Nothing is absolute, certainly not in Hollywood, and while it may be true that remakes are
almost always worse than the originals, there are some notable exceptions.
In fact, some remakes aren't just as good as the original, they're even better.
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and the rest of the Rat Pack were riding high
in the early 1960s, so they decided to make a movie.
The result is Ocean's 11, a film which feels like a big-budget vanity project because,
well, it is.
Frank Sinatra stars as Danny Ocean, who assembles his 82nd Airborne buddies to rob five Las
Vegas casinos on New Year's Day.
In 2001, Steven Soderbergh and a crew of Hollywood's coolest remade Ocean's Eleven into the film
the original wanted to be.
George Clooney assumes command as Danny Ocean, with Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts
joining the crew.
The resulting film showcases a heist story that moves as confidently as its star-studded
cast.
"Today's lesson: how to draw out the bluff.
That much money this early in the game, I'm guessing he's holding nothing more than a
pair of face cards."
Disney was in a dark place in 1977.
The studio's Golden and Silver Ages of the 1930s through the late 1960s were over, and
Disney was clearly adrift on the animation front as well as in its live-action offerings.
Case in point?
1977's Pete's Dragon.
While the story of an orphan boy named Pete and his magical dragon named Elliot effectively
mixes live action and hand-drawn animation, that's about all it does well.
However, studio execs saw something in the story and brought it back almost 40 years
later in 2016's Pete's Dragon.
The remake fared a bit better critically, thanks to incredible special effects and a
stellar live-action cast rounded out by Robert Redford.
John Wayne made a career out of playing John Wayne, and in so doing became one of America's
most iconic movie stars ever.
But out of all of Wayne's movies, only one won him an Oscar: 1969's True Grit.
Based on Charles Portis' 1968 novel, True Grit tells the story of a young girl named
Mattie Ross who hires the drunken, eyepatch-wearing U.S. Marshal "Rooster" Cogburn to hunt down
the man that killed her father.
While Wayne's megawatt movie star bravado made up for it, his True Grit was missing
Portis' deft prose.
The Coen brothers made up for that 50 years later, returning to Portis' novel to create
a more faithful adaptation.
Jeff Bridges donned the eyepatch this time, breathing new life into the whiskey-breathed
Rooster and securing an Oscar nomination along the way.
Unlike Wayne, Bridges didn't win an Oscar for True Grit.
Still, the 1969 original was more of a star vehicle resting on Wayne's broad shoulders,
while the 2010 was top-to-bottom the better film.
"They tell me you're a man with true grit."
"What do you want, girl?
Speak up, it's suppertime."
The Thing From Another World is one of the best 1950s sci-fi films, and although it boasts
no shortage of fine qualities, one main reason for its success is the director.
Not the credited director, Charles Nyby, but the real director, Howard Hawks, who "presented"
the film, but didn't take a directing credit.
Credit or no credit, make no mistake, this is a Howard Hawks movie, with crackling dialogue,
competent, confident heroes, and a hawkish worldview.
That said, while audiences in 1951 were probably scared stiff, viewers today wouldn't lose
any sleep over this film.
That's not the case with John Carpenter's The Thing, which came out in 1982.
The first of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, The Thing's truly terrifying SFX and storytelling
supersedes the original in the most important way: it's much, much scarier, thanks in no
small part to a delightfully ambiguous ending.
"What do we do?"
"Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens?"
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro's first onscreen faceoff in Michael Mann's Heat was a cinematic
milestone.
The two co-starred in The Godfather Part II without sharing any screen time, so by the
time Heat arrived in 1995, film fans were ecstatic to finally see them trade lines.
Heat proved a bit of a tease in this respect, but the film's quality extends beyond its
star power.
While this was the first time Pacino and De Niro met onscreen, it wasn't the first time
this story was adapted.
After making waves with TV's Miami Vice, Mann wanted to make another cop drama on the golden
coast.
His script eventually became a 1989 TV movie called L.A. Takedown.
Working with a TV-sized budget and lacking the star-studded cast of its successor, Takedown
has gone on to become a footnote in Mann's career, especially compared to Heat.
It is one of Stephen King's most popular novels, so it was inevitable that it'd become a movie
at some point.
Still, this gruesome story about a supernatural killer spanning decades doesn't exactly scream
TV miniseries.
That was exactly what happened in 1990, however.
While the miniseries isn't exactly bad, with Tim Curry clearly relishing his role as Pennywise,
this two-part adaptation just lacks the visceral, all-consuming terror the story demands.
King's It is an epic story that demands an R rating and all the bells and whistles that
come with big-budget blockbuster filmmaking.
In 2017, that's exactly what fans got, in the form of the first chapter of a two-part
film adaptation liked by critics and loved by moviegoers.
Released two years later, It: Chapter Two lacked the freshness and urgency of its predecessor.
Still, while the miniseries has its fans, the 2017 and 2019 movies are the definitive
screen versions of King's classic so far.
Released in 1991, La Totale! is a comedy about a humdrum civil servant who is actually a
crack secret agent, though his family has no idea.
Does this sound like the plot of James Cameron's True Lies, one of the biggest hits of 1994
and the first movie to have a $100 million budget?
It should!
True Lies is actually a remake of La Totale!, only now with Arnold Schwarzanegger in the
role of the nerd/spy and Jamie Lee Curtis as his unaware wife.
La Totale! is perfectly fine for what it is, but Cameron had a very different vision for
the story.
He took the already absurd plot of La Totale! and dialed it up to 11, transforming this
silly French flick into a mega-budgeted, action-packed blockbuster with bridges getting blown up,
horses racing up skyscrapers, and Arnie blasting a bad guy from the rocket of a harrier jet.
It's a good thing he did, since True Lies is a much better movie for it.
Critics dug it, while audiences showed up in droves to make the film a massive success
domestically and around the world.
When you think "great comedic duo," Steve Martin and Michael Caine probably don't spring
immediately to mind.
Yet the chemistry between the Texas-born, California-raised superstar standup comedian
and the Cockney-bred, two-time Academy Award-winning English thespian is absolutely undeniable
in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
However, there was another pairing of an American and a Brit in the same story that didn't have
quite the same chemistry: Marlon Brando and David Niven in Bedtime Story.
Released in 1964, Bedtime Story is about a small-change scammer played by Brando and
a high-class, cultured con artist played by Niven who compete for innocent women's cash
in the Mediterranean.
It was a great setup, but the film failed to impress and fell into movie oblivion.
However, sensing the promise of the premise, Martin, Caine and director Frank Oz remade
it 24 years later in 1988 as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
It worked out pretty well, as the film went on to be well-liked by critics and regular
moviegoers alike; it even inspired a 2005 Broadway Musical!
Hoping that lightning would strike twice, the story was remade again 31 years later
in 2019 with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as The Hustle, but critics weren't nearly
as kind.
Of the three versions of this story, we're convinced Martin and Caine made the best con
artists.
Inspired by advancing technology, Cold War paranoia, and fears of nuclear war, the 1950s
was a golden age for sci-fi.
Still, one film that truly stood out in that era was 1958's The Fly.
Starring genre staple Vincent Price in a supporting role, The Fly is about a scientist experimenting
with a teleportation device who accidentally ends up splicing his own atoms with those
of a house fly.
Flash forward 28 years to 1986, David Cronenberg's The Fly takes the unsettling source material
into much darker, more disturbing directions.
In the hands of Cronenberg, The Fly became arguably the best body horror film of all
time.
It's a horror film that stays with you not only because it's scary, but because it's
sad.
While The Fly is one of the best sci-fi horror films of the 1950s, Cronenberg's The Fly is
one of the best films, period.
"We'll be the ultimate family.
A family of three, joined together in one body.
More human than I am alone."
In 1960, screenwriter Charles B. Griffith and famed low-budget B-movie auteur Roger
Corman created a killer plant named Audrey in The Little Shop of Horrors.
The film is considered a cult classic today, but Audrey's roots in American pop culture
were eventually to grow even deeper.
Before making Disney billions as the lyricist and composer for The Little Mermaid and Beauty
& The Beast, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken produced a stage musical version of Corman's
cult classic in 1982.
This musical inspired the 1986 film version starring Rick Moranis as Audrey's keeper,
with Steve Martin stealing scenes as a demented dentist.
The 1986 version underperformed at the box office, but it's since earned a sizable cult
following of its own.
Has there ever been an actor who is able to chew scenery like Al Pacino?
Maybe.
Fifty years before Al Pacino told audiences to say hello to his lil' friend as Tony Montana,
Paul Muni racked up an equally impressive body count as Tony Camonte.
Howard Hawks' 1932 Scarface has a story that should be familiar to fans of Brian De Palma's
1983 remake: A low-ranking homicidal hood works his way up the gangster corporate ladder,
sadistically wiping out his foes while maintaining a soft spot for his little sister.
Camonte is Italian, not Cuban, and instead of peddling cocaine it's booze, but otherwise
the stories are the same.
Hawks' Scarface is a classic, so what makes the 1983 remake "better?"
Its exploration of excess continues to inspire pop culture to this day, particularly hip-hop
culture.
While both films are strong, Pacino's take continues to resonate like few gangster films
ever have, before or since.
"So say goodnight to the bad guy, go on."
When you think of The Wizard of Oz, you probably think of Judy Garland's bright red sparkling
shoes or maybe the lustrous, glittering gold of the yellow brick road.
You probably think of color, Technicolor to be specific.
However, while The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films to be shot in color, it wasn't
the first time L. Frank Baum's story hit the silver screen.
Fourteen years before the Oz we all know and love was released, there was another version.
The original 1925 version interpreted the story as a heavy-handed slapstick silent comedy.
Unfortunately, it isn't even funny, which is saying something, considering it featured
Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man.
Thankfully, movie studios still saw something in the story and remade it in 1939.
Hollywood just can't seem to get enough of James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans,
written in 1826, it's been filmed 11 times.
One of the earliest adaptations was the 1920 silent film version, followed by a 1936 version
starring Randolph Scott as Hawkeye and Bruce Cabot as Magua.
Besides the unpleasant whitewashing of the Native American antagonist, the 1936 version
is otherwise an acceptable, if not particularly memorable, 1930s Hollywood adventure picture.
Nearly six decades later, director Michael Mann would leave the sunny, pastel-colored
world of Miami Vice and take on this 18th-century story, casting Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye
and Native American actors to play Native American characters.
Funnily enough, Mann is said to have based the script for his film less on the novel
and more on the 1936 version.
Philip Dunne, that adaptation's screenwriter, even received a credit.
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