Via one of the blogs over at Wired I see that the powers that be in Hollywood continue apace to rip off old ideas rather than come up with new ones. Apparently, remakes are in the works of Dune and Seven Samurai.
I can understand the desire to have another crack at Dune, as the 1984 film version is widely panned, although I have a soft spot for it. Where else can you see Patrick Stewart play Stick, after all? The more recent SciFi miniseries allegedly tracks more closely to the books, but suffered from the limited budget and visual palette you have on television. Could a 21st-century epic film do Herbert's work justice? I guess we'll find out.
I'm a little bit more distressed by the idea of remaking Seven Samurai, depending on how it's done. It's already been done quite well by Hollywood once, of course, as The Magnificent Seven. Will this new project be a similar reinvention, or is someone foolish enough to try and just redo one of the landmarks of cinema, as with Psycho? Again, I guess we'll find out.
I don't so much have a problem with revisiting classics - nothing is sacred, after all. But I'd feel better about them if I thought it was a sincere effort to say something new and different, rather than a cop out easy way to make money.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Doesn't Anybody Have Original Ideas Anymore?
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2 comments:
One other thing that bugs me aside from remakes (and who can outdo david Lynch?)- is prequels. Especially prequels on my favorites.
Don't get me wrong, Batman Begins kicked ass and Smallville is surprisingly entertaining most of the time. But goddamn. Let's have some new Batman or cover some older things that haven't been covered like the death of the second Robin or the story of Nightwing, himself.
How 'bout a Star Trek movie or better yet a series that deals with Federation life in the post 24th century instead of going back and telling the story of how Spock, Kirk, and McCoy met. And yes, in the grand scheme of the Star Trek universe- Enterprise was pretty lame, despite a few colorful characters. Wouldn't a continuation of DS9 be cool? We never really did find out what happened to Sisko or if Odo managed to persuade the Dominion to give up their conquering ways. How 'bout a Dominion versus the Borg war?
Is Star Wars over? The prequels to one of the best movies of all time were horrible. How 'bout kicking George Lucas out and starting a new line of Jedi movies.
OK. Rant over. Thanks for the opportunity to get that off my chest, JDB.
The spice must flow!
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