#comedic article

And that’s why I shouldn’t be allowed to watch TV. Thanks for reading even if you hate-read it and your opinion worsened of me the whole way through. Also I’m never going to stop watching TV.

Nostalgia is an inbred Labrador. It brings in feelings of warmth and happiness to be sure, but deep down you know the poor thing doesn’t know its front paws from the back ones and its unfortunate habit of chasing the lawnmower will inevitably end in disaster. Alternatively, original concepts are a rare commodity in the world of cinema today. Even more rare are original concepts that result in good movies. Consequently, the filmmakers of today find that it is much easier remaking an older successful film, thus skipping the thought process of creativity and moving straight into reaping the benefits of past glories. Or so the plan goes. We’ve all seen at least one remake recently, as just this past decade roughly 250 remakes were produced by major companies, and frankly all the conventional remakes have sucked more than a Puffer-fish on a vacuum cleaner in a wind tunnel. By conventional remakes I mean the carbon-copy remakes, where the only changes from the original production were the actors. Any major changes to plot, style or atmosphere are banned so as not to “insult the source material.” This could be said of 98% of the recent horror-movie remakes today. Unfortunately the great tragedy is that these horror films like Halloween, Quarantine, Friday the 13th, Prom Night, Valentine’s Day, Psycho, and most recently Nightmare on Elm Street, have been so terrible that fans of the original have been calling down the wrath of Zeus on the cretins who dared to redo their favourite masterpieces. This confuses me somewhat, as a complete copy of what we love seems to enrage us, rather than entertain. It’s the odd situation where you break a child’s favourite toy and replace it with a shiny new one. It’s the same toy but it’s not their toy that they grew to love. The real trick with remaking a film is not to “remake” it but to “recreate” it with an original, thoughtful perspective which goes further than changing the lighting of a scene or adding in differently named angsty teenagers as the prerequisite fodder for slasher movies. A remake that works is one that stands alone from its inspiration, to the point that you don’t even know it is even a remake. “Does such a film exist” I hear you ask and the answer is of course yes, and you’ve very likely seen them. There are brilliant films you may not even know are remakes such as Ocean’s Eleven, The Departed, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Mummy, The Italian Job, I Am Legend, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Bourne Identity.  At least one of these is likely a favourite of yours as they are all legitimately well acted, intelligently written and pleasing to the eye however they are only spiritual successors to their original productions. Ok, so it’s a little unfair to say that all remakes are stodgy piles of squid excrement, yet the general trend is definitely walking drunkenly towards that path. Original perspective is still somewhat lacking in the broad spectrum of film, no matter what the concept. For example while robots fighting wars (surprisingly) isn’t that common a concept, Transformers still sits firmly in the generic action film genre. Everything is very easily classifiable as horror, action, romance, thriller or whatever; it’s just up to the filmmakers to create something that stands out above the generic mess. And anything that does stand out unfortunately gets remade as the idea if milked to death. We’re not even waiting around for films to be released before we remake them anymore. I was unfortunate enough recently to have watched a film by a production company named The Asylum called Transmorphers. Those of you paying attention will have noticed the similarity between this title and that of another film I just mentioned and if you did you (and you’re a masochist) you get to go watch it as a reward because they’re the same fucking film! Actually that’s something of a lie, it’s as if The Asylum took my thought of ‘recreating’ a film on board except they forgot the whole ‘thoughtful’ part and just beat their head against a wall repeatedly while thinking of ideas for the movie. They managed to make a film worse than Transformers of all things while using the same basic premise, which you might even call a feat in itself if it weren’t so depressing. The Asylum’s official policy is to plan its productions around “word of mouth” financial prospects of upcoming films, shoot them over three months on a low budget and release it shortly before the blockbusters. Along with Transmorphers some others that might sound oddly familiar are Pirates of Treasure Island, The Da Vinci Treasure, Alien Vs. Hunter, Sherlock Holmes, Sunday School Musical, The Day the Earth Stopped, The Terminators, and my favourite: Titanic 2.  So we’re milking, famous movies, nostalgic movies, and even movies we haven’t seen or even really know about yet. To top it off, the existence of franchises makes me want to tie on cement shoes and throw myself off a waterfall. There are about as many entertaining franchises as there are good remakes, yet they are cash piñatas and we’re the poor blindfolded bastards beating them with sticks, losing money. George Lucas is living proof that you can take a good thing too far, having destroyed both Star Wars and Indiana Jones for many fans, with only the step of crossing them over left before he’s lynched by an angry mob. Crossovers are the sin of all sins when it comes to remakes, as they can only exist remakes of two films, and these are usually part of franchises and the whole equation is just giving me an aneurism. Regrettably the idea of crossovers is commercially popular and we’re going to see more of them but when Alien vs. Predator vs. Terminator vs. Sherlock Holmes vs. Darth Vader vs. Jack Sparrow vs. Dr. Who vs. Batman vs. Shrek comes out in 2030 and causes mass suicide across the world you’ll know I was right, just before you follow your Nostalgia-Labrador into the lawnmower.