This morning I awoke to the sounds of the 2005 film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" coming from the living room, as my son had awoken early to gorge himself on movies as a fitting beginning to the week-long break he's about to get. It also occurs to me that the new version of "Robocop" just came out this weekend. All in all, this put me in mind of remakes and sequels and such, and how strongly many of my friends feel about such things. So I realize it's an unpopular opinion, but I, for one, love sequels, remakes, reboots, and reimaginings. I honestly do. And I know there are plenty of arguments against them, but just hear me out.
As a theatre director, remakes are essentially my bread & butter. We are constantly redoing shows that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people have done before us. In the case of the classics, those numbers might be even higher. The point is: this is almost all we do. And people come to see these shows. In fact, in my experience audiences are much more likely to come to a show they've seen or heard about in the past than a brand new title. For that matter, we find it difficult to fill seats when the play is unfamiliar to our particular audience, nevermind that it may have won a Pulitzer Prize or garnered critical accolades. Broadway even has an award for best remake every single year, only they call remakes "revivals" to make them sound a little fancier. People are more likely to pay attention to entertainment properties with which they are familiar than to those that are new or different. This is simply human nature.
For support of this hypothesis, let us go back a few thousand years. When audiences went to the Theatre of Dionysus for the annual play festival, they didn't go in expecting to see entirely new stories. They went to see new retellings of old stories. The same can be said of Shakespeare's plays, especially the tragedies and the histories. Audiences already knew the stories. They knew the endings. They just wanted to see the stories in a new way. "Romeo & Juliet" is the perfect example: the ending of the play is laid out for the audience in the first 38 seconds. Audiences didn't go to see the works of Sophocles or Shakespeare because they were new or fresh. They went because the stories were familiar. Sophocles and Shakespeare worked their respective poetic magics on these stories, of course, and we now remember the plays and still perform them for that reason. But the original draw came from the same thing it still comes from today: name recognition.
Filmmakers know this trick as well, and they've known it for decades. Even when there were no films to remake, many of the earliest movies were adaptations of books and stage plays. In fact, there are still, to this day, two separate Oscars awarded for screenwriting: one for original screenplays, and one for adaptations. "Gone with the Wind" wasn't made on a whim, and neither was "The Wizard of Oz." These stories were made because they were already familiar to audiences. They would already sell. The same is true today. Books, comics, plays, and even older films get made into new films because they will draw people in. And this is nothing new. It could even be argued that even an "original" work is still a remake to some extent, especially when it comes to mainstream entertainment.
So we've established that remakes are nothing new. Sequels and prequels are nothing new. Name recognition drives ticket sales. But that's why they're made. That's why these projects get green-lit. And that isn't what I said I was going to write about. It is important to realize these things, yes, but I said I would tell you why I love these projects, so that's where I'll try to take this post from here.
I love creative people, and I love creativity. I like remakes, reboots, and sequels because I like to see how the next person will reinterpret the material. I once saw a steampunk adaptation of Hamlet. I've seen (and done) shows that push the limits of the source material. Sometimes this is a great success, other times it's a bit of a disaster. But every time someone approaches a work, something new is brought to that work. Remaking something adds to the conversation about that thing, and that's almost always good. I love to see people flexing their creative muscles, bringing new to the old. And even if the new doesn't surpass the old, there's still something valuable in the creative process.
And speaking of the new not surpassing the old, I'd like to wrap up this musing by mentioning one of the arguments against remakes, reboots, and the like. Many folks will say that a remake, by its very existence, somehow diminishes the original. I disagree. Each work of art is its own thing. If you like the original work, a new work doesn't take away from it. The new work may not add anything, but its creation doesn't take away from what has already been made. The 2010 Karate Kid remake doesn't make the 1984 version worse, no matter your opinion of either film. The upcoming Terminator reboot may seem superfluous, but nothing it can do can change the film that is already so entrenched in our culture. A remake can only add, not take away. No, not every remake can be as good as the 1986 version of 1958's The Fly, but every one has at least something to offer.
So I guess my battle cry is: "give remakes a chance." Or at least lay off the negativity and let the rest of us enjoy them. Don't think of remakes as rip-offs. Don't think of them as the result of a director trying to destroy something you love. Think of them as a new expression of an old idea. Remember the Ancient Greeks, trudging up the hill toward the amphitheater, thrilled to see a depiction of the life of Oedipus from the third or fourth different playwright. The arts of playmaking and filmmaking are about telling stories, and some of those stories are retold many times in many ways. Embracing the remake is one of the ways we can both hold on to the past and look forward into the future.
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