Top Ten Movie Remakes That Never Should Have Happened

[Nousemercenary]

Top Ten Movie Remakes That Never Should Have Happened

For perhaps as long as the art of film has existed, movie remakes have occurred throughout the decades. Even some of the earliest films of the 1930s were eventually remade only two decades later. For some individuals, movie remakes are a great way to introduce a new generation to a fresh twist on an older storyline or film. However, for the avid film fan who is familiar with the classic originals, sometimes the realm of movie remakes bears a large sign that only warns Proceed With Caution. Although there are many movie remakes that have at least lived up to the hype of the originals that they were based upon, the following is a list of the top ten movie remakes that never should have happened.

Read the feature here.



List includes:

The Omen
Portrait of Dorian Grey
Planet of the Apes
Rear Window
Thomas Crown Affair
Manchurian Candidate
House On Haunted Hill
The Ring
Footloose
War of the Worlds

What's on your list?

[Dotpattern]

There is no downside to remakes. If the remake is good (and there are many good ones), great!

If the remake sucks, the original doesn't go away or get erased. It is still there for all to enjoy.

In both cases, the remake renews interest in the original and makes new fans out of people who may otherwise never bothered to see it.

[blonde_devil]

some good ones on the list. for me, Star Trek should not have been done. The characters and actors are so intertwined that having someone else play them doesn't work as well. It is different than getting another actor to play Bond or something where the character is established and then you look for someone to play it. For Trek movies, you should always start with a series and then move them to movies.

Casablanca is probably my top one. Sure it can be done better now visually but the actors really make it work for me. As a whole, most movies should not be remade unless they can really improve on it or take it in a good, new direction. Halloween is the perfect example - the new one added info that no one really cared about. Why bother if you are going to do that? I think both that and Elm Street should have been left alone.

[Jennifer Lawrence Fan]

Originally Posted by Dotpattern

There is no downside to remakes. If the remake is good (and there are many good ones), great!

If the remake sucks, the original doesn't go away or get erased. It is still there for all to enjoy.

In both cases, the remake renews interest in the original and makes new fans out of people who may otherwise never bothered to see it.

+1 Agree with you all the way on this one. That's how I like to see it.

[MykeHavoc]

Halloween
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Nightmare on Elm Street
Friday the 13th
The Fog
The Omen
Poseidon Adventure (TV version)
Prom Night
Psycho

and many others. Not to say they're all terrible, but most of them were, as the article states, unnecessary.

[EricJ]

As good as they were, "Let Me In" and "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" should never have happened--
Except for corporate studio jealousy, xenophobic studio ideas of what a foreign film "should" or "shouldn't" be, and the old thrill of thinking you're the "only one" to have seen a popular foreign film.
(Or was that all covered under the Ring remake?)

As usual, explanations for why we GOT all the remakes on the list available on request.

[tigertron]

I actually thought the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes was pretty good. Wahlberg wasn't brilliant but he was pretty decent. Although the ending did suck and that ruined it for me.

[AKORIS]

of what's been listed here so far-- I agree with

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
PSYCHO
HALLOWEEN
THE FOG

I would add

ROLLERBALL
THE SHINING (tv movie)
CARRIE (tv movie)

[DoubleDownAgain]

Originally Posted by Dotpattern

There is no downside to remakes. If the remake is good (and there are many good ones), great!

If the remake sucks, the original doesn't go away or get erased. It is still there for all to enjoy.

In both cases, the remake renews interest in the original and makes new fans out of people who may otherwise never bothered to see it.

Agreed! I think remakes get a bad rap because so many of them are bad and aren't really needed. I really liked Fincher's remake but the downside is that is one less original film he will make. I think you have to judge each movie on it's own merits. If it weren't for remakes we would have never saw Humphrey Bogart in the Maltese Falcon.

[sxerunner]

Miracle on 34th Street
Psycho
Nightmare on Elm Street
GODZILLA

[Nousemercenary]

Originally Posted by MykeHavoc

Halloween
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Nightmare on Elm Street
Friday the 13th
The Fog
The Omen
Poseidon Adventure (TV version)
Prom Night
Psycho

and many others. Not to say they're all terrible, but most of them were, as the article states, unnecessary.

Those are some good ones. The Fog, Psycho, and the Poseidon Adventure shouldn't have been remade. As for the others, it was only a matter of time. They can probably remake Prom Night and Texas Chainsaw Massacre as many times as they want. :P

[BluBrown]

Last year's remake of The Thing didn't need to happen.

[Jimmy Smith]

Originally Posted by BluBrown

Last year's remake of The Thing didn't need to happen.

That one was a prequel not a remake. Its clearly in continuity with the 1982 movie

Anything by Rob Zombie. He is a terrible terrible TERRIBLE filmmaker and his remake of Halloween completely ruined the original

The point of Mike Myers was he was suppose to be a normal kid from a normal family that one day just snapped for no reason. By making him come from a horrible trash family (the only kind of character Zombie seems capable of writing) he completely missed the point of what made the character scary

It amazes me that hacks like him are able to keep making movies and it amazes me more the sheep of the general public still see such awful movies

[lilojbone]

Psycho
High Noon

Both classics and paragons for their genres. Heck, they are paragons for filmmaking; yet, some jabronis thought it was a good idea to remake them.

[surfdude12]

Originally Posted by Dotpattern

There is no downside to remakes. If the remake is good (and there are many good ones), great!

no, they're bad enablers:

(1) enable lazy people not to check out the "great" original they would have otherwise done, but for a "good" remake

(2) enable lazy screenwriters to piggyback on other peoples ideas, instead of coming up with their own

(3) enable greedy studio producers to always invest in quick-profit over quality-art.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by surfdude12

no, they're bad enablers:

(1) enable lazy people not to check out the "great" original they would have otherwise done, but for a "good" remake

Or let their own movie-watching experience color their own revisionist history ("I saw the Jaden Smith Karate Kid, but the original was so 80's!" "I saw the Clash of the Titans remake, and it didn't have those stupid puppets!"), and thus have no curiosity about what made the original films so popular--
While at the same time mythologizing the theater decade "those 80's films" came from, which's why everyone remakes them in the first place.

[Agent Cooper]

To add, remakes take resources that otherwise could have been invested into original film projects, be it finances or the people working on the films.

Same goes for the sometimes endless barrage of sequels to a box office hit. I would gladly exchange all Saw sequels to a single original horror film instead, even if that film should turn out to be mediocre.

[HelmutNewton]

Psycho
City Of Angels
The Wicker Man
The Pink Panther
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Swept Away

[csdot]

totally disagree with The Ring, thats among the best horror remakes in my book. (along with The Thing, The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers etc)

[Dotpattern]

Originally Posted by surfdude12

no, they're bad enablers:

(1) enable lazy people not to check out the "great" original they would have otherwise done, but for a "good" remake

So people who work full time jobs, are full time parents, watch new releases when they get a chance but don't have the time to watch the original, silent version of Ben-Hur are just lazy? That's rather over-simplified. But on the other hand, if they only ever saw the Charlton Heston remake, they're still getting to see a damn good movie.

btw, I noticed in your collection you have 300, 3:10 To Yuma, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Departed, The Fly, Insomnia, King Kong, Planet of the Apes (2001), Robin Hood, The Thing, and The Wizard of Oz. Are you too lazy to watch the originals?

I also noticed you own Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Is that because you were too lazy to go out and see the plays?

How about movies that were based on books, like The Mist? By your definition, aren't those "enablers" too? People were too lazy to read the book so they watched the movie.

Originally Posted by surfdude12

(2) enable lazy screenwriters to piggyback on other peoples ideas, instead of coming up with their own

So Scorsese was lazy when he directed The Departed? Or Cape Fear? He found nothing fresh or interesting to explore in his remakes? James Cameron was lazy when he adapted and directed True Lies? Have you seen the original French version of True Lies? Or the original Bourne Identity? Are you too lazy? Or maybe you just haven't gotten around to them. Or maybe you didn't know they existed. Or maybe you did. But a lot of people don't and are only familiar with the remakes when they're released.

Originally Posted by surfdude12

(3) enable greedy studio producers to always invest in quick-profit over quality-art.

That's a generalization. Because, based only on the remakes in your collection, clearly some studio producers do care about the quality of their art even when it comes to remakes.