They Did What To Our Movie?
By Josh MacMillin
Classic movies are great; nobody is going to dispute that. Yet, you do have to admit, they can seem a bit dated. However, good old Hollywood has the perfect treatment for this. They have the right idea: classic movies are great, but they can be made even better! Why waste time and money on an original or new idea that people might not like when you can just remake an old film or recycle an old idea.
Can you blame them for thinking this way? Remaking old films is an excellent way to go about the process. The story is already in place, so you don’t have to bother writing a stupid new screenplay. All you have to do is change around a few characters, the setting, or maybe some minor plot element. It’s like getting two movies, or more, out of the same concept.
Take the most recent example of Guess Who, staring Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher. All that was required to make this movie was to take 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, change the setting, switch the races of the characters, and throw in a few laughs (and shorten the title, to compensate for contemporary audiences’ shorter attention spans).
For example, instead of Sidney Poitier as the dignified, stoic son-in-law to be, you have Ashton Kutcher, who despite playing a Wall Street broker still manages to act like a bumbling fool. You have to love Ashton Kutcher. Not only does he excel at tricking celebrities, he also makes brilliant and original comedies like Just Married. Another improvement is that instead of Spencer Tracy playing the WASP-ish father-in-law, there’s the comically cantankerous Bernie Mac, putting some much-needed flavor into the role. How could this movie not be great? Hollywood has taken a boring old drama and reinvigorated it with fresher, newer actors to make a movie even funnier and more original than White Chicks.
Sure, some people will complain that they “dumbed down” the message of the original film, which was a social commentary on interracial dating. But they obviously fail to see the point. Who wants to sit through “social commentary” when they can watch Bernie Mac catch Ashton Kutcher wearing lingerie?
The same goes for the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead. Sure, satire about society crumbling and mindless consumerism makes us think, but that leaves less time for idiots getting eaten by zombies. I’m an American, why should I have to pay ten dollars to see a movie, and be forced to think about it.
Sure, you may have to strip away a few things when remaking a movie, like some of the more “socially relevant” material. Maybe the interracial dating theme of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner might end up downplayed a bit. But really, how socially relevant is this old film about interracial dating these days? Race certainly isn’t that big an issue anymore, right? Sometimes it’s a good thing to strip a movie down before rebuilding it. How can you make a movie better if you’re not willing to change a few things here and there, or ignore a few themes for the sake of making a funny movie?
So what if the critics don’t like the movies, does critical praise mean that much anyways? Does the average movie-goer care what that spherical hack Roger Ebert thinks about movies? He only gave Gigli two and a half stars. And what does it matter if the box office sales go down after a weekend or two? The movies already made a profit, so everybody still wins. And who cares about awards? Oscars are for snobs anyways. Did you see how they totally snubbed New York Minute? That was just plain tragic. There will always be some whiners who complain about the classics being “defiled” and that certain “geniuses” are “rolling in their graves.” But what do those hipsters know about real entertainment?
Since Hollywood seems to love making remakes, I thought I’d pitch a few ideas of my own.
Remember Citizen Kane? Great movie, but it could be even better. Why not remake it…with Adam Sandler? Rosebud could be his hockey stick.
What about Gone with the Wind? That movie would be so much cooler if it was set in the future (preferably on the moon), and Scarlett was a robot. It would be even better if they made Clark Gable’s character a two-headed pimp full of cheerful one-liners.
Why stop there?
Hollywood could remake The Godfather. And since Marlon Brando’s dead, why not have Ben Affleck play Don Corleone? Instead of having a heart attack, he could live and unleash an army of genetically enhanced cyborg monkeys on his enemies, doing so as revenge for Sonny (played by Vin Diesel) being murdered by ninja midgets. But in the end, the cyborgs turn on Don Corleone and Michael (played, of course, by Keanu Reeves) swears revenge on them, thus setting the stage for a new Godfather, Part II.
Now honestly, would that not be the coolest movie you have ever seen?
Josh MacMillin is a sophomore TV-R major who would like everyone to know that Punk’d isn’t a real verb. E-mail him at jmacmil1@ithaca.edu.