Over the last (checks watch) quite a few years, there has been a vocal push back against a lot of what Hollywood seems to be doing. In an age where ticket prices are going up and 'spectacles' are getting out of hand, or expected in certain cases, there has been a massive abundance of sequels, remakes, reboots, and everything in between. Sequels are, at least, understandable, even if they may be very unnecessary. They have been a staple for quite some time, now, and is an easy go to for studios to make money if the preceding film did great. Even films that are getting sequels way later than they should be can generate some sort of enthusiasm, if they are paired up with interesting filmmakers or involve the creative groups behind the originals (take this year's Trainspotting 2 or Blade Runner 2049 as examples). But the one area that has always been a sore spot is the simple idea of remakes, or 'reboots' as they like to label them nowadays.
     I have been wanting to write about this topic for quite some time now, as a lot of my frustrations are ones that are based around the storytelling aspect of remakes. Am I inherently against them? No. I do find them wildly unnecessary, but the fact is that you can do a remake that is worthwhile. There have been a few announced over the years that I don't outright hate the idea of, because the writer in me knows that there's a lot you can do with certain properties. My frustrations set in knowing that these interesting things are most likely not going to be done, which is a shame as we have many a remake that have done just that.

     One genre that always leads to remakes are horror films. There are reasons why this is obvious; they have a built-in audience, a following, and when it comes to certain films that are chosen to be remade, they can be done cheap. The bigger names in horror have gotten a few extra bucks thrown at them since they do have name reputation, which is where the remakes for Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Friday the 13th come in. Easy and cheap ways to make easy money. What is odd to consider here is that there have been horror remakes that have done wonders based on their original source material. As a matter of fact, re-watching some is what sparked me to finally write about this.
     There are three main examples for remakes in the horror genre that elevated the original ideas to something so much more. These films are, yes, remakes, but they also took the original groundwork and explored different ways they can be told or different stories they can tell. Of course, these three films are The Thing, The Fly, and The Blob. Lots of one-word, descriptive titles there. While there are a few remakes that fall into this category of creating great films by remaking and giving depth to what came before (the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is also fantastic), I thought I'd keep it to these three to talk about.

     Though John Carpenter's The Thing is more of a new adaptation of the initial source novel, it does qualify as a remake. Taking the story of a group stranded in the Antarctic, John Carpenter and crew perfectly explored the effects of being locked down without knowing whether or not someone is who they are supposed to be, being threatened by a force they don't know how to comprehend. It is an incredibly tense and effective film, realistically diving into how people's trust in each other can wither away in their desperation.

     While The Thing focused on a group, David Cronenberg's The Fly took the short story by George Langelaan and the 1950's original adaptation of it, and created a film that explored how playing God and not knowing when to put your excitement for new discoveries in check. So, you know, don't experiment massively new scientific things on yourself. It turned a story about a scientist who accidentally transferred his head onto the body of a fly, and took a more realistic approach to it, with how a human's DNA would break down and change over time to show the full, horrific events of something gone wrong. It is shocking and heartbreaking, taking us on a journey that shows the accidental destruction a man puts himself through in an attempt to fully realize his ideas and discoveries.

     In a slightly different way of exploring things from the past, the 1988 remake of The Blob took a cheesy, 1950's idea and turned it into gore-filled, legitimately unnerving idea. While the remake isn't filled with the all-around depth of the other two films on the list, it does include a twist a way through that makes the idea of the blob and what it truly could be into a whole new thing entirely. Even though it may be a tad farfetched, it does show how far people could go in an attempt to try things they think may be right, or in some way effective.

     Of course, good remakes aren't relegated to simply horror films. Most recently, last year, the remake of Pete's Dragon proved to be superior to the original film. Though the original may not, in all honesty, be looked back upon as being a good film, the new one took the idea of a boy befriending a dragon and explored told a sweet story of what may come from that, and the knowledge of this dragon's existence to the outside world. It may not be the most original idea, but the most important aspect of story is execution.
     All of this is why any cheap jump into obviously attempting to make a few extra bucks is incredibly frustrating. The remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street had me curious when it was announced to finally be happening. While I prefer practical effects to CGI, the thought of what they may be able to do easier with endless imagination nowadays made the prospect of a horror film set in dreams intriguing. But that's not what we got, the majority of the 'dream world' in that film relegated to gritty, unimaginative locations and set pieces. It made it easy to see that there was no real effort to try anything.

     Remakes aren't necessarily an awful idea, it's all simply about having a reason to revisit something. There are endless films out there that could be remade to update their initial stories into something that may involve the climate of the present world. Even in a film like Pete's Dragon, you can revisit an original source material to fully dig into the character depths that may not have been explored prior. It's all about effort. It's all about wanting to actually tell a story, and not to simply make a quick, easy buck.
     Yes, I'd love nothing more than a steady stream of new, original ideas; but there are always going to be remakes, or reboots, or even long gestating sequels based purely on name recognition and the ease of marketing such work. The point is, remakes shouldn't always have to come with a long, sad sigh and an eyeroll. There are films that obviously shouldn't be remade, and these have more to do with the kind of film they are and when they were released. The Neverending Story, for instance, though based off a book, keeps a lot of its charm in the fact that it is a wonderful 80's family film.
     But those films that do lend themselves to possibly being updated in this day and age properly shouldn't be squandered. There are so many possibilities to explore, and so many ways that these stories can be enriched and married with new ideas and themes. We can only hope that, like with Pete's Dragon, we get more instances of proper attention and care being put into these works that, sometimes, deserve much more.