Ask any director worth their weight in salt and they will tell you remaking an older film is generally a lose-lose proposition. The thing a remake can’t do is to make a great movie better.
Some films worse than the originals that immediately spring to mind are “Red Dawn” (2012), “Point Break” (2015), “Jacob’s Ladder” (2019), “Firestarter” (2022), and virtually every Disney remake of the last decade.
Remakes of ‘Here Comes Mr. Jordan’ (1941)
Nominated for nine Oscars and winning one for Best Art Direction, Warren Beatty’s “Heaven Can Wait” used the 1941 “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” as merely a skeletal blueprint. The basic plots are virtually interchangeable. In “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” Joe (Robert Montgomery) is a professional boxer who dies prematurely. In “Heaven Can Wait,” Beatty is a pro football player who suffers almost the same fate.
Upon learning both Joes were taken 50 years too soon, the angel Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains; James Mason) sends their souls back to earth to find replacement bodies. Because each man was cremated, this presents some “challenges.”
The 1978 version isn’t better than 1941 take; they are just different. However “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” has a distinctly dated feel.
These movies are light years better than Chris Rock’s 2001 “Down to Earth” (currently 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) where his character plays a stand-up comedian. Avoid it at all costs.
A Remake of ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ (1960)
While probably not the first, director Steven Soderbergh was among the few who came to the conclusion that remaking an already great movie was a bad idea. Soderbergh and his screenwriter Ted Griffin instead took a patently pedestrian “Rat Pack” movie from 1960 and gave it a major upgrade.
In the role originally played by Frank Sinatra, George Clooney is recently paroled convict Danny Ocean. A lifelong thief, Danny shows no signs of cleaning up his act and immediately starts assembling a team of specialists to pull off what he says will be a one-off robbery.
This isn’t just some jewelry store smash-and-grab but a high-risk high reward theft of three major Las Vegas casinos all overseen by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) who just so happens to be the boyfriend of Tess (Julia Roberts), Danny’s ex-wife.
Remake of ‘A Star is Born’ (1937)
The 2018 remake is not so much better than the 1937 and 1954 versions, but it was updated to reach an entirely new audience, which it did. As for the 1976 edition … the less spoken about it, the better.
Originally planned as a Clint Eastwood Warner Bros. movie with Johnny Depp and Beyonce as the leads, the 2018 remake went into turnaround and got picked up by Paramount. It was turned over to Bradley Cooper who eventually directed, starred, co-produced, and co-wrote it for Warner Bros.
Cooper cast Lady Gaga as the co-lead, which proved to be a masterstroke. She surprised everyone with her stunning debut performance. She also wrote and performed most of the soundtrack and won an Oscar for Best Original Song (“Shallow”).
A Remake of ‘The Invisible Man’ (1933)
Both based on the 1897 novel by H.G. Wells, the 1933 original sci-fi thriller by James Whale and its 2020 successor by Leigh Whannell couldn’t be more different in tone and execution.
In the first, Claude Rains plays the title character Dr. Jack Griffin, who isn’t really all that invisible as he is seen the majority of the time in mummy-like bandages.
What starts out as a series of pranks quickly devolves into murder until he meets his demise in a manner not unlike that of assassin John Wilkes Booth.
In the remake, Oliver Jackson-Cohen plays the truly sick puppy. Adrian Griffin, whose reaction to his former live-in architect girlfriend Cecilia Cass (Elisabeth Moss) leaving him is, to put it mildly, extreme.
Adrian puts on a masterclass of serious gaslighting, first by faking his own death, then turning up in Cecilia’s life, often with lethal results.
A Remake of ‘The Trapp Family’ (1956)
The highest-grossing movie until it was supplanted by “The Godfather,” “The Sound of Music” bested its 1956 predecessor on virtually every front. The biggest and most obvious difference was replacing a collection of quaint, largely forgettable German folk songs with perhaps the most memorable score ever composed by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Nominated for 10 Academy Awards and the winner of five, the remake tells the story of Maria Kuczera (Julie Andrews). She’s the governess working for the stern widower Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), tutoring his seven children.
Forever changing the landscape of the Hollywood musical, its influence cannot be overstated.
The studios’ temptation to remake old intellectual property is understandable. People liked it the first time around, so why not a second? Audiences feed this by seeming to always gravitate towards the tried and true. It’s less of a gamble.
There’s one thing that is a money-in-the-bank guarantee: It will never stop.
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