This week the blogging world is aflutter with Hollywood’s sendup of the classic tale of Larry Talbot, a good man who falls upon a terrible curse and by the light of the full moon finds himself transformed into a most foul creature. I don’t need to tell you the name of the movie. Whether you’ve been reading the blogs or not, you know. It is one of our most treasured horror classics, The Wolfman. And whether featuring interviews with the director or cast, or detailing the long and painfully public process of the troubled production, Web sites everywhere are gearing you up for a big weekend with the remake of a classic film. Which leaves me with only one question:
Where’s all the hate?
This is the Internet, for the love of all that is holy; this isn’t a place for reasoned excitement and production chronicles – not for a remake. Remakes are bad. They are evil. If the devil could exist in physical form in the modern world, he would appear in the shape of a remake of a beloved horror classic. Or so the blogs would have you think. After all, one need only announce a remake on Sunday night to ensure widespread coverage Monday morning – though little of it will be positive.
You see, the reason I ask is that I love remakes. I really do. I live in a rational world in which I understand two very important things. The first is that there is no police force that travels the countryside, forcibly removing DVD copies of the original film from people’s collections. The second is that there is no one forcing me to watch something I don’t want to see. If some nuclear physicist of a studio executive decides to cast Taylor Lautner in a remake of Casablanca opposite Hillary Duff, I don’t have to review it. I don’t even have to watch it. Neither do you, and neither do the blogs. But they do.
In recent years I’ve found myself referencing the Universal monster movies when discussing remakes, especially when it has come to such notorious remakes as Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. After all, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers are the closest things our generation has to the Universal monster universe. We all grew up with them, we love the stories and have seen them dragged out and thinned down over nearly 10 (or more) successive sequels apiece – not to mention television series. In fact, if you add together the sheer number of Freddy, Jason and Michael movies, I think you’ll find that they outnumber all the of the vintage era Universal icons added together – including Abbot & Costello versions!
So why does The Wolfman get a pass? Is it because it has been remade, ripped off, mocked and referenced for the better part of 70 years? Is it because its memory had been desecrated long before these bloggers were born, let alone old enough to see the original in theaters? Or is it the big budget and impressive cast boasting nothing but some of the finest actors of their respective generations? I tend to pull towards the latter, as recently the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie was absolutely reviled in the press until the addition of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy (a role everyone said was irreplaceable) when it suddenly became interesting and gained potential.
So is that the key? Remakes are evil unless you get the right combination of talent that’s interested in it? Because I’m looking around, and instead of the normal wailing screed chronicling the various writers’ knowledge and love for a classic being publicly defiled, I’m seeing something very different: writers using their knowledge and love for a classic to educate readers on that classic while getting excited for a new movie.
Universal somehow cracked the code. Can others follow? Because I’m really liking this week’s movie-loving vibe.
Check out last week’s Counterpoint with Cargill
