That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler to take the slings and arrows of box office misfortune,
Or to take arms against of sea of ideas, by remaking those already proven…
Well, maybe that’s just a wee bit melodramatic. Though, after the latest edition of the MCFAT, I’ve found myself in a minority, yet again. I’m one of only a few individuals who actually didn’t like Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong. Being in the vast minority, I would like to offer this as an addendum, as it seems my readership (all 10 of you) may not get this bit about me. King Kong works technically, has good direction of actors, but I do NOT find the film artful in any way. To artful, I mean that it does not inspire me to think about issues raised in the film in any way. It is not updated to really reflect the current state of the world, as it is set in the same time as the original. The main purpose of this King Kong is to update the visual and sound effects to create a more realistic look to the film. WETA Digital fulfilled this purpose to a T, but showed a total disregard to the true artistic talent from the original. Fay Wray’s acting. Her performance in the 1933 original brought life to a rather off looking stop-motion figure. Naomi Watts was doomed to even try to recreate such a performance.
Mind you, there is a catch-22 to this whole situation. I work as a Lighting Technician in the film industry here in Vancouver. Though I haven’t worked on a remake I’m consciously aware of, I’ve worked on sequels (X-Men: The Last Stand, Scary Movie 4, Like Mike 2), and with the exception of X-Men, I would never pay to see the latter. Most probably, you’d be hard pressed to pay me to watch it. Why? Because, as many working in film, I harbour highly egotistical desires to one day direct, to be one of the big wigs. To which I fear, as the current trend continues, almost every movie will be either a remake or a sequel of something. Instead of 20-30 minute serials, we’ll have 2-3 hour serials of the same movies, over and over again.
* SHUDDERS *
Which somewhat reminds me of MCF’s point in his answers to his own MCFAT:
Casablanca, Spartacus, On the Waterfront, and other classics should stand as they are, with no need to revisit the stories.
Two of the three picks are quite intriguing. Casablanca is a remake of the unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, laden with pro-American war effort propaganda as the film was produced in the wake of America’s late entry into World War II. Spartacus, in it’s own right, was the last studio film done by the late, great Stanley Kubrick, who like David Lynch after Dune, vowed never to make another studio controlled production. Luckily, for the pair of odd, quirky, dark filmmakers, the list of classics to follow are timeless.
For Kubrick, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut.
For Lynch, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, and soon to be released Inland Empire.
So maybe I’m just a bit paranoid. With the technology in digital video evolving rapidly, creating more professional, cinematic style images, the independent revolution will soon have a second surge. So maybe something good has come out of this waste of celluloid after all, being a total shift of the market to new ideas, and more artful films.
That is all.
