Savage Popcorn

I was going to stop complaining about the constant stream of remakes coming out of Hollywood at the moment. But, while reporting that Rod Lurie is to direct a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s classic revenge film, Straw Dogs, CHUD’s Devin Faraci summed up in two sentences everything that is wrong with this remake fad:

But I guess someone at Sony did some market research or something and found that Straw Dogs has some name recognition. It can add three percent to Friday night numbers!

I don’t have a problem with remakes in principle and would be the first to acknowledge that, if someone has a new insight or original slant to bring to a story, the results can be well worth seeing and may even be better than the original film. David Cronenberg’s version of The Fly, for example, is a much stronger film than the original; and I have to admit to preferring the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the 1956 film.

What I find objectionable about the current slew of remakes is that there isn’t any new slant or original take on the story. This is a fad driven entirely by the cynical observation that if you churn out a completely anodyne piece of drivel with a recognisable name, enough people will march into the multiplex to make it financially worthwhile. I know I’ve said it before but as long as we keep buying this crap, the big studios will continue to sell it to us.

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