Fucking With Greatness.

[Telemediocrity]

Remakes of classic movies almost never end well.  Especially when the classic in question - My Sassy Girl, quite possibly the greatest romantic comedy of all time - only came out 5 years ago and is still wildly popular on DVD.  But just like with Ringu, Shall We Dance?, and so many others, someone in a suit somewhere decided that the lack of white stars in a popular movie needed to be rectified.

End result?

We're getting an American remake of My Sassy Girl next year.

If I were Jeon Ji-Hyeon, I'd be pissed off.  They already remade one of her recent films, Il Mare, into the forgettable The Lake House.  Given that they replaced her male lead with Keanu fucking Reeves, it's anybody's guess who they'll put into this one.

Do yourself a favor; if you liked My Sassy Girl, avoid this remake like the plague, and track down the lesser-seen but still good prequel, Windstruck, instead.

[Kenrick]

Last years remake of Wonka.  Simply. Did not. Need. To be made.

[CmdrSlack]

Last years remake of Wonka.  Simply. Did not. Need. To be made.

I thought it wasn't technically a remake, but a reinterpretation of the novel.  Granted, there were still singing and dancing Oompa Loompas, but yeah, that's the talk I heard about it when it came out.

[Sky]

I thought the original Ring was pretty good. Decent cinematography. The Ring 2 sucked.

Wonka? The girl and I were stunned in a perpetual state of wtf (though we only watched about fifteen minutes of it on HBO). The Oompa Loompa songs were atrocious, and the rest was completely unnecessary.

[Kenrick]

Last years remake of Wonka.  Simply. Did not. Need. To be made.

I thought it wasn't technically a remake, but a reinterpretation of the novel.  Granted, there were still singing and dancing Oompa Loompas, but yeah, that's the talk I heard about it when it came out.

It's been on HBO the last week or two... I just to watch it every time it's on but it's just... painful.

[HaemishM]

The "re-imagining" of Willy Wonka is a crime against humanity. It is cinematic VD. Tim Burton needs to be flayed, for this, Sleepy Hollow and that shittastic Planet of the Apes. How do you fuck up Planet of the Apes?

[bhodi]

The fog.

The remake was brain hemmoragingly bad.

[stray]

I'm not looking forward to the Oldboy remake.

Definitely not looking forward to the Sunset Blvd remake.

Then again, some remakes of classics can be pretty good (Cape Fear, Manchurian Candidate, Dawn of the Dead, the Fly).

[Raging Turtle]

This remake has been in the works for more than a year.  Sassy Girl was a good (I don't know about great) movie, but a subtitled movie is almost never going to be a big market success here.  Somebody thinks they can make a lot of money remaking it for American audiences and they're probably right.   

[WindupAtheist]

Tim Burton had a couple good movies back in the eighties, but otherwise pretty much just sucks ass.

[Nebu]

I liked the Wonka remake.  It was more contemporary than they older version and had a very different feel to it.  Besides, I always thought the Wonka in the book was a pedophile anyway.  My daughter also prefered it to the Gene Wilder version. 

I agree with the theme of the thread though.  Most remakes just can't hold a candle to the original. The remake of Sabrina was horrible.  I think meet Joe Black was a reasonable exception.  I enjoyed the remake more than the original.

[Morfiend]

I only recently saw the Wonnka remake, and I enjoyed it. Having never been a fan of the old movie, and having not seen it for probably 15 years or so, this was basically like watching a new movie. Some of it was not so great, but over all it kept me entertained for 2 hours.

How about the Godzilla remake. Yuk.

[HaemishM]

The Godzilla remake was art compared to the anal wart that the Wonka or Apes remakes were.

[Fabricated]

Seth MacFarlane put it best when talking about remakes:

"Maybe they'll just put Johnny Depp in it and call it gold like they've done with every other fucking classic movie out there."

[Riggswolfe]

Put me in the (apparently) small group that liked the Wonka remake. Depp's Willy Wonka was creepy and came across as mildly dangerous and borderline perverted which fits my general impression from the book much better than Gene Wilder's version. Oddly I like the Wilder version better though. I chalk it up to nostalgia.

As for Planet of the Apes, I never thought the original was all that great so wasn't shocked that the remake was so-so. Godzilla should never have been made most likely.

The Fly, as someone else mentioned earlier, is a damn good remake and stands as an example that it can be done right sometimes.

[Morfiend]

Godzilla could have been decent if it had been "Random Movie About Large Creature in City" and not tried to attach it to the Godzilla name. Specially since the monster didnt look anything like Godzilla.

[Arnold]

The Fly, as someone else mentioned earlier, is a damn good remake and stands as an example that it can be done right sometimes.

As is "The Thing".

[Jimbo]

Man, I hope no one does B.O.C. version of the song over, one of the best songs by them.

There have been 8 versions of the mighty lizard, plus three more if you count the cartoon, zilla (1998), and the Marvel comic.  Trying to keep up with the big Z in all his films is a headache.

[Merusk]

Put me in the (apparently) small group that liked the Wonka remake. Depp's Willy Wonka was creepy and came across as mildly dangerous and borderline perverted which fits my general impression from the book much better than Gene Wilder's version. Oddly I like the Wilder version better though. I chalk it up to nostalgia.

The Depp version was good, you're not in a small group.  You're just stuck on a forum with a bunch of geeks.  Geeks hate change. Oddly, there was a comic about just this bit yesterday. Enjoy. Apply it to anything that gets bitched about in the 70-80's pop culture revival. 

Bitching that a remake of a movie (for kids!) that somehow raped your childhood is an old and tired act.  Hyperbole^10 since at this point in the thread the CGI Godzilla has been called 'art' to prove a point, despite being a shitty movie, not just a 'rape' of Godzilla.

[Telemediocrity]

They're remaking Oldboy?  Sigh.

Why is it that the only subtitled movies anyone will watch is guys with swords killing shit?  Reading ain't hard, and My Sassy Girl seems to be doing pretty good in America in DVD sales/rentals at least.

Apparently they're going to set this version in the Midwest, with Elisha Cuthbert as The Girl.  I sense a disaster in the making.  How can they do the hotel scenes when you're not in a locale with love hotels?


Credit where credit is due, though; much as I liked the original Willy Wonka, I think the remake is better.

[NowhereMan]

While I haven't seen it yet I have bad feelings about the Wicker Man remake. Somehow I don't think a Nic Cage vehicle is really going to improve on the original in any way (and that's considering making it contemporary a good thing).

[Johny Cee]

While I haven't seen it yet I have bad feelings about the Wicker Man remake. Somehow I don't think a Nic Cage vehicle is really going to improve on the original in any way (and that's considering making it contemporary a good thing).

Ugh.  I have reservations about it because Neil Labutte is the director/screenwriter,  and I enjoy bad horror movies.  He likes to fuck with his audience just because he can.

Remakes aren't all bad.  The Thing and A Fistfull of Dollars (remake of Yojimbo).  There are some things just begging for a good remake,  like Omega Man (based on I am Legend, which is a badass book) which could be amazing with a good budget and cast.

The problem is that they don't take enough of the good ideas that had bad implementations and rework them.

[Yegolev]

Godzilla might have not sucked if there was more of what Godzilla normally does in it: smash a city and/or fight a giant space creature.  Instead I get a weak King-Kong-is-a-lizard... and Godzooki.  Fucking Godzooki.  I still cringe to think that it was so bad as to resurrect Toho from retirement in order to rectify the space-time continuum.

I'm sure Planet of the Apes was totally awesome when it was released.  I saw it during the 21st century, however, and it's OK.  Not awesome.  You know what sucks ape balls?  Beneath the Planet of the Apes.  Balls.

I enjoyed the recent Time Machine, as well as the Count of Monte Cristo.

Edit for picture of Godzooki hate.

[Margalis]

There are good remakes, just people don't realize they are remakes because the originals aren't too good or popular. Just like book to move conversions - there are good one but usually not for the books you've actually read.

That's really the better strategy from an artistic standpoint - remake something that was neat but flawed. Remaking Planet of the Apes into a shitty action-fest with Marky Mark? Why bother?

[Jeff Kelly]

Why do american studios even have the urge to badly remake perfectly good movies? I mean why for example remake something as stunningly good as "Der Himmel über Berlin" and, adding insult to injury, even cast fucking Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan as leads? Why remake "flight of the phoenix" or "Oldboy" or "Poseidon Inferno" or one of all the other perfectly good films? Just dub them for christs sake.

I once saw an interview with the director of "city of angels" who basically said that they were remaking such films in order to dumb them down for the american audience because they "wouldn't get" those pesky foreign films otherwise. So every time such a film is released the american public is basically insulted by one of the film studios because they think people are too stupid to enjoy foreign films.

To get back to the topic. Most, if not all, remakes are very much superfluous and should be avoided like the plague especially if you have any kind of emotional attachment to the original.

[Ironwood]

Remakes are mostly bad.

However, I liked Burtons Wonka.  Mostly because it was about seventeen thousand times more faithful to the book and I liked what they did to Wonka.  He was never, ever, ever sane nor safe.

You get that the book is about torturing kids, right ?

[Wolf]

What the hell is going on in this thread?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was awesome, as was Corpse Bride. Tim Burton has a bunch of really, really good movies. You people are all crazy   

edit: ok finished reading the thread. There are sane people here after all.

[Telemediocrity]

Update: I haven't actually seen Il Mare, but I met a girl today who has and she told me it was a million times better than that Keanu Reeves shit.

[Riggswolfe]

The Fly, as someone else mentioned earlier, is a damn good remake and stands as an example that it can be done right sometimes.

As is "The Thing".

I forgot The Thing? Damn. I must go stand in the corner like the Blair Witch kids now. I'm so ashamed. Hell I love that movie more than the Fly really.

[Ironwood]

You know, I never really considered The Thing to be much of a remake.  It expanded and improved so much it's almost its own man.

Just my opinion, of course.

[HaemishM]

Burton's Wonka was about Tim Burton creeping people out. Again, as if they hadn't seen his tired schtick sixteen billion times over. I've read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As a kid, I read the book, years before I ever saw the Gene Wilder movie. I don't recall anything about Wonka's father in the book, nor about Wonka wearing a Burton-esque BDSM headgear and braces. I don't recall rock-n-roll Oompa Loompas. The whole shitfest that is the Burton version is just disagreeable poop. It's the Corpse Bride for Wonka. It takes a perfectly good version of the book in Gene Wilder's film and turns it into Burton's masturbatory fantasies about creeping out "the mainstream."

Tim Burton is a talentless hack like Marilyn Manson. They have the same routine, and the same wasted ability.

[Paelos]

I liked Sleepy Hollow, which I think Burton did.

Wonka never interested me so I never saw it. I didn't want to replace the already wonderful images the Wilder version put in my brain.

[stray]

Ed Wood is a great movie. Big Fish is pretty good.

Among the many good things about them is that they're not rehashes of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands (which were good as well....Just a bit played out).

Planet of the Apes definitely sucked, but I don't think it sucked by virtue of being "Burton-fied". It just sucked in general terms.

[WindupAtheist]

I forgot The Thing? Damn. I must go stand in the corner like the Blair Witch kids now. I'm so ashamed. Hell I love that movie more than the Fly really.

Both are based on the 1938 story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell.  Of the two movies, the John Carpenter version is MUCH closer to the source material.

[Morfiend]

Tim Burton is a talentless hack like Marilyn Manson. They have the same routine, and the same wasted ability.

I usually agree with a lot of your reviews on movies, but in this case I disagree. Tim Burton has made some really great movies, some decently entertaining movies, and a few stinkers, but to call him a "Talentless Hack" is just sensasonalizm. You dont like his movies, fine, but a lot of people do. I have had many hours of happy movie watching from Tim Burton, and when it comes down to it, thats all I really want from a movie, keep me entertained.

Also, you might not like Marilyn Manson's music (I happen to enjoy it), but you have to give him credit for doing what he did and using the media and the publlic to really promote his albums.