If You Absolutely Have to Make a Remake…

“If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,

Which laboring for invention bear amiss

The second burthen of a former child.”

It’s out of context I know, but by itself the first part of the Bard’s Sonnet 59 could perfectly describe the state of modern Hollywood. There’s been a lot of talk about the “new” “adaptation” of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”. Or whatever the hell this is supposed to be, other than a row of barfing emojis:

But whatever “artistic” direction they’d taken, I’d find it hard to get even mildly interested in the 34th screen adaptation of ol’ Wuthering Heights (and no, that is not hyperbole, this really is the 34th reimagining of Wuthering Heights, counting the Hindu and Japanese versions out there. I counted.)

Not that remakes are anything new, but is there some kind of rule in Hollywood that you can only adapt classic books that have been adapted a hundred times before, or that already have what is considered a definitive adaptation? Jane Austen, Murder on the Orient Express, Anne of Green Gables, Frankenstein, The Odyssey? Of the Bronte Sisters, I myself prefer Anne. She was a bit more… down to earth. And for the record, no one’s ever made a feature film adaptation of either of her novels. 

Or what about films that were made not even a full decade ago? Moana, all these DC superheroes. I mean, seriously, what is wrong with the film industry? Apart from the obvious.

But if you truly have no original ideas, and you absolutely have to get the remake-bug out of your craw, couldn’t you at least readapt something that actually could use readapting? Something that hasn’t been done justice on the big screen, or was butchered in the writer’s s workshop? Just a few suggestions:

• A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway – It’s been done before of course, but a full-throated, un-sanitized version that really gets to the bleak heart of the story hasn’t been achieved yet. Maybe Sam Mendez directing? 1917? Maybe Austin Butler and Lilly James in the leads, ideally. And then give it the grit, mud, blood, and sex it requires
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury – Granted I haven’t seen Truffaut’s 1966 adaptation, but I know enough to know they fundamentally altered the nature of the relationship between the characters by turning it into a romantic one and having the same actress play both the Girl and the wife. Plus, it needs a technological update, though Bradbury’s original masterpiece did predict wireless earphones. 
• The Beastmaster -Alice “Andre” Norton – Haven’t seen the movie, and I don’t need to, to know that it has nothing to do with the book it was purportedly “based” on, which was not, in fact, a swords-and-sorcery fantasy, but a futuristic space opera. And what little I’ve read of the book tells me it could also use a few changes. But the basic premise of a Navajo former soldier fighting a frontier war on an untamed planet is sound. I don’t know how you make telepathic communication with animals seriously work, but someone might be able to do it. 
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – I could see this one as a three-hour, technicolor epic:  Capture the glorious beauty of Greece in lush Cinemascope – azure blues, chalky whites, the wide, barren spaces. Maybe actually get some Greek actors (so don’t let Christopher Nolan do it, I guess). Really do justice to the book’s full-throated eroticism, violence and melodrama. I miss melodrama.  Except of course the book’s farcical ending. Feel free to change that.

And then there’s pretty much anything by Dean Koontz, Ethan Frome, The Grapes of Wrath, The Woodlanders, The Giver, I Robot, probably others that I can’t think of right now.  Maybe you can.

Before I wrap things up, there are a few musical adaptations that could use a do-over.

• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – the 1966 version cut out over half of the songs, an unforgivable sin against any musical and one that Stephen Sondheim’s work seems to fall prey to. 
• Godspell – a new adaptation for a new generation (by which I do not mean the Modern Audience of myth). Wouldn’t hurt. The 2012 soundtrack was really good, proving it can be adapted in the current age without massacring it. 
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• Paint Your Wagon – they did not follow the actual plot of the musical for the 1969 film. Like at all. You could make an adaptation that is faithful to the original stage play, and it would not resemble the first movie adaptation at all. Which could not be a bad thing. Though I’ll be the first to say, Harve Presnell’s rendition of “They Call the Wind Maria” can’t be beat. 

And just a few more. Bear with me, I’m on a roll here. 

• Windtalkers (2002) – Maybe, I don’t know, tell the actual story of the Navajo code-talkers of WW2, instead of focusing on a fictional Nick Cage’s story and a romance that goes nowhere? 
• Reign of Fire (2002) – Just hear me out, ok. You could spin this concept. But I think it would work better as a tv show. Good old 90s fashion, episodic tv. Just release all the mythical creatures along with the dragons, nix Matthew McConaughey, and have the Bale and Butler characters travel around the post-apocalyptic landscape hiring themselves out as… well, maybe I’ll write a pitch for it for a potential series called If I Did It: Fixing Hollywood’s F#%@- Ups and Missed Opportunities.
  
• Love Me Tender (1956) – Most of the King’s movies were missed opportunities, but this very first one had potential in the core storyline: older brother thought to be dead, the law is after him, younger brother married his girl, jealousy, betrayal, blah-di-blah. Of course, the real Reno brothers were ruthless killers and thieves, but that just adds another layer to it. A bit of Legends of the Fall meets The Assassination of Jesse James… Actually, there are a buttload (if you’ll pardon the term) of C and D-level westerns that had the germ of a good idea that was poorly executed, but I don’t have time to name here.
• The Black Hole (1979) – Disney’s attempt at Star Wars meets 2001, didn’t work on many levels, but it wasn’t a bad idea. They just seemed to think they were still in 1964. And the special effects weren’t quite up to snuff, though still pretty good for the time. It’d be nice to see intelligent sci-fi about intelligent, competent people again.
• Krull – I DID NOT watch this of my own free will. Now that we got that cleared up, I can say that as truly terrible as this film is, again, the basic idea is sound. Medieval-style space prince goes on space-quest with space bandits to save space princess. What can’t you do with that? But you’d have to find a much better balance between medieval swords-and-sorcery and space opera. And an actually good script wouldn’t hurt.

Not that I’m actually saying I want Hollywood to make these proposed remakes, because inevitably they’d (d)uck them up. And frankly, no, I really don’t want Angel Studios or the Daily Wire taking it on either. The sole purpose of this slightly incohesive ramble is to point out that the common complaint of there being no original material to work with is not true but even if it was, you’d still have to be hard-up indeed, before you were reduced to massacring the 200th adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. 

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