Remake rant #???

You know I hate movie remakes.  Song remakes are fun.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad.  But movie remakes just kill me.  I consider myself more of a “music guy” than a “movie guy” but maybe I’ve got it backward.  When I hear a bad cover song I cringe but I’m alright with it.  When I see (or even hear about) a bad movie remake I just want to scream.

My latest fears have been put on a “wait and see” list.

Steven Spielberg is doing “Oldboy” and they’ve cast Will Smith in the lead.

If you’ve never heard of Oldboy, you might not have just felt that sharp spike to the center of your brain.  Everyone who has seen the original just threw up.  It’s almost as bad as when I heard Michael Bay was doing a remake of “Rosemary’s Baby”.

Jose recommended this movie to me and I had never even heard of it.  It is a Korean film and as soon as I saw it I went out and watched the other two movies in the Vengeance trilogy.  I love these movies and the idea of Steven “I put aliens in every damn movie” Spielberg even watching them, much less doing an American version of them just makes me want to kick him in the teeth.

But there is a small comfort.  I just read that he is not going to remake the movie, he is going to adapt a new screenplay from the original graphic novel (that’s read as “comic book” for all you literary types out there).  That means that the movie may be different but he won’t be in direct competition with the original.  Somehow in my brain that makes it easier to deal with.  I just don’t see any way that Hollywood will be able to make a movie that is anywhere even close to the original.  They’ll have to leave too much out.  There’s no way they’ll be able to show the level of emotions in this story.  Sorrow/Depression, Rage/Determination, Love/Redemption, Horror/Betrayal…  Even if they leave it all in, the censor board will never allow them to show the depth.  Some images just have to be seen to convey the absolute peaks and valleys of human emotion.

Will Smith on the other hand is another reason to worry.  I didn’t see “FistWeiner” so the last thing I saw him in was “I Am Legend” and that was a pure abomination.  Why do film adaptations of classic stories if you don’t use the proper ending?  In that version, the title doesn’t make sense anymore!  I am Legend?  In what sense?  I challenge anyone who never read the book (and didn’t Google it) and only has this movie to go off of to tell me what the title means.  You can’t get it from this movie!  They should have called it “Last Man on Earth” or “Omega Man”!  And now they’re talking about a prequel!?!?!  Sigh…