Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Ghoulish Delight]

A movie's "quality" and "value" are not, in my opinion, defined solely by what's on the film and on the audio track. Their standing in the public eye is part of the equation. And remakes, no matter the quality, usually have a diluting effect on that standing. A truly terrible remake makes younger viewers reluctant to consider the original as worthy of watching, thus reducing its appeal and therefor its value, no matter the quality of the original. A mediocer remake that, perhaps, has technical and stylistic advantages while storytelling, acting, directing are inferor to the original, may supplant the original in the minds of a younger audience that's drawn to its flashier modern sensebilities, again devaluing the original movie (e.g., overheard some kid who claimed that Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was sooo much better than the original).

Hamlet is an unfair example. That's a play. The difference, to me, is that a play is a medium that is designed to be given different interpretations. Or, rather, a written play is one medium, a performed or filmed play is an interpretation of the written play in a different medium. When someone does a new movie version of Hamlet, they aren't starting with another movie version, or stage version, and going from there. They start with the play. Whereas when someone's remaking a movie, they aren't starting with the screenplay, they're starting with the movie. Heck, using the same example, that's where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fell short, imo. Despite everyone's insistance that it was going to be more faithful to the book, in the end it had too much in common with the movie version to be anything more than a remake rather than a reinterpret. And the bulk of the stuff that was distinct from Willie Wonka wasn't from the book at all anyway.

So yes, I tend to be on the side of feeling that remakes, especially poor ones, hurt the standing of the original.