The best thing about "Godzilla: Final Wars" was having the original Godzilla obliterate the craptacular Godzilla from the Emmerich travesty. Good times.
[thewavemag.com] It has reviews of Turkish Star Wars, Turkish Star Trek, Star Crash (Which is Italian Star Wars) and even a review of Learn the Art of Dirty Dancing, which is probably one of the funniest things ever written.
Go to Seanbabys home page to read some of the un-edited reviews, prior to him going all respectable like.
the single greatest problem with planet of the apes was not tim burton, it was not helena bonham-carter, and it sure as hell wasn't paul giamatti. mark i-cannot-act-my-way-out-of-a-wet-paper-bag-to-save-my-life walburg was conservitavly responsible for 87.6% of the travisty that was the planet of the apes remake. curiously he is absent from this listing, i'm assuming this is due to PTSD blocking out the painful memories of his stage presence.
I agree with most of these slams except for The Island Of Doctor Moreau.
I dunno, maybe the cheestastic over-the-top-itude of Brando: "I simply cannot abide this heat" and then Kilmer trying to overcheese that...(which he did)
Oh, and how about Fariaz Baulk gettin' all slinky with the quasi-Indonesian dance and later wit' da cool-ass wire-fighting with Azazello--PURE UNADULTERATED FUN!
Plus, Ron Fuc&!ng Perlman as the Sayer of the Law.
C'mon people, compared to the 1932 and 1977 filmed versions of the story this one SLIGHTLY ROCKED!!!
Good list, but I'm disappointed you did not elaborate more on how badly Emmerich fucked up Godzilla. Anyone curious about that travesty should check out it's review here:
@Erinaceus: Oooooooooh, do not get me started on "godzilla". Godzilla is not a big lizard that runs away, hides and lays raptor eggs. Godzilla is an atomic powered death machine... and he knows it.
The only good thing that come from "godzilla" was what Kitamura did in Godzilla Final Wars:
Wow. I think this marks the first time in io9's history of lists where I can't split hairs with any of these choices. Though I did love Moreau because it is the closest we'll come to a feature length GWAR film.
@Grrsn Dn: Oh man... I think I just heard some horsemen go past my window. And my fundamentalist neighbors are missing, but their clothes are still here.
@Dormouse II: The Wrath of Gryphon: the only good part in that was the opening training sequence..... what happened after that I've erased from my mind...
@HerrIssyvoo: Ha... Annalee was just passionately arguing that the Abel Ferrara remake of Body Snatchers is a misunderstood classic, just a few minutes ago.
@evan7257: Since the article is about remakes *worse* than The Day The Earth Stood Still, I suspect it doesn't especially matter how soon it is, as it is hard for a movie to be worse than itself.
@capnrob: My feeling is, it'll take a while (for me at least) to decide quite how bad the day the earth stood still was. Right now, I'd put it in the "runners up" category. It was bad, but not "Invasion" bad.
Since we're now allowed to occasionally include fantasy here, and because it fits with the season, I'd like to nominate The Grinch. The art direction and animation of the original was fantastic, and the voice work by Boris Karloff (!) was without peer. I grew up watching that movie every Christmas eve.
The remake even by arbitrary standards was atrocious, a perfect example of horrid use of both CGI and live action, but compared to the original?
@_MARVKO_: I was sort of "meh" about both WOTW and Death Race, but couldn't summon the hate. I almost put Death Race on the list, but I looked back at the review I'd written when it first came out. And I remembered that I actually sorta didn't hate it. As a Jason Statham smash-em-up vehicle, it's okay. And Joan Allen rocks it.
_Rollerball_ gets a bit too much hate - it's directed by John McTiernan, who was, for my nickel, the successor to Michael Curtiz there for a bit, before he started phoning it in - and it's not a bad little sporting/action movie. The main problem, from a remake standpoint, with it is that it's not even *trying* to be a remake - it shares no concepts, no theme, no characters, no nothing with the original, and thus, the people who *want* a remake are irritated ... and the movie isn't good enough to stand up to that irritation.
If you can break your mind away from the expectation that this is going to be anything other than a vague remake of _The Longest Yard_, with roller skates thrown in, there's actually a fair amount of entertainment in there; it's kind of like the original _Fast and the Furious_ in that if you have expectations, you'll hate it, but if you don't, it's a reasonable amount of fun.
The same goes for _Death Race_; it's *not* a remake, it's just stealing the name, but if you can detach your mind from expectations, there's some value there. It's a good two, three notches above your average made-for-the-Sci-Fi Channel movie, and has Ian McShane clearly having a ball. (Yes, I'm defending a Paul W.S. Anderson movie; he can't suck ALL the time. Just most of it.)
As for the others; no, there is no excuse for the U.S. _Godzilla_, nor for the _Planet of the Apes_ remake. _Invasion_, _Moreau_, _Stepford Wives_, those had behind-the-camera excuses for being disasters - I hear that the original ending for _Stepford Wives_ was *much* better, but it was a downer, and so they had to reshoot, as U.S. audiences don't *do* downers, according to studio execs. They don't do crappy added-on megahappy endings either, sadly...
I'm a bit puzzled as to why Carpenter's _Village of the Damned_ is on the list, though. Almost like van Sant's _Psycho_, it's pretty much a shot-for-shot, line-for-line remake, and isn't that bad, as long as you can ignore the fact it's in color.
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Go to Seanbabys home page to read some of the un-edited reviews, prior to him going all respectable like.
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I dunno, maybe the cheestastic over-the-top-itude of Brando: "I simply cannot abide this heat" and then Kilmer trying to overcheese that...(which he did)
Oh, and how about Fariaz Baulk gettin' all slinky with the quasi-Indonesian dance and later wit' da cool-ass wire-fighting with Azazello--PURE UNADULTERATED FUN!
Plus, Ron Fuc&!ng Perlman as the Sayer of the Law.
C'mon people, compared to the 1932 and 1977 filmed versions of the story this one SLIGHTLY ROCKED!!!
sorry, i feel almost strongly on this subject.
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[www.cinematical.com]
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[thatguywiththeglasses.com]
And I promise that's the only shameless plug for another website I'll ever give.
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The only good thing that come from "godzilla" was what Kitamura did in Godzilla Final Wars:
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"I always knew that tuna-head wasn't up to much!"
Thanks.
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The remake even by arbitrary standards was atrocious, a perfect example of horrid use of both CGI and live action, but compared to the original?
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And I think War of the Worlds and Death Race should be ON the list, not runner's up.
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Jerks.
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If you can break your mind away from the expectation that this is going to be anything other than a vague remake of _The Longest Yard_, with roller skates thrown in, there's actually a fair amount of entertainment in there; it's kind of like the original _Fast and the Furious_ in that if you have expectations, you'll hate it, but if you don't, it's a reasonable amount of fun.
The same goes for _Death Race_; it's *not* a remake, it's just stealing the name, but if you can detach your mind from expectations, there's some value there. It's a good two, three notches above your average made-for-the-Sci-Fi Channel movie, and has Ian McShane clearly having a ball. (Yes, I'm defending a Paul W.S. Anderson movie; he can't suck ALL the time. Just most of it.)
As for the others; no, there is no excuse for the U.S. _Godzilla_, nor for the _Planet of the Apes_ remake. _Invasion_, _Moreau_, _Stepford Wives_, those had behind-the-camera excuses for being disasters - I hear that the original ending for _Stepford Wives_ was *much* better, but it was a downer, and so they had to reshoot, as U.S. audiences don't *do* downers, according to studio execs. They don't do crappy added-on megahappy endings either, sadly...
I'm a bit puzzled as to why Carpenter's _Village of the Damned_ is on the list, though. Almost like van Sant's _Psycho_, it's pretty much a shot-for-shot, line-for-line remake, and isn't that bad, as long as you can ignore the fact it's in color.
12/15/08