Who says they will ruin it?

I know this isnt all you write about i’ve been coming to this site religously since it first started up. i didn’t mean to offend, Rodney, i know you’re just doing your job, it’s just that i dont get to thrilled when i open up the movie blog and the first thing i see is (in my opinion) lame news of remakes. But that was an early morning cranky post and i’ll just try to accept the fact that there are people who get a boner over this type of stuff and ignore it.

meh, Jonas Brothers.

@ Jeremy K.
I was just being sarcastic. My only point was to show that I felt that the word “powerhouse” seemed misused. I assumed Rodney was referring to box office take, rather than charm factor, which he cleared up above.

@ Rodney
I definately agree with that, Disney does seem to have lost some of their magic as of late.

Are you sure the $790m includes the rerelease? I thought it didn’t, I’m not positive though. I am uncertain what you mean by “the methodology” of what Disney was doing at the time and how E.T. is so far removed from that though. They seem very similar in a lot of aspects to me, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

And I never said that Hollywood doesn’t have any new ideas, I am completely aware that they do. I never said that I thought because they make a few remakes that a thousand different movies aren’t made a year. YOU “narrowly assume” that I must fall into this category of thinking. You’re putting words into my mouth, now. Maybe you fancy yourself a mind reader, but I assure you that isn’t my mind you are reading.

But your assement is that people DELIBERATELY go to bad movies?

I agree that Meet the Spartans (and all other spoof movies of the recent trend) are horrible films, but you cannot deny that they made money.

If the movie was universally bad to everyone, no one would go. Clearly people went. Lots do.

Just because you or I think its a bad movie doesn’t mean it doesnt have a market.

The quality of those movies are precisely what that market wants to see, and they will keep making them. When that market dries up and people stop going to them, they will stop making them.

The quality of the film is going to reflect directly at who they are marketing the film to. You don’t see trailers on TV for Dance Flick during 60 Minutes, but you will during WWE Wrestling.

Your preference is what you are clouding as quality. They do a fine job making a good quality film for people who find entertainment quality in their own farts and think that a kick in the balls is the funniest thing imaginable.

They make remakes because they expect that the movie could draw a crowd, but this is only a guess. If they could accurately predict the audience, then movies would always be well attended because they would make the ones that would get poor attendance. Just because they expect attendance does not mean the movie is good. Plenty of movies that are consistently and overwhelmingly reported as bad have higher than deserved attendance. “Meet the Spartans” is categorically awful. There is no excuse for it. It has a 2% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.4/10 on IMDB. It is rubbish. The damn things still grossed $38,233,676 in the United States and Canada and grossed $45,787,889 Internationally. $84,021,565 for dreck. I completely agree that the studios are making these remakes and other bad movies because they expect them to make money. But I don’t think they believe the movies are good, and I don’t think that being able to make money is a yard stick by which to measure if a movie is good. Good and financially-viable are completely unrelated. I agree that remakes aren’t automatically bad. My only disagreement with your original sentence that the idea that they must be good because they wouldn’t make them if they were bad. Good or bad never enters into it. They make them because they expect to make money, regardless of the quality.

Or just skip that article. I wrote 3 times as many today alone that had nothing to do with remakes.

Just like people assume “there are no new ideas in hollywood” you are making the assumption that because you heard a lot about remakes today, that is all we write about.

Wasn’t the first line of the post saying Disney was digging in their vaults? Just sayin.

Most remakes fail, but they don’t have to.

There have been some good remakes that were quite successful. I think its the approach to remakes that fail.

They seem to count too much on the marketing the title and premise will bring and pay less attention to the quality. People will still go see it in droves.

Hollywood is fast catching on that you can remake good ideas and still have them be good ideas.

The point of recognizing Disney as a powerhouse was that it churned out lovable films on a regular basis. Navigator wasn’t the turning point nor was it one of their biggest hits, but it was part of what Disney was in the business of doing back then.

It seems they lost some of that magic. You used to be able to trust that ANYTHING with Tinkerbell flying around was instantly a classic.

And if you want to compare numbers, ET made $11m on its opening weekend. Impressive as that was, the $790m number includes its theatrical re-release as well as its record setting stay at the boxoffice. Doesn’t even apply to the whole methodology of what Disney was doing at the time.

And Hollywood DOES have new ideas. You narrowly assume that if they do a handful of remakes that instantly there are not a thousand films a year coming out of Hollywood.

Nope, you didn’t. I don’t see what your point was there, though. What was your point in comparing the two?