Remake films

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"We all had a drink. Except for the cat, and that's important. The water tasted like... heaven. It floated over your tongue like a cloud. Tuck carved a T in the trunk and we moved on west to find a place to settle down. We put up a house for Mae and Tuck and a little shed for Jesse and me. That was the first time we figured there was something... peculiar. Jesse fell thirty feet and landed on is neck. He was up on his feet before Mae could work up a good cry. Didn't hurt him a bit, no broken bones... nothing. But that's not all... not by a long shot. Things began to happen. Some brush-poppers mistook Mae's horse for a deer. Thing is, the bullets didn't kill him. Barely even left a mark. Then Tuck got bitten by a rattlesnake, and you know what... he didn't die. But the cat did, of old age. And Miles got married. Tuck figured it early on. It was the spring. We all drank from it, even the horse. It had to be... the source of our changelessness. I begged her to come back... to me and find the spring and drink from it. The children, too. It was our only hope... to be together. She'd made up her mind that I'd... sold my soul to the devil. And she left me. She took my babies with her. Everyone... pulled away after that. There was talk of witchcraft... and... black magic. I went lookin' for wars to fight... and I saw brave men die at Vera Cruz. And then Gettysburg. Thousands of them in the blink of an eye. But not me. I couldn't die. Like Little Anna. The influenza took her before she was fifteen. And Bo. He'd be almost eighty now if he were still alive. And my sweet... my sweet young bride. She died in an insane asylum. Old and alone. But I'm still here... I'm still here."

- Tuck Everlasting (2002 film)

0 likesComing-of-age filmsFantasy filmsFilms based on novelsPeriod filmsRemake films
"Though War of the Worlds may have been based on an H.G. Wells novel from 1897, the film is very much about a specific, confusing, terrible time in American history: the period directly following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and how we, as a country, reacted to it. The movie tries to work through this collective angst and trauma, a fact that is, somehow, even more obvious watching it more than a decade after its initial release. The story begins in New York City, where Tom Cruise's Ray works on the docks and lives in New Jersey. When the alien attack first begins, greater New York City is the "ground zero" we see it depicted from. Ray's New Jersey community, filled with a sense of tight-knit camraderie and friendly neighborhood cops that feel totally different in the context of post-9/11 than they do in our current cultural context, is where this all begins for us. From there, we get several iconic images Americans have come to associate with 9/11: from traumatized people covered in ash to hordes of weary people walking across bridges to the signs people have made to look for their missing loved ones. At one point, when Ray and his kids are driving away from NYC, Dakota Fanning's Rachel asks if it is "the terrorists" as the city is destroyed behind them. This movie is also really pro-military. Pretty much whenever there is a heroic moment, it is a military man leading the way. The National Guard makes recurring appearances, somehow still in operation in the midst of this batshit crazy alien attack that the Earth is wholly unprepared for. This is not only an allegory for the police and firemen whose heroism has become a central tenet of our 9/11 narrative, but of the Iraq War that began probably around the time of this film's initial development."

- War of the Worlds (2005 film)

0 likes2000s American filmsScience fiction filmsFilms based on novelsRemake filmsFilms directed by Steven Spielberg
"The problem may be with the alien invasion itself. It is not very interesting. We learn that countless years ago, invaders presumably but not necessarily from Mars buried huge machines all over the Earth. Now they activate them with lightning bolts, each one containing an alien (in what form, it is hard to say). With the aliens at the controls, these machines crash up out of the Earth, stand on three towering but spindly legs and begin to zap the planet with death rays. Later, their tentacles suck our blood and fill steel baskets with our writhing bodies. To what purpose? Why zap what you later want to harvest? Why harvest humans? And, for that matter, why balance these towering machines on ill-designed supports? If evolution has taught us anything, it is that limbs of living things, from men to dinosaurs to spiders to centipedes, tend to come in numbers divisible by two. Three legs are inherently not stable, as the movie demonstrates when one leg of a giant tripod is damaged, and it falls helplessly to the ground. The tripods are indeed faithful to the original illustrations for H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, and to the machines described in the historic 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast. But the book and radio program depended on our imaginations to make them believable, and the movie came at a time of lower expectations in visual effects. You look at Spielberg's machines and you don't get much worked up, because you're seeing not alien menace but clumsy retro design. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to set the movie in 1898, at the time of Wells' novel, when the tripods represented a state-of-the-art alien invasion."

- War of the Worlds (2005 film)

0 likes2000s American filmsScience fiction filmsFilms based on novelsRemake filmsFilms directed by Steven Spielberg
"(narrating) Thebes, City of the Living. Crown jewel of Pharaoh Seti I. Home of Imhotep, Pharaoh's high priest, keeper of the dead; birthplace of Anck-Su-Namun, Pharaoh's mistress. No other man was allowed to touch her. But for their love, they were willing to risk life itself. To resurrect Anck-Su-Namun, Imhotep and his priests broke into her crypt and stole her body. They raced deep into the desert, taking Anck-Su-Namun's corpse to Hammunaptra, City of the Dead, ancient burial site for the sons of pharaohs, and resting place for the wealth of Egypt. For his love, Imhotep dared the gods' anger by going deep into the city, where he took the black Book of the Dead from its holy resting place. Anck-Su-Namun's soul had been sent to the dark Underworld, her vital organs removed and placed in five sacred canopic jars. Anck-Su-Namun's soul had come back from the dead. But Pharaoh's bodyguards had followed Imhotep, and stopped him before the ritual could be completed. Imhotep's priests were condemned to be mummified alive. As for Imhotep, he was condemned to endure the Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient curses. One so horrible, it had never before been bestowed. He was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, the undead for all eternity. The Medjai would never allow him to be released. For he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater with the strength of the ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility. For 3,000 years men and armies fought over this land, never knowing what evil lay beneath it; and for 3,000 years we, the Medjai, the descendants of Pharaoh's sacred bodyguards, kept watch."

- The Mummy (1999 film)

0 likesFilms about mummiesRemake filmsReboot filmsFilms directed by Stephen SommersFilms set in deserts
"Like Polley, the rest of the cast members joined the film for reasons other than fealty to Romero's classic. Rhames looked at the story as a metaphor for tumultuous times rather than a literal interpretation of the source material, which itself is ripe with social commentary. "I didn't see the original, and in general I'm not a fan of the horror genre," admitted Rhames. "But from reading the script, I don't really put this film in that category. To me, it just so happens that our nemeses are zombies, but it could be any life-threatening situation." Rhames observed that the cast of characters reflected a decidedly more multi-cultural slant than in other recent films. "What I liked about it was, I thought it's bringing people from different ethnicities, different cultures together who need each other. So when I look at the world, I really say unfortunately, sometimes it's an atrocity; let's say 9/11; that forces us to come together. When I read the script I had no concept of what the zombies would look like; I just said, it's interesting to find these groups of characters in the situation." As he also acknowledged, it didn't hurt to have a steady hand behind the camera to keep the proceedings organized: "I also looked at Zack's reel, he has a very good commercial reel, and what I did was I turned down the volume, and I just watched how he moved the camera, and how the camera told the story. After that, I said, you know, I think this guy has a lot of potential, and I'd like to be a part of the project.""

- Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

0 likesRemake filmsPost-apocalyptic filmsFilms about zombiesFilms directed by Zack SnyderFilms set in department stores
"The idea of Zack Snyder being a political filmmaker is hilarious in any respect. He is stereotyped more for being so in awe with the art direction, production design and costumes of his films that he never realises how lacking in quality the final products are. But ever since his debut film, his 2004 remake of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, a right-wing political allegory has always been so central to the narratives of his works it can hardly be described as subtext. The time has come for us to now understand that this is more than mere coincidence. As The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin wrote in a recent appraisal of Snyder as a “latter-day Ken Russell”; “Romero’s original was a bleak and timely consumerist satire, in which zombies shamble around a suburban shopping mall on lizard-brain instinct. Snyder’s version abandons that, and instead uses zombies as an allegory for western fears of “otherness” – immigrants, refugees, Muslims, you name them. This time, civilisation is the mall, about to be swamped by a rising tide of subhumans – although as the film’s ultra-bleak finale makes clear, any distinctions between “them” and “us” are ultimately meaningless”. Despite this allegory, the subversive screenplay by Guardians of the Galaxy director w:James Gunn\James Gunn ensures there was an intended satirical bite, that Snyder’s overwrought direction rendered moot. One of the complaints of his remake was the refusal to linger on the faces of the zombies, therefore “dehumanising” them in the eyes of Romero."

- Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

0 likesRemake filmsPost-apocalyptic filmsFilms about zombiesFilms directed by Zack SnyderFilms set in department stores
"Snyder's career actually began in controversy, with the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. The original Dawn of the Dead is perhaps the greatest zombie movie ever made, a shambling attack on American consumption that shows zombies staggering around a mall, winking at the way many of us anesthetize our deeper feelings and thoughts through buying crap. It seemed an odd fit for a director whose previous credits were all commercials and music videos. And it's fair to say that Snyder's version largely eschews nuance in favor of being awesome. Instead of stumbling and shuffling, his zombies sprint. Instead of a not-so-veiled attack on consumerism, his movie would be more of a take on post-tragedy community building. It was a horror flick, sure, but without any of the psychological tension that propped up the original. Above all, it was a flat-out thrill ride. In Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, the zombies didn't have to mean anything, because they could run, headlong, after their prey. Somewhat fittingly for the diminishing returns Snyder has yielded throughout his career, the best thing he's ever directed are the first 10 minutes of Dawn of the Dead. I've embedded a portion of them below, as well as the film's terrific opening credits. Watching those two clips will give you a good sense of some of Snyder's strengths. For one thing, he's terrific at casting strong actors. (In Dawn of the Dead, that distinction belongs to Sarah Polley, as a young woman watching her world go to hell.) For another, he's a master of montage editing, where seemingly disconnected moments bump up against each other in ways that create new connections and contrasts. (Those opening credits are a tremendous example.) The clips (particularly the first one) also hint at some key elements of Snyder's aesthetic. For one thing, he uses far fewer medium shots than most directors. He likes alternating between wide shots (as when the protagonist observes the chaos devouring her neighborhood) and shots that zoom in close on his actors, to a variety of different degrees (as when we see her worried expression as she takes it all in). When Snyder does use medium shots, he uses them in weird ways. Take the short moment where our hero talks to the man across the street who's holding a gun. Both characters are filmed in mid-shot, but Snyder puts them both in the same frame exactly once (when we see the man across the street over her shoulder, as if we're standing behind her). Blink and you'd miss this shot. Most directors would give us at least a few lines of dialogue while the two shared the same frame, but not Snyder. They're never in the same frame while talking to each other. The medium shot is the cinema's version of normalcy. Certainly, there are several where something huge happens, but a lot of the time, cinema uses the medium shot to break up the "pay attention to me!" panoramas of the wide shot and the forced intimacy of the close-up. That Snyder doesn't really use them in the first place, let alone typically, gives his work a heightened feel — everything subconsciously feels bigger than it otherwise might. Indeed, you'll note that the scene from Dawn of the Dead I've described above mimics the look of another visual medium: comic books."

- Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

0 likesRemake filmsPost-apocalyptic filmsFilms about zombiesFilms directed by Zack SnyderFilms set in department stores
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you a very strange story. A story so strange that no one will believe it. But, ladies and gentlemen, seeing is believing. And we, my friends and I, have brought back the living proof of our story. The story of our adventure, in which 17 of our party suffered horrible deaths. But their sacrifices were not in vain. Their lives were lost in pursuit of a savage beast. A monstrous aberration of nature. But unlike other wild animals, even the meanest brute can be tamed. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as you will see, the beast was no match for the charms of a young girl. A girl from New York who melted his heart, bringing to mind that old Arabian proverb: "And lo, the Beast looked upon the face of Beauty, and Beauty stayed his hand. And from that day forward, he was as one dead". And now ladies and gentlemen, before I tell you the story of our voyage, I'm going to show you the greatest thing your eyes have ever beheld. He was more than just a god. He was a king in the world he knew, but he comes to you now a captive... a show to gratify your curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World! [The curtain rises to reveal Kong, sitting on the stage, miserable, his limbs cuffed with gigantic chains. The audience gasps] Don't be alarmed! It's perfectly safe! These chains are made of chrome steel. They are strong enough to hold a battleship!"

- King Kong (2005 film)

0 likes2000s American filmsNew Zealand filmsRemake filmsAdventure filmsFilms about monsters
"I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. A boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say "I do." I was wrong. That's getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition. I know. I've just been through one. Not my own. My daughter's. Annie Banks-MacKenzie. That's her married name. MacKenzie. I'll be honest with you. When I bought this house seventeen years ago, it cost me less than this blessed event in which Annie Banks became Annie Banks-MacKenzie. I'm told that one day I'll look back on all this with great affection and nostalgia. I hope so. You fathers will understand. You have a little girl. An adorable little girl who looks up to you and adores you in a way you could never imagine. I remember how her little hand used to fit inside mine. How she used to sit in my lap and lean her head against my chest. She said that I was her hero. Then the day comes when she wants to get her ears pierced and she wants you to drop her off a block before the movie theater. Next thing you know she's wearing eye shadow and high heels. From that moment on, you're in a constant state of panic. You worry about her going out with the wrong kind of guys, the kind of guys who only want one thing—and you know exactly what that one thing is because it's the same thing you wanted when you were their age. Then she gets a little older and you quit worrying about her meeting the wrong guy and you worry about her meeting the right guy. And that's the biggest fear of all because then you lose her. And before you know it, you're sitting all alone in a big, empty house, wearing rice on your tux, wondering what happened to your life. It was just six months ago that it happened here. Just six months ago that the storm broke."

- Father of the Bride (1991 film)

0 likes1990s American filmsComedy filmsRemake filmsFilms about weddingsMidlife crisis films
"There are significant differences, too. For where Alien boasted an on-board computer nicknamed ‘Mother’, a female protagonist and an egg-born nemesis, The Thing is set in an all-male environment, and is as much a study of masculinity in crisis as an update of the sort of siege scenario that Carpenter had already played out in Assault on Precinct 13. The first time we meet chopper pilot and hero RJ MacReady (Carpenter regular Kurt Russell), a loner who lives apart from the rest of the crew’s quarters in a shack outside, he is in the rec room, pouring himself a scotch on ice, and resuming a game of chess – not with one of his companions, but with the computer. “Poor baby, you’re starting to lose it,” he comments, before the Chess Wizard checkmates him. With his masculine ego damaged, MacReady’s response is to pour his drink into the computer’s circuitry, frying it with the words, “Cheating bitch.” It is a misogynistic slur (accompanied by an absurd destructive act) against the only presence on the station that might be deemed female – for the Chess Wizard, despite its masculine name, has the distinctive voice of a woman (in fact Carpenter’s then wife Adrienne Barbeau). With that word ‘bitch’ still ringing in the audience’s ears, Carpenter cuts away to the husky outside, racing from its armed Norwegian pursuers to the relative shelter of the American station – and through the magical implicature of editing, we infer that this new arrival is also a bitch, come to invade this male community with her feminine otherness – even as it smuggles in all the alien cells that will be these men’s ultimate undoing."

- The Thing (1982 film)

0 likesFilms based on novelsFilms set in AntarcticaScience fiction horror filmsRemake filmsFilms about extraterrestrial life
"Throughout Godzilla, it feels as though Emmerich is embarrassed of his subject matter; the dumb jokes and one-liners ("We need bigger guns," "That's a lot of fish," and so on) are like cynical, condescending winks to the audience. It's also obvious he wants to avoid reminders of the old Japanese films - not only is the creature itself almost totally different, but scenes that the audience expects to see in a picture called Godzilla are missing. Where is Godzilla smashing buildings and incinerating entire city blocks? The fierce battles between Godzilla and the army? The monster rearing back and bellowing his high-pitched roar? The are a few Godzilla-like moments in the affair - for instance, when Godzilla hugs a skyscraper and wails into the night; why doesn't he push the edifice to the ground? Wasn't the point of making a mega-budget Godzilla the chance to relive these classical thrills with super-enhanced visual effects? Sure, a gigantic reptile jogging down Fifth Avenue is impressive, but the new Godzilla was just a way for Sony to make its own upsized, dumbed-down Jurassic Park without getting sued by Steven Spielberg. The experience leaves one wondering why they bothered, for the awe of seeing CGI dinosaurs for the first time is gone, and there's little else that's new. Emmerich tries vainly to create an atmosphere of dread by dowsing the movie with rain, but gloomy skies alone do not equal subtext. The original Godzilla was a harbinger of doom, but this one is a gutless wonder whose only desire is to eat fish and give New York the ultimate pest problem: a clutch of Baby Godzilla eggs."

- Godzilla (1998 film)

0 likesFilms about GodzillaRemake filmsThriller filmsScience fiction horror filmsReboot films