Basically that’s what they did with Ocean’s 11. The original Frank Sinatra version was shit. But it was a good idea, a crew of super cool dudes get together to rob a casino.
They remade it and it was very successful.
The Thing has a similar origin.
But it’s rare things like that happen because Hollywood execs usually need an existing property with good numbers to greenlight a movie.
For a second I thought you were trying to say that The Thing (2011) is a better remake of The Thing (1982), but then I remembered that 1951 version exists.
Funn enough Ocean’s X is also the opposite example since they didn’t stop just making more of the same.
Ghost in the Shell was an unnecessary remake of a fantastic original animation that was improved by the series that followed it. There was never a need for a live action version.
Ghost in the shell was decent. They paid incredible attention to the art direction and casting ranged from perfect to acceptable. I can’t remember a single scene but their rendering of 90s retrofuturism sincerely blew me away. Maybe modern cinema has tainted me but it really wasn’t terrible.
It could have been an acceptably decent movie if it wasn’t trying to be part of the GitS franchise. As a GitS fan I hated it, but I wonder if it could have been more fun to watch if I was unfamiliar with the series. I remember thinking the same with a lot of movies based on books I hadn’t read like Percy Jackson, the movie became a lot worse after reading the source material.
It could have been an acceptably decent movie if it wasn’t trying to be part of the GitS franchise.
Yeah, I think this is a pretty common phenomenon. In the same vein, Discovery could have been a fun sci-fi show if it wasn’t trying to be part of Star Trek.
As a GitS fan I hated it, but I wonder if it could have been more fun to watch if I was unfamiliar with the series.
Yeah, this as well. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the Hobbit trilogy more if I’d never read the book. Still, there are such huge chunks of those movies that just feel like video game cut scenes—probably not the best example.
Absolutely, there’s a lot of stories that would have been better received as their own original IPs. Unfortunately, it’s a lot safer to make a sequel so you can count on sales from the pre-established fanbase. Another good example I always go to is the Thief video games, where I got my username. The reboot dramatically changed all the mechanics and ditched a lot of what made the first games so engaging, very little aside from a few proper nouns has any resemblance to the original. It could have been a decent stealth game if it sold itself on its own merits(it certainly wasn’t terrible) but as a Thief game, it justifiably got fans upset.
I loved that movie! I thought they did an excellent job, and it gave us more cyberpunk content, which there is not nearly enough of.
tbh I would have loved a well done live action version of GITS. With a Japanese cast, international subtitles, and a new offshoot plot that expands upon the original film. Bring in a remastered version of the original animation’s impeccable soundtrack. I absolutely think it’s possible, but it’s far outside the realm of “make cheap movie make big money” that the majority of film studios operate on today
Word War Z.
Have it actually be a mocumentary with interviews. Once people start talking switch to the scene. It is a collection of short stories. Would be fun.
Or make it a mini series.
Personally I thought the book was good, but I don’t think an adaptation to a movie format is the right move. Maybe a mini series would be best.
Hmm, miniseries could work. I stopped reading the book because it felt like a screenplay. (And the movie is unrelated garbage.)
Yeah I’ve never read the book but I’ve heard the movie was literally just a generic zombie movie that had nothing to do with the book.
It wasn’t even that it was a generic zombie movie, it was a particularly shit zombie movie.
District 9 with Zombies.
Virtually every single bad adaptation can be directly traced back to studio interference.
Movies like LoTR only happened because the studios thought it would be a colossal flop, and so left the directors and producers alone.
If you want great movies, the studios need to leave the producers and directors the hell alone.
Counterpoint: Game of Thrones. The studio would have been happy to give them a few more seasons to develop a better ending. It’s the creators who gave up and phoned in the ending we got.
George RR Martin is the creator of game of thrones, not the show runners.
Oh wait, the original example was lotr, which also was based on books lol. Nevermind me, carry on.
George RR Martin was a consultant on seasons that had not yet been written as books. He told the writers where he wanted the story in the books to go, and where to take the story in the show. I doubt it’s true, but a lot of fans were speculating that he made the end deliberately bad (Arya kills the Night King, Denarys goes crazy, Cersei and Kingslayer reunite to be crushed by the collapsing Red Keep, Bran becomes king) because he wanted the show to be worse than his next two books. @
My head Canon is that that was the actual ending he planned and because it flopped so hard the last books will never happen
No man, that specific ending can be made to work. But you need good writers, several more seasons and good taste to do that. Martin gave DandD a finish line, but they had to figure the trail and make the run. They just suck at that so bad that it almost killed their entire careers, got them dropped from the job they had lined up and poisoned everything they touched for 5 years. Netflix just gave them the “3 body problem” adaptation. I’m sure it will be good because the thing is already written, and they are usually good at coloring between the lines. Just not good at coming up with new original or creative stuff.
He said in interviews that he was pushing for 10 seasons, I don’t think he intentionally fucked up, I think he did what he could with two showrunners that were tired of doing their job and couldn’t accept that someone else would take the reins.
The only problem is that GoT didn’t have any more source material, as Martin didn’t finish the story (think he still hasn’t?).
The creators were in constant touch with GRRM. They knew where he intends to go. The ending we got could be done better if things were fleshed out over a longer period of time.
You’re assuming GRRM knows where he intends to go. Or more importantly, how he intends to get there.
We know he has a specific destination in mind. It’s well established that he had an outline for what was originally a trilogy. It’s why the first book is heavier with hints of (for example) Jon’s lineage than the others.
How to get there has clearly changed, and GRRM might not know how anymore.
For all the bad you hear about studios though, there are plenty of stories of movies that were saved by the studio because the director was off the rails and had no idea what to do. Here’s a list with a couple:
https://collider.com/10-movies-that-were-improved-by-studio-interference/#easy-rider-1969
Most of these are a stretch. They didn’t like psycho so they underfunded it. Hitchcock finances the movie, takes a pay cut along with the actors. Somehow this is positive interference…
LotR also is going to stand out from now on, because at the time it was made, CGI was ok, and getting to be good, but they didn’t trust it for crowds yet. SW Ep. 1 came out at about the same time, and the CGI crowds don’t hold up. LotR had PJ directing and he wanted to use as many real people and real sets as he could, so that when they had to use CGI it wouldn’t be noticable. You can see the difference looking at The Hobbit movies.
I’d go one further. Do longer run remakes for good source material that ended up with a bad movie.
Golden Compass Movie = bad
His Dark Materials limited series = fantastic
Yeah, there are so many movies based on media with a deeper and richer source material than can be presented well in a 2-hour movie format. For example, the Ender’s Game novel spent a significant amount of time on the progression of Ender’s career at the Battle School and the movie only spent as much time as was necessary to show that he was good. A TV series could tell the parallel story of Ender’s Shadow as well in the same season.
A counterexample is that sometimes the TV series may over milk the source material and drag out which should be a shorter story. The first season of American Gods was awesome, but they kept dragging out the series way too much by stretching out the stories of minor characters and fumbled in the end.
Just as long as we avoid giving money to Orson Scott Card…
Works for me.
Do longer run remakes for good source material that ended up with a bad movie.
I immediately thought The Hobbit for some reason.
God that trilogy was so painful.
I immediately thought The Hobbit for some reason.
God that trilogy was so painful.
That doesn’t count. There was a bunch of stuff in those movie that never happened in the source material.
I think remaking it with less.
I even watched the fan edit, and it was still too much.
Yeah, even the fan edits I saw left in way too much garbage. I think they somehow made three movies without shooting enough decent footage for one, and there’s no way to cut it together in a way that really works.
We have AI text to video, we can fix this, we have the technology!
Which one? I’m a fan of the cardinal cut, but that still ends up being over three and half hour long.
They have. Dune would be one example.
Shut your pie hole! The original with Sting was amazing!
It was a solid B movie until the end. How do you decide to cut the fact that Paul becomes the emperor from the movie completely?
Now I have to watch it again, I swore he did become emperor in the end.
Irulan is escorted away before the final scene and never comes back.
How do you put random bs like pugs and heart plugs in the greatest space epic of all times? I respect Lynch for his other work but his Dune is a fucking joke from my point of view.
Lol
I will die on this hill I legitimately like Mr. Mayor and Picard better than the new one. It took me like 4 tries to get through the new one it is so slow and full of itself. I’m not sure what the line is for me between good slow and being a slog but the new one is so hard for me to pay attention to. I’d rather scroll through spaceship still shots with some space music in the background
The new movie is not slow compared to the book though, in fact it feels like the book shown in a time lapse.
This is how we’ve ended up with 17 different attempts at the fucking Fantastic Four. Each one is shit, and EVERY director thinks that they’ve got the chops to make it work.
Hollywood…please…fucking stop. It doesn’t get better. It’s a cursed movie. Stop fucking trying to get the Fantastic Four to work. Just…put the poor thing out of its misery and let it sleep peacefully.
Ehh, some of them were to maintain Fox license from Marvel. They were contractually obligated to put out a movie every X years or they lost control of it. Mostly they just wanted something cheap or weird out of the door.
Now that Fox entertainment and Marvel have been gobbled by the mouse, it may not be a problem anymore. They sure got Reid Richards right in that doc strange film, even if he got obliterated on alternative earth.
I still don’t think he looked right, but I think it’s impossible to make him look right.
Krasinski played him with the right attitude of earned arrogance to my eye. The stretching power looked fine enough too, but yeah, that’s always going to look weird in live action.
Krasinski was fine, and I didn’t mind the way she spaghettified him, because hex magic does not obey physics. The problem always is that Mr. Fantastic’s powers aren’t magic, he’s just able to elongate and stretch himself. It’s barely shown in the movie, as the only time he uses his power is to jump into the frame and reach out to try to grab Wanda after she murders Black Bolt. It is the briefest moment and yet it still doesn’t look right, because his arm doesn’t thin as it stretches out, and he leans forward when physics would suggest he lean back to counterbalance the shift in his center of gravity.
Every movie featuring Reed Richards has gone out of the way to avoid showing his powers.
The best example I can think of was that one ridiculous scene where Ioan Gruffud fought The Thing, and you can tell they cropped half the fight out of the frame to avoid showing more terrible CGI. Like you just see their heads bobbing around while their arms fight each other off camera, and then it awkwardly pans out to reveal Reed has Ben all tied up.
You know what would be a great Fantastic Four movie? A tongue-in-cheek film set in the 60s based on the original comics.
Oh yeah, go full 1960’s Batman Camp. Not sure who could play Mr. Fantastic, but whomever is picked should be told to emulate Adam West’s complete deadpan delivery.
Exactly! I would love that so much!
Hollywood: “Wellll ok…but we’ll need to do just one more to
earn more proficlose out the story”
I don’t care what anyone says, the worldbuilding that was done for the 1990s Super Mario Bros. movie was awesome and if the movie had lived up to it, it would have been great.
Remember that when the movie was made, Mario was a plumber that jumped on mushrooms and turtles to save a princess and he had a brother named Luigi that did the same thing. That was pretty much the entire storyline they had to work with.
Looking at you, Dark Tower
I can’t believe we’re in the universe where there’s a Dark Tower film with the incredibly talented Idris Elba and it was so stupidly bad.
Does he play Susannah?
No, he plays Jake.
I heard a rumor that Stephen King gave Mike Flanagan the greenlight to do Dark Tower. Here’s to hoping. That’s one of the few things I want to see as a show rather than movies
Imagine the dude doing the Dune movies making Dark Tower.
I’m dreaming. But it’s a wicked cool dream.
It is not a rumor.
https://ew.com/tv/mike-flanagan-dark-tower-stephen-king-adaptation-update/
the director envisioned as a five season TV series, followed by two stand-alone features.
Wow that’s not what I was expecting at all.
Should be a TV series. Start with The Gunslinger and work your way through the books, but also split up Wizard and Glass into small chunks to use as episode openers so there isn’t suddenly a season long flashback with different actors.
Funnily enough the movie they made was supposed to be the intro to a TV show.
Trying to expand Gunslinger to bring in more backstory (and reeeeeeeally messing up the backstory) killed both the movie and the planned TV show. It’s crazy how well their plan could’ve worked if they hadn’t tried to fold too much into the “prequel”. Dark Tower even has the built-in “out” that this is a different turn of the wheel.
They were going to run out of material way too fast the way they did the movie. They condensed The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, Wolves of the Calla, and Song of Susannah into ninety minutes. They could have done the rest of Drawing, but then that just leaves The Waste Lands, The Dark Tower, and an excessively long flashback with Wizard and Glass. They would have needed to just not adapt more book content in order to have more than a couple seasons of material.
yeah it can’t be a movie. Unfortunately my favorite character will never be accurately adapted and will lose her badassery. Better we wait for another time
THERE’S A MOVIE!!?
Yo, I am reading that series!
Don’t get hyped, it’s mid at best.
Awh
Like Dune? Like Dune.
Nah the original was great. Idk but old shitty VFX do something for me.
In my eyes, SFX still stands the test of time. Sure you can see CGI is shit, but models and custom made suits just scream style and dystopian nightmare. I love it and still watch it from time to time. Didn’t watch the new one as it ads nothing to the story, at least from what I heard.
Indeed the new one, in attempting to the faithful to the book, but minus any of the critical inner monologue, just manages to be bland on a big budget.
I love the campy 84 version, even if it departed wildly from the text. The characters were colourful, over the top, memorable. Current version everyone’s a slightly different dark haired man in a dusty suit. Give me some dated CGI and theatrics any day.
Give me some dated CGI and theatrics any day.
Same. I still happily rewatch Sci-Fi movies from 80s and 90s. Those were the days. Today CGI has advanced much but it seems directing and world building have taken a back seat.
Ha ha I remember when fans would slit your throat for saying “Sci-Fi” instead of “SF”.
I liked the Lynch version.
Captain Picard and Sting!
David Lynch didn’t even like the Lynch version
The visuals were great, and the film has a hypnotic fever dream feel to it. Not sure it can be called a"good" film, but it’s extremy entertaining.
The new film has more gravitas and is much more loyal to the book, but it also doesn’t add anything to the book and is just less interesting to watch (for me it was down right boring). I think it over-corrected the Lynch version.
Every Lynch movie feels like a fever dream, favorite director of all time for me
Or Dredd.
Watching clips of that movie today. So good!
Dragonball Evolution was so shit that it drove Akira Toriyama out of retirement, which led to Battle of Gods, Resurrection F, Broly, Super Hero and an entirely new anime/manga series titled Dragon Ball Super.
It even technically is leading to Dragon Ball Daima, which looks like a serious effort to try and do the whole ‘Goku is a kid again’ concept that Dragon Ball GT fucked up 25 years ago.
So he literally lives the plot to do many movies.
We need you back…
I’m retired…
But “thing” has happened…
… Son of a bitch, I’m in
Dragonball Evolution was a horrible Hollywood adaptation of Dragon Ball’s original plot.
Imagine that instead of making it the action-packed goofy parody of Return to the West that Akira Toriyama originally envisioned, you instead make Goku and Chi Chi US high-schoolers and Bulma some kind of secret agent.
It’s more like the movie was so utterly dogshit that Toriyama felt he had to personally step in and ensure the franchise wasn’t going to die on that negative note.
I decided a few years ago to simply stop watching anything that was a remake, reboot, update or ‘franchise’. Too many of them have used nostalgia and familiarity to compensate for shortcomings in storytelling. Even more cynically, leveraging intellectual property is all about money and business, whereas for me storytelling and art are about the human experience and spirit, so it’s no wonder these IP films are usually so poor.
It’s also that Disney own almost all the known IP, and will roll it out time and again as a safe bet with predictable returns - art by focus group simply isn’t a thing.
Capitalism, baybee!
Is this the innovation I was promised?
Some older movies that come to mind: Enemy Mine. Great sci fi premise that was ahead of its time. Just plagued with bad effects and limitations.
The Last Starfighter Not bad even for the day but I think it’s a solid enough concept that could use a refresh. Set in the 80’s to get the retro video game vibe. I think it could even be a multiple movie property.
Masters of the Universe It was a goofy premise with some interesting characters that were wasted. Even the updated animated series didn’t do great. Or even go off in a space Western and do a Rio Blast movie.
Krull was really missing the visual elements to tell the story and it ended up cheesy and stilted (still holds some nostalgia for me though). It could still be a fun space fantasy.
The last Starfighter, was supposed to be multiple movies. I loved the original, but I’d be down with a remake.
Krull was bad, but I still loved it!
The Last Starfighter Not bad even for the day but I think it’s a solid enough concept that could use a refresh. Set in the 80’s to get the retro video game vibe. I think it could even be a multiple movie property.
If it were a Netflix production they could have little easter eggs in it like the arcade being the one in Hawkins (Stranger Things).
Great post and right to the point of the OP!
How are our corporate overlord supposed to know what a good story is other than the success of a movie based in them?
Ironically capitalism does not like to take much risk, nor do the large companies who are best able to take them. It also sucks that many things are switching to being ads supported, so there is further limiting of creativity. For example, Love, Death, and Robots is a really awesome animated anthology. It is something that does not try to have the broadest appeal; however, the customers are now advertisers who may not want to run ads on something with a narrower audience. Oddly it seems Netflix will be going down the path of YouTube battling that to keep the content adverts will buy space for, and YouTube trying to be independent of it with its premium. Strange world.
Love, Death + Robots is amazing and everyone should watch it.
Hell yeah, even the ones I didn’t like were well done and I’m glad I watched them.
For real.
Well they are taking another swing at Fantastic Four
