Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Rejection of Regurgitation, Part 02

Last time we got on this, it was brought up how the re-makers of The Crow were using the excuse of bringing about a "more faithful adaptation" of the original work to reboot a movie that doesn't have to be remade.

Of course, there are plenty of excuses. Most of them have to do with new technology and filling out a story (that, oftentimes, doesn't have to be) and other flimsy, transparent see-thru justifications. Bigger budget! Bigger stars! If Hollywood makes EVERYTHING BIGGER, then people will pay to go see it, right?

Not so fast. There are quite a few prime examples of this reasoning going south - a handful of them happening very recently. Nightmare on Elm Street was recently regurgitated re-envisioned, only to fall flat on its face. The budget was there, the CGI was definitely there, a star name was in place (Jack Earle Haley, coming off a dominant turn as Watchmen's "Rorschach")...and it died a second-week death that Freddie Kruger himself would have been proud of. And had a cooler one-liner for than I could even dream of.

I haven't seen it myself (I have no reason to, as you can tell by having written something like this series in the first place), but I heard all about it. Some pf what I read and heard pointed out how confusing or over-stylized it was. The one common thread I saw/heard was how soulless the new Nightmare turned out to be. If box-office numbers are any indication, audiences certainly felt the same way...

...and that's a subject we'll get to next time...

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