Reboots, remakes and sequels are an inevitable part of Hollywood today.
And bemoaning the trend will only give you agita.
So … let’s look back at WWTW’s formative decade – the 1980s – and come up with some films that could actually stand a reboot.
- “9 1/2 Weeks” – Sexuality in modern movies is far different than what it was two decades ago. From an anthropological angle alone I’d like to see it (with Kate Winslet).
- “Back to School” – Please not Jack Black … please not Jack Black … repeat as needed. The late Bernie Mac was once rumored to take Rodney Dangerfield’s place in a “School” reboot but it never came to be.
- “Coming to America” – The fish-out-of-water template never gets old, and all you need to do is change the Prince’s country of origin and you’ve got a hit on your hands.
- “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” – Cast Sean Penn as a teacher getting hassled by punk students and I’m there.
- “The Lost Boys” – It’s bizarre this one isn’t already in the works. You’ve got teens, hit music and vampires – the box office trifecta.
- What ’80s movie would you like to see reborn … and why?
Update: Here’s one more ’80s relic being redone — J Lo as Goldie? Yikes.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Man, I am so sick of reboots from Hollywood. There is very little imagination, if any, coming out of that supposed denizen of creativity on the left coast. It seems like the only formula they want to follow these days are either:
1) remake (Really? “Death At A Funeral” remake? You mean the Frank Oz offering wasn’t good enough? And it was only out two years ago!)
2) sequel (Zoolander 2?)
3) movie based on 70’s or 80’s TV show (please stop Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, now!)
4) war movie designed to make America look bad, terrorists look humane and sympathetic and conservatives/libertarians look like scheming malicious idiots (hey, we’re still $75 million in the hole with “Green Zone”, but we made that evil Bush look REAL bad, yes we did).
And everyonce in a while, they’ll throw a bone to the red states with a conservative or moral theme (“The Blind Side”) so that they can make up for the loses on the above.
But, having said that, here are my 80’s remakes using the current formula:
1) Mannequin (this time, the reason why Ema is turned into a manneuqiun is the fault of the Bush administration and their misogynistic thinking)
2) Night of the Comet (in this version, Cheney orders the comet using Haliburton to gain control of oil reserves in the Middle East)
3) January Man (the murders were covered up by Rudy Guiliani)
Or something like that…
I feel your pain, Jason. But these reboots are a fact of life. And thanks for the colorful film suggestions – I hope no one from Hollywood is listening
So, we can safely update Benjamin Franklin’s quote to: “Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and remakes.”
The scary thing is that I think death is the least certain out of the three these days.
Great topic! The first 80’s movie that popped into my mind was The Breakfast Club. Many of John Hughes’s films would be interesting to see from a 2010 perspective, but this one stands out as the most worthy of a reboot.
Weekend at Bernies … endless family-friendly comedy that can be done with a corpse. Ok, that sounded bad.
Ferris Bueller … always nice to see school officials outsmarted by the cool kid.
Most of the classic 80s movies had a “lightning in a bottle” chemistry that probably couldn’t be recreated in a reboot, so I’m going to pick movies that were good but had the potential to be more:
-The Last Starfighter: I’d love to see a sequel or remake with modern special effects. With video games even more popular now than they were in the 80s, the premise would be very appealing to kids today. It’s a shame that the late Robert Preston can’t return as the fast-talking Centauri, but James Woods would do just fine.
-Red Sonja: Robert Rodriguez almost did a reboot of it a couple years ago that sounded awesome. I hope he goes forward with it one of these days, but he should dump the ditzy Rose McGowan from the lead role and replace her with Christina Hendricks from Mad Men.
-Gung Ho: it was a very funny Ron Howard comedy with Michael Keaton trying to keep his company from being taken over by the Japanese. Keaton could return for a reboot set in modern times, with him fighting to keep it from being outsourced to India (or maybe, fighting against a government takeover, but I doubt anyone in Hollywood would have the guts to go in that direction).
I definitely agree with The Last Starfighter.
Cat People – It was pretty gory, which makes it wonderful, but if Sweeney Todd can be released with that many slices, Cat People could be even more realistically gory, without the singing.
Victory – Does anybody know that Sly was in a film about soccer and WWII with Michael Caine? I wish a remake was coming out right around World Cup this summer.
Seems to me that remakes are made mainly to update the films to today’s level of political correctness. All it indicates is that the present culture, the culture of James Cameron, Tom Hanks and Robert Redford is remarkably sterile and barren of ideas.