The Girl with Dragon Tattoo

[batman]

.... but when I watched the original I didn't think, god I bet an American remake would be good.

Neither did I, but then I never watch a film and think 'God, a remake would be good', but if one appears and it is made by top quality film makers (ie Fincher, Craig, Skarsgard, Plummer et al) I think it deserves a look. If it's crap no worries, we still have the superior original to enjoy. If it's good, we then have two films to enjoy. I don't adhere to the 'remakes are always shit' theory ... some remakes (or adaptations/reinterpretations/reimaginings or whatever else they're called these days) are good films in their own right. An example .... Fritz Lang's M is one of my all-time favourite films. It was remade in the 50s in the USA by Joseph Losey. It's not as good as Lang's film, but it is a decent film in it's own right. The acting and direction are strong and the US locations make it sufficiently different to be worth a look. It will never replace Lang's version, but it exists and it's existence has done no harm to anyone (except maybe Lang, who got the hump 'cos he wasn't asked to participate) and it gives us a chance to see someone else's take on the story.

[Timmy_Lea]

Neither did I, but then I never watch a film and think 'God, a remake would be good', but if one appears and it is made by top quality film makers (ie Fincher, Craig, Skarsgard, Plummer et al) I think it deserves a look. If it's crap no worries, we still have the superior original to enjoy. If it's good, we then have two films to enjoy. I don't adhere to the 'remakes are always shit' theory ... some remakes (or adaptations/reinterpretations/reimaginings or whatever else they're called these days) are good films in their own right. An example .... Fritz Lang's M is one of my all-time favourite films. It was remade in the 50s in the USA by Joseph Losey. It's not as good as Lang's film, but it is a decent film in it's own right. The acting and direction are strong and the US locations make it sufficiently different to be worth a look. It will never replace Lang's version, but it exists and it's existence has done no harm to anyone (except maybe Lang, who got the hump 'cos he wasn't asked to participate) and it gives us a chance to see someone else's take on the story.

John Carpenter's The Thing is an example of a great remake, returning to the source material. But Hollywood is increasingly relying on remakes at a time when international cinema is thriving in terms of top quality genre film. The only power I have as a consumer is to not help fund this trend by paying to see these remakes.

[batman]

The only power I have as a consumer is to not help fund this trend by paying to see these remakes.

That is your personal choice, but you may be missing out on some good films. Hollywood has always remade films and I don't think this is a process that will ever stop, because good films always have good stories and there are never enough good stories to go round, therefore a certain amount of recycling will always occur. When films began to be made film makers had a plethora of different sources to plunder for 'new' ideas ... novels, plays, songs, other films, legends, history et al, plus they had hundreds of people beavering away to create 'new' stories. In the past hundred years or so most of the good stories have already been told so present day film makers have a smaller pool from which to extract their 'new' stories. Even their 'original' ideas are often plagiarised (either knowingly or unknowingly) from other sources. Remaking a good story is one of the few ways that studios believe that can 'guarantee' a money-spinner, but as William Goldman said 'in Hollywood nobody knows anything', so these guaranteed money-spinners are no more assured of success than any other film. It's all a gamble, and if one has a good hand (ie the rights to a good or well known story) one is bound to want to play it. Does the consumer suffer? Maybe, but even in the world of non-remakes there is still a lot of rubbish out there, so I would rather watch a decent remake than an 'original' work that is a pile of crap.

[Steve Crook]

That is your personal choice, but you may be missing out on some good films. Hollywood has always remade films and I don't think this is a process that will ever stop, because good films always have good stories and there are never enough good stories to go round, therefore a certain amount of recycling will always occur. When films began to be made film makers had a plethora of different sources to plunder for 'new' ideas ... novels, plays, songs, other films, legends, history et al, plus they had hundreds of people beavering away to create 'new' stories. In the past hundred years or so most of the good stories have already been told so present day film makers have a smaller pool from which to extract their 'new' stories. Even their 'original' ideas are often plagiarised (either knowingly or unknowingly) from other sources. Remaking a good story is one of the few ways that studios believe that can 'guarantee' a money-spinner, but as William Goldman said 'in Hollywood nobody knows anything', so these guaranteed money-spinners are no more assured of success than any other film. It's all a gamble, and if one has a good hand (ie the rights to a good or well known story) one is bound to want to play it. Does the consumer suffer? Maybe, but even in the world of non-remakes there is still a lot of rubbish out there, so I would rather watch a decent remake than an 'original' work that is a pile of crap.

Remember that the purpose of most film-makers in Hollywood isn't to create great works of art, it's to make money. People can only make films in Hollywood if they get funding from the studios or the big production companies - and these stopped being interested in artistic quality a long time ago. The are now all multi-national corporations and they only back a film if they think that there's a good chance that it will make money for them.

Where they do plunder the archives it's not only because they've run out of ideas. It's more that rather than take a chance on an unknown new story they would rather remake an old story which was popular in the past. They know that if it's re-made, even if it's not as good as the original, if they spend lots on promoting it (they often spend as much in promoting a film as they do in making it) then it will almost certainly make a profit - and the trouble is that they're often proved correct. So they keep on doing it.

But having said that, there are plenty of remakes that are better than the original, so it's wrong to dismiss all remakes just because they are remakes

Steve

[Timmy_Lea]

The past yes, but the trend is now to remake films almost immediately!

[batman]

The past yes, but the trend is now to remake films almost immediately!

But that usually only applies to remakes of non-English language films and, as has been discussed elsewhere, there are a lot of people who won't watch subtitled or dubbed films, so they remake these films quickly so that they can earn money out of those titles while they are 'hot'. If one views that as a negative, the positive is that some worthwhile stories will reach an audience who otherwise may never have got to hear about them, which can only be good for everyone ... the original versions may sell more tickets/DVDs thus generating more income for the makers of the original film. Also, the actors/writers/directors of the original may get a career boost from the attention Hollywood has brought to their work.

[Steve Crook]

The past yes, but the trend is now to remake films almost immediately!

What's the shortest period between remakes?

Scorsese' film The Departed (2006) was a remake of the Hong Kong film Mou gaan dou (2002) [aka Internal Affairs]
Are there any where the Hollywood film is a remake of another American or European film and it's remade "almost immediately"?

Steve

[batman]

What's the shortest period between remakes?

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was originally filmed in 2009 with the remake about to be released on Boxing Day 2011. I can't think of any that have been remade quicker than that. There were three years between the Japanese and US versions of Dark Water and four years between the different versions of Ringu.

[Timmy_Lea]

There are only 2 years separating the different versions of TGWTDT. The same timespan for french thriller Anything For Her which was remade as The Next Three Days.

& 2 years between Let The Right One In & the yank version Let Me In.

Spanish horror [REC] was made in 2007. The american remake, Quarantine, in 2008. That counts as "almost immediately".

[batman]

There are only 2 years separating the different versions of TGWTDT. The same timespan for french thriller Anything For Her which was remade as The Next Three Days.

The Next Three Days was pretty good IMHO. It was sufficiently different from the original to be worthwhile and Russell Crowe was less obnoxious than usual. IIRC correctly, the director of Anything For Her was happy his film was being remade and was very keen to see it.

[Steve Crook]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was originally filmed in 2009 with the remake about to be released on Boxing Day 2011. I can't think of any that have been remade quicker than that. There were three years between the Japanese and US versions of Dark Water and four years between the different versions of Ringu.

But they're all different language versions. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) was in Swedish (dubbed into English) [aka Män som hatar kvinnor]
Ringu (1998) was in Japanese and was remade into The Ring (2002)
Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002) was in Japanese and was remade into Dark Water (2005)

That isn't quite the same as the lazy, pointless remakes like The Ladykillers (1955 & 2004) or Psycho (1960 & 1998). They're the remakes that give remakes a bad name

Steve

[Timmy_Lea]

My point was about Hollywood remaking foreign films at a time when foreign film makers are making top quality genre cinema.