Remakes: We hate them, until we don’t.
“Why can’t Hollywood do something new?” is a moviegoer refrain as familiar as “Why did the trailer spoil the best parts?” I’ve repeated it myself. And even if filmmakers insist, as actor Armie Hammer did of Netflix’s flaccid “Rebecca” last week, that their projects are not remakes, it doesn’t take a cinephile to know a “new” movie that repurposes an old one with the same title, characters, setting and source material is, indeed, a remake. Or that it probably won’t match the original.
There are some exceptions, though — unicorns that are exciting because they’re so rare.
“Dawn of the Dead” in 2004 springs to mind. You hope every movie is going to be good, but as I walked into the Mall of America theaters for a preview, I’m sure I was thinking, “Why would gifted Sarah Polley act in a retread? Who is this Zack Snyder, who has never made a film? Why Xerox a George Romero horror classic that’s only 26 years old?”
All whines were erased in “Dawn” 2.0, which upends our skepticism with a spectacular opening. A surprising benefit of remaking a good movie is that low expectations are built in. We are prepared to be disappointed, so when we’re not, the movie seems even better.
It can go the other way, too. Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of “Psycho” was an intriguing exercise that should be studied in film classes and not seen by anyone else, ever, because it added nothing to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece.