Remaking a classic movie is never easy.
You've got to appeal to fans of the original while impressing a whole new crop of critics
and drawing in new fans at the same time.
It's a tough balancing act... and it's easy to screw up.
In the 1971 British crime film Get Carter, London gangster Jack Carter returns to his
hometown after the death of his brother.
When he suspects foul play, he decides to dig deeper and find out who was really responsible.
As he delves back into the city's world of organized crime, tensions escalate and violent
conflict ensues.
The 2000 remake of Get Carter, starring Sylvester Stallone, wasn't exactly a bright spot in
the actor's career.
This time, the story was set in America, with Carter a mob enforcer living in Las Vegas
who returns home to Seattle after his brother's death.
But it wasn't the change in setting that disappointed critics it was the fact that the plot was
formulaic and contrived in comparison to the original, despite the fact that it was supposed
to be a suspenseful mystery.
Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman wrote:
"Carter, who goes to Seattle to hunt down his brother's killer, may have entered a labyrinth
of evil, but his response to it [...] is as hollow as it is monolithic."
1990's Total Recall follows Douglas Quaid, a construction worker who begins having disturbing
dreams about life on Mars.
He ends up getting a memory chip implanted that gives him a virtual reality experience
of working as a secret agent on the planet.
But as the film goes on, the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred, and Quaid
struggles to figure out who he really is and what he has really done on Mars.
"If I'm not me, who the hell am I?"
Here's where the 2012 remake went completely wrong: it isn't even set on Mars.
Instead, it takes place on a future, dystopian Earth.
And sure, that concept could have worked well anyway, but this version of Total Recall fell
flat in pretty much every other aspect, too.
"If I'm not me, then who the hell am I?"
According to some critics, the action sequences were the only real bright spot of the film.
CineVue's Joseph Walsh wrote:
"Whilst the action is grand in scope and certainly high in production values it somehow lacks
any tangible sense of tension or drama."
In John Carpenter's 1980 cult classic The Fog, a mysterious fog covers a California
town, bringing with it the ghosts of dead sailors who promptly set about terrorizing
the residents.
The concept could have been corny, but the film's slow build to its scarier moments kept
audiences hooked.
It seemed like a film that could have benefited from a remake with updated special effects
too.
Sadly, the 2005 remake managed to botch it completely.
Although Carpenter produced the remake himself, it just didn't strike a chord with critics.
The scares weren't scary, and the ghosts didn't come across as threatening or intimidating
in any way.
And if a horror film isn't genuinely scary, it usually ends up feeling boring and muddled
which is exactly what happened here.
Writing for ScreenCrush, critic Matt Singer suggested it could be one of the worst movies
ever made.
He wrote:
"This movie's not even that foggy!
The clouds in two-thirds of this movie are so sparse they wouldn't even warrant a push
notification from your phone's weather app."
The Stepfather is a 1987 slasher about a murderer who kills his family, changes his identity,
and then marries into another family so he can repeat the process.
His new stepdaughter soon becomes suspicious of him, and sets out to prove his identity
and save her family.
The film falls somewhere between horror, crime thriller, and black comedy, and the plot is
just interesting enough to carry audiences along to a genuinely satisfying conclusion.
But the 2009 remake of The Stepfather failed to do the same.
The original's palpable tension just isn't there, the plot holes are distracting, and
the climax of the film ties up everything a little too neatly with a predictable series
of events leading up the final moments.
For the AV Club, Scott Tobias wrote:
"Even by horror-remake standards, The Stepfather sets the bar for pointlessness."
Originally released in 1956, Around the World in 80 Days is an epic adventure based on the
novel of the same name by Jules Verne one that ended up winning five Academy Awards,
including the award for Best Picture.
The plot is pretty simple: Phileas Fogg makes a bet that he can get around the world in
a mere eighty days, and subsequently sets off on a race across the globe.
A tale like this might seem timeless, but the 2004 remake didn't take audiences on quite
the same ride as the original.
Instead, it barely followed the plot of Verne's novel, and ended up being nominated for Worst
Remake at the Razzies.
It also went on to win Most Unwelcome Remake at The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.
Marty Mapes summed it up for Movie Habit, when he wrote:
"Around the World in 80 Days is the kind of movie you should see if you're looking for
an excuse to sit in an air-conditioned theater for two hours, and you've already seen all
the good movies."
Nicolas Cage has a strong track record of starring in films that prove a little underwhelming
for critics, and Bangkok Dangerous definitely falls into that category.
The original Bangkok Dangerous is a Thai crime thriller about Kong, a gunman who can neither
hear nor speak.
He works as an assassin for hire, struggles to find real meaning in life, and eventually
meets a tragic end.
It's an intense film, packed full of action and emotion.
Cage's version, however, couldn't hold a candle to the original despite the fact that it was
made by the same directors.
In the 2008 remake of Bangkok Dangerous, several key details are changed.
Cage plays the protagonist, Joe, who isn't deaf or mute.
The cinematography is visually confusing at times, and the idea of a hitman who eventually
gains a conscience feels kinda cliche.
As Scott Nash remarked in a review for Three Movie Buffs:
"The burnt out assassin shtick is old and tired."
The 1959 historical drama Ben-Hur is an undisputed classic.
Interestingly enough, this version of Ben-Hur was actually a remake itself, and one which
definitely improved on the original 1925 silent film, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
For one thing, it features Hollywood's most iconic chariot race.
It was difficult to see how a remake could have outdone the 1959 version but that didn't
stop Paramount from trying.
What could have been a stunning historical epic turned out to be a box office bomb.
The aesthetics were downgraded by haphazard editing and lackluster CGI, and aside from
a few exciting action scenes, little about the film stood out.
Alison Rowat wrote in The Herald:
"A thrill ride in parts, as long as you can forgive the hokiness, wooden dialogue, and
long-slog running time."
1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers might not seem as slick or pretty as today's horror
films, but it's still widely regarded as a classic.
In this sci-fi horror movie, alien spores grow into seed pods that can produce physical
replacements of human beings without any shred of human emotions.
A critically and commercially successful remake followed in 1978, and another retelling, titled
Body Snatchers, was released in 1993.
In 2007, another version of the story was released, this time titled The Invasion.
Rather than creating a straight remake, the writers tried to take it in a different direction
and make the story more contemporary and political.
The result?
A film that was widely criticized for an inconsistent narrative, one whose deeper themes were subsequently
lost in the mess.
For Slate, Dana Stevens wrote:
"It falls far short as an effective sci-fi thriller, not to mention the brainy political
allegory it's determined to be."
1953's House of Wax was a 3-D horror hit in which a sculptor stocks his museum by killing
people and coating their corpses with wax.
It was actually a remake of an earlier film, the 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum.
Audiences were mostly enthusiastic about this version, and it did fairly well at the box
office.
All in all, not a bad go.
In 2005, a modern-day House of Wax was released, but the plot was quite different, preferring
to err more on the "shrill teen slasher" side of things.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a cheesy slasher but compared to the impact of the 1953 version,
this retelling was shallow and way too reliant on cheap scares.
Granted, this was probably obvious based on the casting alone: with Paris Hilton in a
supporting role, it was never going to be taking home an Oscar.
As Maitland McDonagh wrote for TV Guide:
"It delivers some bracingly nasty gore scenes, but there's no spark left in the run-scream-repeat
formula."
In the 1991 film Point Break, Keanu Reeves plays an undercover FBI agent who has to investigate
and infiltrate a group of bank robbers who also happen to be surfers.
But while the premise of Point Break may have seemed clunky, everything still managed to
come together to make a downright ridiculous yet genuinely entertaining movie.
So how do you recapture the magic of a film with an unexpected cult following?
Well, if the movie's 2015 remake is any indication… you can't.
The 2015 Point Break features some visually stunning action scenes, but other than that,
it totally falls flat.
In a review for Times of India, Reagan Gavin Rasquinha summed up the film's fatal flaw:
"Point Break comes across as a string of admittedly amazing action sequences and sports feats
with the rest of the film haphazardly built up around it."
The 1985 zombie film Day of the Dead follows a group of scientists and soldiers who live
in a bunker in the aftermath of a zombie invasion.
Several zombies are kept captive for the purpose of research; an arrangement that obviously
goes very wrong indeed.
Before long, a conflict breaks out that threatens the very survival of the human race.
Now, Day of the Dead is obviously a pretty bloody film, but as with all of George Romero's
zombie movies, it balances its violence with a genuinely thoughtful critique
of society.
However, the 2008 remake forsakes any attempt to bring a real message to the audience in
favor of gore and guts.
There's no real commentary on the state of humanity, the special effects look cheap,
and the zombies are so intelligent and agile that they operate less like zombies and more
like evil human beings with superpowers.
Writing for the Pittsburgh City Paper, Jordan Snowden said:
"Like infected zombie areas put under quarantine, I would lock this film away in a box and leave
it there for good."
Adam Sandler's 2002 remake of Frank Capra's 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town doesn't exactly
rank amongst his best work.
In the original, Longfellow Deeds gets by making a living by juggling odd jobs during
the Great Depression, until he suddenly inherits $20 million from his late uncle.
He soon falls in love with Louise "Babe" Bennett, and an unexpected love story unfolds.
The plot of 2002's Mr. Deeds is similar, but the jokes are grating, the characters are
bland and irritating, and the entire narrative is dumbed down to the point where it's practically
insulting to the audience and to Capra's memory.
In a review for the Seattle Times, Moira Macdonald wrote:
"Mr. Deeds is supposed to be a celebration of the goodness of regular people... but really
it's nothing more than a money maker for the filmmakers and a pointless star vehicle for
Sandler."
1972's The Heartbreak Kid is a different kind of romantic comedy.
Self-absorbed Lenny is married to clingy Lila, and on their honeymoon, he ditches her to
pursue a manipulative college girl named Kelly.
He impulsively divorces Lila and proposes to Kelly, but it becomes clear that her sole
reason for marrying him is to rebel against her father.
At their wedding, Lenny ends up ignored by almost everyone, including the bride, and
this dark comedy ends on a fairly depressing note.
The 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller, didn't do quite so much to push
the boundaries of the genre.
The characters are nasty to the point of being practically irredeemable, and the whole thing
totally fails to differentiate itself from any other film in the genre.
In fact, Rolling Stone dubbed it the worst remake of the year.
In a review for eFilmCritic, Peter Sobczynski said:
"[The Heartbreak Kid is] an ugly, hateful and deeply unfunny bit of hackwork."
Remaking a truly classic horror film is no easy task, and the 1998 remake of Psycho made
that crystal clear.
It certainly didn't help that the original 1960 Psycho was downright chilling and near-perfect
— so fans weren't exactly begging for a do-over, either.
"We all go a little mad sometimes."
The remake didn't take much artistic license, opting instead for a shot-for-shot copy of
the original.
Honestly, it's hard not to ask why it was worth making the film in the first place if
the filmmakers would refuse to deviate from the source material.
Everything from the dialogue to the score is almost a carbon copy of the original.
Somehow, though, they still got it wrong.
The film was nominated for a grand total of three Golden Raspberry Awards, and won for
Worst Remake and Worst Director.
Nitrate Online Review's Sean Axmaker wrote:
"Even with Hitchcock's shot list...
Van Sant can't come up with anything more than a wan tribute to the master, proving
it takes more than a good storyboard to make a film work."
In 2006, the Japanese horror film Kairo was remade for American audiences as Pulse.
In Kairo, evil spirits manage to find their way into our world through the internet, causing
a series of strange and horrifying events to occur.
The film features two parallel narratives that show characters dealing with the consequences
of this paranormal invasion.
In the remake, the unique dual narrative approach was scrapped.
The premise was similar enough, but everything that made the original a cult favorite in
Japan was missing.
The film relies on grotesque imagery to get its points across, but those cheap thrills
aren't enough for a film that fails to delve deeper into any meaningful themes.
Writing for the Austin Chronicle, critic Mark Savlov said:
"[The remake is a] curiously dull Americanization of one of the finest examples of subtle, moody
J-horror out there."
The 1980 film Fame follows a group of high school students after they gain acceptance
to the prestigious High School of Performing Arts in New York City.
As they study their respective crafts, they face difficult obstacles in the classroom,
on stage, and in their personal lives.
There are moments that slip into melodrama, but overall, the characters are relatable
and sympathetic, and the musical numbers were a hit.
But the 2009 remake of Fame just doesn't strike that same atmosphere.
It's too slick and polished, like it was intended to be an after-school special rather than
a film about authentic, complex, and ambitious characters.
It lacks the original's gritty edge too, seeming to take cues from High School Musical and
Glee instead.
Critic Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, writing:
"The new Fame is a sad reflection of the new Hollywood, where material is sanitized and
dumbed down for a hypothetical teen market that is way too sophisticated for it."
1973 British horror film The Wicker Man follows devout Christian police sergeant Neil Howie
as he investigates an isolated island cult.
He travels to the island of Summerisle to find a missing young girl, Rowan Morrison,
who he believes has been taken to the island based on the contents of an anonymous letter.
Howie worries that she's intended to be a human sacrifice for the cult, but what they
have planned for Howie is even more terrifying.
The Nicolas Cage-led 2006 remake of The Wicker Man couldn't help but fall short of the eerie
expectations set by the original.
Moments intended to be harrowing are instead so absurd that they came across as genuinely
hilarious, and the unsettling atmosphere of the original film is completely missing.
“Not the bees [...] Not the bees ah. my eyes, my eyes!”
When a horror movie comes off more like an ill-conceived comedy, it's hard to walk away
without feeling like everyone involved was phoning it in.
The 2008 American remake of the Japanese film One Missed Call has the distinction of being
one of the few films to score a whopping zero percent on the Tomatometer.
The original One Missed Call wasn't exactly a classic, but this just meant there was a
real opportunity for the remake to outshine the original.
And it still completely missed the mark.
One Missed Call just wasn't scary enough for critics, but that lack of fear factor isn't
the movie's real problem.
No, the real problem is that it's just so unforgivably boring.
As Common Sense Media wrote in their review:
"One Missed Call suffers from predictable characters, overused conventions of the horror
genre, and a plot that never really makes sense."
The 1939 comedy film The Women featured an all-female cast, and while one of the main
themes of the film is the characters' relationships with men, not a single man is seen throughout.
With today's push for more female representation in movies, you would think that remaking The
Women would present a great opportunity for Hollywood.
Sadly, the 2008 remake left much to be desired.
It wasn't anywhere near as witty or charming as the original, and the ensemble cast's talent
was largely wasted.
Comparing the film to the 1939 version, critic Linda Barnard wrote for The Star:
"What was then snappy dialogue from meowing madams [...] now flaccidly flaps, lost in
translation from old world to new."
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