Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Remake Bad Movies, Not Great Ones

I seem to recall either Gene Siskel or Roger Ebert saying, years ago, that he believed film makers should only do remakes of lousy-to-average movies, and leave the classics be. The rationale was pretty simple: a great motion picture is already there; it's achieved its potential. So take the crappy ones, or the blah ones, and remake them into something special! That actually accomplishes something.

If you wonder what made me think of this, Variety was reporting today that Jennifer Connelly and Keanu Reeves are slated to appear in a new version of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Need I say more?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know... personally, I think Keanu would make a great Gort!

Kimota94 aka Matt aka AgileMan said...

LOL!

For those not familiar with the movie, Gort is the giant mechanical being who has no speaking parts and spends a good chunk of the movie immobile (guarding the ship).

Sadly, Reeves is cast to play Klaatu, the role originally played perfectly by Michael Rennie. The human race never seemed as puny as when Rennie's Klaatu reviewed the mathematical blackboard conjecturings of the Earth's smartest man, and immediately corrected where he'd gone awry. And he did it all without seeming arrogant or any more condescending than we deserved.

Damn, now I want to watch it again!