Old School Vs. New School February 21, 2008
Posted by Dan in Uncategorized.Tags: Movies
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Reimaging….the very word makes me cringe in fear. It’s like Hollywood admitting “Ok we have no new ideas so we’re gonna take a movie/tv show/comic book/etc that you love and not use the things that you like about it but change it and “make it our own”. Case in point Planet of the Apes. Now granted the original by todays standard is no masterpiece, but it’s still an enjoyable film. It’s a fairly simple story, astronauts travel thru time/space to land on a future version of Earth ruled by monkeys, but in the remak…err reimagining the astronaut travels thru a wormhole looking for a monkey and lands on a planet ruled by monkeys. If you haven’t seen the remake, sorry reimagining stop reading now because I’m gonna ruin the big twist ending for you. In the original the big shock ending was Charlton Heston finds the Statue of Liberty and realizes that he’s been on Earth the entire time and not some strange alien monkey filled planet, in the rema…damn it the reimagined version Marky Mark manages to get back to Earth only to find it….you guessed it ruled by monkeys. Now if they hadn’t used the title, if they had instead made it part of the POTA (Planet of the Apes because I’m tired of typing it) universe it would have made a much better movie, but when you use the title of a know property people are gonna go in with certain expectations and when they get something completely different they leave with a bad taste in their mouth.
Ok if you stopped reading because of spoilers you can start reading again. Now I’m not gonna say that all reimaginings are a bad thing, the remake of Dawn of the Dead was well done. Yeah a lot of people had issues with the fast zombies but to me it made sense, if a corpse is freshly deceased then it would make sense for it to be able to run, as the body breaks down then it should move slower. Anyway the reason for this particular rant is inspired partly by a “reimagining” of Romero’s Day of the Dead. I obtained a copy of this “cinematic masterpiece” and given my love of zombie movies went in with high expectations. Again spoilers ahead, if you wanna watch this when it comes out stop now.Still there? Ok I warned you. It now stars Ving Rhames, Mena Suvari and Nick Cannon instead of a cast of people known only to their family and friends. Ok my first problem is Ving Rhames was in the Dawn reimag…you know what screw it, it’s my blog it’s a damn remake, so unless it’s his characters twin brother how does it make sense for him to be in the sequel? I can live with that though, not a huge deal. My second issue is the cause of the zombie outbreak is an airborn virus that infects people, kills them and they turn into zombies. No I’m not kidding. It’s eventualy explained later on in the movie as to how/why this virus was created. I know your saying “But Dan, they did the same thing in Resident Evil and you liked those movies!” Yes and no, yes the people were turned by a virus but they were killed before they turned so while it was a virus that caused the people to become zombies they were deceased first. It wasn’t “Oh I have a cold, oh I have a bloody nose, oh I’m dead now time to eat people! Grr!” Whats even “better” about this one? Two things, first the virus must have had some radioactive spider DNA in it because in this version the zombies can climb walls! That’s right folks we get Spider-zombie in this one! Yee-fricking-haw. The other jewel in this crap fest? Vegetarian zombies! Yes you read that right, vegan zombies. How you may ask? Well apparently in this movie the zombies retain some of their humanity (which they did to some extent in the original version too) so Bub (now Bud in this version) was a vegetarian in life so he refuses to eat people in death because even the dead have principles. I didn’t intend for this to turn into a movie review, it was just meant to be a rant about the lack of originality in Hollywood but you take what you get right? 
As always thanks for reading,
Dan
Hey Dan!
I’m so with you on the remake issues, and I think that there can be a strong difference between remake and reimagining.
A prime example of a reimagining is Batman Begins, which keeps alive traditions set forward by Burton for the general level of gritty but changes it to a slightly different setting and background.
As far as remakes, I’m quite satisfied with King Kong, in that I’ve seen much worse remakes and it was quite compelling to watch. If anything, this was quite faithful to the spirit of the original and didn’t detract much.
POTA’s remake was, to be frank, a huge disappointment and I feel a low point of Burton’s career. It actually would have been better as a almost literal remake, without the few ‘reimagined’ aspects. The same could also be said for Godzilla, which just felt like it was missing something in its delivery.
For very bad ideas at remakes/reimaginations, I present The Italian Job (just, no), The Wicker Man (lost the impact) and Village of the Damned (the children are meant to be creepy).
I haven’t seen the remakes of Dawn or Day yet, but the changes you’ve mentioned are very frustrating to hear. The virus change is annoying, it worked well in Resident Evil, but there’s a certain element of Romero’s that made it a cult classic, and you can’t screw with those rules. Damn the vegetarianism after death, that’s just silly.
Movies can be remade or reimagined, but the main key is being faithful to the works you are taking the mantle from.
Once again Dan another fine article!
I know exactly what you mean by the POTA comparison. I sort of feel the same way about the new Star Trek movie being made as well as the new Battlestar Galactica to some extent.
I think the defining difference is the change from using the strength of character and actor ability to carry the story, to one’s budget and usage of explosion and effect.
In that way I can appreciate Shaun of the Dead as a remake and tribute to the classic more than the new Dawn of the Dead.