What’s up, guys?
Jared, here.
Today, we’re going to talk about remakes, or a socially-sanctioned form of collective
deja vu.
Remakes get a whole lot of flack for being uncreative money-grabs without an ounce of
artistic justification.
And sometimes they are just that.
But other times, remakes can be monumentally inventive, deviously effective, or just plain
socially relevant.
And other times, we get this: "Use your big boy voice."
So, what makes a remake great, and perhaps more importantly, what makes a remake suck?
We have a few thoughts, and a lot of them have to do with ragging on sh*tty Disney live-action
remakes, so don’t pretend you’re not up for that.
Anyway, welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on Remakes.
And, of course, spoilers ahead for movies you first watched in diapers.
We may mistakenly think of remakes as a purely modern phenomena, born out of some lack of
imagination in which film executives can only sadly paw around their archives for old IP
material to exploit.
But that’s not quite true.
Remakes in literature and music are pretty much as old as the mediums themselves.
Take the German legend of Faust, about a totally reasonable dude who sells his soul to the
devil in exchange for knowledge, fun, and presumably a lifetime supply of cheese.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Anyway, over the past four centuries, his story has inspired dozens of top-notch literature,
ballets, operas, plays and more.
Each one was kind of a remake, even if it didn’t come complete with a promotional
McDonalds happy meal.
In another example, Dies Irae, an old Gregorian chant that’s been haunting dreams since
at least the 13th century – "Dies Irae!" – eventually got reincarnated into pieces
by composers like Mozart, Liszt and Berlioz, then later into jazz, metal, and so on.
Given art’s history of borrowing from and building on the work of its ancestors, it’s
no surprise that the young art of cinema has been all about remakes since its very infancy.
See, the earliest movies were, as you probably know, printed on film reels.
These reels, subjected to light and mishandling by pimply theatre operators, inevitably started
to decay.
So, the earliest remakes were actually attempts to replicate old films before they were lost
to the sands of time.
Since then, remakes have tended to flourish in eras of economic strife and anxiety.
For instance, remakes like The Island of Lost Souls, and Huckleberry Finn kept the movie
business humming along during the Great Depression.
Remakes also tend to get a boost during times of technological change.
Take for example, the 1980s, an era when Americans spent half their time rewinding VHS tapes,
instead of going to the movie theaters.
Desperate studio executives went through a remake frenzy as they tried to get butts in
seats.
Today, those changes are mirrored by the digital streaming revolution, which has led many of
us to prefer a good Netflix and chill sesh over shilling out $20 at our local AMC.
So, it’s no wonder that we’re living in a remake revolution.
But is it good or bad for cinema, and the culture at large?
We’re going to be looking at it through the lens of Disney, unquestionably the biggest
peddler of present-day remakes.
First, let’s look at the anatomy of a Disney remake: it’s pretty simple.
Take a massively popular Disney cartoon.
Make it, usually, live action, always with a generous dose of CGI, and an even more generous
dose of celebrities.
Lots.
Of.
Celebrities.
Then, add a good, unnecessary 40 minutes of running time, usually by expanding the film’s
exposition, aka the introduction to its world, characters, etc.
For example, the exposition in the original Cinderella clocks in at about 30 seconds.
Now compare that to the exposition in the 2015 remake - which clocks in at a good 19
minutes.
You can almost feel the writers struggling to pad out the story simply because audiences
these days generally prefer two-hour long films.
And some of this narrative padding seems to be an attempt to give Disney princesses more
to do than just stand around looking pretty.
Which brings us to how these films adapt for modern audiences.
You take whatever was perhaps objectionable about the original cartoon version - say,
that Cinderella and the Prince fell in love after one dance because they’re both hot
- or that Jasmine has no discernible character arc, or that Dumbo ends with the titular character
still working at the circus and PETA would protest - and then massage it into something
a little more politically correct.
Take the perplexing choice to make Gaston’s sidekick Lefou pretty apparently gay for Gaston.
First off, whether or not you’re all about representation in film, it’s an incredibly
lazy effort - Lefou is pretty one-note, and spends most of his time trying to talk Gaston
out of wifing up.
"Exactly!
Who needs her when you've got us?"
But beyond that it also feels a bit...
Toothless, like an attempt to force your way into a bunch of viral headlines.
After all, the gist of the story is the same: Beauty still falls in love with the dude who
held her father prisoner, then ordered her to spend the rest of her life in his creepy
castle.
And her ability to love him despite him not being very cute becomes irrelevant a moment
later when he turns hot.
These pandering attempts feel strange when compared to the obvious other option - that
is, come up with some new story ideas.
Ultimately this Disney remake recipe yields a bloated version of the original film that
feels uncanny and uncomfortable, like an absurdly well-funded high school play.
"How would you feel about growing a beard?"
[Growl]
Overall, these films feel like a cynical attempt to bottle millennial nostalgia in an era when
adulting is particularly hard.
And worse, these films are ultimately doomed to fail at doing just that.
Here’s why.
According to film scholar Anat Zanger, the motivations of an audience watching a remake
is a sort of masochistic desire “to have the already-known experience repeated," despite
the fact that it’s “accompanied by the presentiment that it never will be.”
Basically, we walk into the theater hoping to be as wowed by Aladdin as we were the first
time we saw it as kids.
But at the same time, we walk in knowing that it’s not going to be the same.
Bummer!
Still, that hope convinces us to spend good money and time watching our favorite cartoons
be butchered.
So, what’s really going on when Disney decides to remake The Lion King?
According to film scholar Thomas Leitch, something very specific to our cultural moment.
In the past, an original film from 1931 didn’t really “compete” with its 1943 remake.
Because, come 1944, you couldn’t access any of those films anyway!
It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that you could start rewatching your favorite films on TV
on the couch in your underwear.
But in our age of a million streaming platforms, a remake is forced into direct conflict with
its original - Will you pay $2.99 to watch Beauty and the Beast on Youtube, or pay $15
bucks to go to the theater with a vain hope that it will be better?
As Leitch puts it, today’s remakes have to balance two opposing claims: “that the
remake is just like its model and that it’s better.”
That’s why most remakes make small changes - in Cinderella, the prince and Cinderella
meet up in the forest, thus hopefully easing our concerns that they fell madly in superficial
love after 1 waltz.
But these changes have to be both small enough that they don’t anger audiences who love
the original, and significant enough that audiences don’t feel like they’re watching
a carbon copy.
And yet, with a film as perfect as, say Beauty and the Beast, any amount of changes - like
a book that acts as a portal to the place you most want to go in the world - feels unnecessary,
unwarranted and raises a lot of weird questions about the space/time continuum.
Leitch goes on to explain that there are essentially four different types of remakes: 1.
The Readaptation - which just means the filmmaker went to the original source text rather than
mimicking previous film versions of the story.
This applies to adaptations of Shakespeare that are explicitly faithful to the text.
2.
The Update - This means that the filmmaker significantly changed the story, as in realigning
its cultural, socioeconomic or political meaning.
Your prime example of this is West Side Story, which plants the Romeo and Juliet complex
square in the middle of New York City gang wars in the late 1950s.
Or the glorious update to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew vis a vis 1999’s classic
teen flick, 10 Things I Hate About You, which sets Shakespeare’s story in a then-present
day LA high school because, why not?
3.
The Homage - These are movies that do not attempt to directly compete with the original
film, but rather function as love letters to the original text.
They also tend to establish a direct intertextual relation to the original film, that is, making
direct references via inside jokes.
Good examples include ‘80s films The Thing and Invaders from Mars, both of which openly
pay homage to their 1950s predecessors.
Then, there’s the fourth category: The “True remake.”
True remakes essentially don’t change much of anything about the original text, except
by making it “newer” or ostensibly “better."
Bear in mind, these categories can be slippery, but we think Disney remakes qualify as true
remakes.
Though they’re technically “live action,” most rely heavily on CGI effects (The Jungle
Book does entirely) making them somewhat an "updated” version of hand drawn animation.
According to Leitch, true remakes have a curious relationship with their older siblings - in
that they are inherently trying to replace them.
The mere existence of a live-action Beauty and the Beast can only serve to make the original
animated version less relevant to modern audiences.
So, could live action Disney films, if they’re really well made, ever “outdo” their original?
Fundamentally, it seems to us like a question of visual storytelling -
- namely what form of narrative is most effective at conveying compelling fairy tales, and often,
fairy tales prominently featuring talking animals or fantastical feats of magic.
Which mouse would you rather see sew a dress?
Which beast would you rather watch throw a fit?
And which lion would you rather watch sing “Hakuna Matata” I mean, honestly.
Which do you prefer? and keep in mind there’s objectively only one right answer?
Now, there’s a legitimate argument to be made that in remaking say, a black and white
film in color it might make the story more appealing to modern audiences.
But are kids these days really that immune to the charms of 2D animation?
The thing is, nobody ever complained that Disney cartoons weren’t lifelike enough
- and that’s the only supposed “problem” these live-action films can really claim to
solve.
Disney cartoon characters evoke human feelings - even if they’re lions or devils or goblins
– and they do so because of the stylized artistry, not in spite of it.
Charming moments where lions swing from vines aren’t life-like, and they’re not trying
to be.
Of course, no matter how loudly we complain, facts are facts: Disney remakes make BANK.
Take 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, which made a chill 1.264 billion dollars in the
box office, or 2019’s Aladdin, which as of early July crossed the 900 million dollar
mark.
The Lion King will undoubtedly ride the Beyonce/Donald Glover/Seth Rogen/Billy Eichner fan mill to
equal success.
For the most part, these movies are automatic, no questions asked goldmines.
Of course, there are exceptions, namely Tim Burton’s steam-punk Dumbo,
which, again, nobody asked for.
But overall, these movies make a lot of people a whole lot richer.
So, needless to say, Disney remakes aren’t going anywhere.
As of May, there were no less than 16 live-action or CGI remakes in the works, meaning that
other assorted classics like Mulan, Lady and the Tramp, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame
are about to get the same treatment, whether we like it or not.
"Whatever, you'll pay to go see it, f**k you!"
Now, are we categorically railing against remakes?
No way.
As we mentioned at the top, the roads of film history have been paved with remakes.
But it goes further than that: as writer and philosopher Umberto Eco put it, “The history
of arts and literature is full of pseudo-remakes that were able to tell at every time something
different.
The whole of Shakespeare is a remake of preceding stories.”
For example, Romeo and Juliet borrows heavily from Ovid, a 1st century Latin poet, and his
story of the similarly bummed-out pair of lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe.
Eco thus concludes that “‘interesting’ remakes can escape repetition” because “seriality
and repetition are not opposed to innovation.”
This certainly applies to movies.
Indeed, sometimes a really quality remake can eclipse its original, not only in the
public consciousness, but in pure quality.
Take Scarface, a 1983 film so beloved in its own right, you may not have known it was a
remake!
To be precise, the 1983 version is an “update” of a 1932 film by the same name, which centers
around an Italian immigrant who makes it big in the bootlegging world of Prohibition-era
Chicago.
The ‘80s version took the basic story-line but jazzed it up, centering it around a Cuban
immigrant who becomes a hot shot drug lord.
Here, we see what feels like a warranted remake that responds to the changing social dynamics
of the country’s immigration patterns, while still grappling with the same themes of immorality,
greed and ambition.
Here, changing the cultural context of the story wasn’t a cheap shot at seeming more
inclusive - a la Beauty and the Beast’s Le Fou having an unnecessary and honestly
boring crush on Gaston.
Instead, it was a genuinely smart way to evolve a narrative and speak to the changing American
landscape.
Also, Al Pacino.
"Say hello to my little friend!"
Similarly, remakes can feel warranted when the technology on or off screen has changed
significantly in a way that makes the film objectively more awesome.
While Beauty and the Beast employed some gnarly CGI to make this candlestick talk and haunt
your dreams, the technological changes did not, again in our objectively correct opinion,
advance the storytelling, and actually may have hindered it - Lumiere in the original
Beauty and the Beast has expressive eyebrows, big sleepy eyes, a candle wax cowlick - he
is very clearly a man who was transformed into a candlestick!
Lumiere in the new Beauty and the Beast looks like a creepy gold figurine your grandma keeps
on the bottom row of her cupboard.
In contrast, the increased capacity of practical effects in the 1980s allowed for versions
of The Fly and The Thing that filmmakers could only have dreamed of in the 1950s when the
originals were made.
They literally advance the storytelling by making for more believable, visceral moments.
In a slightly different vein, the 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven felt justified because
of all the changes in technology that the wider world had undergone since the original
film debuted in 1960.
Not only had weaponry and surveillance technology changed, but also, cell phones happened.
As such, the 2001 film has a plot, and a star-studded cast, better suited to the times.
Then, there are remakes that are celebratory love letters, pure and simple.
Our favorite example of this is the 1989 film Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a
cinematic endeavor by three teenagers to remake the Indiana Jones film shot for shot.
Film critic Jim Windolf describes watching it “with a double perspective, partly rooting
for Indiana Jones to beat the Nazis and partly rooting for the kids on-screen to pull off
each film-making feat."
We’d watch this over the new Lion King any day.
We set out to give you a definitive answer as to what makes a remake valuable, and what
makes a bonafide stinker.
But as you can see, when it comes to remakes, there are a lot of fine lines, nuances, unexpected
triumphs and totally expected failures.
So, here’s our somewhat arbitrary and totally up for debate criteria: 1.
A remake often loves, or at least respects, its original.
2.
A remake must advance, augment, or modernize its original in a compelling way.
3.
A remake must not undo or erase what is most beloved about its original.
Under this paradigm, a film like West Side Story rocks, and Disney live-action slash
CGI films are often stinkers, in that they are explicitly untrue to the original charms
that made their earlier counterparts work.
So, what do you guys think?
Is the Lion King an abomination, or is there value in the Ford assembly line production
of Disney remakes?
What about remakes in general?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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