But this was the best—except for the human element

[sovay]

I am skeptical of remakes. So many of them seem unnecessary at best, offensively pointless at worst. Every now and then I think of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and I still don't understand.

. . . If you tell me that Peter Capaldi is going to play Professor Marcus in a stage version of The Ladykillers (1955), I want tickets.

(The rest of these are kind of stupid, but I approve of John Oliver: "You're not a man unless you own at least three monocles.")

Comments

[hylomorphist.livejournal.com]

I am skeptical of remakes. So many of them seem unnecessary at best, offensively pointless at worst.

Amen to that. When Hollywood had the fabulous idea of making a remake of Tarkovskij's "Solaris" I had semi-violent intestinal reactions. Getting to watch George Clooney look like a lost puppy for two hours didn't really make up for the offense.

[sovay]

Getting to watch George Clooney look like a lost puppy for two hours didn't really make up for the offense.

There are very rare cases—usually cross-language—where the remake is enough of its own thing to be a worthwhile story. I think both Yojimbo (1961) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964) are worth paying attention to, for example, and while The Magnificent Seven (1960) is probably not the game-changing masterpiece of Seven Samurai (1954), there are far worse ways to waste your time with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, and Charles Bronson. On the other hand, I will never rewatch Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002) now that I own the Norwegian original—which I recommend unreservedly to anyone who hasn't seen it and even people who have—and we will not even get into the question of Let the Right One In (2008). Honestly, I don't even like Hitchcock's own remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) as much as I love his 1934 original.