Remakes that don't suck?

Ben-Hur, Cape Fear, The Departed, The Fly, The Jungle Book, The Magnificent Seven, Ocean's Eleven, Scarface, The Thing, and True Grit.

The Ten Commandments (1956), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Gaslight (1944), and A Fistful of Dollars (1964).

The many adaptations of it remind me of an idea I had a few years ago: write a simple 25-minute script, and produce a new version of it every 10 years, with each version being done in the current up-to-date style by the leading director of the day. Over 100 years it would be fascinating to see how each era did the script. Unfortunately I doubt anyone could be bothered to do my idea.

Man on Fire
A Fistful of Dollars
Heaven Can Wait
Let Me In

"King Kong"
"True Grit"
"Ben-Hur" (the Charlton Heston)

I thought the remake of "Adventures in Babysitting" was pretty good. It made the story different enough that I was able to watch it without feeling like it was a complete rehash.

or this list i am not counting stories that came from the same material like a book. For example "Red Dragon" with Ed Norton came from the same book as "Man Hunter" with Brian Cox. I will be counting Original screen plays only so The Girl wit The Dragon Tattoo won't count, even tho both the Swedish and American versions are great.

I Spit On Your Grave (I think it was truthful to the original)
The Departed
Three Men and a Baby
The Birdcage
True Lies
The Fly
House of Wax (The Vincent Price version as it was a remake of 'Mystery of the Wax Museum)
Cat People
John Carpenter's The Thing (yes, it was a remake)

I prefer Brian Cox as Hannibal, he's more sinister, less hammy than Hopkins. I wish he'd been in the film a bit more.

First of all, there is no such film called "The Thing" in 1951, just The Thing from Another World. Second, Carpenter's The Thing isn't a remake of the earlier film they have a similar name but they are 2 completely different films, and people only call it a "remake" because of the earlier film but fans of Carpenter's film and the book know it's not a remake but rather a new adaptation of John W Campbell's Who Goes There. The name The Thing comes from the star in the book yet Carpenter's film has only 2 homages to the earlier film like the title card and that is it. Everything like the location (one in the north pole and the other the south), the nature/methods of the alien (the monster in Hawk's film has only one form being a vampiric bloodsucking vegetable humanoid Frankenstein who can reproduce itself but it wasn't the imitator from the original source material) where the other monster is a shapeshifting being that can imitate any living creature it touches, the characters and their background, the origin and discovery of the spaceship and all that are very worlds apart from each other. I consider them to be 2 separate adaptations of the book, Hawks film is a very good movie but in reality its a poor adaptation of the original 1938 source material just like The Lawmower Man or World War Z etc. where Carpenter's film is it's own entity that is an excellent adaptation of the source material. Carpenter may had grew up with the earlier film then later on in college he read the original novella Who Goes There which was different than the film he grew up and liked the original story more as he said when he set out to do his film he didn't want to remake the earlier film as it would be foolish to compete with Howard Hawks as instead he returned back to the original book that started it all.



Somebody who makes a film based on the novel Moby Dick is not "remaking" John Huston's film. They're making a new film based on the same literary source material and that's what The Thing is. he definition of a remake is "a motion picture based on a film produced earlier" which is not the case with the John Carpenter film. A scene by scene copy of the original film (as Gus van Sant did uselessly with Hitchcock's Psycho), updated with more F/X or more gore and based on the screenplay of the earlier film or even on a screenplay not based on any existing source material like books, novellas and comics/graphic novels like say The Blob or Ocean's 11 are true remakes. If The Thing was a remake then the writer of the earlier film's screenplay would had been credited he wasn't.



To call The Thing a "remake" of The Thing from Another World would be like saying that every Dracula movie is a "remake" of the Bela Lugosi film or the silent film Nosferatu which is factually incorrect. Obviously they are all separate adaptions of the Bram Stoker novel. Another good example are the films I Am Legend, The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth all based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. None of the films have anything to do with each other aside from all being based on the same source material. Calling a new film based on a novel filmed before a remake cheapens it a bit, when like i said they are separate adaptations.



 differences between remakes and adaptation.



Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Thing, Stephen King's The Shining, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Omega Man/I Am Legend/Last man on Earth, Romeo and Juliet, A Christmas Carol, True Grit,  the upcoming IT, War of the Worlds, Casino Royale etc. are adaptations of source material being books and novellas. Including being separate adaptations.



Night of the Living Dead, The Fog, Halloween, Maniac, Hills Have eyes, A nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Freaky Friday, House on Haunted Hill, Ocean's 11, King Kong, Father of the Bride, The Nutty Professor, Ocean's 11, Thomas Crown Affair, Godzilla, Angels in the Outfield, The Fog etc. those are remakes in every sense of the word.

For remakes that don't suck.

Night of the Living Dead 1990.
Dawn of the Dead.
Hills Have Eyes.
Blob.
Maniac.
Ocean's 11.