In this new section, I hope to explore the film remakes of world cinema. Some are good, most are bad/unnecessary but they all still exist in the world and we've all seen them every now and then whether we were aware of it or not, and so without further ado we're going to look into a few of the good and a few of the bad. Hopefully, this can be a continuous thing as I have plenty of material to work with for sure.
GOOD REMAKE:
The Thing (1982)
Considered the best remake of all time (though I have saved that slot for another article) Director John Carpenter took his childhood favorite 'The Thing From Another World' and its novella source material 'Who Goes There?' and brought a film that's both an original film in that it sticks more to the book than the original film, but also keeps some familiar beats from the 50's classic. Kurt Russell and the rest of the cast are great, working off each other and making the audience feel uncomfortable and paranoid along with them in the isolated campground. The special effects are also top notch, with some jaw-dropping scenes that still hold up today in the world of computer graphics. The film was actually a bomb (E.T. came out the week before) but has now reached film nirvana in the halls of classics.
BAD REMAKE:
The FOG (2005)
John Carpenter also helped out with this remake of his own 1980 film, hoping that he could improve upon his original. Carpenter had stated beforehand that he felt that the original could have been much better but due to his limited resources, he was unable to do as he had wished and while that's a noble thought and good intentions on his part, the remake is a total waste of time. This is not John Carpenter's 'THE FOG' what this is amounts to little more than a Disneyland pirate ghost ride with some poor actors and felt like watching a crappy CW television drama. The ghosts in the original were actually intimidating, with simple makeup/costumes and glowing red eyes while their dark forms are silhouetted in the fog, while the 2005 version has crappy CGI ghosts that looked like they belonged on a Goosebumps cover. I hope John Carpenter got something beneficial out of this one, though I question what could possibly be worth this?
GOOD REMAKE:
PIRANHA 3D (2010)
Okay, I may be scraping the bottom of the seabed here, but in all honesty 'Piranha 3D' is really fun and perfectly harmless as far as remakes go. The original, while being a clever parody of 'Jaws' it wasn't exactly a classic film that millions loved so this remake was never going to meet that kind of hatred necessarily. The fact that the film came out as well as it did however was a rather big surprise for me and overall I had a good time with this one. The remake retains the satire and self-aware humor and never takes itself too seriously, which was the best possible move. And another genuine surprise was that the 3D effects were pretty top notch in a cheesy B-Movie kind of way. Just be warned that this one gets rather nasty with its usual genre tropes. It's a trashy party movie with lots of booze, boobs, and gore.
BAD REMAKE:
POLTERGEIST (2015)
A film from just last summer and its already on many lists similar to this one and for a good reason. This is probably the perfect representation of a completely pointless remake that added nothing, gave nothing and left us with nothing other than a migraine perhaps. The fact that the film feels LESS scary and MORE toned down than the original film (PG rated by the way) is the main reason for these negative feelings. It commits all the remake sins you can imagine: Bad CGI effects, cheaper character development, lazier writing, changing aspects that didn't need to be changed you name it. Completely pointless trash, skip it.
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