It has become fashionable to claim that a remake or reinvention of a
favourite book, film or whatever from when one was young "ruined my
childhood". And inevitably it has also become fashionable to dismiss
such overblown nonsense. I think there is potential for a useful
middle way.
Ignore the exaggerated rhetoric for a moment. Obviously a large
part of my liking for things I met when I was young is nostalgia: I
will never again read such-and-such a plot for the first time and find
it new and surprising. I have probably retained more sense of wonder
than many people (well, I haven't given up reading SF and fantasy the
way quite a lot of people seem to), but I am not the child I was, even
if I can manage a reasonably good internal simulation of him.
When someone says "it's that old thing, only new" my immediate
reaction, before I've heard any details, tends to be negative. Either
I didn't care for that old thing, in which case I have no interest in
a newer version of it, or I did like it, in which case why would I
want it re-done when the original is available? (And these days the
original probably is available, which is something many film and
TV-makers don't take into account since it wasn't true when they were
growing up. These days they're competing not only with whatever else
is new this season, but with everything that's available on DVD and
download.)
But that's me: I'm probably not the target audience. Why should I
object if those darn kids get a new version of a thing I liked? I'm
told that many young people today will simply refuse to watch a film
that's not in colour, because it's so alien to their experience (while
I grew up with endless repeats of old films, and indeed we had only a
black-and-white television set in the house for much of my childhood).
Why shouldn't something be re-done for them so that they can enjoy the
same stories I did?
Two reasons: I don't mind a new version of an old thing, but I do mind
that people will see the new version and think that that's what the
thing was always about. Doomed elf-dwarf romance? Oh, yeah, Tolkien
was into that. Indiana Jones was always set in the 1950s, what do
Nazis have to do with it? And so on.
And secondly I don't think that the stuff I grew up with is so amazing
that it needs to be recycled. Which is more likely to be a film with
interesting things to say, a Ghostbusters remake with an all-female
main cast, or an original story with an all-female main cast?
(Actually that's a trick question, because this is Hollywood, and
"all-female main cast" usually means "chick flick".) But the attempt
to bring in an audience of people who remember the original story will
stretch and distort any attempt to do something interesting, because
it forces in-jokes and call-outs to memorable moments in the original
even when they don't fit with whatever new story someone might have
wanted to tell.
- Posted by Owen Smith at
01:54pm on
11 March 2015
Ghostbusters was near perfect as originally made, it is pointless re-making it. You can't recapture what made it work. The all female main cast is a gimmick to make it seem interesting or somehow worthy.
I've not heard anything about young people refusing to watch black and white. Do you have any references? While we're at it, how are they on silent films, I find them rather hard work myself.
- Posted by RogerBW at
02:02pm on
11 March 2015
Here is a typical example of the complaint; I don't think it's been formally studied.
I suspect from what I've read that black-and-white is actually considered a proxy for "old, slow, too much talk and not enough action" rather than being a problem in itself. But that's still a reason for a studio to go for a remake rather than a re-release.
- Posted by John Dallman at
07:19pm on
11 March 2015
Another reason for a remake, of course, is that it costs a lot more, and a lot more people in the industry, as opposed to shareholders, get a cut.
- Posted by Ashley R Pollard at
08:12pm on
11 March 2015
John you're far too cynical for your own good.
Remakes are the equivalent of staging a play. RSC does it, but you live in Middlesborough, so you go to see the local company put on their version.
The only difference is that with film one can replay an old performance of a production, and compare and contrast Olivier performance with Branagh's portrayal of Henry the 5th.
- Posted by RogerBW at
01:00am on
12 March 2015
I think remakes are trying to get the best of all worlds: it's something new, so there's a reason to make a fuss about it more than just a DVD rerelease, but it's also something old, so it's a Known Marketable Property and you can hope to drag along some fans of the original who are nostalgic for it.
This gets into the economics of filmmaking: the money men try to minimise variation in return on investment, i.e. they go for the surest thing possible, and while remakes and re-inventions are rarely stellar performers they're also rarely complete flops, The Lone Ranger being a notable exception. (The money men may also, being typically in their fifties or older, have some nostalgia for the original.)
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