsterdam”. The latter of which had 4x the budget.
I kinda disagree with the writing being the ultimate decider on what makes a good story) movie. Directing and editing matters just as much, if not more so. Those two brings to life what is written on the page because sometimes it’s hard to imagine what is described on the page.
Good writing, directing and editing are all necessary, and are not on their own sufficient.
Because a bad effect, actor, or shot can only ruin a moment. A bad script ruins the story.
I quite enjoyed amsterdam. It’s not better than everything everywhere but it’s still a good film
Well to be fair I had way too much weed beforehand but like. Ehhhhh. It felt like a circlejerk for random famous people. Also Taylor Swift cannot act.
Why not just read a book, then?
LotR also is going to stand out from now on, because at the time it was made, CGI was ok, and getting to be good, but they didn’t trust it for crowds yet. SW Ep. 1 came out at about the same time, and the CGI crowds don’t hold up. LotR had PJ directing and he wanted to use as many real people and real sets as he could, so that when they had to use CGI it wouldn’t be noticable. You can see the difference looking at The Hobbit movies.
I can’t remember who it was, but there was a producer credited for greenlighting several classic movies in the 1960s and 70s. We’re lucky if a producer or executive is good at spotting what makes a good story and have dependable crew to make it.
I’d go one further. Do longer run remakes for good source material that ended up with a bad movie.
Golden Compass Movie = bad
His Dark Materials limited series = fantastic
Yeah, there are so many movies based on media with a deeper and richer source material than can be presented well in a 2-hour movie format. For example, the Ender’s Game novel spent a significant amount of time on the progression of Ender’s career at the Battle School and the movie only spent as much time as was necessary to show that he was good. A TV series could tell the parallel story of Ender’s Shadow as well in the same season.
A counterexample is that sometimes the TV series may over milk the source material and drag out which should be a shorter story. The first season of American Gods was awesome, but they kept dragging out the series way too much by stretching out the stories of minor characters and fumbled in the end.
Just as long as we avoid giving money to Orson Scott Card…
We just have to wait for him to die first.
Works for me.
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Do longer run remakes for good source material that ended up with a bad movie.
I immediately thought The Hobbit for some reason.
God that trilogy was so painful.
I immediately thought The Hobbit for some reason.
God that trilogy was so painful.
That doesn’t count. There was a bunch of stuff in those movie that never happened in the source material.
I think remaking it with less.
I even watched the fan edit, and it was still too much.
Which one? I’m a fan of the cardinal cut, but that still ends up being over three and half hour long.
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We have AI text to video, we can fix this, we have the technology!
Oh good to hear, I just acquired his dark materials, but haven’t seen it yet.
There are so many poorly executed great ideas. I’d love to see them redone, whatever format (tho complex stuff does tend to be better serialized… limitedly - end the story when it’s done, not when people give up on it because it fell apart)
They have. Dune would be one example.
Shut your pie hole! The original with Sting was amazing!
It was a solid B movie until the end. How do you decide to cut the fact that Paul becomes the emperor from the movie completely?
Now I have to watch it again, I swore he did become emperor in the end.
Irulan is escorted away before the final scene and never comes back.
How do you put random bs like pugs and heart plugs in the greatest space epic of all times? I respect Lynch for his other work but his Dune is a fucking joke from my point of view.
Lol
I will die on this hill I legitimately like Mr. Mayor and Picard better than the new one. It took me like 4 tries to get through the new one it is so slow and full of itself. I’m not sure what the line is for me between good slow and being a slog but the new one is so hard for me to pay attention to. I’d rather scroll through spaceship still shots with some space music in the background
It’s adapting a book where sometimes a chapter is two people meeting in a room and having a short conversation, and you get to know what one person is thinking about the conversation at length, and then the same thing from the other person’s perspective, and then they leave the room.
I couldn’t get through the book either… Like I said I’m not sure what that line is for me because I’ve definitely watched and read slow things but Dune can be so off the charts slow it hurts me. LotR is slow and half the movies are spent watching people running through fields but both the books and movies captured my attention (I know this is an imperfect comparison just first example I thought of). I’m excited you all can enjoy the new movie but I’ll take the old one
To be fair, I’ve read the books and love the newest film, but I can’t read or watch LotR because to me, they drag on and on while moving nothing.
I read the Hobbit, flew through it one of my favourites. I had to force myself to finish fellowship. It’s so obtuse. Dube however. One again flew threw it, even though it’s massive. I just could not put it down. Genuinely became my all time favourite book.
The pacing of the new film is great. But I’m the kind of person who wants to stay and linger on aspects of the world and really get to know what’s going on. So I like “slow” films like Blade Runner 2049. But to me they never feel slow. The film ends and im still there wanting more, watching the credits to the very end just to eke out every little bit out of the film.
I’m a big Dune fan but I was miffed at how unsatisfying and clipped the first movie was. It’s not a complete movie on its own, it really needed to finish with the acceptance ritual of the Fremen and then that would allow movie 2 to start by playing with what happens during the time jump in the latter half of the book. I loved the ambience and the attention to detail in the movie, but tons of the little details lost their meaning and their payoffs without more context. (The bullfighter metaphor, the palms for example). I would have preferred the details to be cut or saved for an “extended version” rather than just be used as Easter eggs. I’m really counting on movie 2 to bring it all together so I can just treat it like one epic movie.
Yeah, I do think it was a weird decision ended it where they did. To me it feels like they started the first act of the next movie but only got part way through. I feel like they must’ve done it purely just so they can fit more in the next one. Cause a more satisfying ending would be ending it where “Book 1” ended in the book and go all out on the vision scene. The vision scene in the movie was a big let down for me. I still love the movie overall, but that’s the thing I was so excited to see all the way through and then it’s just a standard flash forward sequence.
The new movie is not slow compared to the book though, in fact it feels like the book shown in a time lapse.
This is how we’ve ended up with 17 different attempts at the fucking Fantastic Four. Each one is shit, and EVERY director thinks that they’ve got the chops to make it work.
Hollywood…please…fucking stop. It doesn’t get better. It’s a cursed movie. Stop fucking trying to get the Fantastic Four to work. Just…put the poor thing out of its misery and let it sleep peacefully.
Ehh, some of them were to maintain Fox license from Marvel. They were contractually obligated to put out a movie every X years or they lost control of it. Mostly they just wanted something cheap or weird out of the door.
Now that Fox entertainment and Marvel have been gobbled by the mouse, it may not be a problem anymore. They sure got Reid Richards right in that doc strange film, even if he got obliterated on alternative earth.
I still don’t think he looked right, but I think it’s impossible to make him look right.
Krasinski played him with the right attitude of earned arrogance to my eye. The stretching power looked fine enough too, but yeah, that’s always going to look weird in live action.
Krasinski was fine, and I didn’t mind the way she spaghettified him, because hex magic does not obey physics. The problem always is that Mr. Fantastic’s powers aren’t magic, he’s just able to elongate and stretch himself. It’s barely shown in the movie, as the only time he uses his power is to jump into the frame and reach out to try to grab Wanda after she murders Black Bolt. It is the briefest moment and yet it still doesn’t look right, because his arm doesn’t thin as it stretches out, and he leans forward when physics would suggest he lean back to counterbalance the shift in his center of gravity.
Every movie featuring Reed Richards has gone out of the way to avoid showing his powers.
The best example I can think of was that one ridiculous scene where Ioan Gruffud fought The Thing, and you can tell they cropped half the fight out of the frame to avoid showing more terrible CGI. Like you just see their heads bobbing around while their arms fight each other off camera, and then it awkwardly pans out to reveal Reed has Ben all tied up.
You know what would be a great Fantastic Four movie? A tongue-in-cheek film set in the 60s based on the original comics.
Oh yeah, go full 1960’s Batman Camp. Not sure who could play Mr. Fantastic, but whomever is picked should be told to emulate Adam West’s complete deadpan delivery.
Exactly! I would love that so much!
Hollywood: “Wellll ok…but we’ll need to do just one more to
earn more proficlose out the story”
Your aim: logic.
Their aim: capitalism.
:-(
I don’t care what anyone says, the worldbuilding that was done for the 1990s Super Mario Bros. movie was awesome and if the movie had lived up to it, it would have been great.
Remember that when the movie was made, Mario was a plumber that jumped on mushrooms and turtles to save a princess and he had a brother named Luigi that did the same thing. That was pretty much the entire storyline they had to work with.
Video game movies in the 90s were always shit.
We had studios seeing green with franchises that had significant canon (remember, SMB, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat all had significant backstory in their manuals, but writers/directors who knew nothing of them except that it was something their kids/nephews were obsessed with.
MK was the only one to actually use a good portion of that canon, and it was by far the best of the three. Though the soundtrack did a lot of work for it too.
Super Mario Brothers would’ve been a fun movie if they didn’t try to tie it in with the game. It wasn’t canonical at all, and 8-year-old JasonDJ was quick to realize it.
I’m more optimistic of video game movies now, now that the Gen X and Millenials that were molded by video games are in the directors chairs, and these are now major franchises with significant investment.
Super Mario Brothers would’ve been a fun movie if they didn’t try to tie it in with the game.
That is very likely, although I still think it would have had big problems. John Leguizamo isn’t exactly a terrific actor. Funny guy, not a great actor.
But the worldbuilding they put into it was pretty damn impressive and they had some great ideas. The whole parallel world where dinosaurs didn’t die out but evolved into what look like humans but aren’t quite idea was pretty cool. Or at least I thought so.
John Leguizamo isn’t exactly a terrific actor
Luigi isn’t exactly a deep charter to act out. You don’t need a Shakespearian actor for a character whose main line is “whaaaaaaaa!”
Ayeee Leguizamo is technically a Shakespearean actor lol. That gun was pretty lit in the adaptation.
Haha true and also true!
Oh, I agree with you there.
I’m just saying there was more to work with. Super Mario World was out by 1993 and all the previous SMB games were available with all their manual content. Mario had been a plumber, a doctor, a race-car driver, an athlete, a construction worker, a teacher, a painter, and a dinosaur tamer by that point.
Okay, fair enough. I wasn’t very steeped in Nintendo lore at the time, I just played the games. I’m guessing that was the norm.
The movie was definitely a big mess. Most of the people involved were very talented, but it suffered from severe executive meddling. What interests me most about it is that it was directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, who brought the same cyberpunk aesthetic to the film as they brought to Max Headroom. It was what got them brought in to direct the film in the first place. If you haven’t seen Max Headroom, both the British and U.S. versions (which Morton and Jankel both were responsible for) are really good.
Anyway, the script they wanted to direct was more adult and not intended for kids and definitely would not have followed what Nintendo had in mind for Mario et al, but that script apparently was what convinced Bob Hoskins and Fiona Shaw to do the movie. I’d love to have read it. Then the producers brought in Ed Solomon to do a two-week rewrite and give it a lighter tone. Solomon is a good writer. He co-wrote the Bill and Ted movies amongst others. But two weeks was not enough time and they had the wrong directors in place to do a movie with a lighter tone.
Would Nintendo fans have enjoyed the movie they wanted to make? Probably not. But I think it also might have been a good movie as opposed to the end result.
You can read about the mess in this article- https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/mar/22/super-mario-bros-movie-killing-fields-chariots-fire-video-game
Looking at you, Dark Tower
I can’t believe we’re in the universe where there’s a Dark Tower film with the incredibly talented Idris Elba and it was so stupidly bad.
Does he play Susannah?
No, he plays Jake.
I heard a rumor that Stephen King gave Mike Flanagan the greenlight to do Dark Tower. Here’s to hoping. That’s one of the few things I want to see as a show rather than movies
It is not a rumor.
https://ew.com/tv/mike-flanagan-dark-tower-stephen-king-adaptation-update/
the director envisioned as a five season TV series, followed by two stand-alone features.
Wow that’s not what I was expecting at all.
Imagine the dude doing the Dune movies making Dark Tower.
I’m dreaming. But it’s a wicked cool dream.
Should be a TV series. Start with The Gunslinger and work your way through the books, but also split up Wizard and Glass into small chunks to use as episode openers so there isn’t suddenly a season long flashback with different actors.
Funnily enough the movie they made was supposed to be the intro to a TV show.
Trying to expand Gunslinger to bring in more backstory (and reeeeeeeally messing up the backstory) killed both the movie and the planned TV show. It’s crazy how well their plan could’ve worked if they hadn’t tried to fold too much into the “prequel”. Dark Tower even has the built-in “out” that this is a different turn of the wheel.
They were going to run out of material way too fast the way they did the movie. They condensed The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, Wolves of the Calla, and Song of Susannah into ninety minutes. They could have done the rest of Drawing, but then that just leaves The Waste Lands, The Dark Tower, and an excessively long flashback with Wizard and Glass. They would have needed to just not adapt more book content in order to have more than a couple seasons of material.
yeah it can’t be a movie. Unfortunately my favorite character will never be accurately adapted and will lose her badassery. Better we wait for another time
THERE’S A MOVIE!!?
Yo, I am reading that series!
Don’t get hyped, it’s mid at best.
Awh
Battlestar Galactica is a great example of something mediocre that was made great by a remake, but also something that might be greatly improved by another remake because the second half was so flawed.
Whoever said, lets do whip zooms and shaky cams with tribalesque war drums for space combat was a genius. First two seasons of the show the feeling of dread was so good.
So good. So damn good.
Then they had a weird second half, an ending that explained nothing and left so many plots open and closed with a movie that was called “the plan” that revealed the cylons had anything but. I’m still mad just thinking about it.
Stanley Kubrick never really had an original screenplay. His movies are based from an already existing story. He reasoned that it’s better to adapt a story that is good but not considered classic, because it means there is plenty to improve from such story.
I see you’re emulating Kubrick’s idea 😂
That just blew my mind.
Like Dune? Like Dune.
Nah the original was great. Idk but old shitty VFX do something for me.
In my eyes, SFX still stands the test of time. Sure you can see CGI is shit, but models and custom made suits just scream style and dystopian nightmare. I love it and still watch it from time to time. Didn’t watch the new one as it ads nothing to the story, at least from what I heard.
Indeed the new one, in attempting to the faithful to the book, but minus any of the critical inner monologue, just manages to be bland on a big budget.
I love the campy 84 version, even if it departed wildly from the text. The characters were colourful, over the top, memorable. Current version everyone’s a slightly different dark haired man in a dusty suit. Give me some dated CGI and theatrics any day.
Give me some dated CGI and theatrics any day.
Same. I still happily rewatch Sci-Fi movies from 80s and 90s. Those were the days. Today CGI has advanced much but it seems directing and world building have taken a back seat.
Ha ha I remember when fans would slit your throat for saying “Sci-Fi” instead of “SF”.
I liked the Lynch version.
Captain Picard and Sting!
David Lynch didn’t even like the Lynch version
The visuals were great, and the film has a hypnotic fever dream feel to it. Not sure it can be called a"good" film, but it’s extremy entertaining.
The new film has more gravitas and is much more loyal to the book, but it also doesn’t add anything to the book and is just less interesting to watch (for me it was down right boring). I think it over-corrected the Lynch version.
Every Lynch movie feels like a fever dream, favorite director of all time for me
Or Dredd.
Watching clips of that movie today. So good!
I decided a few years ago to simply stop watching anything that was a remake, reboot, update or ‘franchise’. Too many of them have used nostalgia and familiarity to compensate for shortcomings in storytelling. Even more cynically, leveraging intellectual property is all about money and business, whereas for me storytelling and art are about the human experience and spirit, so it’s no wonder these IP films are usually so poor.
It’s also that Disney own almost all the known IP, and will roll it out time and again as a safe bet with predictable returns - art by focus group simply isn’t a thing.
Capitalism, baybee!
Is this the innovation I was promised?
