Film remakes: threat or menace?

[madbaker]

So, I read on Sluggy the other day that the Sci-Fi channel is doing a remake of Battlestar Galactica.

After the shudder fit stopped, I formed a postulate:

Remakes are a bad thing.

No, seriously. I can only think of a couple that have not been a waste of celluloid and money: The Maltese Falcon with Bogart, and The House of Wax with Vincent Price (which was a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum).

Comments welcome. Since it's my postulate, I'm setting the ground rules to allow valid comparisons:

1. The remake must be substantially the same as the original.

Kevin Costner's Prince of Feebs doesn't count because they made huge changes. (Costner made Robin a crusader, among many others.)

2. The remake must be done in the same language.

A U.S. film that is a reworking of a French film doesn't qualify. (Although, again, I have yet to see one that even lives up to the original. Sommersby, a remake of The Return of Martin Guerre, violates both these rules as it went from French to English, and changed the setting from the Middle Ages to the Civil War.)

3. The remake must be a film of a film.

Remakes of TV series don't count. (Although they don't invalidate the theory - I mean, Scooby Doo, Charlie's Angels, and The Brady Bunch aren't exactly masterworks.)

I'm aware that if you include TV movies, the record is slightly better -- Patrick Stewart's remakes of Moby Dick and A Christmas Carol are pretty good. So I'm sticking with my original rules.

Comments

[fionnbharro.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention "Gone in Sixty Seconds", and the unreleased original "Gone in Sixty Seconds 2", but the remake violates rule 1 -- it's substantially different than the original.

And the remake doesn't have MY FIRST CAR in a substantial portion of the background scenes (in the sequel).

Look up Toby Halicki to find out more about the original "Gone in Sixty Seconds". None of this Nick Cage crap for me!

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... hadn't thought about the spaghetti western idea. I guess I have to rule that they aren't remakes, since the setting is changed substantially. I agree that Mag Seven doesn't suck!

Dawn asked about Branagh's Henry V vs. the Olivier version. My gut instinct is that those don't count either. Maybe because they are adaptations of plays, which are meant to be redone? Shrug.