Remakes that are better than the original

Rydia

Rydia

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This could be a very touchy topic.

Do you prefer any movie remake to the original movie? On par? There are a lot of people out there that will not give a remake a chance and dismiss it as a failur before the movie is even released. Yeah, many remakes do suck. But some to put effort and try to be as good as the original.

I prefer the newer version of The Parent Trap to the original. Don't get me wrong, I do love the original, but I can relate better to the Lindsay Lohan version. I also liked the two girls better in the remake.
 
Usually, remakes are all horrible. And sometimes it takes them 5 tries to get it right and better than the original. Like the new Batman movies. Way better than the originals, in my opinion. But still, usually whenever I hear a remake is comin' out, I shake my head.
 
I usually prefer the original. I enjoy remakes more when it is not so much a remake, but a reinterpretation of the original (but keeping the core concept and idea). If it’s just a copy of the original movie, updated so that people can understand it today, or given a makeover with graphics and such, then I usually wouldn’t find myself enjoying it as much if I had seen the original.

If I hadn’t seen the original before then I might enjoy a remake, but might feel that perhaps I am missing out on something by not watching the original. If it’s a new interpretation then that’s completely different, and I’d be more happy with that. Say if they are taking the same story but putting it to a different setting, a different period, or a different situation, I think movies that do that can be interesting if done well.
 
JesusVsThePolice said:
Usually, remakes are all horrible. And sometimes it takes them 5 tries to get it right and better than the original. Like the new Batman movies. Way better than the originals, in my opinion. But still, usually whenever I hear a remake is comin' out, I shake my head.
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Christopher Nolan's Batman movies aren't really remakes though. They are just movies based on the same source material as the old ones are. You wouldn't say that Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy is a remake of Ralph Bakshi's 1978 cartoon either. They are 2 different products which just happen to be based on the same source material.

For me it has to be the American remake of The Ring. A lot of people give Hollywood shit for doing remakes of Japanese horror movies, but in this case I actually thought that the American remake was superior. The Japanese version was just a bit too primitive and bizarre to be really scary in my opinion.
 
I can't agree that the American version of The Ring is better than the original, though it is a good film in its own right.

Anyway superior remakes are rare, but there are a handful:

The Thing - brilliant visceral horror, though of course it's a world away from the 1950s original.
Ocean's Eleven - shame about the sequels though
His Girl Friday - though barely anyone has heard of the original this 1940s comedy is based on to be fair
 
Hard to say. Not all remakes have the same quality of the original. For example: The Twilight Zone. The newer episodes sucked royaly. Nothing can live up to the eerie pyschological mind fuck of the original episodes. It falls in the same pile as Black Christmas, The Fog, Stepford Wives, Halloween, House of Wax, The Eye and the list goes on. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all remakes suck. The Ring and Oceans 11 did a pretty good job at capturing a new audience without desecrating their origins. Though it is hard to find movies/games that were better than the original.

 
Really old things like Nosferatu and Sweeney Todd were much better in their remakes but in general remakes do tend to make you think...where has this bit gone? And that - I loved that!

I wonder if, when we're all 80+, if things like Harry Potter and Twilight will be remade with the cast of that generation...how weird will it be to see things from OUR generation being remade, and seeing kids in that day get in to it for the first time and hating them for it?
 
I would just like to say that I found Red Dragon to be superior to Manhunter. I get that Manhunter was perhaps more realistic in settings and the like, but "Inna Godda Da Vidda" is not good showdown music for a Hannibal movie.
 
This is a very tough one. I will say that in the vast majority of cases the original is much better acted than whatever movies are meant to live off of it's fame. "The Pink Panther" and "Psycho" are perfect examples, which will go down in history as almost an insult to the excellent acting and directing or the originals. The King Kong remake is much closer to the original, but the length was overblown and failed to deliver the same emotional intensity and impact that the original achieved.

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Scarface- the Al Pacino remake is generally considered by critics to be vastly superior to the original 1932 film of the same name. In these rare instances, when the director brings a whole new level of life to a movie concept, I feel like the result can top the quality of the original.
 
To be fair the Al Pacino Scarface has nothing in common really with the 1930s version apart from the title, so I don't count it as a remake.
 
I usually prefer the originals, but the remakes I like are Rob Zombies Halloween, The Thing and The Wolfman. But originals such as Get Carter, The Italian Job, War of the Worlds, Nightmate on Elm Street, Last House on Left, etc are all brilliant and should have been left alone IMO.
 
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