Films that could have or deserve a remake

So, seeming as there are movies that get a remake, even though we didn't ask for them and didn't or don't want them, are there any movies that you think could be done better or that they deserved a remake, even if only to expand on the characters/universe/etc.?

I wish they remade Broken Blossoms, but in a way that avoided Yellowface and some Unfortunate Implications. The story and the characters themselves are quite interesting and things could be remade to appeal to current topics like interraciality and cultural issues. And, of course, the themes of abuse would remain relatively intact.

edited 13th Feb '14 9:39:06 PM by Quag15

The Star Wars prequels.

I want a Leroux accurate The Phantom Of The Opera including Philippe and the Persian. The 1925 one came so close and then the director completely changed loads of it, including the ending. They would have to film in the Garnier for maximum effect.

edited 10th Feb '14 11:01:13 AM by Fiwen9430

This probably seems a bit anal of me, so soz in advance, but I would love a remake of "Battle of Britain", the 1969 Guy Hamilton film, with full William Walton score and CGI aircraft throughout - that way we wouldn't have the hideous prospect of seeing all the BF-109 fighter aircraft being portrayed by those Hispano Buchon Merlin-engined atrocities that defaced the original. Plus an updated script showing off more of the real story, i.e how the Polish, French and British work in cracking the Enigma codes made the victory in the Battle more probable than it would have been otherwise.

Having the real pilots names would be nice, I mean for the ones that were easily identifiable as their real life counterparts, like Malan and Park were, given their expies portrayals.

The original movie was quite good, but it could easily be improved upon.

Not going to lie, I would like to see Metropolis done. We've seen it's influence in so many movies like Blade Runner and Total Recall, it'd be awesome to see the one that started it all.

Didn't that version with the Giorgio Moroder soundtrack not count? Not trying to be difficult, I'm just puzzled.

That wasn't a remake. It had restored footage and the Moroder soundtrack, but otherwise it was the same film.

Oh okay. I had heard that the new footage and so on made it almost a completely new film in the way the story went but I was obviously under a false impression on that.

It's actually edited down than the orginal. Other than that, the big differences between the two is that the original Soundtrack gets ditched for some really 80s music and, for whatever reason, it's color tinted.

Pretty much anything that had good concept and got completely fucked up in realization. Remember The Postman? Ditch the tacked-on ending where the world gets restored to pre-war state in half a generation, and we're golden. Oh, or the Max Payne movie. Sticking closer to the game's plot, as cinematic as it was, would be a no-brainer, CGI badtrips included.

My opinion on video game movies in general is that the studio execs deserve a good hard spanking that'll teach them video games can actually surpass modern movies in some regards, including writing. Hell, most of the Bollfests deserve remakes for that exact reason.

Agreed. The only relatively decent video game adaptation, to me, was Prince of Persia. And even that had a few faults and was less interesting than the game.

edited 10th Feb '14 6:32:00 PM by Quag15

Costner's films tend to have a fairly solid premise behind them but are badly let down in the execution. It's why the Nostalgia Critic used The Postman as an example of a film that is So Bad Its Horrible: Costner is competent enough as a director not to make a terrible film but not competent enough to make a good one. The result is a grey and boring heap of junk.

Films I suspect may well be remade are Battlefield Earth & Atlas Shrugged, simply because they both cater to...specific...ideological/religious constituencies, both of which are kooky cults have members who aren't shy of shelling out large amounts of money for little economic reward (ironically...).

edited 11th Feb '14 4:29:08 AM by Achaemenid

Highlander, as a franchise, had one great movie, then fell flat on its ass, stumbled to get back up, and then got Sparta-kicked down to oblivion. I remember some time ago there were talks of a remake in the works, but my point still stands: it needs to be done again, and it needs to be done right.

edited 11th Feb '14 10:55:35 AM by Watchtower

Dune, Westworld and Nineteen Eighty-Four will probably be remade at some point.

The Never Ending Story had a similar fate,the third one being In Name Only

A remake of Blade Runner that is closer to the book it was based off of.

The scene in the android police station would be great. On the other hand, I'm not sure how well Mercerism would translate to film.

Dune?! AGAIN?! Just... how pointless would that be? We had the Lynch epic, and the miniseries, and the bloody thing is fucking boring.

Also, remaking (pseudo-)religious/philosophical screeds? Just as pointless. That stuff was made with a certain purpose. It's like you'd try to peddle kumba-ya crap like Left Behind to people who mostly don't give half a shit about it.

I'd also question remaking movies based on books, unless they strayed from the original disastrously (for example, by crapping all over the source material or whittling it down so badly it's unrecognizable). Blade Runner defends itself, as does One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest from the perspective of McMurphy, as weird as that might sound.

I know Blade Runner is respected as a Cult Classic, but it did take quite a few liberties with the book. I would probably leave out the Mercerism, since it wasn't really that relevant to the plot.

edited 12th Feb '14 3:10:12 PM by shiro_okami

Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's the official worst film ever made, so anything would make it better.

If only you saw the kind of stuff that The Cinema Snob reviews, you wouldn't say that.

Besides, Plan 9 is hilarious. A remake would probably become just a forgettable film.

There was a remake attempted with the cast of Chad Vader but it seems to have fallen through.

Flash Gordon, they need to keep the camp.

If you want to see an unofficial remake of it, just watch Ed Wood.

edited 13th Feb '14 6:56:25 AM by Lionheart0

I've gone mad. I want to see a remake of The Godfather, but for it to be about the east coast subplots mostly cut out from the film. Start with the Wedding and then focus completely on Fontaine and the rest, with characters like Vito, Hagen and Michael only being in a few key scenes where they visit east and we see how their buisness affects our main characters.