Something a lot of fans do that bugs me
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People are more emotionally attached to action and scifi characters? That's probably true around here, since this is a scifi board, but I'm not sure that's generally the case.
Heck, PBS ran a sequel to Pride and Prejudice just a few weeks ago . . . and, trust me, the world is full of Jane Austin fans who are as invested in those characters as some of us are in Batman or Sarah Connor!
Very true. Maybe instead of limiting it to action/scifi it should be more generally "Franchises that elaborate subcultures form around".
Or even "Franchises that put a lot of effort into getting the viewer heavily invested in the characters' fate". Nobody gets in a huff about all the Sherlock Holmes incarnations which bear little or no resemblance to the original characters. Nobody is overly concerned that Dumb And Dumber To will besmirch the original.
People are more emotionally attached to action and scifi characters? That's probably true around here, since this is a scifi board, but I'm not sure that's generally the case.
Heck, PBS ran a sequel to Pride and Prejudice just a few weeks ago . . . and, trust me, the world is full of Jane Austin fans who are as invested in those characters as some of us are in Batman or Sarah Connor!
Very true. Maybe instead of limiting it to action/scifi it should be more generally "Franchises that elaborate subcultures form around".
Closer, but I question whether Holmes doesn't have his own cult following, on screen and in prose. The only difference is that Holmes fans have had a century or so to get used to the idea of multiple sequels and remakes. And, of course, the original books were part of an ongoing series so sequels were built into the format . . ..
I guess we should probably distinguish between movies that were designed to launch a continuing series of adventures--like Holmes or James Bond--and sequels to movies that didn't necessarily cry out for sequels. (Like, say, THE EXORCIST.)
Of course, even that's blurry. THE MARK OF ZORRO was never intended to launch sequels, and ditto for FRANKENSTEIN, but that's never stopped Hollywood . . ..
People are more emotionally attached to action and scifi characters? That's probably true around here, since this is a scifi board, but I'm not sure that's generally the case.
Heck, PBS ran a sequel to Pride and Prejudice just a few weeks ago . . . and, trust me, the world is full of Jane Austin fans who are as invested in those characters as some of us are in Batman or Sarah Connor!
Very true. Maybe instead of limiting it to action/scifi it should be more generally "Franchises that elaborate subcultures form around".
Closer, but I question whether Holmes doesn't have his own cult following, on screen and in prose. The only difference is that Holmes fans have had a century or so to get used to the idea of multiple sequels and remakes. And, of course, the original books were part of an ongoing series so sequels were built into the format . . ..
Yeah, the Sherlock fandom is huge - and there were quite a few complaints when CBS started making Elementary, so there is a batch of fans that is not quite used to multiple sequels or remakes yet.
I think that was more an issue of competition; if I recall correctly, the BBC Sherlock had just emerged around the same time.Very true. Maybe instead of limiting it to action/scifi it should be more generally "Franchises that elaborate subcultures form around".
Closer, but I question whether Holmes doesn't have his own cult following, on screen and in prose. The only difference is that Holmes fans have had a century or so to get used to the idea of multiple sequels and remakes. And, of course, the original books were part of an ongoing series so sequels were built into the format . . ..
Yeah, the Sherlock fandom is huge - and there were quite a few complaints when CBS started making Elementary, so there is a batch of fans that is not quite used to multiple sequels or remakes yet.
It was also the expectation that Elementary would just be a BBC Sherlock rip-off.
Luckily, it was not.
Luckily, it was not.
Sherlock started in 2010. Elementary in 2012. Not quite the same time.
A few people were a little irked when Robert Downey Jr made the character into an action hero, but nobody was mad the way Star Wars fans were about the prequels sucking.
I never particularly cared about Newt and Hicks. They were just mooks that happened to survive past the end titles. Alien3 was a lot truer to the original than Cameron's gung-ho action movie.
The first Mission: Impossible movie kinda did a hatchet job on the TV series, if only because of what happened to Jim Phelps, but I guess that can be easily explained, assuming that...
it wasn't really Jim, but somebody posing as him, which happened at other points in the film anyway so it's not like it's a stretch
I can kind of see how someone who has become invested in an ongoing series of sequels--a "franchise," in other words--could get upset if the latest offering(s) seemed to be taking it in a "bad" direction. Sure, you can just stop watching after the last "good" one, but the idea is that you want more of the good stuff.
As for remakes of individual films (as opposed to relaunches of franchises), I find it easy enough to just pick the version(s) I like best and ignore the rest. Heck, having choices is supposed to be a good thing, right?
The only time remakes really piss me off is if I'm scrolling through the TV listings looking for something to watch, spot something like The Day the Earth Stood Still, get all atwitter looking forward to a great viewing evening, and then find out they're running the Keanu Reeves POS instead of the original.
As for remakes of individual films (as opposed to relaunches of franchises), I find it easy enough to just pick the version(s) I like best and ignore the rest. Heck, having choices is supposed to be a good thing, right?
The only time remakes really piss me off is if I'm scrolling through the TV listings looking for something to watch, spot something like The Day the Earth Stood Still, get all atwitter looking forward to a great viewing evening, and then find out they're running the Keanu Reeves POS instead of the original.
The only thing for me is remakes with the same name. So if you're talking to somebody (probably somebody younger than you) and you something like say "oh have you seen Total Recall? Or Planet of the Apes?" and they might reply with "oh yeah those movies suck."
And then you have to work out which version they're talking about, and often it's the lame remakes (2001/2012 of those two) rather than the great originals (1968/1990)
I'm not really saying remakes should have different names, but just that a bad one can then tarnish the original in a non-fan's eyes
And then you have to work out which version they're talking about, and often it's the lame remakes (2001/2012 of those two) rather than the great originals (1968/1990)
I'm not really saying remakes should have different names, but just that a bad one can then tarnish the original in a non-fan's eyes
I'll second that I never really liked Aliens that much, and I appreciated Alien 3 for jettisoning those silly Cameron caricatures.
I didn't like ANY of the Terminator movies after the first one, especially since T2 was just a rehash of the first, made a mockery of the closed-loop time travel thing and gave it some silly fairytale ending.
I didn't like ANY of the Terminator movies after the first one, especially since T2 was just a rehash of the first, made a mockery of the closed-loop time travel thing and gave it some silly fairytale ending.
I'll admit that it's annoying that so many people think that THE WICKER MAN is a bad Nicholas Cage movie and a not a classic Christopher Lee movie from the Seventies, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. You can't really hold it against the remakes that some people don't know their movie history. Chances are, those same people would have never watched the original movies anyway . . . because they were old or black-and-white or whatever.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with B/W movies. Heck, I watch more old movies on TCM than is probably healthy and am currently working my way through a boxed set of all original Universal "Dracula" movies.
But I have met people for whom this is a deal-breaker, and I suspect that those folks are only going to see the most recent remake anyway, and were never concerned with the reputation of the earlier version to begin with.
I've met such people as well. I consider it a major accomplishment that I managed to refrain from throttling them.
Also, thumbs up for your excellent taste. I have a special affection for the Universal Horror line.
While I disagree regarding T2 (I think it's better than the original and it's one of my favorites), I'm mostly in agreement about Alien/s. Aliens was a good movie, but I do feel it's pretty overrated and it doesn't hold a candle to the original. It's always bugged me that Cameron took one of the greatest horror movies ever made (it's basically a haunted-house movie) and made a sequel that was little more than a dumb action movie.
I never really got the Alien 3 hate. I think it's pretty solid and about on par with Aliens.
I wasn't that bothered with the Starship Troopers movie - well, at first I was, but I realized it was just a parody, nothing more. It clearly doesn't take the novel seriously - it takes what some believe (and I do NOT believe) are "fascist" tendencies in the novel and inflates them to an absurd degree. I find it impossible to take that as anything other than a joke, and as a fan, I have to learn how to take a joke.
And that film doesn't claim to be an actual part of the novel's continuity - unlike the M:I one, which purports to be a sequel to the events of the TV series. So the Troopers film does not ruin, but the first M:I film just might.
And that film doesn't claim to be an actual part of the novel's continuity - unlike the M:I one, which purports to be a sequel to the events of the TV series. So the Troopers film does not ruin, but the first M:I film just might.
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I like Aliens, but hate that some people don't seem to realise it was a sequel and very different to the original. Insisting that Alien 3 should have been like Aliens really misses the point. Alien 3 has problems (which were not fixed by the so-called director's cut), but also a lot of really good and interesting elements. It also has what I find to be a cathartic end for the trilogy.
^ I like Starship Troopers the film but haven't read the book. I get annoyed at fans who say it's garbage because it's not like the book, so am glad to find a more reasonable Heinlein fan
Maybe one day the book will be properly adapted. If so, I hope the result is as good a film as Neumeier's version, because that would be pretty good.
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