Kurosawa remake - finally someone will improve his average effort (1 Viewer)

[teapot2001]

Seven Samurai was way too long at 207 minutes. Good ole Bay will whittle it down to 100 minutes and have explosions and what not. Instead of rifles, maybe the marauders will have chain guns and

I know that is sarcasm, but Pearl Harbor was 183 minutes and Armageddon was 144 minutes (those not being director's cuts); his shortest was Bad Boys at 118 minutes.

~T

 

[Mike Broadman]

Yes, Damin, that is what I meant. Thank you.

People still watch Hitchcock's Psycho. That is the version everyone knows, while making fun of the remake. It was most certainly not "harmed." If anything, I'm guessing it got more people to rent/buy the original.

IIRC, there were lots of people around here who like Planet of the Apes. How is that any better?

 

[Carlo_M]

POTA was, according to Burton, not a remake. It was a reinterpretation of a novel upon which both movies are based. And IMO, the execution was better than the original (I wasn't a fan of it) and the ending more true to the book.

AFAIK, 7S was not a novel first, but a film by Kurosawa. So there is no "reinterpretation" to be had. This new one will only attempt to "modernize" it and that will probably lead to an awful remake. Time will tell, though, I hold no real hope that the remake will even come close to matching the original.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Most everyone is saying the same thing - change the vision of the film can sometimes be interesting if you either maintain the core themes, or replace them with equally adept themes.

But cut the core and leave it empty and you've got crap.

The other method is to keep all of it and apply it to a new environment, ie Mag 7. Of course Mag 7 is a far cry from 7 Sam, yet enjoyable due to types of changes made. Really it was just an Americanized version of the exact same film, and due to the Western style that Kurosawa loved all you really had to do was a costume/set change.

But how many times was Bug's Life billed as a "modernization" of 7 Sam? Exactly. Though they borrowed the premise they were doing their own unique thing with it and had no reason to call it "the CGI kids version of 7 Sam" or something.

IMO, you just don't touch the top 100 films of all-time, period. And the farther up the list you go, the more you are looking for trouble. Even Barb Wire didn't bill itself as a "Casablanca moderization", for good reason.

 

[Josh_Hill]

Man, this is isnt Planet of the Apes, this is friggin Seven Samuri, one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, not a b-movie popcorn film. Is Bay really gonna make this?

 

[Damin J Toell]

Is Bay really gonna make this?

no one said Bay was actually involved. people are just discussing worst-case scenarios.

DJ

 

[Dome Vongvises]

no one said Bay was actually involved. people are just discussing worst-case scenarios.

Bay worst case scenario? He's not that bad folks. Worst case scenario is John Waters or the corpse of Ed Wood.

 

[Seth Paxton]

No, Waters would be okay because that would be a 100% change in vision. A true interpretation rather than modernization.

Bay would try to make 7 Sam for "today's audience". No new vision just hyped up effects, lots of character development cuts and lots of quick cutting camera work.

 

[Mark Pfeiffer]

You know, I think you've hit upon the way to do this remake right. John Waters directs with Divine in the Toshiro Mifune role. Since Divine isn't an option, maybe Meemaw from Pecker in that role?

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Bay worst case scenario? He's not that bad folks. Worst case scenario is John Waters or the corpse of Ed Wood.

To-may-to. To-mah-to. Let's call the whole thing off. Although the John Waters suggestion has me intrigued a little.
Regards,

 

[Richard Kim]

Bay would try to make 7 Sam for "today's audience". No new vision just hyped up effects, lots of character development cuts and lots of quick cutting camera work.

They'll probably hire Yuen Wo Ping or some other Hong Kong stunt coordinator to make the sword fights "flashier."
:rolleyes

 

[Brian Lawrence]

The film will come out and most likely tank. It WILL NOT hurt the reputation of the original, If anything it will result in the Kurasawa film getting extra attention for a few months.

I saw it with Hitch's Psycho. When I worked at a video store that movie never rented (maybe 2 times over 3 years). But when the crappy remake came out at the theaters, all of a sudden the Hitchcock classic was a hot title for about a month and rented out about 15-20 times. A lot of those renters where teenagers that normally won't watch any B&W films.

If the same thing happens with Seven Samurai, I don't care how much money these studios piss away on their remake as long as it gets more people to watch the true classic.

 

[David Oliver]

An author (I want to say James Cain) was once asked whether he thought the movie version of a book he had written had ruined it. He replied (paraphrasing) "Not at all, it is still on my shelf, just as I had written it."

The only problem with most remakes is they probably waste talented people's time and money. It has no effect on the original. In fact often it will help the original when a critic says something like, "This remake stunk, go see the brilliant original version of Super Fuzz."

 

[DonMac]

JonZ wrote:

Yea, Its already been done before:
13th Warrior(Seven Samurai)

True, there are similarities in the basic story, but The 13th Warrior was actually based on the 1000-year-old epic Beowulf, or more precisely, Michael Crichton's imagining of what a possible "true story" behind the legend might have been (such as changing the Grendel monster into a last surviving pocket of Neanderthal, who are also the legendary "fire dragon" when they attack in a long long carrying torches). The main hero of the film and Crichton's novel, Buliwyf, is the Beowulf of legend and the narrator who "draws" the story, Ibn Fahdlan (played by Antonio Banderas), is actually based on a real person who wrote some of the first historical accounts of the Vikings.
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