Caffeinated Clint
I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked whether so-and-so is a remake of an earlier film – it’s a fair question, I suppose, since most films these days are merely polished blueprints of someone’s previous cinematic architecture.
What I’ve found is that folks will spot a video (shit, they’re not even called videos anymore, right?!) in a library with the same title as a better-known, more recent flick and presume it to be the source material for the one they know.
Sometimes, that’s the case – for instance, “Gone in 60 Seconds” is based on the ’70s revhead actioner from H.B ‘Toby’ Halicki that occasionally likes to rear its head in a DVD store bargain bin. And yes, “Fun with Dick and Jane” (1977) starring Jane Fonda and George Segal is a vastly superior version of the Jim Carrey film of the same name, which came years later.
But to the merit of the filmmakers behind some of the original fare that some have presumed are remakes, here’s a list of those that have nothing to do with one or another :
Reese Witherspoon may get our her pointy things in the earlier film, just as Rob Pattinson does in the latter, but we’re not talking about the same thing. Also, the Newman movie is a crime drama – no neck-nibbling or wolf-boys in it at all (sad, Gene Hackman with hairy ears and a mean-ass motorbike might’ve helped sell tickets for the 1988 “Twilight”). NOT RELATED.
I remember when I worked at the video store, when I was about 16, that the film on the left use to go out a fair bit. I’m not sure why, nobody came back raving about Mark Dacascos’s sublime performance, the amazingly effective soundtrack or the against-type turn of John Pyper-Ferguson as the film’s bad guy in the fight-flick. NOT RELATED.
In one, Steven Seagal plays a karate-proficient cook who gets to beat up Tommy Lee Jones on his boat. In the other, Peter Strauss plays the head of an FBI in a story about terrorists launching a strike against the USA. Sometimes the poorer film does make the more money. NOT RELATED.
The one on the right is an upcoming found-footage-style comedy produced by “The Hangover”‘s Todd Phillips. Unless it features a young man trying to free chimps from being used in a government pilot training scenario, and I’m pretty certain it doesn’t, its… NOT RELATED.
You may have had ill-feelings towards Vera Farmiga’s character by the 2009 version of “Up in the Air”, but you didn’t wish her dead – not like the characters in the 1940 film, one of whom is responsible for the murder of the none-too-popular radio singer. NOT RELATED.
One’s a bloody marvellous action-thriller with some divine performances. The other’s a dog of a pic, featuring Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman and Ben Mendelsohn. NOT RELATED.
Either because Jet Li didn’t like strawberries, or the idea of spending half the time filming an airplane, his “Fearless” was nothing alike the Jeff Bridges film of the same name. NOT RELATED.
Jeff Chandler would’ve made an awesome Tony Stark, sadly, it was expensive enough to stock the prop cupboard up with boxing gloves, let alone mechanical hearts, back in the day. NOT RELATED.
One’s a film that critics tossed tomatoes at Kevin Smith for, the other’s a film that critics totally avoided even going to see. NOT RELATED.
In 1997, Steven Seagal stepped into Robert Mitchum’s shoes to play…. oh wait, no he didn’t. NOT RELATED.
You could be mistaken for assuming these two are connected, if only because their posters aren’t that dissimilar, but tonally and story-wise they’re as different as Arnold and Maria. NOT RELATED.
Not the first time Hollywood has remade a Corey Feldman movie; you remember a little flick called “Blown Away”? Yup that… Oh, hang on, I’ve just been informed that neither this or that are remakes. Corey Feldman’s “Blown Away” and “Legion” are safe. NOT RELATED.
Bruce Boxleitner wears a protective suit in that original one on the left. That’s where the similarities end with it and Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 flick. NOT RELATED.
In 1991, Drew Barrymore decided no better a film to make her comeback in than a remake of the classic telemovie “Poison Ivy” starring Michael J.Fox and then-girlfriend Nancy McKeon. The love scenes between Fox and McKeon paled in comparison to Barrymore and Tom Skerrit’s though. I’m joking, of course, they’re… NOT RELATED.
You’d have to be a labor party back-bencher to think those two were related. NOT RELATED.
