Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle
Anyway, my wife got me this after hearing the story:
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Man overboard! 
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I don't mind reboots as long as they're done right. Remakes and sagas, on the other hand, are quite easy to screw up no matter what.
Let's see here:
Red Dawn—The original was fun and played into the Cold War perfectly. The characters were just scared kids with no experience who found a way to become heroes. The remake was … um … crap? Suddenly, North Korea has the military capacity to send a fleet of transport planes right over New York City?
And that's where I rolled my eyes and basically tuned out for the rest of the show. Plus, the whole "kids are now experienced soldiers" thing just blew it to hell (why does every one of these things now have to have an experienced vet who just returned from his eleventeenth tour in Iraq?) Rather than remaking, they should have told the story from the other side of the country. In other words, while Red Dawn was happening in Colorado (is that right?) Red Dawn II should ahve been happening in, say, California. Or North Dakota. It was just slightly worse than stale crap.
Spiderman—Yeah, which remake?
Batman—Yeah, which remake?
Superman—The original was good, although they still hadn't figured out how to make a human at least look like they were trying to fly.
The remake was OK, but there was just too much downtown city destruction for my taste. I didn't like it.
Star Wars—Episode VII was very well done, IMO, and I like it as a movie better than Episode IV, which it was clearly intended to replicate. Nothing will ever beat
A New Hope—
story wise—but I loved Episode VII.
Ghostbusters: Um, no! Fortunately, the creators of
Afterlife are smart enough not to repeat that mistake.
I think that's it for the one's that I have seen. Never cared for
It or
Halloween.
Maverick is smart enough to keep Tom Cruise around and you know he isn't going to "remake"
Top Gun. So that will build upon Maverick's career as a perennial jackass but with lots of good flying.
Terminator and
Rambo are just a couple of old-fart action heroes trying to stay in the game.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? Had no idea, but is it a remake or carrying the franchise forward? A remake is going to wind up like
Ghostbusters 2016, methinks.
Bill and Ted I cannot wait for. Keanu Reeves has never been more himself than he was in those two gas-fests! Loved them!
Beetlejuice and
Splash? Please, please no.
I think what the "remakes" tell me is that Hollywood is running out of ideas and just trying to rake a few more dollars out of the nostalgia wallet. The franchise-extending movies, however, have the capacity to rake nostalgia, while simultaneously building on the franchise with fresh, new story ideas. Those can either go crazy right or hopelessly wrong, depending on who is involved.
Star Trek and
Star Wars are on the wrong path.
Maverick and
Ghostbusters remain to be seen (two weeks apart, maybe?
) but appear to be heading the right direction.
Terminator keeps going back in time to try and save itself.
Rambo? Just blow something up and grumble about fairness. (Speaking of which,
The Expendables is flat out funny stuff. I mean, take all those decades of action heroes, plop them all into one movie, and just annihilate everything!
). DC is a crap fest. Marvel is trying really hard to make something beautiful, but it's getting pretty messy over there. The Bourne series was very good, but they should have left it alone after #3. John Wick was supposed to be 3, but hell, why end there?
Sigh. Just take me back to the '70s when the effects sucked so bad that you had to be able to write a good story and then you had
one shot to tell it in 2 hours.
