Remakes: The Hollywood Recycle Bin

Everything that was old is new again. Or, at least, everything that was old is remade again. Every new movie out of Hollywood that was based on an original idea seems to have two counterparts that are based on classic movies or on foreign films. Remember when your parents used to tell you about how they had to walk to school for 20 miles, in the snow, and uphill both ways? The first time you hear that, you are stunned, but every time after that, it has a smaller and smaller impact. Now, we expect our parents to run out of ideas, but not Hollywood. According to recent box office numbers, ticket sales are steadily decreasing at a rate of 5.4%, while ticket sales are on the rise by 3%. Although many of us can hardly afford to hit the theater like we used to, the decline of the western box office may also be due to deeper factors of originality, creativity, and a lack of both.

Sequels, prequels and remakes are Hollywood’s bread and butter. Looking at the top 20 grossing movies of all time, four Star Wars movies make it in, all three Lord of the Rings made it, both modern Spider-Man movies broke the barrier, and even Shrek 2 made it, while Shrek itself did not. These are the kinds of movies that keep audiences piling into movie theatres, so there is no surprise that we continue to see more of these movies as the years go by. After all, if they make money, we'll see even more.

Hollywood’s pinnacle achievement each year is the summer blockbuster. We salivate at the thought of the summer’s line-up of big name, special-effects laden movies, waiting to shell out our hard-earned money to see flicks like Shrek, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor, Top Gun and Indiana Jones. When these movies do well, we crave sequels to keep our fantasies alive. Who wouldn’t love to know what exciting adventure Indiana Jones gets into next? What will happen to Harry Potter next year? If Darth Vader is Luke’s father, what in the galaxy far, far away is going to happen next? On the other hand, when we get a movie that has a definitive ending, the last thing anyone wants to see is a sequel.

Have original concepts taken a backseat to regurgitation? Are there any original ideas in Hollywood? Although Tinseltown is all about the bottom line at the box office, audiences seem to be lapping up the success of days gone by. In 2004, one of the better original ideas to come down the cinematic pipe was sleeper horror hit Saw, directed by James Wan. In a film world that's playing off the succes of previous hits, Saw was a horrific breath of fresh air. As far as remakes go, here's what James Wan had to say in a recent interview with UGO:

"That's the trouble with Hollywood. They don't really want to make original things nowadays. They like their remakes and comic book adaptations and computer game adaptations and books and so on; it's kind of hard to sell original stuff."

Given the recent success of Betwitched, original ideas are semingly still alive, only now within the remake formula. At least with Bewitched, however, it wasn't a complete carbon copy of the original series. To that end, Bewithced did work on certain level of originality. Although there is proof positive that remakes are contributing to the downturn of the 2005 box office take, we can look back to 1993 and The Fugitive as an example of a remake that was a carbon copy of the original but did work on many levels as a stand alone film.

The Fugitive was a TV series running from 1963 to 1967 about a wrongfully convicted doctor, Dr. Richard Kimble, who escapes incarceration and beings his own personal search for his wife’s murderer, a one-armed man. While searching for this one-armed man, Kimble makes profoundly positive impacts on people’s lives while maintaining his anonymity as a wanted fugitive. This series was such a success that its two-part finale captured a 72% audience share. Like the TV series, the movie captured our immediate attention. And what a great movie that was, with two imaginative and creative actors like Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones coming together under the skillful direction of Andrew Davis. Davis had very few accolades in his directing career at this point (okay, Steven Siegel action movies WERE pretty cool), but was given a great opportunity to showcase his talent. We were all rewarded with a classic summer blockbuster that found its way into pop culture. After all, who can forget Jones’s famous line of “What I want…is a hard target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse.”

Four and a half years later, we were punished for this with U.S. Marshals. About 25 minutes into this movie, I found myself asking “I paid $7.50 to see The Fugitive all over again?” First, we are treated to a plane crash on a lake, which liberates our new fugitive, Mark Sheridan, played by Wesley Snipes. This is a direct reflection of the bus/train wreck that liberated Dr Richard Kimble in the original. Next, Tommy Lee Jones gives us another, less-impacting speech about searching “... every house, hotel, back road and back water home.” As well, it turns out Sheridan (Snipes) may be wrongfully convicted as well. The only plot twist in this movie different from its predecessor comes in the form of Robert Downey Jr.’s character, Special Agent John Royce. Unfortunately, since Special Agent Royce is the only major new addition to the cast, we already know he is going to play into the inevitable, yet predictable, plot twist. In the end, there seemed to be so little differentiating these two movies that they might have been better off, from a critic’s point-of-view, not making a sequel at all.

This summer, the two big blockbuster movies are Batman Begins and War of the Worlds. With Batman Begins, a talented, but underutilized director (Christopher Nolan, Memento, Insomnia) uses a multi-faceted but relatively unknown actor (Christian Bale, American Psycho, Equilibrium, Reign of Fire) to breathe new life into the Batman Legacy. Nolan’s use of black-on-black cinematography and his sometimes discontinuous, but easy to follow storyline, are complimented so well by Bale’s dynamic acting. Bale’s ability to express so much anger and emotion while having 90% of his face covered by the Bat Mask are a testament to his acting ability, coupled with Nolan’s fresh take on an older idea, makes this movie a showcase of what a summer blockbuster should be.

In War of the Worlds, tried and tested Steven Spielberg (ET, Jurassic Park I, II, III, IV, Back to the Future I, II, III) takes heartthrob Tom Cruise and uses an 1898 novel about space invaders and turns it into the same action/alien invasion movie that we see each and every year. Cruise’s character in Worlds, Ray Ferrier, is one of a seemingly bad father, who becomes transformed into a protective parent when the aliens invade. This storyline is certainly easy to relate to, but we have all seen it before. As well, the original H.G. Wells classic focused almost entirely on the protagonist’s encounters with the alien species (or attempts to avoid them), whereas this movie uses the aliens to astound us with special effects, but not as much to further the plot. One of the strongest pluses to this movie is that Spielberg doesn’t feel the need to adjust the ending, which, if you haven’t read H. G. Wells’s novel, may seem like a cop-out. That, and a stellar performance from Tim Robbins as Harlan Ogilvy, the savior that sheltered Ferrier and his daughter from the coming aliens, only to turn out to be a nightmare for the family on the run. On the whole, most of us will feel satisfied after seeing this movie, but we won’t be crying out for War of the Worlds 2.

Whether these movies are entertaining or visually stunning, or horribly boring, the creative juices flowing in Hollywood seem to be stagnating. Is creativity completely dead? Some of the remade movies and sequels that come out are enough to re-shape our idea of the silver screen. The shock in my voice is still there whenever I have to say “You haven’t seen Lord of the Rings?” When great directors bring fresh thoughts into remade movies, the results can last in our memory forever. On the flip side, if the fresh viewpoint and new ideas aren’t around, these remakes and sequels wind up seeming like their predecessors, offering up little or no new excitement. The real question becomes “Do we need another larger than life hero in our cinemas, to add to the likes of Captain Kirk, Superman, James Bond and the Fantastic Four (like the Incredibles), or do we actually want to see Spider-Man 24?”

In a recent interview at About, actor Michael Caine sums it up perfectly with regard to duplicating success in favor of an original idea...

"I’ve always thought that you should remake flops because you’ve got nowhere to go. Don’t remake the success."