Talking About Movies: Reboots and Remakes versus Original Content

© 2013 Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment

On Quora, Jason Handleman asks: 

Do you look forward to cinematic reboots and remakes or do you prefer original, untested offerings?

My reply:

It really depends on the film and/or genre, as well as other considerations, such as who is making the reboot/remake, the cast, as well as the why.

For instance, I would not care for remakes of such films as Casablanca, North by Northwest, Jaws, the original Star Wars Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Stand By Me. Those are films that are representative of the times in which they were made, and no matter how hard one tries, they can’t be replicated and be expected to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

I am open to remakes and/or reboots of comic book movies; DC and Marvel Comics reboot their established titles every so often, so if the source material can be revamped by their respective publishers, then their movie adaptations can be given the same treatment. (That being said, I much prefer Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie to Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel, even though the ’78 film’s special effects look a bit dated in comparison to the 2013 film’s state of the art visuals.)

I’m also willing to watch remakes of some classics, such The Longest Day and West Side Story. The former is one of my favorite war films, but even though I don’t mind that it’s in black-and-white, I get impatient with the casting of 48 international stars that call attention to themselves in brief cameos and don’t disappear into their roles all that convincingly. Plus, yeah…the battle scenes are impressive but far too sanitized to truly recreate the triumph and tragedy of D-Day.

As for West Side Story? That’s also one of my favorites, but it always irked me that the cast includes actors that look a bit too old to be playing teenagers in a musical about rival gangs in 1950s New York. Also, the producers asked Stephen Sondheim to clean up some of the songs’ lyrics from the original Broadway stage production for the 1961 film adaptation. I saw a still photo from Steven Spielberg’s upcoming remake, and I noticed that the cast looks like teens, not college-age adults.

And, of course, any movie that recreates a historical event but cuts corners in depicting the time period properly is also ripe for being remade. Midway, The Battle of the Bulge, and even Tora! Tora! Tora! should be revised and redone, if only to make them more historically accurate.

For the most part, though, Hollywood should focus less on the easier reboot/remake path and try to create more original films.