I'm going to be pedantic, and say that to qualify as a "remake," a motion picture must
Be a feature length motion picture that present substantially the same story as a previous, feature length motion picure. (So no sequels, prequels, origin stories, or reuse of characters in new plots. Nix to all the Batman films.)
Adaptations from other mediums don't count. (So no Harry Potter and the... titles, and all the various screen presentations of Hamlet are out, too.)
Adaptations of televisions series don't count. (So no X Files, or even worse, the lamentably terrible Bewitched)
Adaptations on television don't count. (So ScyFy's Dune doesn't count.)
A musical adaptation of a previous motion picture doesn't count--and vice versa. (So no, My Fair Lady--which fails on the second condition, anyway, since it was an adaptation of the stage musical and no Willy Wonka--which also fails on criterion 2, and no Little Shop of Horrors.)
Rerelease of the same footage in a new or expanded medium doesn't count. (So no Star Wars Episode I The Endless Droning on of a Film in Search of a Screenwriter: 3D, and no director's cuts.)
With that substantially narrowed field, then, we come to the question of how to assess "best" and "worst." To my mind, the vast cavernous gulf in quality between the original and the remake is the acid test. It's not enough that the new version be execrably bad. It must be an execrably bad remake of what was once a marvellous film. It must so poison the title that the original is forever tainted with its awfulness. So this disqualifies Red Dawn which was an original so awful that an awful remake is merely a repetition of a bad idea.
Similary, the best remake must be so wonderful, that is causes the the title to blossom, lotus-like, from the filth in which it had been left to wallow.
Worst
So many to choose from.
Planet of the Apes--but was the original truly wonderful? The same could be asked of Clash of the Titans. And with all due respect to Hitchcock and his original Psycho I'm not sure that horror and thriller films occupy the rarified level that can be utterly laid low by an awful remake. But there is nothing that is as remotely stale as an old joke. And so I suggest that it is in comedy that the true dreck is to be found. I offer these three crap-tacular entries:
The Pink Panther--Steve Martin is a comic genius in his own right. Why on earth would he do this to the memory of the late, great, Peter Sellers?
The Ladykillers--Tom Hanks' consistently demonstrates that his reach exceeds his grasp, and nowhere more in this utter failure to capture the comic genius of Alec Guinness.
But even these two dogs pale in comparison to that utter travesty that was:
Arthur.
For all their faults, Steve Martin and Tom Hanks can act. The same cannot be said for Russell Brand. And did Helen Mirren really need a new summer home that badly???
Best
Here we come to much pleasanter territory. A nod must go to The Man Who Knew Too Much--the only case I can think of where a director has remade his own film. It's good--but is it that much greater than the first? Well, it sets a bar, anyway.
Most of the good horror and thriller remakes fail to meet this bar. They're good, to be sure, but not quintessentially better than their originals. Cape Fear is a noteworthy exception, and perhaps The Fly is the very best of the type, transforming camp into graphic horror.
Then there are the great remakes of great originals. The Magnificent Seven, for example. But Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai is no less great a film. Similarly, The Departed cannot really eclipse, Infernal Affairs. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Father of the Bride, The Thomas Crowne Affair, 3:10 to Yuma,True Lies, The Italian Job, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels all belong in this category.
But there are two that potentially bridge that gulf between terrible and terrific. The first is Scarface--but the comparison is almost unfair because in the 51 years that elapsed between the original and the remake, so much of the potential of moviemaking changed. But there can be no doubt that the 1983 film completely supplanted the original.
But I'm going to break my "no adaptations" rule for my best remake selection, because no such excuse can be made for Casino Royale. The 1967 original is an eminently forgettable, lamentable excuse of a spoof which--given its cast--ought to have been a comic masterpiece, and turned out to be a waste of perfectly good celluloid. But the 2006 film most assuredly takes pride of place among the great Bond films.
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--James
15 Nov 2012, 5:33 pm
