Original Ideas Becoming Science Fiction
June 9, 2008 by brian
Every time I fire up the computer it seems like another 12 remakes spring forth from the pages of film news sites. Today for example, there’s talk of a Rosemary’s Baby redo.
Yeah, that movie wasn’t any good. Surely some modern director can do better. Wait! That movie is iconic! It’s probably one of the main reasons Roman Polanski isn’t in prison somewhere. Working on it currently is the Brad Fuller and Andrew Form tandem that has rebooted Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They held their latest press event, talking about Rosemary’s Baby, on the set of their Friday The 13th revamp. One wonders if the irony was lost on them.
These guys are a prime example of what’s going wrong in Hollywood. If I were going to start a career as a painter, I couldn’t do it by repainting the Mona Lisa and The Scream and calling myself an artist. Yet Fuller and Form are well on their way to forging a career out of redoing other people’s work. (Which let me assure you, is not nearly as rewarding as forging a career out of ripping apart other people’s work.)
Addressing the critics already up in arms, Form said that if they don’t remake Rosemary’s Baby someone else will. That’s a great rationale. If I don’t rob a bank or jump off a bridge tomorrow I can rest assured someone will do both those things. It doesn’t make them smart things to do.
The Friday remake is a perfect microcosm of the problem. It’s going to ruin other good movies. Remember in Scream when the guy asks who the killer in Friday the 13th was and the girl incorrectly says Jason? Well, that’s a classic piece of trivia that most people don’t know. But in the remake, Jason is the killer in the first film. This is going to make kids heads’ explode when they watch Scream for the first time. That is, until the inevitable Scream remake 10 years from now.
Hollywood has become enamored with the Broadway model, where you cycle between the same 10-15 shows and rake in the bucks. But as many a studio has learned when they try to adapt Broadway plays (anybody see The Producers?) the two are really different.
It’s getting harder and harder to go to a multiplex and pick out a movie to see that isn’t a sequel, a remake or just plain bad. Yet movie execs wonder why numbers are down. An even more important question: What does this industry do 15-20 years from now when it looks back for properties to remake and there aren’t any? Oh well, let’s do Friday the 13th again.
My fear is that the concept of a completely original script becomes such a foreign idea that it’s as unrealistic as teleportation or vampires.
Image courtesy of Newscom.
But look at it this way, if a filmmaker makes a new movie about a slasher killer and a camp figures in it for even a minute, they’ll call it a Friday the 13th steal – so why not just put the label on it and reap the built in buzz?
The irony here is that on TV we prefer to see the same characters over and over again which is why anthologies don’t fair well, but on the big screen we say we want new characters not ones we already know and love. That makes no sense.
I look at these movies as I look at the old serials that used to play in the movies, but instead of a new one every week or month, it takes a year.
Personally, I’m thrilled to go on another adventure with Indiana Jones or The Mummy’s Rick O’Connell. Why invest in new characters when I already like these guys and want to see more.
Teleportation is not unrealistic. Jeff Goldblum tried it few yrs ago, but he failed to make sure the chambers were clear. And Sam Jackson does NOT waste his time dying his hair 2 track & tether Jumpers unless they exist. Besides, next to flying that’s got to be one the most sought after abilities.
As for the rest of your rant, I agree w/you 100%.
–Godspeed–
Teleportation is fun. I think with Nightcrawler in X-2 they really showed how much damage that power can do.