Everybody knows Hollywood loves remaking classic movies, but that's not always a bad thing.
Sure, there are plenty of boring copycats out there, but for every unimaginative reimagining,
there's an amazing remake that feels nothing like the original.
The Thing
John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing is a remake of the 1951 The Thing from Another
World.
But as far as remakes go, the two movies are different creatures.
Sure, both versions are set in snowy wastelands, where an alien terrorizes humans and murders
sled dogs.
In both movies, the Thing hates fire and is defeated by a pilot, but that's where the
similarities end.
In the '51 movie, the monster is a gigantic humanoid vegetable.
The humans work together to defeat it, which is the opposite of what happens in the remake.
Instead of fighting an intellectual carrot, the characters in the '82 film face a slimy
shape-shifter that absorbs and impersonates its victims.
The heroes in The Thing are constantly suspicious of each other, and never sure who's human.
Most importantly, the '51 film ends with the alien defeated, but the '82 film has one of
the most ambiguous endings ever, as bleak and cold as Outpost 31.
"Why don't we just wait here for a little while… and see what happens"
Pale Rider
Shane is one of the all-time great Westerns.
This 1953 film follows a mysterious gunfighter played by Alan Ladd, who defends homesteaders
from an evil cattle baron.
In 1985, Clint Eastwood unofficially remade the movie as Pale Rider.
As the enigmatic Preacher, Eastwood rides into a downtrodden mining camp and defends
the locals from a powerful gold tycoon.
In both movies, a cold-blooded gunslinger standing on a porch shoots down a well-meaning
hothead.
And both movies end with the hero riding into the distance, with an obsessed kid calling
out after him.
Despite the similarities, there's one enormous, otherworldly difference.
Shane is human, and Preacher is the ghost of a dead gunfighter, who only shows up after
a little girl asks God for a miracle.
"And behold a pale horse … and his name that sat on him was Death.
And hell followed with him."
Little Shop of Horrors
The 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors is a big, brassy musical about a nerdy florist,
played by Rick Moranis, and a man-eating plant with dreams of world dominance.
Directed by Frank Oz, this over-the-top monster flick features Steve Martin as a sadistic
dentist and a giant singing Venus flytrap.
The film was inspired by an off-Broadway play, but if you go further back, you can follow
Little Shop's roots to the 1960 original.
While the basic plot is the same for both movies, the original wasn't a musical.
The blood-hungry plant is far more talkative in the remake, but the biggest difference
is the ending.
In the remake's theatrical ending, the hero saves the world from the giant plant, but
in the original, the lead is devoured and turned into the world's most horrific flower.
"He was such a good boy …"
"Seymour!"
"I didn't mean it"
12 Monkeys
In 1995's 12 Monkeys, a super virus has ravaged the Earth.
The survivors send a prisoner, played by Bruce Willis, back in time to find the disease's
origin.
While it certainly feels like an original movie, its basic premise was lifted from a
1962 French film called La Jetée, which shares a nearly identical plot.
Just like the prisoner in 12 Monkeys, the hero of La Jetée is haunted by a childhood
memory of a man gunned down at an airport.
In both films, the hero discovers that, thanks to the curse of time travel, the guy he saw
shot down at an airport was his future self, and now he's stuck in a never-ending time
loop.
What truly sets these movies apart is that 12 Monkeys is a traditional movie while La
Jetée is experimental art.
The black-and-white French film is only 28 minutes long and is told with still images
and a narrator.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
The modern Planet of the Apes franchise takes a whole lot of liberties from the original
Ape pentalogy, so you might not realize that 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes is also
a remake of the fourth film in the original series: 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the
Apes.
Both movies follow an ape named Caesar who leads a primate revolt against humans.
But the Caesar of the 2011 remake, played by Andy Serkis, is far more benevolent than
the original Caesar, played by Roddy McDowall.
Serkis' character is a Moses-type who leads his fellow apes to freedom, while McDowall's
Caesar is driven by righteous anger and vengeance.
Rise takes place in modern times, whereas the 1972 Conquest takes place in a totalitarian
era where apes are used for slave labor.
But perhaps the most important distinction is that in Rise, the apes use spears, and
in Conquest, they kill bad guys with machine guns.
The moden reboot would have to wait another movie for that.
Pete's Dragon
If you compare the 1977 Pete's Dragon to the 2016 remake, you could sum up the similarities
in one sentence: "An orphan boy named Pete befriends a magical dragon named Elliott."
Other than that, these two movies are totally different beasts.
Most notably, the original Elliott is covered in scales, but the new one looks like a fuzzy
green dog.
And Pete's backstory is different; In the original, he's a runaway, and in the remake,
he's been stranded in the forest after a car crash.
Both films feature a villain who wants to capture the dragon, although the motives of
the '77 villain are somewhat more sinister.
"We could make a million by slicing him, dicing him..."
The biggest difference between the two films is that the original is a musical, while there's
not a single show tune in the remake.
That's probably a good thing because we're not sure if Robert Redford could have pulled
off the whole Mickey Rooney song-and-dance routine.
The Magnificent Seven
Antoine Fuqua's 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven features a mustachioed Denzel Washington
and a cowboy Chris Pratt fighting an army of gunslinging assassins.
It might not compare to the 1960 version, which was itself a remake of Seven Samurai,
but the modern update got some much-needed upgrades.
The cast is much more diverse, and one of the most important characters is female, which
is allows for some more dynamic storytelling.
In the original, Mexican farmers fend off bandits, but in the remake, a group of townsfolk
defend their property from a psychopathic robber baron.
Washington's character is partly driven by revenge, while Yul Brynner's man in black
is fighting for the farmers solely because it's the right thing to do.
Both movies have their pros and cons, but at the end of the day, well …
"It was magnificent."