Doin' It To Death
The never-ending trend of Hollywood retreads.
      by Julie Ng

But wait. Maybe Warner Brothers is onto something. Last fall's successful re-release of The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen grossed $64 million internationally, proving that studios can make easy money without having to either buy scripts or remake old ones at all. Their next 'new' re-issue? Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie, for its uhmm... 23rd anniversary (due for release later this year). Ironically, the reason why Superman is three years late for a traditional anniversary is because the company was too busy trying to celebrate the franchise with a new revival, starring Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel. After a clash over authorship between its screenwriter Kevin Smith (Dogma) and the would-be director, Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow), the project fell into development hell.

Misfortune befalls those who attempt to remake The Haunting.

In their own way, director's cuts are mini-remakes themselves, though made for more creative reasons. This is a second chance for directors to re-edit their old work and present the film the way they originally intended rather than that of the studio's. It's their job to slap on a restored digital soundtrack and gloss up the movie poster. Being a sucker for nostalgia, I'm all for this new trend of restoration re-issues. I was excited to hear Steven Spielberg's plans on re-releasing a director's cut of E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial in March 2002, to mark its 20th anniversary. Finally, we will get to see the fabled cameo by Harrison Ford, who played Elliot's principal in a scene cut from the original, and hear Drew Barrymore's scream and John Williams' score in their full glory through THX-enhanced speakers.

Yet there is also the issue of going overboard with technology; the ever-increasing urge to manipulate old footage that's already been shot. These kinds of alterations are ones I just don't understand. Adding new CGI effects is something that detracted from the new version of The Exorcist, and in many a fan's opinion, they ruined entire scenes in the 1997 re-release of Star Wars: The Special Edition (a.k.a: Star Wars: The Film Where Greedo Shoots First). For E.T.'s re-release, Spielberg apparently has similar intentions -- he expressed in the past that he regrets making all of the government agents carry guns, and plans on having all of them removed by CGI effects! Spielberg has also stated in interviews that when he watches Close Encounters of the Third Kind today, he would never let Roy abandon his family to get on an alien spaceship. Makes you wonder what he would do if he got the chance to re-issue this film in theatres for a third time?

Factor in a long actor and writer's strike that will leave directors with nothing better to do, and you never know. Experiments to create a fully computer-animated Richard Dreyfuss could be underway at Dreamworks as we speak. Actually, Gitesh Pandya, the editor of BoxOfficeGuru.com believes that there is a possibility that we could be seeing re-issues for every week that goes by on the picket lines. "It'll be 'Raiders of the Lost Ark beat out Jaws at the box office this weekend!'" Pandya recently theorized in Entertainment Weekly, "with Back to the Future up next."

Remakes are a much more subjective matter. I forget who actually said it, but someone once said that Hollywood should not remake classic movies -- they should remake the bad ones (does that mean someone should remake Teen Wolf?) There is another widely held belief that some films could be improved upon with the effects capabilities we have today. Hence rumours of updated versions of Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans and the cheeseball Disney film, Fantastic Voyage, which was already been remade once before as Innerspace. And then you have directors with sufficient clout and economic backing to make a film for their own personal reasons.

Last September, I found myself waiting in line with director, Gus Van Sant while trying to get a Toronto film festival ticket. Granted, there were about five people ahead of me, but I was able to overhear the odd fan who'd recognize him and sing their praises about Good Will Hunting, though it looked like he just wanted to be left alone. One of them was a classmate of mine who worked at the theatre. But after he brushed her off, Rachel couldn't help it. A few minutes later, she went back up to him and asked point blank:

"So, Psycho. What is up with that?!"

I won't go any further than that. Suffice to say, I laugh every time I think of their exchange. Of course, she was referring to the filmmaker's line-by line, shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's horror/thriller Psycho, in colour. In Van Sant's own words, his Psycho is a post-modern experiment in which he hoped present the film to a new generation of filmgoers. But for all the good intentions his homage had, it failed both critically and commercially.

The following is a dramatized re-enactment of another overheard conversation, but it best summarizes my own feelings towards remakes of such classics films:

DUDE: ...looking back and copying the past is post-modern. It's like bell-bottom pants or pastel shirts or... Van Sant's Psycho!

CHICK: The only good thing about Psycho was the movie poster.

DUDE: Wha...? How can you say that? It was like bringing Hitchcock back from the dead!

CHICK: There is no need to screw with perfection. Superman in Rear Window; Gwyneth in A Perfect Murder; and Anne Heche in Psycho? That's three perfect films ruined by remakes!

DUDE: But don't you see we need icons? Jimmy Stewart, Janet Leigh, they're gone! We have to find new icons to replace the old ones.

CHICK: Janet Leigh is still alive!!!!

Oh, who am I kidding? The DUDE is actually my friend Brent, and the bitter, outraged CHICK is... surprise, surprise... yours truly. I think Brent gets off on playing devil's advocate. But it seems only right to point out that yes, there are such things as good remakes. As a matter of fact, even Hitchcock remade himself. An American version of The Man Who Knew Too Much was remade twenty years after the British original, because of Hitch's dissatisfaction with the climax of the first version. Although he never stated in interviews that he preferred the newer version, the director acknowledged that "the first version is the work of a talented amateur, and the second was made by a professional."

That sounds a bit like the cult classic, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, which is essentially a remake of the original. With the success of the first Evil Dead, Sam Raimi got enough financial backing to do it again, even going so far as to reuse his ever lovable star, Bruce Campbell. The important twist that makes it such a success, however, is that Raimi didn't just take the cash to make a more polished version of the same thing. By converting the whole thing from a dead-serious horror movie to an over-the-top, screwball comedy, he created something completely fresh (in fact, a whole new sub-genre) out of elements of the old. Likewise, instead of making yet another Dracula movie, E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire chooses to focus on the making of the very first one, Nosferatu. Or who ever thought The Great Escape would work so well with a bunch of clay chickens replacing Steve McQueen in Chicken Run? It all boils down to finding the right combination to hit gold.

But enough rambling about old stuff that's been done before. What about all the stuff that's been done before that we still have yet to see?

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