The Horror of Remakes

Everyone hates remakes. If you spend anytime looking at movie sites or talking on movie forums, you will see the nonstop vitriol people direct towards the very concept of the remake. Now as a writer I can understand why people like me would hate remakes. Hollywood is so busy betting on a proven property that it is not willing to take a chance on a new idea (of which I have many, sitting in a pile on my desk). But while the average movie goer likes to talk trash about remakes, the box office numbers seem to indicate differently. Looking at the box office, people love remakes. And the type of remakes people like the most are Horror films.

As I type this it is just a few days until the remake of Evil Dead comes out in theatres (though it is probably many days after that I post it, and I saw and loved it). Evil Dead is one of those horror franchises that holds a special place in the hearts of horror fans. While Friday The 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween (all three franchises who have had remakes done already) post up the numbers for sequels, Evil Dead composed just a simple trilogy. But those three films are more innovative than the majority of horror films out there, launching the careers of director Sam Raimi (Oz: The Great and Powerful, Spider-Man trilogy, The Quick and The Dead, Darkman etc.) and actor Bruce Campbell (Burn Notice and any number of cult films).

With the love so many fans hold for the original Evil Dead you would think that news of a remake would elicit feelings of fury and anger from fans. Their sacred film is being reinterpreted. As if there was something wrong with the original? But in truth, most fans of the original are singing nothing but praise for a new film (to which I add my voice). Although a new director and writer have been brought onto the project, Sam Raimi is still producing so the property is still in the caring hands of the original creator. This leaves the promise that this new vision of Evil Dead will still hold some flavor of the original.

And that is the key to a good remake. Capturing the spirit of the original film. Straying from the original storyline and changing characters, that is all fine if you can still keep the tone and feel of the original film. This is why horror remakes seem to succeed so much more than other film genres. Horror films need to terrify. They can make you laugh, cry and think at the same time but above all they need to inspire feelings of dread. No other emotion matters. A remake of a comedy needs to be as witty and clever as the original in order to capture the same feeling of watching it. Being clever is hard when you’re trying to reproduce something that has already existed. Clever implies originality, and by definition remakes are not original.

Another problem with remakes is that some people cannot differentiate between a remake and an adaptation. There have been films that have been made that all come from the same source material, but these films are not remakes. They are adaptations of a single source. Each new filmmaker is giving a new interpretation of the book or TV show that is independent of any previous film adaptation. This is the category most comic book films fit in. They’re not remaking the previous films, merely readapting the same source material.

As someone who is desperate to get his original ideas made by the Hollywood establishment, I should be anti-remake. But I cannot deny the excellence of these films. Horror movie remakes have been pretty damn good (with a few exceptions). While I want my movies to be made, more than that I just want good movies to be made. Above all I want to be entertained and as long as remakes continue to do so, I will gladly watch them.

Wrestlers: Real Life Super Heroes

Colorful costumes. Muscle bound men and women. Clear cut good guys and bad guys. Team ups and rivalries. When you look at them, comic book super heroes share a lot in common with wrestling stars. I’m embarrassed to admit this but as a child I was quite the fan of both comic books and professional wrestling. While I continued to read comics, developing more mature tastes in reading and appreciation of the medium, for some reason I outgrew wrestling. Which seems odd since the two seem to share tastes that should appeal to the same palate of someone like me.

Part of what inspired this blog entry, as what inspires many entries, is I was flipping through channels on the TV. Without even realizing it, I found myself watching wrestling. Without having any knowledge of the backstory of these two fighters, and having long ago learned that these bouts are choreographed, I never the less found myself enthralled by the story in front. A loud voiced antagonist called out threats to his absent opponent in an attempt to draw him out. Despite the ref’s calls for civility, the clearly dressed bad guy performs a host of “illegal moves”, eventually just knocking the ref unconscious while the commentators narrate an epic battle between these two foes.

Where Spider-Man got his start

This entire format is all too familiar to me. While these events were taking place in a ring, had this fight been moved to a city street it could easily appear like two super powered beings fighting for the fate of the city. The taunts yelled out from the ring to his opponent back stage fit easily into your average super villain monologue. If the ringside commentators remind me of the dialogue boxes in comics that give voice to the characters inner monologue, letting us the audience know their real thoughts and feelings as they do battle.

The most obvious trait that wrestlers and super heroes share is the costume. This is of course no accident. As I said in a previous blog (see here), Superman is the prototypical super hero and the creators of that character modeled him after a circus strong man. Similarly modeled are the outfits of wrestlers. The purpose of such a costume design is to show off the musculature of the wearer. It’s meant to be a part of the showmanship. While most modern wrestlers lost the cape, the classic wrestling fans can remember fighters walking towards the ring with a cape around their neck, which they could flourish before the crowd.

There are also the famed Luchadores, the masked wrestlers of Mexico, who adopt a persona when they enter the ring just as super heroes adopt a secret identity. As I’ve said in two previous entries (see here and here), a recurring theme in super hero comics is the adopting of a persona in order for the character to both fight crime and also protect their family and loved ones. Plus the mask allows the hero to act in a way they normally wouldn’t in civilian life. It is a freedom that comes from anonymity, which is what I believe the Luchadores share with comic super heroes.

Super heroes and wrestlers are two genres of entertainment that have evolved little since their original inception. Many of the classic super heroes are still around and classic wrestlers who can still physically perform are still showing up in arenas around the world. Go to any comic book convention and there are bound to be a few former wrestlers there signing autographs. There is a mutual fanbase shared by these different entertainment platforms. So closely related are the two that a super hero adaptation can not be mentioned in the news without at least a few wrestlers turned actors being rumored as cast. 

Super Power As Personality Quirk

Suffice it to say, if it involves super powers it is something that will capture my attention. Super heroes are the gingerbread house that I just cannot avoid and always get sucked into. But not all super powered characters are heroes. Nor are they villains. Some people with powers are just regular individuals whose lives have been forever altered by the knowledge they have this strange ability. An ability that seems to shape everything about their lives.

I got to thinking about this while watching reruns of the brilliant TV show Pushing Daisies. If you are unaware of this show (and you missed out on something really great if you are), the show revolves a young baker (The Pie Man aka Ned) who as a child discovered he had the power to bring the dead back to life with just a touch. This ability to bring back the dead has drawbacks though. For every thing he brings to life, something of equal size or weight has to die. That is of course, if he allows them to live longer than a minute. If he touches the dead again they return to being dead, unable to be revived. This causes Ned to grow up mostly an orphan after he revives his mother and then tragically kills her when she kisses him on the forehead. He also brings back to life his beloved dog, whom he can never pet or touch for fear the canine will die again. The series really gets going though when he brings back to life his childhood crush who along with a detective helps him solve murder cases.

As you watch the show you can see that all this death has caused Ned to develop a fear of intimacy. Even when around the living, Ned tends to keep his distance. Touch is the delivery system for his abilities. He needs to focus on everything he touches. And so many of the things he touches are dead. An accidental nudge and a former corpse is walking around. The awesome power of life and death is in his hands. As one of my favorite heroes said, with great power comes great responsibility. I can’t think of a power greater than being able to control life.

One of my favorite tacklers of this topic of super powered individuals is Mr. Stephen King. Kings work is full of individuals who through some twist of fate or another have been given a strange ability. I’ll cite The Dead Zone (book, movie, TV show, they all follow the same general plot) that has a schoolteacher awaking from a coma with the ability to see a person’s life (past, present, future) through touch. Tactile sense seems to be a popular theme among these types of stories. As John Smith, the main character, tries to live a normal life he is constantly forced into impossible situations due to his “power”.

The main feature of these ordinary individuals who gain some sort of ability is that they all want to be rid of their ability. Their greatest wish in life is to be simply normal. Most individuals dream of having something that separates them from the rest of the herd of humanity, where the people in these stories want nothing more than to go with the flow. For them, normality is the greatest gift a person can have. Again, another King character who perfectly exemplifies this is Carrie. Carrie wants so badly to be like the other girls in her school but she is ostracized at first for her deeply religious upbringing and then later for her destructive mental abilities.  All she really wants is to fit in at school.

That seems to be the important point put across in all these super power stories. No matter how badly you want to be like everyone else the only way you will truly be happy is if you accept who you are. An important lesson when you look at the world around you. With so much dissidence and prejudice based on so many arbitrary lines, more people need to realize that it is the differences that make people interesting, not the sameness.

Westeros: Land of The Anti-Heroes

If you are unaware of the series Game of Thrones or the books (A Song of Ice and Fire Series) that inspired it you must have been living under a rock for the past couple of years. The massively popular TV show on HBO has blasted into the pop culture scene like flames from a dragon. The stories of characters living in the mystical land of Westeros have captured people’s imaginations. And the appeal of the series seems pretty simple. The entire show is nothing but shades of gray.

When you look at the characters in Game of Thrones, be they Stark or Lannister, there seem to be no clear-cut good or bad guys. No white or black hats (though plenty of black cloaks). Most people think they are supposed to route for the Starks since their family is the one we are first introduced to at the beginning of the series. But as the stories progress there are so many characters introduced that it is impossible to take a side. Each character has their good and bad moments, making it impossible to completely hate or love any character (though I know many female friends who will with no hesitation declare their love for a single male individual).

The main reason why none of the characters are really the bad guys is because in reality none of them are. From the very beginning of the series we are told “Winter is Coming.” While all the fighting and feuding between the various houses and alliances is where much of the story lies, there is a larger threat looming over all the characters. One of the mystical aspects of Westeros is that seasons can last entire years, sometimes even decades. While the citizens of Westeros revel in the warmth of summer, they all live in fear of winter. Not just because of the cold and dying of crops but because winter brings all sorts of other horrors, chief among them The White Walkers. This is the real threat of the series. They are the ultimate enemy that all the characters will have to confront when their summer ends. This makes it possible for the author and the show runners to paint so many characters as ambivalent.

Even the least liked characters in the series have brief moments of redemption. Tywin Lannister is supposed to be a cruel and greedy man, lusting for power. But reading the books, and especially when watching the TV series, you realize so much of his horrible actions are done out of love for his family. He wants power not so much for himself but for his children and grandchildren. And certainly the Lannisters can’t be all evil when you see that most beloved character in the show is a Lannister. Tyrion Lannister is a favorite among so many fans of the books. And Petter Dinklage’s portrayal of the character just makes him more likeable.

Nor are the noble Starks completely pure hearted and good. One of the Starks’ most trusted allies, Theon Greyjoy, betrays his adopted family the first chance he gets. Robb Stark, the King in the North, jails his mother after she goes behind his back. Robb uses his direwolf to bite off the fingers of someone who disagrees with his war plans. The Starks are not perfect. Even Ned Stark who is seen as the most noble man in Westeros fathered a bastard child (Jon Snow) while he was off fighting a war. And even though he tries to do the right thing and raise the child, his wife despises the young Snow, even though the child of her husband has worked his hardest to endear himself to the rest of his family.

Plus there's hot chicks and dragons.

What rings so true about the characters in this series is that everyone has an agenda. While people in the real world try to be altruistic and selfless at times, in reality most of us have ulterior motives for nearly everything we do. And that is why Game of Thrones are so relatable despite it being set in a world of swords and sorcery. In many ways, Game of Thrones is not fantasy but a political thriller. It certainly shares far more in common with a series like Scandal than it does a show like Once Upon A Time.