put down the remakes, put them down! now!
you have so many originals to live for
I wanna come out and say I’m not against all remakes and reboots. I think a lot of them have the potential to elevate media. When I think of remakes / reboots that elevated the original I go to: Oceans 8, The Wiz, Star Trek (Chris Pine), Batman (Nolan), Power Rangers. Which is only to name a few.
*I’ve seen Alien Romulus. And it makes the list!
And, I would have named a certain franchise in the horror genre but they wanna play games and fire their leading actress because she dares to stand against an ongoing genocide. So they get nothing!
Back to remakes…I mean I would personally love to see a remake of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with two leading actors of color. That’s what I think about in my spare time.
In my lifetime I am prepared to see the following remakes fail and wither away: Gone With The Wind, Casablanca, The Godfather, Scarface, and Titanic. There is also the remake of Snow White but that will fail because a certain someone who dipped their toes in the superhero scene for two leading films doesn’t know how to act, but that’s neither here nor there.
But why prepare to see these monstrosity when there have already been some horrible, and down right dirty, remakes and reboots. If I had to name a few, you know, off the top of my head—and this list is totally not premeditated or anything I put in no additional time to create it…
Girl Meets World is actually one bane of my existence because I watched it as I was younger and liked it. Then I tried to rewatch it almost four or five years later and realized there was only one thing I liked about the show and it never paid off. Lucaya hive check in. I mean the way they would cover topics was crazy. The main characters literally couldn’t stand the thought of one of their friends being on the spectrum and just summed it up to him just ‘being him’ (iykyk)
Another bane would have to be Fantasic Four—which I have to explain. I think to the naked eye the casting distracts you. Because Sue doesn’t have noticeable blonde hair and because Reed looks more like a nerdy teacher than a nerdy professor (there’s a difference, one is paid a bit more than the other and is treated with less respect but viewed as more important). And because apparently Johnny is Black. But these things didn’t take away from the movie for me. No, what did it for me was the grey scale of it all. It looks like the movie is taking itself way too seriously. I mean how is Ben supposed to say Clobbering time when he looks like he’s in a Nolan film? Come on.
I could go on, and I will probably at some point. But I’m not really here to talk about remakes and reboots. I’m here to talk about originals.
I hit play on Killer Book Club. And I’ll admit I was about to zone out. Until a very particular scene played out on my screen. *Spoilers for roughly the first thirty minutes of this movie. A group of university students get revenge on their professor for assaulting one of their own. Their plan goes too far and he accidentally falls off a pretty tall ledge. The group knows they are murderers but no one else does. Until they are all in the same class, about to watch a film with the lights off, and someone texts their group chat.
One by one each of them opens the message, and one by one their phone screens illuminate their face in red light. Because you know, they have blood on their hands. The phone in their literal hands is painting them red.
It’s good cinema! Whoever wrote that I wanna know the best way to send you flowers and my first born baby.
It was such a good idea. Like in this new age of technology, how do you display that ‘red handed’ visual? Kids these days (oh my god I can’t believe I typed that out, I just gained a mortgage didn’t I?) aren’t gonna be hanging around red paint or during their hands on the stove.
This scene is so simple but it does so much work, I love it.
I love it and I need more of it.
Abigail (2024) is another movie that I need more of. By the trailer I thought I knew what I was in for but by god I really didn’t know. The movie was fun, the actors were good fits for their roles. And most of all I need to know how to submit Miss Abigail herself for an Oscar because that performance was earth shattering to me.
I think what this movie does differently from other vampire films is comedy. I mean Abigail is a little girl for all intensive purposes. She wants to have fun. Does her idea of fun include killing people…yeah. But it’s like kinda funny to watch as she busts all those ballet moves and hunts down people twice her size.
With Challengers, we got nonlinear story telling. And when I tell you that as everything unfolded and we found out why things were happening, I screamed. Patrick doing that move—he’s broke but damn he’s got some morals! (No hate to Tashi, who I really like and will defend to the ends of this earth)
I’m also thinking of No One Will Save You (2023) which blew my mind. I mean there is no talking from the main character in almost all of the film. Which makes the dialogue even more important when she does speak. It boils down to a very simple idea but it’s executed very highly and with deadly stakes.
Missing (2023) is also a great contender! I mean a movie told from different social media perspectives? It takes what the Blair witch project did and elevated it to today’s ever present need to be watching / be watched. Storm Reid played that role beautiful and Nia Long… should have gotten an Oscar nom for that role!
In a world of book to screen adaptations and sequels and reboots, I think we all need to look at the cold hard facts here which are: new ideas are profitable. And they make me not wanna sigh in guilt for giving my money to a well known cash grab. (If you think i’m talking about a certain cameo filled movie, I AM! and what about it?)
I’m gonna end with just this, support new ideas and new voices. I cannot be fifty years old forced to pick between a reboot of reboot or an unwanted remake.