On Remakes

A word on remakes. Obviously, as I’ve mentioned before, they tend not to make me angry since they’re so easy to ignore. A remake does nothing to the original work, it can only hurt itself. That said, if remakes are here to stay, let me give out some unsolicited but nonetheless sage advice.

First, don’t remake really good movies. This goes for adaptations as well. I say this not because I irrationally imagine that a remake will somehow “ruin” the original, but rather because when you decide to remake something good, you only end up damning yourself. Your film will inevitably be compared to its source and will not come off well in the comparison, no matter how artfully you approach it.

This is fundamentally because there is no purpose to a remake of a good film. What are you accomplishing, what are you improving? Nothing.

Thus, if you’re going to remake something, remake something mediocre but which has a spark of inspiration to it that you can exploit. Or, if you must remake something good (like King Kong), pick something that has a fairly obvious flaw that it is within your power to correct (in this case, the personality-filled but unconvincing special effects in the 1933 Kong). The point of a remake is not to just do the older film over again, it is to comment on the older film, making clear your affection for it but also pointing out its flaws by correcting them.