Ok, guys. Check this out. I'm not going to rant about my life today. I know! First I start being positive and then won't rant about my life, what kind of trauma have I been through lately?
Anyway, because I have opinions and currently have no one to share them with (except my dog who just sticks his tongue out at me and mocks me with his clueless brown eyes), therefore I shall pretend that you care about my opinions.
So, anyway, movie remakes! Actually, let's scratch that and put remakes of any kind of popular media including books, music, etc. Remakes generally occur when technology advances, and someone looks back at their favourite old movie/tv show/book/song and thinks "imagine what this would look like with todays technology". It's a valid thought, one I have often pondered myself. Could you imagine something like Star Wars with the technology that Avatar used? I'd love to see that!
Here's the problem, though. The favourite movie usually tends to be many people's favourite or a "classic". That's great, but that means that the original movie has a huge fan-base that have every second of that movie memorized and consider it a part of their childhood or what have you. That's a big issue because generally these fans do not like having someone mess with a classic.
One of the things you could do to avoid this, is wait until a new generation grows up; one who doesn't really remember the original. A good example of this would be Evil Dead. Evil Dead came out in 1981and became a cult classic. In 2013, a remake was released. For those less mathematically inclined, that's a 28 year period from the original to the remake. Now, the age range targeted for horror movies is approximately 13-30 years. If you're paying any attention, those 28 years means that the people who are likely going to see this movie probably didn't watch the original or experience the hype that followed, which could be why the remake ended up being successful.
However, that doesn't always work. Sometimes a film is such a classic, that even being generations apart doesn't work. Take Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". It's probably one of the most popular movies to date. Did you know that in 1998 there was a remake? It flopped, big time. Unlike some remakes change the plot a little, it was a scene-to-scene remake, but it used modern (at the time) equipment. The reason it flopped was because the hype never died. It's such a classic that it's nearly everyone understands what you're talking about if you reference the famous shower scene.
Now, let's look back at Star Wars, simply because it's one of my favourites and the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a classic. Also, because it has been messed with over the years. The original trilogy was a huge hit, that fans are still geeking out about decades after it first hit theatres. Then the second trilogy came out, which didn't hit nearly the popularity the first did. Although to be honest, I don't have a huge issue with it. Jar Jar Binks probably wasn't needed, but I kinda liked the movies and they did moderately well in the box office.
Then came the sacrilege that was the editing of the original trilogy years after it was released. Just check out some of the amazon pages for the movies and you'll really see the disappointment and anger people feel towards it. You just can't mess with a classic.
The other way you can avoid a lacklustre remake, is by doing what Stars Wars did with the second trilogy. Take inspiration from the original and take part of it, but change the perspective by either making it from the view of a secondary character, filing in background story by doing a prequel, fast-forward into the future to view the repercussions of the original story's events, or by setting the focus on an alternative event occurring at the same time or a different world/country/etc. You still get to play around with the wonder of the world created by the original, but you're not replacing the original in any way, just adding to the story.
That kind of adding rather than replacing is why the second trilogy didn't completely fail. Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed the focus of the main character in Angel; which wasn't as much of a classic, but did manage to last for 5 years.
Another thing you can do is switch mediums. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was originally a tv show, but is currently being continued in comic format. You see that a lot when a book becomes a movie. Harry Potter and Star Wars both have continued their stories through approved fan-fiction. If you like Star Wars, you need to check out their comic omnibuses; if you love learning about back stories as much as I do, they're enjoyable.
Something to remember about switching mediums is that you can't keep the exact same story when you switch over. It's one of the things readers hate about when their favourite book becomes a movie (you've heard it, "The book is always better!"). They liked the book because of all the little added details, but whereas a book doesn't really have a time or page limit, a movie does. Condensing what took you days to read into only a couple of hours requires taking some stuff out and editing to allow it to work in its new format.
I could go on, but I think this post is long enough already. Long story short, I'm smarter than most of the people in Hollywood and they should really pay me millions to tell them how to do things. Remakes aren't always crap, but they are trickier to pull off when you're toying with a successful original. The easiest way to pull one off is to pick a shitty movie that didn't make a ton of waves but has a decent plot and turn it into a classic.
Thanks for satisfying my need to converse (my favourite conversations have always been the ones where only I talk, blame my dad). I'm sure I'll wind up giving you another rant in the future. :)
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