The Remake: Tribute or Corporate Greed? (March 2006)
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This shook my foundation. It genuinely made me think long and hard about "The Remake". I've never been a big fan of rehashing the same old story, though I know several films that did a great job: the Donnie Walberg version of Planet of the Apes was completely different, using the original only as inspiration. Lord of The Rings: Return of the King and Romeo & Juliet are also solid cases for the worth of "The Remake", especially with Best Picture Oscars to support their case.
The questions I find myself asking are these: "Is Hollywood losing its creativity? Is it getting lazy, or is it solely interested in profits rather than producing art?"
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Ebert and Roeper, after giving the sequel Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo two solid thumbs down, tore into a heated condemnation of the industry at large. They explained how they could not fathom a film like this passing through the doors of a corporate boardroom, being approved, and going into production. Not only was this a waste of their time as critics, they said, but it usurped the space and money that a GOOD writer could have made use of. Rather than opting for integrity, the corporation chose profit, riding the coattails of the first film, knowing that another would succeed.
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However, The Remake is usually a tragically blatant ploy to make fast money. You save in marketing, having marketed already the first time around. From simple re-releases like Exorcist 2000, to ridiculous attempts to modernize an outdated cultural bias like in Cape Fear, which centered around the legality that allowed a rape victim's sexual history as permissible evidence (imagine redoing To Kill A Mockingbird today without changing the basic social stigma premise and you'll understand).
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