Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[mousepod]

Don't know if you noticed €uro's post last night. The "bad Nic Cage movie" could also be "Wings of Desire".

As for Psycho - Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake (except for one telling shot) was an interesting excercise that happened to be a bad film. By siting Psycho and "The Godfather", you're talking about films that are already part of the general public's consciousness. That wasn't my point.

In film, the "art" and the story are almost intrinsically linked. When Brendan Fraser's "Bedazzled" was released, it tossed out Peter Cook's clever dialogue and retained the same basic plot. In that way, the remake "spoiled" the original in its artless telling of the same story.

[Alex]

Yes, but in citing The Godfather and Pscho they do support the idea I had (which I admitted was not what you were saying).

When the Psycho project was announced and again when it was released many people did argue that independent of its quality it was a bad thing because it somehow devalued the original.

I disagree with you though. I haven't seen both Bedazzled movies but I have seen several other pairings and don't view the lesser as detracting from the superior. Alec Guinness's The Ladykillers is exactly the film it was before regardless of how good or bad the Tom Hanks version is (and it was bad). If other people aren't able to view separate movies telling the same story as separate objects (Olivier, Gibson, Brannah; how are these impacted/devaluded by the existence of the other Hamlets) then I don't see it as the movie's fault that most people are retarded.

"Oh now, now people will only see the new crappy version and ignore the old wonderful version" is a valid complaint (though again it is a complaint about stupid people, not movies). But only after the movie has been released. But my point was that before a remake is ever seen most people complain about it being an insult to the original.

(And, of course, my larger point was that this argument from some people, while striking me as silly is similar to the devaluation of marriage argument. The former I find silly but easier to understand. But if they come from the same place maybe this smaller example can help me understand the larger).

[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.