Any one of the 22 (not exaggerating) film versions of Count of Monte Cristo is surely considered by most to be better than the first.
Would remaking TOS episodes make you upset?
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Thought about that but I don't think Silent film adaptations should count, it's basically a different medium, as different as radio or the stage. But again we need to distinguish between remakes and new adaptions of the original
See, I regard any adaptation as worthwhile even within the same medium. It's going to have a different attitude, different perspective, and different production values. To me, it's the same as going from radio or stage to film.
Never mind the numerous other efforts to adapt the Wizard of Oz. Or various Shakespeare plays, Passion Plays, musicals, or stage productions. I don't understand why Star Trek is special but I can get twenty different iterations of Batman in film?
Ocean's Eleven is a remake of a movie from the sixties called Ocean's 11. One of them is the most famous heist movie ever. The other is the original.
That's an excellent example, not to denigrate the original at all, which is a solid movie, but the new one, it's just something special.
See, I regard any adaptation as worthwhile even within the same medium. It's going to have a different attitude, different perspective, and different production values. To me, it's the same as going from radio or stage to film.
Never mind the numerous other efforts to adapt the Wizard of Oz. Or various Shakespeare plays, Passion Plays, musicals, or stage productions. I don't understand why Star Trek is special but I can get twenty different iterations of Batman in film?
All of Batman's live action adaptations have equal weight, the Comic is the original and has the highest status. Therefore it's a bigger deal, intellectually speaking, to do a "crisis" and reset comic continuity than it is to make a new live action Batman.
Star Trek started out as live action, all the shows are in the same continuity (even ST09 in the multiverse). The seal has never been broken, and after 60 years, that's one tough seal. Disco/SNW is beating on it pretty hard with the visual reboot, but it's still intact.
That doesn't diminish the originals by remaking them. That's absurdity at the highest level.
That's just the opposite of what I was trying to say. It's a big deal to make an adaptation in the same medium as the original. New Sherlock Holmes books are never as respected as the originals, regardless of their quality, but all the movies are judged on the same standard, because it's a different medium. There is a massive handicap that has to be overcome for a same medium adaption. Nu Battlestar Galactica is a notable success. None of the Lost in Space adaptations have managed it, and the original Lost in Space is a low bar. Star Trek is a really high bar. Abrams was the only one who thought he could clear it and even he chickened out and stuck in Old Spock.
Hey, I liked the Netflix one!
There never should be that need for the respect like the original. To me it's absurd because they are two different things. Treat them as such instead of searching for the thrill of the original. It's like trying to get a band to sound like the first album. It's not possible.
That's nice, but it's not how most people react to things. Ghostbusters 2016 was loudly rejected by fandom in a way that simply wouldn't have been possible if Ghostbusters had been a book first. That said, the Harry Potter reboot is coming up and, hold on to your butts, it's going to get very ugly, even though it was a book first. Some of that is because it was adapted so soon, a mere 4 years later, so the movies have more cache than is usual with this sort of thing.
How people react doesn't demand such a response though. To me, people's first reaction shouldn't dictate that response forever. It's absurd to stay with your first reaction no matter how comfortable.
Yeah, I'm excited for Harry Potter, and no doubt it will get ugly. People are absurd.
Remakes can exceed expectations, but only rarely, in my opinion. Sometimes, I just prefer a straight-up remake to a cash grabbing continuation of the shows or movies I once loved. That way I can take it or leave it without having to care about continuity, or pretending my favourite characters are now miserable and lonely.
Ghostbusters seemed to do well with Afterlife, but I have my problems with it. Top Gun Maverick is just great and I'm so happy I got to see it in the cinema. However, come the day that Bob Zemeckis is no longer with us and someone decides to make new films set after the BTTF trilogy, I think my soul will be crushed. I'd prefer a remake I can safely ignore like the Robocop reboot.
I guess it just depends.
One remake I also like was Flight of the Phoenix. Not quite on par with the original, but it was alright.
Ghostbusters seemed to do well with Afterlife, but I have my problems with it. Top Gun Maverick is just great and I'm so happy I got to see it in the cinema. However, come the day that Bob Zemeckis is no longer with us and someone decides to make new films set after the BTTF trilogy, I think my soul will be crushed. I'd prefer a remake I can safely ignore like the Robocop reboot.
I guess it just depends.
One remake I also like was Flight of the Phoenix. Not quite on par with the original, but it was alright.
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I never saw them, but they are pretty well regarded.
Never saw that either.
Aha! Battlestar Galactica! That's a remake I actually did enjoy. Though it's so distinct that it's more like a brand new story with new characters that's just inspired by the original.
Adaptations like Sherlock Holmes are definitely very different to remakes, and have their own advantages and challenges. The switch in media alone sets them up as a being an 'Elseworld' of sorts, in their own continuity. Fans are not happy when movie Batman starts killing folks, adaptations aren't entirely isolated from the original, but no one is that bothered when they reimagine the Batmobile or change the story, because each batch of films is a different echo of the true continuity running through the comics. But the Ghostbusters remake got hit by a huge wall of resistance, because people weren't willing to let the original movie continuity go. And the fans did actually get the true sequels they wanted in the end, so I guess making noise worked that time.
Which is hilarious in light of @UssGlenn saying the comics are more important because in Batman's first appearance in "Detective Comics" #27, and it's Batman punching a criminal in to a vat of acid:
It's interesting what aspects of adaptations resonate with different audience members. It reminds me of my first actual encounter with Doctor Who and watching Eccleston and friends of mine would say "You never forget your first doctor." and how that portrayal defines our expectations. It was an interesting experiment of sorts as I had never watched Doctor Who, and was not as on board for David Tennant or Matt Smith, but liked Peter Capaldi. So there are so many different facets of that franchise that are defined more by our first encountered than the original material.
So I wonder if the resistance to an adaptation is filtering through our first experience and how important it is or how sacred it is.
I think @eschaton noted this that adaptations and retellings seem built in to human history so I just don't feel the need to be resistance to a retelling because the original still exists.
Batman's slightly murdery early stories are pretty much just trivia at this point, especially as he really didn't kill a lot of people even then. With Detective Comics alone running over a thousand issues, I'd estimate Batman kills people in about 0.1% of his stories.
I think the way we think about stories has evolved along with technology. People have been retelling the same stories throughout all of human history because they had to, the printing press wasn't invented until the 15th century and the ability to print and distribute ongoing stories to the masses didn't really come along until the 1800s. In the 20th century the performance of actors could finally be captured and stored, In the 80s we got home video and by the late 90s folks were sharing video across the internet. Each shift brought with it a new perspective on stories.
The second Don Quixote novel from 1615 actually featured characters talking about the fake sequel someone else had published that was out of continuity, and ended by saying all other stories by other authors are false. A few hundred years later Sherlock Holmes fans came up with the term 'canon' to define which books are part of the true story. With ongoing comic books and streaming video we entered a world where stories can just keep going and episodes can be forever. Now remakes are frustrating because it means we've got another contradictory version of the events to store in our brain. Plus if they're successful studios are going to go in that direction instead of giving us a proper continuation, so fans have reason to want them to fail.
Ah,so it doesn't count? How wonderfully arbitrary.
This fan doesn't want them to fail. I don't think I have a proper continuation of the things I enjoy. Not TOS, not Farscape, not Firefly, not even Man in the Iron Mask, which is an awful story compared to Three Musketeers.
It's ok to not have a proper continuation if the story is good.
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