In its infinite wisdom, Sky Movies decided to show Demolition Man a few nights ago. It starred Sylvester Stallone as a tough New York cop who, for some unfathomable reason, is cryogenically frozen for a crime he didn’t commit. Then, at an indeterminate point in the future, he is defrosted so that he can dash about, punching bad guys in the face.
It was by no means a great film, but nonetheless it’ll no doubt be snapped up for a remake pretty soon. Because remakes are seemingly Hollywood’s main source of income nowadays.
Now, don’t get me wrong, remakes are all well and good- in small amounts. But the DVD shelves in HMV (God rest its soul) are now so choc full of them that it’s really quite hard to find a film that wasn’t made before, or is a sequel or prequel, or based on a TV series or a book. It can be annoying to see a film that, in essence, you’ve seen before. But is it really all that bad?
The problem, as I see it, is that a lot of these ideas, these once-upon-a-time blockbusters, are just… not that good. Let’s take a gander through the world of soon-to-be/recently made films, shall we?
We start with Triplets, the unnecessary sequel to the 1988 film Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. The premise here is that their wooden, and decidedly non-identical, characters discover that they have a long-lost triplet, played by Eddie Murphy.
But of course. Who else?
Next up is A Good Day To Die Hard, which, as you may have guessed, is not quite an original idea. Made 6 years after the fourth installment, and a whole 25 years after the first, this is a franchise that has been bled dry of any interest that could’ve surrounded its February 2013 release date.
Then there’s Horrid Henry: The Movie, which is the film adaptation of the books that make Mein Kampf look exciting.
And don’t even get me started on the Twilight series. I’ll have an aneurism.
If Hollywood is going to nick a pre-existing idea and jazz it up with fancy CGI, can’t it at least have the decency to pick a concept that was successful when it was first created? It can be done, and sometimes to spectacular effect. 2012 alone was full of so many films, based on an already established franchise, that rocked the socks off anyone who saw them. Even the seventh American Pie film was alright, and we’ll just ignore that reboot of The Three Stooges.
Oh, you didn’t know that they remade The Three Stooges?
...Yeah, no-one else did either.
Of course, the main motive behind all these remakes is money. Filmmakers need funds to continue making movies, so they commission remakes which, with minimal effort spent, pull in a hefty audience desperate to feed the hulking Hollywood giant with their hard-earned cash.
And yet said giant doesn’t seem to realise that, with just a bit more love, care and attention, they could take a pre-existing idea and create not just a huge, muscular cage-fighter of a remake, but a huge, muscular cage-fighter with a sensitive side, who sometimes wears pink, and plays chess in the park. This is a film which would not just bust blocks, but crush them into tiny little pieces, scoop up said pieces and throw them in an incinerator. It would pull in enough money to pay off the American deficit three times over, with still enough left over to buy Belgium.
It would be an amazing film.
One such film is The Avengers: the highest-grossing film of last year, earning Marvel over 1.5 billion dollars, making it the third-highest grossing film ever. Universally enjoyed by all who watched it. Brilliantly written characters, an unexpected level of wit and amazing special effects made it into a prime example of the film industry doing justice to a pre-existing concept.
If only all sequels and remakes treated their source material with such respect.
At the end of the day, no matter what I say here, Hollywood’s just going to keep churning out remakes. And I don’t know if it’s an especially bad thing. Sure, they may be unoriginal, and sometimes insulting to their first incarnation, but they still deliver what, at the end of the day, we go to the cinema for: a couple of hours of escape from the worries of the real world. And some of them are really rather good- forget that they’re based on age-old franchises and you’ll enjoy yourself even more.
And with that, I shall take my leave- I’ve promised myself I’d spend some time on a screenplay I’m writing. It’s about a student who’s bitten by a spider and develops superpowers. It’s all my own work, and I think it’s going to turn out rather well.