Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
As I said above, somewhere, some shows are simply in the right place, right time, right content, right everything, and they enter the zeitgeist. MV was one of those (like Magnum) and I don't see a real point or gain in remaking them. Shows and movies either catch, or they don't.
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Remakes don't bother me. Most are bad. But then some are interesting and some improve on the original in every respect. I doubt many people would seriously argue that the original Little Shop of Horrors is better than the musical remake, or that Battlestar Galactica wasn't vastly better in remake than original
When the remake is bad, it fades away. Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake didn't exactly erase Hitchcock's film.
And then there's the real classics. Who out there would rather see Ricardo Cortez than Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon? The Maltese Falcon (1941) is a remake of the 1931 version and has eclipsed it in every way.
The same goes for Brian DePalma's Scarface. And the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz.
This weekend, I watched L.A. Takedown. It was a pretty good movie. But it didn't hold a candle to its remake: Heat.
As for right place, right time: Robocop seemed like an obviously bad idea for a remake. The original really was a bad movie that wound up succeeding because of Paul Verhoeven's sensibilities. Any remake would flop and flop hard (and the remake did just that).
But then, Dawn of the Dead was also clearly a personal work by George Romero and is a real classic. A remake seemed like a terrible idea. But Zack Snyder (who I am not a fan of) was able to do a remake that was worthwhile.