Summer Reruns

Just finished Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

We have achieved synchronisity. Open the TV Guide and have a look at what's showing on cable. Now, get out your newspaper, flip over to the entertainment section and look at what's playing in the movie theaters. Creepy isn't it?

Now, I'm not going to say that remaking movies is a BAD thing. There have been plenty of GOOD remakes. Ok, there have been a FEW anyway. And just because the idea came from a TV show, that doesn't mean the movie will be bad.

You know it's NOT a good sign for Hollywood when they pin their hopes on yet another War of the Worlds movie, a quasi-matrix clone and The Dukes of Hazzard. That last one really worries me. Who was the freak of nature that thought we needed a Dukes of Hazzard movie? If there was ever proof that the people out there on the west coast are smoking something funny, that's it.

The trouble with all of these remakes is their growing lack of quality. No, that's too nice. They suck :-) In any decent year, these movies would be considered filler. They'd be the movies you went and watched BETWEEN other movies. For example, one week the latest Harry Potter movie would be out. You'd go and watch that. Next week, well there's nothing major being released but the week after that there's another Lord of the Rings. Great, but maybe you don't want to wait two weeks to go see a movie. Maybe you LIKE seeing movies in the theater on the big screen and all. So what do you do? You go to the movies and you see filler. Sometimes the filler is good and becomes a surprise hit, sometimes (usually) it's bad but keeps you moderately entertained. The movies this summer all seem to be filler.

Why are they all so BAD though? I think, in that case, they're a little OUT of synch. Take War of the Worlds for example. Obviously you can't make a movie that's true to the book. We've had so many breakthroughs in science for things to happen the way they do in the book. You have to tinker with it a little bit or do it the way it was done in Independance Day. Honestly, these critters burry their ships underground, they wait for years and years to pop up and conquer us, yet they don't even bother to find out of the air is breathable? They have all that tech but they can't make a proper air-tight seal? They have fabulous weapons but they don't have Lysol?

Then you go the other extreme. They really didn't need to tinker with The Fantastic Four the way they did. Ben Grimm didn't need to be married. He's supposed to get a blind girlfriend a few comics down the line, remember? And what's this about Reed and Susan being EX's? Their wedding was one of the biggest events in Marvel history. All the great Marvel heroes showed up (including a cameo by Stan Lee). They could have just stuck with the basics and make minor changes only due to advances in tech.

What's also annoying is that the folks out there in Hollywood decide to make movies based on older movies and TV instead of getting their stories from good books. You'd think by now they'd have figured that out already. Then again, when they DO make a movie based on a book they tend to either pick a really crappy book or they change it too much and you lose the things that made the book good in the first place.

And here's a creepy thought for some of us. You realize that when we're in our 60's they'll be remaking movies we thought were great when we were younger. Just wait, we'll see a new and improved version of Jaws or maybe someone will reshoot the ENTIRE Star Wars series! Of course, we're more likely to see remakes of bad movies. With my luck, 30 years from now there'll be a rush to remake Jennifer Lopez movies. God help us :-)