8 Movie Remakes That Were Completely Unnecessary

We live in an age of the remake. That every film you've ever loved is going to be remade soon is just a fact of life now, and the studio heads pulling the strings couldn't care less how much you complain. That's because they know that, at the end of the day, there's a good chance you'll complain your way into watching the remake of that movie you adore - if only to see how bad it is - and further line their pockets regardless. Not all remakes are bad, however - given the number that are being churned out lately, odds are solid that some of them actually turn out good. Even some of the very worst ones, however, at least have the decency to try and do something new. But then there are the remakes that have barely an original bone in their figurative bodies - the ones that turn out to be completely, sometimes offensively unnecessary. Given all the unnecessary remake activity going on lately (the new Point Break currently stinking up cinemas, the news of Memento getting a Nolan-free do-over), there's no better time to look back on some of Hollywood's most pointless remakes from recent years. So, join us as we take a look back at eight remakes that were absolutely lacking in worth. 8) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo If you're coming to David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo before Niels Arden Oplev's original, you're due for a good couple hours of old-school thriller entertainment. The cast is superb (Rooney Mara in her breakout role, along with Daniel Craig, Robin Wright and Christopher Plummer), the visuals are stunning and the story is gripping (multiple millions of readers can't be wrong). Unfortunately, someone else got there first. The only real problem with Fincher's Dragon Tattoo is that Niels Arden Oplev made his own perfectly good version just two years before Fincher did. It has its own great cast and breakout lead (Noomi Rapace), its own pleasant visuals (this is the same director that established the look for the Fincher-esque Mr. Robot) and the plot is almost beat-for-beat identical. The only major difference is one comes with subtitles and one doesn't. 7) Psycho A similar case to Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gus Van Sant's Psycho was pretty much redundant on arrival for no other reason than that it was almost identical to the original. Van Sant's film also had the added factor of just not being very well-made. Where Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho was (and still is) a masterpiece, perfectly measured and intelligently crafted to deliver maximum impact, Van Sant's Psycho simply isn't. There's nothing more pointless than chasing an already perfect film by deciding to remake it wholesale. 1998's Psycho is almost shot-for-shot the same movie, but what's most egregious about it are those changes which Van Sant did decide to make: random shots inserted into the shower sequence, Norman Bates masturbating at the sight of Marion Crane through the hotel walls, and - worst of all - Vince Vaughn taking a part that will always rightfully be that of the great Anthony Perkins. 6) Let Me In Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In is a modern classic of the horror genre, with a fresh angle on the vampire mythos that combines an icy realism with goth-inflected legend. So when an American remake was announced, fans reacted with predictable outrage: why remake something that's already flawless just because the original requires English-speaking viewers to read subtitles? Turns out the fans needn't have worried - not because the film isn't actually half bad (Cloverfield and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves is a much better filmmaker than a cash-in remake deserved), but because Let Me In tanked. People weren't missing much they couldn't already get in the Swedish-language version anyway: it's not quite shot-for-shot like Van Sant's Psycho, but the story and scene order of Let Me In is near enough the same as Let the Right One In. 5) The Planet Of The Apes You can imagine how the story meeting went between Tim Burton and his creative team when he signed up to make the money-grab remake of Planet of the Apes. Short of ideas and constrained by a studio that didn't want Burton to put any of his own personality into the movie (God forbid), the director would have been looking for a way to out-do an original that was never crying out for a straight-up remake in the first place. The idea he came up with was a new twist: after two hours of Mark Wahlberg generally looking confused on a future Earth populated by intelligent chimps, Wahlberg's astronaut (how? Just how?) travels back in time to regular old human Earth. And what does he find there, but a statue of Abraham Lincoln, only with a monkey in the place of the dead president. This is what Burton came up with as an alternative to the original's Statue of Liberty reveal - this was his one original idea. Obviously he didn't sign up for a sequel, and neither did anybody else. 4) Carrie Though not as poorly received as some predicted it would be, coming after a Brian De Palma classic, the Carrie remake drew generally muted critical notice and only modest crowds. Kimberly Peirce's 2013 adaptation of the Stephen King novel generally appeared to impress no one, not fans of the book nor cinema-going gorehounds. The reason the Carrie remake is deemed so unnecessary isn't just that it ended up being inferior to De Palma's adaptation of the novel; it's that this was supposed to be the version that 'corrected' all the previous takes and followed the book more closely. Regrettably, due to studio interference, the theatrical version of Peirce's film arrived significantly cut down and closer to the original movie in a bid to make it more appealing to horror movie fans. 3) The Wicker Man The original is a British horror cult classic; it conjures up a feeling of dread like few others. The remake is a disaster, using the same basic story but adding Nic Cage in a bear costume, Nic Cage beating up women half his age, and Nic Cage getting stung into a puffy, quivering wreck by bees. At least those are original ideas. Otherwise, The Wicker Man is bereft of them. So the film is inherently pointless. Happily, there was a side-consequence of the film being this redundant and poorly-made: the Neil LaBute/Nicolas Cage Wicker Man, with all its unintentional hilarity involving Cage and literally anyone he comes into contact with, has become an inadvertent comedy classic. So bad it looks like a B-movie parody, The Wicker Man 2006 is an accidental laugh riot. So at least it has that going for it. 2) Straw Dogs It divided critics then, and it continues to divide them now: is Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs a dark, nihilistic thriller about a secret sociopath discovering his lust for violence, or is it the mere fantasy fulfillment of a bloodthirsty misogynist? Whatever the case, even with the film's artistic merit aside, there's no denying the 1971 Straw Dogs' worth when it has provoked so much discussion over the years. Then there's the 2011 remake, directed by Rod Lurie, who for some reason felt Peckinhpah's classic (or not, depending on your take) needed an update, minus any of the obscure, provocative social commentary on offer in the original. The setting is updated to the deep South, while the ordinary-looking cast are replaced by people who look like they've just walked out of an Abercrombie & Fitch shoot. The plot on the whole remains similar, but like the aforementioned A&F models, there's just nothing going on beneath the pretty surface to justify the film's existence. 1) Clash Of The Titans 1981's Clash of the Titans is a movie from another age. It was one of the last of its kind to utilize at the time outdated stop-motion effects (orchestrated by the great Ray Harryhausen, the master of the art) and stars a chiseled yet totally wooden actor in the lead. Somehow, Clash of the Titans works because of and not in spite of its more campy, ridiculous elements. This movie is a dedicated throwback, one that has a keen affection for old movies and for Greek mythology. The remake from Louis Leterrier, however, doesn't have any of that. Full of so much (generally awful) CGI that it could almost be classified as a cartoon rather than live-action, and so clearly absent of any knowledge about Greek myth, Clash of the Titans's sole gift to culture is the phrase "Release the Kraken!" Even that's too good for it: this is a film that clearly misses the point of the movie it's seeking to emulate entirely.