They knew how to do this in the 80s. Little Shop of Horrors, The Fly, and The Thing for example. All remakes that far surpassed the cheesy originals.
The 80s version of The Blob is terrifying.
I was scared of the colour pink for like 3 years in primary school.
And still holds up. Been showing classics to my horror-interested nieces and nephews and they loved 80s Blob most of all so far.
We need the 80s coke back. Ketamine ain’t doing shit for us.
80s coke was amazing. New Coke barely works and makes it hurt behind my eyes
The best example is The Thing. The original film in the 1950s was awkward af. But the 1980s remake by John Carpenter was chef’s kiss. Then they made a remake of a remake and it was meh.
The 2011 The Thing wasn’t so much a remake as it was a prequel to the remake, telling the story from the Norwegian scientists’ camp.
The 1982 John Carpenter remake opened with the last two remaining Norwegian scientists chasing “The Thing” until it reaches the Americans’ camp. But they’re misunderstood by the Americans. When trying to shoot at The Thing, which has taken the shape of a sled dog, the Americans instead return fire and kill them. Then the Americans explore the Norwegian camp and try to figure out what horrors killed everyone there, while slowly discovering why they were shooting at a dog in the first place.
The 2011 film shows what happened to the Norwegians before the 1982 remake. You’re correct, it wasn’t as great of a film (hard to compete with John Carpenter), but it wasn’t exactly a remake.
The worst thing about the 2011 prequel is they had filmed the whole movie with practical effects, like the Carpenter movie, which is one of my favorites of all time. If you’ve seen it, you may remember very little of these and a lot of cgi.
The studio or production company or whatever didn’t like the practical effects and we got cgi Thing instead. I’d love to see the original effects, and I feel so bad for the people who worked so hard on it just to get scrubbed from the final cut.
It was a weird combination of remake and prequel. It hit all the same story points and barely added anything new apart from Tetris aliens.
You scared me for a second, being only aware of the 80s one I thought you wanted a remake of that lol
Today we see it that way but in the 70s and 80s, the 1950s Thing was hailed as a classic prestige science fiction film. That’s why Carpenter’s version was trashed at the time. It was dismissed as a grotesque barf bag SFX spectacle that completely disregarded what made the original so good.
On a vaguely related note, why aren’t we making more movies that take a Shakespeare plot and just stuff it in a different setting without trying to hide it? Like 10 Things I Hate about you was Taming of the Shrew.
Tell me you wouldn’t watch Mechbeth.
Macbeth… IN SPAAAAAAACE!!!
Profile picture checks out
There have been a bunch: Throne of Blood is Samurai Macbeth. Warm Bodies is Zombie Romeo & Juliette
The Lion King (1994) is Hamlet.
“O” (2001) is Othello.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) is based on two minor characters of Hamlet.
She’s the Man (2006) is Twelfth Night.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) is Homer’s Odyssey. Not Shakespeare, but a brilliant modern retelling of one of humanity’s oldest surviving stories. In the same vein as the above mentioned films.
These are all I can think of off the top of my head. Not to mention dozens of modern Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth retellings over the years. Those three alone are the more popular Shakespeare stories for reinvention on the big screen.
Love Romeo + Juliet. The first gunfight and when Mercutio shows up are highlights.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, they use tons of the original dialogue, even down to calling their guns swords.
Mercutio was one of the best parts of that movie. He and the soundtrack were so great.
That “Love me, love me” song was on the radio constantly for months after that movie came out.
I came across a mariachi band playing that song just last week.
Can do other classics too. Clueless is such a fun adaptation of Emma.
I would be so much more interested in Shakespeare if the cast were replaced with giant war robots.
It’s been done a million times: 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, West Side Story, The Lion King, Ran, Forbidden Planet, etc.
How many more versions of Tron do we need?
One more.
- T ron.
- R eboot.
- O h fuck, why did we cast Jared Leto
- N ow we’re talking.
Tron Reboot, fuck yeah make it happen!
I would love to see ReBoot (1994) with modern CG. And also a modernized plot, considering we know so much more about computers and the Internet now.
1994 was when the Internet started to spread publicly around the world and became a thing you could access from your very own home. It was this cool new technology that connected humanity across the globe, but most people didn’t really understand it yet.
So shows like ReBoot captured our fascination with the “Information Superhighway” and built a fantasy/sci-fi story around it. Even if it was horribly inaccurate to how computers and the Internet actually worked.
A group is remastering ReBoot with the blessings of its creators from the original DAT tapes, so they are pixel-perfect HD transfers that one could not have seen on any TV at the time.
Look it up on YouTube. Reboot doesn’t need to be remade, the original masters still looks smoking hot. They recovered the widescreen versions, too.
They’re negotiating the rights to do the same thing to Transformers Beast Wars next.
It needs to be finished. Damn Cartoon Network for cliffhanger canceling them after reviving them from a hasty finale.
yes
Keep em coming. Tron: Legacy is my all time favourite.
I came out of the movie theater wowed and was confused when I went online and saw the reaction.
Fantastic theatre experience. I mean I was on drugs, but I’m sure it was awesome without.
We just need to disavow Ares and make Tron Ascension as originally intended.
the ones without jared leto of course.
If they just stuck to the original premise it would have been better.
This only works on like mid movies, maybe. You can’t do it with a film like Plan 9 from Outer Space or The Room because the jank is part of the appeal. But maybe an actually good version of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? Sucker Punch, but with a better director?
Mid movies with an interesting premise. That’s the point of OP’s post.
Scarface, Omega Man, The Bird Cage, Thomas Crown Affair, Ocean’s 11, Fist Full of Dollars, Vanilla Sky, Wizard of Oz, The Bourne Identity: all remakes. Arguably, the new Dune movies might be considered remakes of a relatively mid original movie, though the new ones are far more tied to the book.
So taking the 1993 mid kids’ movie Rookie of the Year and adapting it to a modem take where the lead is 19 and plays soccer for Arsenal or whatever, would be what OP means. Or redo the 1993 racist POS movie Falling Down. Or Dave, JFC.
Wow I learned some things here.
Question though - I haven’t seen Falling Down in over 20 years. What makes it a racist POS movie? Was I so blind back then?
It’s been a while for me as well, but IIRC it was a lot of POCs playing the microagression villains.
Weak sauce man
There is no saving Sucker Punch. The fundamental premise of the movie is each rape is a fight scene showing a literal interpretation of a metaphorical struggle. It’s not recoverable.
how about we gut the premise but keep the badass ninja schoolgirls and campy explosion-filled fight scenes and charmingly dated CGI, and let Angela Robinson direct it
Why? Why is something so easily explained impossible?
Can it be done? Maybe. But the problem with making a metaphorical struggle a physical fight is that the audience for both is drastically different. Many people affected by rape hold a feeling of helplessness about the event. A Zach Snyder 300 style fight scene is literally about exerting control and overcoming. For a person to make such a drastic emotional pivot begs the question were they were ever feeling at all?
I’m sure many women could take some amount of joy in beating the shit out of their rapists.
Uh, they remade The Room starring Bob Odenkirk.
somebody PLEASE remake
American Mary
Daybreakerscool ass premises but flawed executions
They remade Dune, and somehow managed to make it worse.
It’s Dune. Great book but original movie needed improvement
Instead of the corporatization of storytelling, we should be letting artists tell the stories they want to tell. We should engage with our media more critically and stop chasing nostalgia.
Stranger Things did that, for its first season.
Nice idea, but you’d never get funding. So lean into it. Instead of remaking flops, demake them. Redo Battlefield Earth or Waterworld on a half million dollar budget. As the world watches your film with effects that would make Sharknado blush they will finally ask “what is art?”
I don’t think Waterworld needs improving, but I recognize that I’m in the minority.
I’m conflicted about waterworld because the special effects were really good for the time but they have dated quite a bit since then.
It’s mostly explosions, as I recall. Is it the miniature work that stands out to you?
Yeah try jumping exploding jetskis into an oil tanker on a half mil budget. The movie rocks.
Sharknado had a tornado filled with sharks with not much more special effects budget, and that was 13 years ago (how the time flies- like sharks in a tornado). We not trying to win Academy Awards for VFX with these demakes.
Waterworld is unfairly maligned and I won’t stand for it. Yo you should watch it, seriously
Sharknado is pretty fun, competently made in my complete amateur opinion.
What I meant is in Waterworld they did that shit for real.
I have watched Waterworld. There is a lot to like (concept, practical effects, Hopper as the villain), but there is a lot lacking (writing, about something, also Hopper as the villain). They should have finished the script instead of barreling ahead. They needed someone in the room to manage Costner’s ego. It’s a very mid Mad Max “inspired” film, of which the 80s/90s had many. The Salute of the Jugger/The Blood of Heroes is about on par and it didn’t cost the GDP of a small nation.
A urinal bolted to a wall: The movie
Or maybe, just maybe do a new franchise or movie. I’m so tired of going to the cinema and watching the trailers for 9 ouf of the 10 comming up movies being sequals or reboots of old franchises.
there are plenty of good movies that are not reboots/sequel.
e.g. the top ten on letterboxd for 2026 contains 2 sequels and 1 reboot and 1 documentary/biography, so you get >50% original new movie stuff this year.
If they can’t even make a good sequal or reboot of an old successful franchise, how do you expect them to make a good movie/franchise from scratch?
Theyre all the same anyways. There hasnt been a unique story in hundreds/thousands of years. Its all the same plots with different characters in different environments.
Fuck that, just make more theaters and let drama kids re-enact them with their own creative vision
That’s actually a fairly good take - they could make a bunch of old scripts and make them enticing to license, and couple that with a small fund to seed some ultra small-scale productions (by Hollywood standards). I like it.
Couple that with remakes on whatever gets traction and it could prove short term profitable as well as raise the overall long term value of their vault. (I hate that this analysis is needed, but unless we change copyright law, this buy-in would be a necessary step.)
Or shorten public domain back to a reasonable level.
Two words: Easy Money
Let’s have multiple reboots going at the same time. I think it would be great to have like three reboots of Jurassic Park going at the same time with different directors. I want to see a full length Wes Anderson take on the film, but also a Zach Snyder take and maybe a Danny Boyle take competing on the same weekend.
Doesn’t that pretty much describe DC? At one point, they ha Juaquin Phoenix Joker, DCEU, and the Robert Pattinson Batman all kinda overlapping.
Better yet, why not create something original?
We could certainly use a lot more Discworld movies.
Because no one watches those.
I think it’s because the way the advertise movies now is terrible. Go look at trailers of the past and it’s always “in a world gone mad only one man can stop the terrorists from blowing up New York” yeah I know it’s cheesy but at least I know what the movies about. These days it’s 300 cuts per minute and now it’s anyone’s guess what genre it is.
Downsizing is the quintessential example of the switch and bait of modern trailers. What an incredibly boring movie that was.
I kinda think Event Horizon had a phenomenal concept, but had a C+ execution. If there’s a movie I think needs a remake, it’s that.
Make it an official WH40K film, like it was written to be.
I was actually going to say, give it some nods Warhammer and you’ll have a dedicated fan base out of the gate.
Starring Jack black and Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
The Rock would definitely do a remake of Silent Running. They’d have a jungle on the spaceship.
I love the movie, but it could definitely be done better with some modern touches to the effects and script.
as soon as they add modern politics, without any resolution or is so seperated from the actual plot the movie/show will be bad.
Whoah, whoah, whoah. That movie is a masterpiece. I say leave it alone and make another eldritch space horror.
Movie mash-ups.
Back to the Future and Tron.
Blade Runner and Hawaii 5-0
Truman and Silo.
Mrs. Doubtfire and John Wick.
WALL-E and alien.
What I wouldn’t give to see a swarm of Xenomorphs tear ass through that ship full of obese humans
Sigourney Weaver was in both movies.
