Over and Over Again
by Don Pizarro
August 15, 2005

I've restarted this piece on the disturbing upsurge of television and movie remakes about five times over the past few months, only to see my references become obsolete within a week, when another crop of remakes would surface. And then, another. Then, another. I was going to kvetch about Battlestar Galactica, Starsky & Hutch, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I could talk about The Dukes of Hazzard or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For that matter, how about the return of The Night Stalker or Wonder Woman, or the updates for Get Smart and The Omen that have been given the green light? But in the end, I had to just finish it because it's true: The more something changes, the more it stays the same. The changes are just getting harder to see, anymore.

Remakes are, quite simply, big no-imagination-required Lego theme play sets for movie makers. One can basically do a remake in the same way one can construct the Hoth battle scene from Empire. Any weird pieces you might need to spend time and effort building have already been pre-made for you. All you need to do is cobble them together and, only if you feel like it, figure out how to put your own spin on it (read: making it bigger and badder, depending on how much money you have to spend on more pieces).

I don't buy all this "updating," "bringing the concept into the twenty-first century," "new take" crap. For one, even the really bad concepts are based on stories with timeless themes. The rest is mere detail. Besides, just how do you update the story of an Appalachian clan with a love of fast cars and no respect for the law in 2005? Anyone in a real life Hazzard County today would still be running from the cops and feeling uncomfortable around their hot cousin in almost the exact same manner they did in 1985. I've lived in Appalachia and seen pictures; some people's haircuts haven't changed in twenty years, let alone their behaviors.

Sure, you could make it bigger, flashier, more serious, more dramatic, more multicultural, or more PC. But if you're going to do all that work, why not try something different? Maybe every theme really has been done to death, but has it become that much effort to come up with new concepts? Why this need to cling to the memories (the audiences' or a filmmaker's own) of yesteryear?

It can't be all about money, given how some remakes flop miserably (e.g. The Honeymooners). Vanity might play a role, for those who feel the need for any sort of film adaptation to be "truer to the source" and take it upon themselves to provide it. Some might say laziness, but that doesn't cover it all, either. I certainly wouldn't call War of the Worlds lazy.

It's possible that doing a remake provides a certain creative safety net. When a remake fails, what's the worst criticism that's ever leveled against it? Even the worst writing, directing, acting, or production is almost always filtered through the phrase "compared to the original." There's a buffer there that doesn't exist when you're dealing with the product of your own creativity made manifest by your own blood, sweat, and tears, and no one else's. Success or failure rests squarely on you, with all the resultant implications (fair and unfair) about your talent and ability, thereunto. Standing at the precipice of your own insecurity is one of the hardest things about being an artist. It doesn't help that there are lots of people willing to kick you off of it.

There's only one thing worse than being accused of a lousy performance, and that's being accused of ripping something off. So, who wouldn't choose to work on a remake? The critics might pan it; the fans might hate it, but so what? Why risk the potential stigma of coming up with an idea that people will think you oh-so-clearly stole off of Knight Rider? Why not just give them freaking Knight Rider? Of course, the idea of a band of brothers against the world has been done to death. So even if you do have something new to say about it, why not play it safe and redo The A-Team? (You may laugh, but both these projects are currently on the drawing board.) Who can really criticize you for copying Sir Alec Guiness if you're playing Obi-Wan Kenobi to begin with? And, if you're just plain greedy and soulless, you can always remake your old successful movies for even more cash. Yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Raimi.

There's a part of me that wants to resist the cynical view that it's all a smokescreen. I've seen a lot of work put into carefully crafting and placing those homages, references, and cameos that make fanboys gush (literally and figuratively) all over themselves. Is Hollywood really telling me that the ingenuity that cleverly foreshadowed the appearance of The Joker in future Batman movies can't be translated into the creation of new stories? New characters? New anything? Or, is Hollywood telling me that it sees no need to do that sort of thing? Even before 1994, when Roger Donaldson remade Peckinpah's The Getaway, we've been clamoring for "something new," but getting the exact opposite. Maybe Hollywood is telling me that the blame might lie somewhere else.