For years, American audiences have suffered through remakes, re-imaginings and rip-offs that exist for absolutely no good reason. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this year. Fede Alvarez’s ultra-gory Evil Dead update may have been better than expected, but did we need it? I think Sam Raimi’s low-budget original will always be the ultimate. This October, a remake of Carrie will hit theaters, starring Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore, which begs the question, what part really needed an update? Brian de Palma’s original was a great horror flick, and it holds up pretty well today. I’m interested to see what Moretz does in the role Sissy Spacek made famous, but I can’t think of anything that really justifies this reboot’s existence. Can you? And I want people to see and become obsessed with Park Chan-Wook’s terrifically twisted original Oldboy, not this October’s Spike Lee version.
Looking back, did anyone ever ask for Mirror Mirror or Snow White and the Huntsman, two ultimately mediocre Snow White knock-offs? How on Earth did Colin Farrell convince anyone that his Arnie-less Total Recall was a good idea? And schlock classic Clash of the Titans somehow got a seriously awful reboot with Sam Worthington and then a possibly even more dreadful sequel to that reboot? What gives? If Hollywood is determined to continue on this path of remaking any old film they can get the rights to, why can’t they at least adapt things that could actually benefit from an update?
And so, without further ado, here’s my (incredibly biased) list of five reboots or remakes we actually want to see happen. Disagree? Good. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
