Ranting About Remakes

I decided to boycott remakes.  

They (meaning Hollywood big-shots and producers) are taking our favorite movies, and screwing them over.  Do they need more screenplays? I have a couple in the works – where do I send them?  Something needs to be done to stop this insanity!

For example, I saw a movie I wanted to watch listed on the cable menu, and I set it up to record. When I start to watch the recording,  I realize that it’s a remake of the film I wanted to watch. This spikes my blood pressure.  Footloose without Kevin Bacon and Christopher Penn is like  The King and I without Yul Brenner. Oh, wait, they remade that film too. They call it Anna and the King. Like that’s going to fool anyone.

When Walt Disney re-released classics like Bambi to a new generation, they were the same movies you watched with your daughter, and she with hers. That makes family traditions that reach across generations. When the family talks about Bambi, we are all talking about the same movie.

  The number of re-makes in the past couple of years astonishes me. And I’m not talking about the re-makes of A Christmas Carol or new Star Trek movies. Nor am I talking about the classics. They are re-making movies that debuted in the 1980’s. Perfectly good movies that don’t need to be  remade.

Just because people liked the film does not mean it needs to be made again by someone thinking they can re-do a good thing and make money off of it.  People must be going to the theater to see these copy-cat movies, because  re-makes are being thrown out at us from every genre.

I researched  (OK, I did a Google search for “remake movies”), and discovered that Hollywood is remaking some of my very favorite films in the near future. I refuse to watch ANY of these debaucheries.

I put together a list of movies being remade soon or for 2015 release. I was astonished. Perturbed. Pissed. Ready to write a letter pissed.

Read it and weep…

• War Games
• Commando
• Poltergeist
• Drop Dead Fred
• Overboard
• Porky’s (a more tasteful version?)
• The Orphanage
• Soap Dish
• Stephen King’s It
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• Honey I Shrunk the Kids
• The Never-ending Story
• Flight of the Navigator
• The Wild Bunch
• Cliff Hanger
• Three Men and a Baby
• House Party
• Videodrome
• Endless Love
• About Last Night
• Agent 47
• Fantastic Four
• The Harder They Come
• Police Academy
• Dirty Dancing
• Escape From New York
• Fletch
• Highlander
• National Lampoon’s Vacation
• Short Circuit
• Pet Semetary
• Scarface
• Time Bandits
• Romancing the Stone
• Weird Science
• The Toxic Avenger
• Godzilla
• Gremlins
• Jumanji
• Van Helsing
• The Monster Squad
• Annie
• An American Werewolf in London

See what I mean!

A website shows 20 of these films and gives details about the remake and the actors being cast. I read a few of these and things are WAY worse than I thought. If you are prone to depression – do not go there!

I’m serious.