I can’t get over how every site that has this mentioned is complaining about remakes, about the movie industry remaking anything with even the vaguest possibility of dollar signs behind it, and yet the industry keeps going. This means that either the studios are right, you want more remakes and are enjoying them and we’re all hopelessly out of touch with the movie going public, or we are right, you don’t want more remakes and instead want originality, and the studios are out of touch.
Let me ponder for a moment which may be right. Of course we all are and the studios are wrong! Still, they haven’t picked up on this and the gossip from Chud through Cinematical is that Robocop is the next up for a remake.
No. Okay so they already stepped over the line for me with the remake (whatever you studios want to call it, it’s a bleeding remake) of the classic Predator, but this is just pissing on the fans of the original.
This movie was fantastic. Witty, satirical, and it did benefit from the lower budget. Now what are you going to do? Make a politically correct, big budget, CGI version of the movie where Robocop is pulled in to save some American Peace Corps from Terrorists or other such crap? I’ve had enough, I’m sticking my head out the window and screaming “I’m as mad as hell and…” wait, they’re remaking that too.
What’s happened to originality? Why remake a perfectly good and cult classic movie? Why would anyone want this? Okay, I can see one reason, they do it better? Hardly…track record and all that.
Richard, I share your pain. But you’ve got to understand, Hollywood execs are so caught up in their own idealogy, that they forget about the appealing aspects of all of the originals: classic actors, bad sound, low budget feel, style, etc… they are so consumed with advancing their careers as opposed to entertaining audiences, that they arrogantly choose to resurrect something old, as opposed to struggling to find something new. Doesn’t happen all the time, but my money is on that’s part of the reason why attendance is down…
Oh, and I’ve got something original and worthy of cult status to recommend: GB: 2525 coming in 2006
I’ve been looking over film history, and it seems whenever there’s a big technological change, the remakes come out.
When sound came in the late 1920s, a zillion silent films were quickly remade as talkies. Lon Chaney took a film of his from 1925 – The Unholy Three – and redid it shot-for-shot in 1930, when it was only five years old. Harold Lloyd redid his own 1923 film Safety Last in 1930 as Feet First. (It was terrible! They all were.) There were lots of others.
Then in the 1950s color and widescreen came along, and again the remakes came along with them. Most of the fifties widescreen epics we remember like Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, and Cleopatra were remakes of earlier efforts (from 1925, 1923, and 1934 respectively). Someone in the fifties even remade The Blue Angel in color, in widescreen, and *with a happy ending*, believe it or not.
Today we have CGI and digital, so guess what? More goddamn remakes!
I think that technological change increases the riskiness of production, and the studios compensate by leaning on remakes, which are safe and “presold”. Fine for the studios financially, I guess, but we’re the poor bastards who have to suffer through it.
Batman was clearly a prequel.
errrr….. wasn’t batman begins a remake/prequel/sequel and if i ain’t mistaken isn’t superman a remake/prequel sequel?
maybe we should say that if you are using a well used idea/storyline or character then you better make sure its good. cause some of us are doing flik-flaks in anticpation of a certain “king king” remake then bashing the rubbish remakes. There are rubbish movies coming out everyday, regardless of whether its a remake or whether its original. Its about how much MONEY it makes that drives it…
its all sending a mixed message to the boys in the ‘wood.
Free advertising is one thing, but everyone saying “it’s crap” is not a great advert and won’t attract anyone other than the hard and fast movie fan who’s curious to see how bad it really is.
The “brand names” of these movies guarantees a certain box office so they are going to make more and more, these films will make money even if no one really likes them that much. You don’t need to spend half as much on advertising when you use a classic movie “brand name”, for one thing the very fact that every movie site on the internet goes starts crying about your next trashing of a classic gives you infinite amounts of free advertising.
… It√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s all about the marketing potential and guaranteed box office
I heard they are going to make a remake of Minority Report, bah, cheap attempt at humor.
I never understand how studios could get away with so many remakes, everybody seems to hate them. However, everyone seems to hate CGI, but they still use it in movies.
whoever decides these remakes and sequels should go through us first. but they’re just gonna make them anyway, we have the power to see them or not.
They are currently remaking movies from the 70’s (The Amityville Horror, The Fog), now they are remaking movies from the 80’s. I guess next year they will start remaking movies from the 90’s.
RoboCop 3 was rated PG-13; the silly TV series was also mild and ‘Prime Directive” was so-so. That said, I think instead of a remake, which is a stupid idea, they should just have another RoboCop theatrical or TV movie. I really don’t think there will be a remake of ‘Predator’, that sounds more like a possible sequel idea. The same goes for RoboCop, the character is rooted in fandom, and a new sequel sounds better. Look at ‘Prime Directive (which was less that four years ago!) – but instead of two, how about a police unit of ‘RoboCops’? Renegade army of ED 209’s?
Anything but a brainless remake just out to make a fast buck. For the record though, I wouldn’t buy it, not even for a dollar.
I am…again…without words. There are so many reasons WHY this movie shouldn’t be remade. Studio execs are the devil and have led the movie making industry to hell. There is NO way this movie could be better than the first and they sure as hell won’t keep the violence. It’ll be a watered down PG-13 piece of crap.
now i think the guy playing bond should be the new robocop.. and give bond to clive owen! aha!