Enough With The Remakes

When I was young I remember hearing the song "Satisfaction" performed by Devo. It wasn't until years later that I heard the original song from the Rolling Stones. I was surprised at how slow their version was and couldn't believe that it was the real thing. I felt kind of cheated that I was first introduced to a copy as opposed to the original. I'm reminded of this when I hear people refer to the Bach Toccata as "the Haunted House commercial music" or people referring to Carl Orf's Carmina Burama as "The Sean Hannity Theme."

Raiders of the Lost Ark has always been one of my favorite movies. There is a scene when the pasty Nazi shows up with his thugs at Marion's bar in Tibet. During the fight scene one of the bad guys is pointing a gun at a defenseless Indian Jones and then we hear it go off. The bad guy falls over dead and it turns out he was shot from behind before he could kill the hero. It was cool then but I wish they would have copy written that scenario because I have seen it a lot since then in other movies and it's totally predictable now. The sad thing is that Speilberg probably got the idea from some old action movie he saw as a kid.

Why can't movies be more original and why do we always have to copy or remake stuff? Did we really need to make movies based on TV shows like The Dukes of Hazard, The Addams Family, Dragnet, Starsky and Hutch, Dudley Doo Right, Bewitched, and the Flintstones? I guess I can understand if someone wants to pay homage to a TV show and make a movie, but how many of these were any good? Most of these kind of movies are horrible. I do have one exception I am willing to gamble on and that is the Land of the Lost Movie coming out later this year. I can't criticize a movie that features my namesake.

I'd like to encourage movie makers to be more original and stop doing so many re-makes. If they do I pledge to improve my blog too. I'm hoping for more creativity and originality in movies, but until that happens I guess I can expect to see movies like Growing Pains, Chips, and Night Court in the future.