Yet More Remakes August 3, 2005 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

Hollywood, in its inability to come up with anything original, is redoing Superman with Superman Returns. I enjoyed Batman Begins, but I wasn’t blown away. I have a feeling this new Superman movie is attempting the same feat: to take the well known series of films and turn them on their head, “re-imagining” them as the Battlestar Galactica folks like to call it. To me, the first Superman movie is perhaps the best super hero film ever made. Why? No other super hero film in my opinion (except the first Spiderman film) really delved into the psychii of the super hero in a convincing way. But my real question is, Why does Hollywood need to constantly remake good films? When a film is about to be made, a certain number of variables are looked at: How many stars are in it? Who’s directing it? What’s its rating and target audience, etc.? Recently on a major network there was a news piece about the lulling movie industry. Producers were lamenting the rise of the DVD and the reduction of people willing to sit in an expensive, commercial-laden, and often crowded theater. Many ideas were thrown around to help remedy the situation: More time between film and DVD release. More films with blockbuster stars. More films that cater to a certain demographic, etc. But never, not once in the ten minute spot, did they mention the obvious to me: that people are not going to see as many films because many of them are so obviously bad from the getgo, that each film is more about profit than art, that each film is more often than not blowing things up in place of story. Now, of course, there are seminal exceptions. But very few times in the last few years have I really been compelled to see a movie in the theater, and with the rise of Netflix, I’m more than willing to wait the three months to see it on DVD, or in rare cases download it from the net. William Gibson in a recent Wired article laughed at the music industry’s attempt to thwart online music swapping because in his opinion, they have “gone the way of the record.” The movie industry is heading that way too for many of the same reasons. When you sh*t on your target audience, they go elsewhere.

Here’s a nice Cartoon about the Iraq war. According to this article on the BBC, one new blog is created every second. That’s crazy. And another remake (thought sadly I think I might see it) is the film version of MTV’s Aeon Flux. But, it will probably suck.