The unnecessary reboot/remake of the week thread

[Captaindemotion]

A lament on the omniscience of remakes, sequels and reboots here

'Freakier Friday' Is Humiliating to Everyone Involved

And it's just the latest in a heap of summer sequels and remakes that seem to exist to turn audiences into nostalgia zombies.

time.com

 

[Aragorn]

Studios are afraid of spending a lot of money on movies so there's an emphasis on sequels, prequels, spinoffs, remakes and movies based on existing brands. The other alternative would be to spend less on movies, but for some reason that's not an option.

 

[Jayson1]

I think the reason why so many movies fail these days is they don't make movies anymore that were proven monkey makers of even the recent past. Edgy comedies done with low budgets. Mid size and sometimes big scope, character dramas aimed at American audiences by capturing something unique and specific about American culture. Something like Forrest Gump or Fargo. About any movie set in a small American town.

Lots of movies now seem to avoid anything doing with middle America settings and people. The big bloated action movies had appeal across the globe and art films and independent movies were for cinephile's with some having crossover success with mainstream audiences such as Tarantino movies. Basically the studios understood who the audiences were for each type of movie they made and made sure those movies would appeal especially to that target audience. Their was very few four-quadrant movies. So they pulled in money from everyone through several different types of movies instead of trying to get all the money from a small handful of movies.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein hasn’t yet been released but director Rada Jude is planning to follow his own version of Dracula with a retelling of Shelley’s story.

‘Frankenstein in Romania’: Sebastian Stan Set to Star in Film That Radu Jude Is Writing

The free-spirited iconoclast also plans to next shoot a movie "about immigration and about Romanians working abroad."

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[Aragorn]

The most inexplicable legacy sequel has to be Backdraft 2. It was just another lower budget Universal DTV where they take a known movie from their library and add a 2 to the title -- usually without any relation to the original -- like Kindergarten Cop, Jarhead, Hard Target, R.I.P.D., Inside Man or Doom. Then somehow Billy Baldwin and Donald Sutherland agreed to return. And thus you had a Backdraft sequel without a budget for fires.

They're probably upset that Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise wield too much power, otherwise we would've gotten Born on the Fourth of July 2: The Standoff and Born on the Fourth of July 3: The Escape by now.

 

[Set Harth]

The most inexplicable legacy sequel has to be Backdraft 2. It was just another lower budget Universal DTV where they take a known movie from their library and add a 2 to the title -- usually without any relation to the original -- like Kindergarten Cop, Jarhead, Hard Target, R.I.P.D., Inside Man or Doom. Then somehow Billy Baldwin and Donald Sutherland agreed to return. And thus you had a Backdraft sequel without a budget for fires.

I never even heard of it.

 

[Aragorn]

I never even heard of it.

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Filmed in Toronto and Romania.

Jarhead having three DTV sequels is the bigger WTF. The first one is a true story about being trained for war and then not seeing any combat. The sequels are all gung go action movies.

 

[SithHappens]

I'll be interested to see what they call the upcoming Dirty Dancing sequel considering we already have a Dirty Dancing 2. That's an example of a film that feels like it just has the Dirty Dancing name and could have been called something else. Obviously the cameo from Swayze shoe horned in helps connect the two even though it's not stated if the character is the same.

I do actually like DD2, once you get past the fact it's not a sequel (or prequel) really it's not a bad movie and has a decent soundtrack.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Dirtier Dancing?

 

[137th Gebirg]

They probably won't be able to film it at the lake where they were before. IIRC, glacial boulders that once dammed up the lake shifted and it drained quicker than local rain could keep it filled. It apparently should never have been there. Although I guess it reappears intermittently if they get a heavy rainfall, but not as full as it used to be.

 

[Jayson1]

Dirtier Dancing?

Dirty Polka Dancing!

 

[Starkers]

Dirtier Dancing?

Dance Dirtier?

Dirty Dancing:With a Vengeance?

 

[Captaindemotion]

Dance Dirtier?

Dirty Dancing:With a Vengeance?

Baby: Back In the Corner

 

[UssGlenn]

Could this maybe be the case: I remember reading years ago studios would do remakes or what not to existing I.P.'s that were going to lapse into the public domain in order to renew the copyright for another period of time (something like that).

They can't extend the copyright of the original beyond a set period, no resetting it to zero. What they can do is make a new version with a fresh copyright period, in the hopes that the new version becomes popular and supplants the original in the popular consciousness. That way, when the original enters the public domain it's not as valuable as the new version the studio still owns.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Noah Centineo (no, me neither) looks set to be the new or young Rambo.

‘Rambo’ Origins Pic ‘John Rambo’ At Millennium Has Noah Centineo In Its Crosshairs To Star – The Dish

Noah Centineo is attached to star in the Rambo prequel movie John Rambo, about the origins of the character made famous by Sylvester Stallone.

deadline.com

 

[Aragorn]

Wasn't Rambo just a guy.... until the sequels turned him into a killing machine? This sounds like the Die Hard prequel that never happened. What's there to tell when an existing movie already shows you how the character went from A to B?

 

[Starkers]

John Rambo wasn't just some guy though, he was a highly trained special forces soldier. He was a killing machine in Vietnam.

Makes way more sense than a John McClane prequel because McClane was just some guy before Die Hard

 

[137th Gebirg]

Well, yes, but he also happened to be a highly trained and highly decorated Green Beret special operator. He was by no means a rank and file ground pounder infantryman.

And the way the 'Nam vets were treated in real life when they rotated back to the states was abhorrent. Depression and suicide was rampant.

Edit: Ninja'd by Starkers!

 

[Captaindemotion]

Wasn't Rambo just a guy.... until the sequels turned him into a killing machine? This sounds like the Die Hard prequel that never happened. What's there to tell when an existing movie already shows you how the character went from A to B?

IIRC David Morrell read a newspaper story about Vietnam veterans with PTSD and then one about hippies being harassed by small town sheriffs and wondered what would happen if there was a clash of cultures that way, and so came up with the plot for First Blood. The first two films contained flashbacks to Rambo’s time in Vietnam, IIRC.

I’m reminded a little also of how the Missing in Action films were released out of chronological order (they were filmed simultaneously).The first one released was the second one to be filmed and has a plot like Rambo: First Blood Part 2, with Chuck going back to Nam to rescue POWs, whereas the second one released is set during the Vietnam war. The studio decided that the movie set in the 1980s was a better film and released it first, holding the other one back to be released as a prequel.

 

[Owain Taggart]

The most inexplicable legacy sequel has to be Backdraft 2. It was just another lower budget Universal DTV where they take a known movie from their library and add a 2 to the title -- usually without any relation to the original -- like Kindergarten Cop, Jarhead, Hard Target, R.I.P.D., Inside Man or Doom. Then somehow Billy Baldwin and Donald Sutherland agreed to return. And thus you had a Backdraft sequel without a budget for fires.

Oh man, I was so disappointed in that movie. The pacing didn't work partly because the setting itself didn't work. The concept itself, ie arson detectives, could have been an interesting one, but they really dropped the ball on the execution. Arriving on-site after the action has already happened doesn't make for a great setup, but that's what the bulk of the movie ended up being.

John Rambo wasn't just some guy though, he was a highly trained special forces soldier. He was a killing machine in Vietnam.

Trained for a purpose, yes, but the point made was that the guy had just come back from war who just wanted to get back to society and live a normal life. The police officer was a dick who made it his personal mission to harass a war vet. He reluctantly picked up some weapons out of defence and frustration when his back was figuratively against the wall. He only did so as a last resort.