One of the coolest action thrillers of the 1980's is getting the remake treatment, The Hitcher from 1986 and starring Rutger Hauer and directed by Robert Harmon is about to go before the camera's again, this time starring Sean Bean as the main villian of the story.Remake's are really starting to piss me off, in recent years we've had or they've announced remakes of Shaft, King Kong, The Seven Samurai, Robocop, Predator, The Manchurian Candidate, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Poseidon Adventure, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Wicker Man, Hairspray, The Evil Dead, The Stepfather, Dreamscape, Alfie, The Grudge, The Ring, Willard, Dawn of the Dead, The Time Machine, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, War of the Worlds etc... etc... a lot of these films I remember at the cinema the first time around, and a lot are classics of their time or their genre. I'm sure in the next 5 years we'll see remakes announced of Alien, Bladerunner amongst many more, Hollywood has about as as many original ideas as the Star Wars prequels have acting !
3 comments:
It's just a matter of time before we get a remake of Police Academy. Ashton Kutcher is...Mahoney. Bernie f**kin' Mac as Jones. Noooooooooooo!
While in the majority of cases Remakes are indeed the hellspawn of the Hollywood money machine, I don't think they can all be swept away. Even the mighty Hitch remade one of his own films, and the idea of remakes is a old as cinema itself, Ben Hur for example.
Some remakes suck, such as the Fog where the original isn't just a classic because of the plot, but because of the execution, the time it was released, the state of cinema at the time. Assault on Precinct 13 is a good example. The remake was more than a cool concept, for a start it was an early example of the right way to remake a classic. The recent version was merely a serviceable actioner, lacking anything like palm sweating grit of the Carpenter classic.
Other remakes actually do a great job as a sequel of sorts. Shaft I found enjoyable, especially when Roundtree appeared making it clear he was still the original and we were watching a sequel. I found TCM remake a thousand times more enjoyable than TCM 2, 3 and 4,and had they retitled it TCM 5 I think alot of fans problems with the project wouldn't have arose. For the same reason I'm actually looking forward to the Friday the 13th remake as the series had fallen into a drunken state of self parody, and when you think of the classic F13 formula, Maniac in Hockey Mask slaughters Teenage Camp counsellors, there is only part 3 which actually does this. And that was in 3D!
The majority of remakes these days are really just sequels dressed up, as Hollywood has realised this is the new way to make money out of a proven formula.
For me the remake of Dawn of the Dead was far more enjoyable than the official sequel Land of the Dead.
Then again there are even two pointless remakes this week which you can't defend as anything other than cash cows-The Omen and Poseidon.
And jobeykowski, that Police Academy is already underway. Titled curiously as just Police Academy, it retains the original cast, with of course the lack of Tackleberry who is sadly no longer with us.
Go figure...
Oh, and for the record a Hitcher remake is a bad, bad, bad idea.
And casting Sean Bean is just bloody lazy.
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