Remakes

fobers95 said:
Ok I went a little far to say that they always get low and negative rating but the majority of them do, and its from moviegoers . Here are a few examples This from IMBD user ratings Halloween (1978) users rated it 7.8 out of 10 Rob Zombie's remake got 6 out of 10, I have seen both versions and the 1978 version is far Superior to Rob Zombies. Psycho (1960) 8.6 out of 10, (1998) 4 out of 10.

Total Recall (1990) 7.5 out of 10, (2012) 6.3 out of 10, War of the Worlds (1953) 7.1 out of 10, (2005) 6.5 out of 10.

The reason I call it greed is because they are making money off of someone elses story.
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IMDb ratings mean absolutely nothing. The average you see is run through a top secret filter to create a "weighted average" so it's not a real average.
The real average is the Arithmatic Mean or Median, depending on how you count.

Halloween (1978) IMDb score = 7.9
Arithmetic mean = 8.1. Median = 8

Halloween (2007) IMDb score = 6
Arithmetic mean = 6.3. Median = 7

Psycho (1960) IMDb score = 8.6
Arithmetic mean = 8.5. Median = 9

Psycho (1998) IMDb score = 4.5
Arithmetic mean = 4.7. Median = 5

Add to this that less than 4% of the people who see a film actually votes on IMDb, and because of the weighted average even fewer actually has their vote count towards the IMDb score (depending on whether they log in with a free server email like Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail or not and a bunch of other factors)

Add to that, filmmaking is a business where you make a huge high risk investment to sell a product, and if you against all odds succeed in seeing returns on that investment, you get to make another one and that's really the only meassuring stick.

Add to it, that when Psycho came out in 1960, it was a game changer in a lot of ways. Similar films of the 1950's dealt with the threat of foreigners, or nuclear holocaust. Psycho ushered in an era of films dealing with a more inner psychological threat.
When Halloween came out in 1978, it too was a game changer. Earlier slasher-like films had come before, like Peeping Tom, Psycho, Bay of Blood and Black Christmas, but it was with Halloween the slasher killer actually took shape.
You can't compare these films with their remakes, because the remakes mean something completely different to a completely different audience in a completely different time and society where completely different rules apply.
Gus van Sant's Psycho was an arthouse experiment to see what happens if you completely recreate a classic. "Do you get the same result?"
This is not what Hitchcock's film was about.

Rob Zombie's Halloween was an attempt at updating a classic and letting us know the story a bit more from the antagonist's perspective.
Carpenter did pretty much the opposite for entirely different reasons.

I would even go so far as to say you really shouldn't compare any two films with eachother even if they're sequels or part of the same trilogy because they're different productions made with a completely different set of goals.

The Two Towers is not comparable to Return of the King.

You have an idea of how to tell a story and you tell it. Sometimes it's been told before. Sometimes, a remake is not the retelling of the same story, but just the same plot. Sometimes it's a different plot with the same story. Sometimes, only the title is the same.

"Good" or "Bad"?
It's not a competition. Filmmaking is not a sport.
 
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Pointeless remake:

The Wicker Man

The original was a cult classic, butcherd by an uncomprehending studio.

The remake? Meh.
 
To riff a bit on the subtitle of Dr. Strangelove, lately I've stopped worrying and learned to love the remake. Okay, maybe I don't love remakes, but I am not as agitated by them as I used to be. Same thing with having a tizzy about certain movies not being original enough for the spoiled audiences of today. "Oh no, Avatar had similarities to Dances With Wolves! I can't watch it now, and will instead huff and puff and blow James Cameron's house down!"

If I could get back all the time and productivity I've wasted getting mad about certain remakes or sequels and prequels, as well as starting and stopping a ton of my writing projects because of stupid hangups over whether or not my idea was original enough to appease the snarky twittering audiences of the modern day, I'd be much happier and possibly more financially solvent. Do I like and appreciate when filmmakers deliver an original or clever story concept? Sure, but at the same time it isn't always the end all be all of film and literature. I'm more interested in whether or not a film entertains me and has interesting characters and timeless or relevant themes. If those qualities turn up in a remake, sequel, or prequel then great, I'll grab my soda and popcorn.

You see, the thing is just about everything under the sun has been done and redone and re-imagined more than most of us realize. So original is sort of a loaded term oftentimes. Same thing with remakes. Take The Thing from 1982 directed by John Carpenter. That was a really bold remake as it went back to the original source material and did something different enough from Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World. So while not every remake is up to the standards set by The Thing '82, is every original film really all that great? Look at how many s*%tty original films hit the direct-to-DVD/on demand market every year. I'd guess there are probably more horrid original movies in existence than there are remakes and sequels in the world.

Seriously, just keep on moving forward with your own work, hobbies, and filmmaking endeavors. Keep writing, practice cinematography or sound design or whatever floats your cinematic boat. Don't get hung up on Hollywood remakes and bitching endlessly about them, because you are not gonna stop them by hollering about it on the internet. There are tons of better things to do with our time than this. And someday, you never know, perhaps you'll be the one asked to remake some film that had a great idea behind it but bad execution. Or what if you are offered to direct a sequel to one of your favorite movies?

For those out there that actually want to make films for a living, what is better? For example, would we rather be flipping burgers, parking cars, sitting in a cubicle all day, filming weddings, or making a film with an honest to goodness budget and support and other great resources? Maybe that film needs to sometimes be a remake, due to the demands of the film industry. So be it. I'll take that over all the crap jobs I've done in the past and am stuck in now. Maybe that makes me a sellout, but I just don't have the time or energy to continue to re-enlist in the internet army that seems to be in a constant state of war with anything Hollywood or the independent film community produces nowadays.
 
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Aside from the very rare exception, nobody sets out to make an inferior movie. The fact that many remakes "fail" when compared to their predecessors only makes sense, when you see that the majority of movies in general "fail" when compared to their contemporaries. (Oh, recently there was a thread somewhere in which someone was arguing that it's very rare for a movie not to earn back its production and marketing cost; I have no idea what world that person lives in.) It's hard to make a good movie, and even if you succeed, and can be hard to get the movie seen by all of the public that may be interested in it.

There can be many reasons to remake a film. But one thing to keep in mind is that the potential audience for a remake is never the same as the audience for the original. Believe it or not, there are always new people coming into the world! Plus, choices made in production, cast, script, direction, music, etc. can very well be significant factors that cause the remake to connect with a viewer in a way that a previous production did not. Just as musicians put their own mark on a work when they do a cover, so also will filmmakers come up with something different from the original.

It's always interesting to hear complaints about Gus van Sant having remade PSYCHO. I actually applaud his effort, and the whole point of the exercise. His working premise was: Everybody always remakes films that weren't all that great to begin with; what if we remade something that was already a masterpiece in its own right? Van Sant failed, in my opinion, by making some bad choices (chief among them being Vince Vaughn in the lead role). But his exercise still produced something interesting to watch, even if it did show that it's not easy to be as great at filmmaking as Hitchcock was!
 
from data, look at the traffic generated by netflix every month, compare with potential new customers of netflix every month(tiny compared to existing customers), and new titles released by netflix every month, and you get the same audience on average(exactly the same) watching all the new titles equally, good or bad, they enjoyed one more than the other, they do consume the same amount, every month(depending on seasons and holiday and how much free time they have). it's about the same number in the summer and about the same number for the rest of the year. it's somewhat steady with newer members, which would indicate that people are starting to watch less and less, and it would reach a saturation point and a steep decline if everything remains on course.

some people talk about new viewers, but we are not talking about movies remade from the 50s or before, some titles being remade(or at least productions started) are released same year, it's not targeting a different generation or a new blood, people that are old enough to go to the theaters to watch some of these remakes already watched the movie made same year or 3-7 years before on dvd or tv or netflix, ...etc, it's not a different generation, and people that were young and alive in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2010s, are alive today and go to the theater today more than newer audiences. the only reason animations and kids movies grosses high in the box office which is still lower than most other titles is because the parents go to see the movie with their kids(and that's 1/4 or 1/6 of the audience watching action titles, parents included), if you manage to turn off the parents, which i saw the phenomenon in various countries by providing decades of bad cinema(it is possible and it happens), the studios will not have any audiences left, old or new. the person getting sting-ed by one too many titles will find a different entertainment outlet or hobby to spend his time. and studios will not be able to replace him with a new viewer every year.
 
Amr Rahmy said:
from data, look at the traffic generated by netflix every month, compare with potential new customers of netflix every month(tiny compared to existing customers), and new titles released by netflix every month, and you get the same audience on average(exactly the same) watching all the new titles equally, good or bad, they enjoyed one more than the other, they do consume the same amount, every month(depending on seasons and holiday and how much free time they have). it's about the same number in the summer and about the same number for the rest of the year. it's somewhat steady with newer members, which would indicate that people are starting to watch less and less, and it would reach a saturation point and a steep decline if everything remains on course.

some people talk about new viewers, but we are not talking about movies remade from the 50s or before, some titles being remade(or at least productions started) are released same year, it's not targeting a different generation or a new blood, people that are old enough to go to the theaters to watch some of these remakes already watched the movie made same year or 3-7 years before on dvd or tv or netflix, ...etc, it's not a different generation, and people that were young and alive in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2010s, are alive today and go to the theater today more than newer audiences. the only reason animations and kids movies grosses high in the box office which is still lower than most other titles is because the parents go to see the movie with their kids(and that's 1/4 or 1/6 of the audience watching action titles, parents included), if you manage to turn off the parents, which i saw the phenomenon in various countries by providing decades of bad cinema(it is possible and it happens), the studios will not have any audiences left, old or new. the person getting sting-ed by one too many titles will find a different entertainment outlet or hobby to spend his time. and studios will not be able to replace him with a new viewer every year.
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Oh my goodness, I don't even know where to begin...
 
Nektonic said:
Someone get Tim Burton and Johnny Depp on the line.

Kevin, have you seen any of the K. Gordon Murray Santa Claus movies?

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Can't say that I have Nektonic. That video was too funny man. I never knew that Merlin the magician was a good friend of Santa.
 
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