Cinematic Mulligans - List Five Films You Wish Someone Would Remake (1 Viewer)

[Ernest Rister]

Remake is the wrong word...Re-Do. Fix. Try again. Impossible in almost all cases, but sometimes you watch a movie that has a great premise, and captures one or two elements incredibly well, but then, something goes wrong...a bad bit of casting, a poorly-written scene, a misjudged bit of direction, truly rotten visual f/x, a bad score, etc. Walking out of the movie, you feel a sense of ennui. It should have been better. It danced close to greatness, then tripped and fell into the punch bowl. If only they had another shot at fixing the bad choices that hurt the film. If only they could take a mulligan.

List your choices for Cinematic Mulligans. Here's mine:

1. Hook (a great idea, a great score, and a few good performances completely flushed down the drain)

2. The Final Conflict (for two movies prior, we're told how terrible it will be when evil Damien Thorne comes to power. We're read some verses from the Bible and we hear creepy poems and we see paintings that predict what the anti-christ will look like. We constantly hear about the horror Damien will unleash on the world, and in this film, we're told Damien and Christ will do battle mano-a-mano. Well, none of that happens. Damien Thorne isn't scary in the slightest, there is no world-consuming battle, Christ and Damien never get to rumble, and we wonder what all the fuss was about.)

3. The Abyss (we've spoken about this at length on the board already - sadly, its a few re-writes short of being a great film)

4. The Godfather Part III (if you watch the original opening scene - which you'll find on the Bonus Disc of the Godfather Box Set - the whole film snaps into place beautifully. We see that Michael is lying to his daughter from the outset, that the fund he has created in her name is really a money-laundering front to pay off corrupt Vatican officials. We see that Michael hasn't changed, and the end of the film becomes even more tragic. Coppola - in a move that baffles me to this day - slashed the opening because he says he wanted Michael to be more likable. By doing so, he also cut the drama out of the 1st act, and the full dimension of the tragedy in the third. Next time you feel like watching Godfather III, watch the abandoned opening scene on disc five, then start the film. You may be surprised at how much better the overall experience is even though some of the footage reappears later in the film).

5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Disney animated film is amazing...right up until the moment the gargoyles start talking and making fart jokes...a colossal misjudgement, marring what is otherwise a great achievement in modern character animation. Same goes for the dumb comedy of Terk in Tarzan, another great movie injured by "kiddie" humour)

 

[BrandonT]

1. Return of the King
2. Artificial Intelligence
3. Matrix Revolutions
4. Pearl Harbor
5. The Alamo

 

[chris winters]

a remake of hook would scare me only becuase of all the peter pan versions out there. It seems like every decade or so, they try and remake it, and it never quite takes off in the right way. Someone could always get it right eventually I guess. I agree that hook was a misfire with perhaps great potential.

The Abyss is a good choice. Maybe even one rewrite could have elevated it above that fragile and subjective threashold between solid effort and classic.

I like the return of the king suggestion. One battle too many, and multiple,badly edited false endings marred an otherwise amazing piece of work. perhaps the directors cut will fix some of this.

There are probably a few of these every year for me. But some that come to mind:

Man on Fire -realeased this year. Great potential, and you could smell somthing magic beginning to happen, but it ultimately sunk into generic action, and style over substance. Like steven sodenberg and michael bay were arm wrestling, and for awhile there was a stalemate, but then bay slammed sodenberg's arm through the table, sealing the movies fate forevor.

alien 3 -a tragic misfire. An artful movie built atop some bad story decisions. All the momentum of aliens completely destroyed, and it created the precedence for the dreary/gooey cinematic constepation that effect all the alien movies that came after. Aliens' had heart as well as slime and scares. Killing off Newt and hicks before the movie even gets started, and having rippley knocked up and fall christlike into a burning hellfire. The whole movie was the emotional equivalent of having a bad case of the runs, while stuck waiting in a nasty/trainspotting style bus terminal. where did the fun go? The franchise may be called aliens, but like most movies its really about the human element.


all the of the new stars wars movies. It had to be said. They will be remade somday. What we have now is expensive previs for the real movies that will follow in 10 -20 years.
hackneyed pacing, and writing. Weatherman style performances over imaginary sets. False beats designed to inspire and thrill that are only marginally succseful becuase of a wee bit of nostalgia. Cartoon hijinks where there used to be real action and whimsy. Somday we will get the prequels we deserve, jut maybe not for awhile.

godzilla -yes this still could work. We now know what not to do. Some of this void may be filled by Jacksons king kong remake, but still. potential squandered.

Lastly Ill submit loser with jason biggs and mena suvery(nm?). I like this movie way more then i should. It had real potential for me. I think Mena was miscast, and didnt add the weight to the role that it should have had. I imagine maybe the girl from six feet under in that role instead, and what a better movie it would be for it. She may not be conventially hot enough however. Biggs was fantastic. I think it had real potential.

my 2 cents.

 

[Brent Hutto]

I'll withold judgement on Return of the King until I see the extended edition. However, one very easy way to improve it would be to show all of the final parting scenes in normal time rather than slow motion. I love the Lord of the Rings movies but there are a handful of sections that just drive me up the wall but the greatest of these is the use of that slo-mo trick for more than a few seconds of emphasis in any one scene. Speaking of endings, I'd love to see AI allowed to end with the blue fairy scene.


But these aren't remake suggestions, just sensible bits of re-editing and/or simple truncation.

I know, how about remakes of the great fantasy movies of the 70's and 80's. Imagine how great the original Star Wars trilogy or ET: The Extra-Terrestrial could be if the visual effects were updated! While we're at it, a few changes to the dialog tracks might really be an improvement.

What am I talking about, that's a terrible idea...

 

[Robin Warren]

Return of the Jedi - scrap ewoks in favour of wookies

The Abyss - great choice for a remake. There is a great thread about this in existence. (too lazy to link)

Van Helsing - Great idea just an awful delivery.

Enemy at the Gates - I really liked this movie and felt it had some real promise, until the love story....eek. It needed a more historical angle to it.

House of the dead - Just use 100% game footage. This would have made a marked improvement.

 

[DougFND]

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - This movie had some good points, but started off on the wrong foot by casting the Flavor of the Month as the lead instead of looking for the right actor.

Pearl Harbor - While the battle sequences are impressive, the dialogue,the bad accents and that stupid-@$$ love story just ruined it for me. Michael Bay should just accept his place as a popcorn director instead of trying to redeem himself like Cameron did. I know a lot of you hate Titanic, but I like it. Pearl Harbor has "I WANNA BE LIKE TITANIC" written all over it.

Hannibal - Man, was I ready to see Anthony Hopkins sink his teeth into that role again after 10 years. I went opening night and have had no desire to see it again since.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - I don't really need to comment, do I? Seriously, it had some good character moments, but Shatner spent too much time trying to capture the comedic tones of IV.

 

[George See]

Timeline please, it could have been a great movie.

 

[Doug:Li]

Exorcist 4!

oh, wait ...

 

[Bill Williams]

The one I would pick would be Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Get Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz back to direct and write it, respectively. Give it a proper budget, re-do all of the crappy visual FX with some realistic CGI FX and make it all look a thousand percent better than what appeared in the final version, and restore all of the lost footage. The potential was really there, but the execution was a poor shoestring.

 

[Scott McGillivray]

Interesting thread topic!

I would like to see:

"13th Warrior" - So close to being a great fun action movie with lots of potential characters. Perhaps even a re-edit could fix it up.

"Alien 3" - I will 2nd that nomination. I would not have thought the movie could have been that screwed up (especially conisdering the directors subsequent work).

"Predator 2" - So much potential. So brutal. I hope the upcoming "Alien vs Predator" makes up for it.

"Dungeons & Dragons" - Again, limitless potential here. There are so many good books based on D&D (Dragonlance series, Drizzit series etc.) and they produce that steaming pile of crap of a movie. Ugh. Please RE-DO!

"Batman" - all of them. I may get my wish with the upcoming movie, but I would like to erase the memory of the rest of them. They had the big budget and did such silly stuff with it.

 

[Jefferson Morris]

Umm...speaking of Titanic, I find that to be perhaps the most frustratingly almost-great movie of the last decade.

Most of its plot could be left intact, but the script would need a re-working for the remake. It seemed like for all his fanatical attention to the details of the ship itself, Cameron wasn't too interested in researching how the people of the era would have lived, spoken, acted, etc.

That said, the basic concept is a masterstroke (doomed lovers on the Titanic), and quite well plotted - despite my qualms, for a 3hr 15min film it flies by. It was well cast, and the production values were impeccable. I'd just love it if the re-maker could inject a bit more ambiguity into the characters - make Rose more of a supercilious bitch for the first half, rather than a late 20th century progressive feminist (and Picasso fan!). And make Jack more of a genuine scoundrel - show him actually picking people's pockets, for example, or winning his ticket on the ship by cheating.

The frustrating thing is, all these ideas are latent in the film - they're there, but not developed. IMO, these little character changes would make the redemptive love story all that much more powerful, as it would give the characters some room to develop.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Dan Rudolph]

The Time Machine. Can we please get a faithful version of this book?

 

[Yee-Ming]

Dune. Not a remake, but let Lynch re-edit and complete it as he wanted. Sadly, not going to happen, even for a DVD release.

Some of the sequences added back into the TV cut (the disavowed "Alan Smithee" version) do add more, e.g. Pauls' deathmatch with Jamis, and extracting the Water of Life, and in Lynch's hands I can see how an extended cut could've been so much better. As it is, I think he turned in a 3-hr cut, which he had to trim to just over 2 hrs, so heck, in a sense this existed at one time.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I would like to see Episode IV redone where Greedo doesn't shoot first.

 

[Andy Sheets]

I can't think of much I'd want to see remade except that I really want to see someone do a faithful, well-cast Conan the Barbarian film.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

1. The Two Towers : Put the original character motivations in from the book and drop dead/not dead subplot. Simple editing and maybe 3 scene reshoots ought to fix it.
2. Matrix Revolutions : Complete redo. We know the machines can only be stopped from within the Matrix so why spend over an hour of the movie fighting in the real world. Huge disappointment after the first two.
3. Pitch Black : Make Riddick's transformation slower and more believable rather than instantaneously after a 60 second speech. Great movie otherwise.
4. MIB : Make it a serious and realistic (well given that aliens exist) instead of a comedy.
5. Addams' Family Values : Change the gold-digger plot to something else and either do a much better job at showing the kids not fitting in at camp (pranks or whatever) or drop the whole camp subplot.

Chuck

 

[Chris]

MIB & MIBII - remove the idiotic end scenes.

Timeline - rework the concept, retake several scenes

Star Trek: Insurrection - cut a lot of the goofy comedy. Don't destroy the enterprise.. hell, have it limp off, but don't destroy it.. that's becoming pro-forma to keep destroying the darn ship.

Star Wars: TPM - OK, I actually like this, but think one thing that would have helped is to change Anakin's character to make him more cynical about his lot in life.. (and I'll still stick with what I said then: I find C3PO far more annoying then Jar Jar)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding - have the guy at some point stand up for himself and say "you know, if I have to change all this much to be acceptable, I'm not sure I'm the right person.. unless you realize after we're hitched this stuff might not last"

Devil's Advocate - forget the semi-dream sequence bit. Forget the incest bit. Go the whole hog. Have him stay evil without the need to procreate some anti-christ. Just put to him the question: I'll make you as rich as you can ever imagine.. you just have to sell your soul.

 

[Gary Seven]

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Studios please note:

Psycho, The Stepford Wives, and The Manchurian Candidate have not appeared on any of the above lists!

 

[chris winters]

i dont want to derail the thread, but i liked phantom menace more the clones as well. Jar Jar was not its biggest problem. I would say make anakin about 5 years older, a young teen, and fix the pacing/rhythm and you have yourself a pretty decent movie. If anakin were say, 14, hes much more believable winning a pod race, and blowing up the droid ship. It also gives his crush on padme more weight. Suddenly everything is much less silly and hes still a prodegy. also maybe he whines a bit less, and has a touch more petulence. play his teen attitude against wise lliam neeson tolerating his attitude while showing a touch of greed and awe at finding an obvious young jedi genius. just a touch of the good will hunting dynamic. Have the whole flick flow better, and you have a decent contrabution to the series. Oh yeah, and change the faux asian aliens accents. Well and give ewen megregor a bit more to do. Oh yeah and lastly ditch the whole midichlorians thing. let the force be spiritual/magical and leave it at that. I dont even want to get started on clones...