The word Remake never used to make me tense up and frown and shout about. I don’t recall exactly when it started to happen, but in the last few years it’s been happening a lot more. And it just happened again when I read this.
For me, The Wicker Man—featuring Nicholas Cage, carved out of wood, in an acting-style cringe-worthy kind of a way, that is—tops the list as far as films which should have been left well and truly alone, closely followed by psycho hitchhiker abomination The Hitcher. But the list really is endless. We have Psycho, released in 1998 and laughed out of town, then we have Rob Zombie’s ‘contributions’ to film—both Back To The Future (2007 version), which was hideous, and Halloween, which just wasn’t that good a story to begin with and was subsequently remade even worse.
The TV show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century? Come on! Normally I wouldn’t have been worried but I’ve been noticing a trend recently that makes me think it just might happen; the trend goes like this: any film that hasn’t yet been remade will be very soon. And there seems to be no end in sight: there’s even been talk of Nightmare On Elm Street—actually Wes Craven’s second feature film after The Last House On The Left, also fallen victim to the remake curse—coming back to haunt us, a film series which could in no way benefit from any amount of CGI or modern special effects.
But be afraid, be very afraid. When you consider that Buck Rogers was inspired by the humongous success of Star Wars several years earlier, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if Ben Affleck ended up in the leading role.