Best Movie Remakes

Hollywood loves a remake and by most audience accounts, we tend to cringe at the thought. It’s all too common for studios to take something that is beloved, or even just moderately successful and “remake” it in order to cash in on already established profits. Movies are a money-making business but more importantly, they are a platform for visual storytelling. If something is going to be re-made the question should be why.

LA Takedown (1989) vs Heat (1995)

The commercial and critical success of Heat starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, was the outcome of persistence of a good story. Writer and director Michael Mann had written a script for a crime drama about a detective on the hunt for a professional criminal, a passion project in which he conducted his own interviews and based on real life events. It was initially filmed as an unsuccessful pilot for a television series before being reworked into a standalone TV film which became LA Takedown. While not received particularly well, as it was critiqued for its poor acting and typical filming style, he considered it as a dry-run for the end-product he had originally envisioned. After re-working the script and gaining a few more directorial credentials, Mann decided to remake it as a cinema feature. A $60 million budget and two of Hollywood’s greatest resulted in a complex and multi-layered crime drama that significantly improved upon its original version. The story was fully fleshed out, with more thought and detail added into the cinematography and even soundtrack. While they are no longer the same film, the principal of the story is the same while fulfilling its true potential.

The Lord of the Rings (1978) vs The Lord of the Rings (2001)

J.R.R Tolkien’s much loved epic high fantasy novel was first adapted for the screen by Director Ralph Bakshi as an animated feature film, releasing in 1978. The film was made by shooting live action footage which was then traced on to animation cells, a technique known as rotoscoping. While Tolkien’s novel itself is rich in terms of its story content and almost impossible to do justice in a single film, the studio refused to fund a sequel and were also against the idea to add ‘Part One’ to the movies title. The belief was that audiences would not pay to see half a movie and thus the film was distributed with an incomplete story. It wasn’t until Peter Jackson began envisioning his own film, that Middle Earth was re-imagined and brought to life with all three books being made as part of a trilogy. A three-movie deal, which at the time was a huge gamble for the studio as it was undetermined if the first film would even be successful. The novels The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, and Return of the King were filmed at the same time with Jackson having a clear vision of how each one would relate to the other in terms of narrative and scope. The result is a collective masterpiece that earned a total of 17 Academy Award wins including Best Picture and Best Director for Return of the King.

The Thing from Another World (1951) vs The Thing (1982)

The 1950’s was a time where science fiction movies were in abundance, and Howard Hawk’s The Thing From Another World was considered one of the better films of the genre to have been released. Based onthe original novel Who Goes There?by John W. Campbell Jr., the story follows a group of researchers in Antarctica who unearth an alien creature that assimilates with other lifeforms, eventually being able to perfectly replicate them in itself. The film however, changed the fundamental nature of the alien as it appeared humanoid on screen and was even referred to as a “super carrot”. In John Carpenter’s version, we are given are much grittier, blood & gore filled version that showcases a key story element that was lacking in the original – the assimilation process. VFX and prosthetics are used to showhow The Thing grotesquely devours sled dogs and people alike as it metamorphizes into them, ultimately becoming the perfect imitation of that lifeform. What that then creates is paranoia-infused survival in a desolate setting and our characters are forced to question who among them is human or not. It is severely darker in tone compared to the films of the 50’s, but ultimately it serves better to the narrative of the story. Although it was not received well upon release, it has since become a cult classic and referred to as a staple in the horror genre.