Remake
Another critic, this time in the Guardian, bemoaning Hollywood's splurge on remakes. The remake of Assault on Precint 13 is nowhere near as good as the original etc etc. Well I've not seen the original but I went to see the remake yesterday with my friends, and damn, it was pretty good. Not brilliant, I agree, but as a popcorn muncher with beautiful visuals and no compromises, it worked for me, plus the little tribute to The Matrix, which I loved.
The critic argued that no one would ever try to repaint the Mona Lisa, or rewrite Hamlet. On the contrary, I myself am doing just that (rewriting Hamlet, not repainting the Mona Lisa, or at least putting it off until this evening). In fact Hamlet by Shakespeare was about the seventh version of the story to appear. Every time hamlet gets staged, it is reconsidered, re edited, reworked, restaged, relit, recast. The Hamlet's of today probably bear absolutely no resemblance to Shakespeare's original vision. Certainly the version I'm directing won't.
How many new plays get produced in the West End or Regional Theatres each year? 10? 20? 50? 100? And how many revivals of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Checkov, Shaw, Miller, Brecht etc. Obviously, Theatre is a finite art which is the justification for the renewal of great plays. However, who on earth can say that Film is not. The cinema is only around 120 years old. The average working life of a (Good) Hollywood director is 30 years, for a (Good) actor, ten to twenty years, for a long lived megastar (Connery, Eastwood, Hackman etc) as long as they live. But basically we are into the fourth or fifth generation of Hollywood. That remakes are now so common is a sign of maturity of the art.
Great Art will always inspire Great Art. Because Great Art can always be reinterpreted. Take Assault as an example. Rio Bravo (John Wayne, Good Guys V Bad Guys) was a response to High Noon (Gary Cooper, Abandoned by "Good Americans"). Rio Bravo became Assault on Precinct 13, updating the story from Old West to Modern America and blurred the line between good guys and bad guys with cops being forced to work with criminals for survival.
Now the third remake brings it right up to modern times. The Bad Guys are now bent cops, Good Guys suddenly turn into Bad Guys, Bad Guys, however Bad, are now Good. A perfect metaphor for the confused post 9/11 world we now live in. You can now read it as an allegory against George Bush and the White House.
Movie's reflect the time in which they were made and so remaking/updating them is not a bad thing. It does not denigrate the original, it allows new artists to bring their own take to an old tale. It might not always work, but I have seen some crap Shakespeare in my time as well.
Despite people crying about these remakes betraying the memories of the original, a good tale always benefits from the retelling, it is how stories evolve.
Whatever people say about the monetarial reasons for these remakes, I think it shows that Hollywood has reached a staging post in it's development, it has become self referential, such a critical mass of stories has built up that whatever original crap gets churned out (cf Pearl Harbour, Titanic, Alexander, Troy, Shark Tale: All very expensive yet singularly original pieces of trash) There is always something from the Golden Age that can be brought back to prominance. It is not that remakes in themselves are particularly bad, it is simply that none so far have yet outshone the original (Save Oceans 11). Give it time. Hollywood is not out of talent.
Someone should remake High Noon. Oh wait, what's that little series Kiefer Sutherland has at the moment; 24 is it?
The critic argued that no one would ever try to repaint the Mona Lisa, or rewrite Hamlet. On the contrary, I myself am doing just that (rewriting Hamlet, not repainting the Mona Lisa, or at least putting it off until this evening). In fact Hamlet by Shakespeare was about the seventh version of the story to appear. Every time hamlet gets staged, it is reconsidered, re edited, reworked, restaged, relit, recast. The Hamlet's of today probably bear absolutely no resemblance to Shakespeare's original vision. Certainly the version I'm directing won't.
How many new plays get produced in the West End or Regional Theatres each year? 10? 20? 50? 100? And how many revivals of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Checkov, Shaw, Miller, Brecht etc. Obviously, Theatre is a finite art which is the justification for the renewal of great plays. However, who on earth can say that Film is not. The cinema is only around 120 years old. The average working life of a (Good) Hollywood director is 30 years, for a (Good) actor, ten to twenty years, for a long lived megastar (Connery, Eastwood, Hackman etc) as long as they live. But basically we are into the fourth or fifth generation of Hollywood. That remakes are now so common is a sign of maturity of the art.
Great Art will always inspire Great Art. Because Great Art can always be reinterpreted. Take Assault as an example. Rio Bravo (John Wayne, Good Guys V Bad Guys) was a response to High Noon (Gary Cooper, Abandoned by "Good Americans"). Rio Bravo became Assault on Precinct 13, updating the story from Old West to Modern America and blurred the line between good guys and bad guys with cops being forced to work with criminals for survival.
Now the third remake brings it right up to modern times. The Bad Guys are now bent cops, Good Guys suddenly turn into Bad Guys, Bad Guys, however Bad, are now Good. A perfect metaphor for the confused post 9/11 world we now live in. You can now read it as an allegory against George Bush and the White House.
Movie's reflect the time in which they were made and so remaking/updating them is not a bad thing. It does not denigrate the original, it allows new artists to bring their own take to an old tale. It might not always work, but I have seen some crap Shakespeare in my time as well.
Despite people crying about these remakes betraying the memories of the original, a good tale always benefits from the retelling, it is how stories evolve.
Whatever people say about the monetarial reasons for these remakes, I think it shows that Hollywood has reached a staging post in it's development, it has become self referential, such a critical mass of stories has built up that whatever original crap gets churned out (cf Pearl Harbour, Titanic, Alexander, Troy, Shark Tale: All very expensive yet singularly original pieces of trash) There is always something from the Golden Age that can be brought back to prominance. It is not that remakes in themselves are particularly bad, it is simply that none so far have yet outshone the original (Save Oceans 11). Give it time. Hollywood is not out of talent.
Someone should remake High Noon. Oh wait, what's that little series Kiefer Sutherland has at the moment; 24 is it?
posted by Caractacus at 16:46
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