Dude, Hollywood, what the fuck? Every morning I walk into work half an hour later than my friend, and I usually find a slew of emails from him in my inbox alerting me to what movie has gotten the greenlight to be remade. This morning it’s Suspiria, which anyone with good horror movie taste has watched and knows does not need a remake because, hello, Dario Argento is amazing, and that movie — while very 70’s (surprise, surprise, that’s when it was made) — is fucking awesome. It’s even on Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments list!
So far, I’ve heard about remakes for The Eye (gah!), Friday the Thirteenth (GAH!), Nightmare on Elm Street (GAHHH!!!!), Last House on the Left (GHD:UOAROIHHO:!!!) and Rosemary’s Baby (OH, for FUCK’S SAKE!!!!!), and on the heels of all of that comes the announcement that they’re making movies of Monopoly and Candyland. As in the board games. As in Monopoly, the board game I have never played all the way through because it is that long and boring.
Did studios learn nothing from the writer’s strike? Or is this some sort of pre-emptive crack-ness that ensures that next time the studios don’t want to pay writers, they already have enough crap and schlock to keep on truckin’? This is pitiful. I personally know at least a dozen people in Los Angeles desperate to sell their scripts. Not all of them are great, true, but some of my peeps are seriously talented people. And yet they want to make a motherfucking MONOPOLY MOVIE instead!
I know, that’s crude, but I don’t care. I’m beyond annoyed and angry. And really, all this remaking is ridiculous. These are classic films. I don’t want to see Jessica Alba try to pretend to have a demon son. Mia Farrow was brilliant (not to mention stunningly beautiful) in Rosemary’s Baby. No need to make it again. And do they really think that CGI makes Nightmare on Elm Street scarier? Because it won’t. I can guaran-fucking-tee that it won’t.
So frustrating. If you, like me, feel like this unending stream of remaks and totally shit movies flying out of Hollywood (I mean, seriously folks, there isn’t someone writing up to the level of, say, “Peggy Sue Got Married?” That movie is fab. Not Oscar-worthy, but who needs all their movies to be Oscar-worthy all the time?) might give you an anyeurism, here is something that will make you laugh:
30 Things That Should Never Be Adapted To Film.
If anyone wants to take a field trip to Hollywood with me to lay the smackdown, I say we plan for May.
–Sara
ETA: The number one best example of why Hollywood should stop making damn remakes is Nicholas Cage’s remake of The Wicker Man. I made my ex take me to it on a date and it was terrible. Granted, by the end it had gotten so bad as to be hilarious (and now we are complete Nic Cage movie addicts, who openly profess our love of the National Treasure movies ’cause they RULE!!), but the original Wicker Man is terrifying. No. More. Remakes.
