Remake curse is lifted

THE REMAKE CURSE has been spectacularly defeated by The Departed, Martin Scorscece’s hard-hitting remake of a movie first made in Hong Kong.

    The new movie has won rave reviews in virtually all countries, and performed spectacularly well at the Oscars, winning the director a Best Picture trophy. It has scored top rankings on the main movie ranking websites, too, at www.rottentomatos.com and www.metacritic.com .

     In doing so, it has put to flight the long-held convention that it is almost impossible to score with a remake. There are countless examples of movies being remade with meticulous standards that are nevertheless slated by critics and/or the public. A case in point is Godzilla – a legendary but naff series of Japanese movies with an obviously fake monster. Hollywood remade it in style, with a believable monster, spectacular special effects, and a good director. But critics overwhelmingly slammed it on every count, including the look of the monster: the feeling seemed to be You Don’t Tamper With The Bible. The same could be said of the remake of Psycho, which carefully recreated the original, scene by scene, shot by shot – but was still snifffed at by the critics.

   In constrast, The Departed has got the thumbs up from all sides.

   The only place where a significant number of people preferred the original was Hong Kong. But it is hard to argue against the fact this is simply family loyalty – “we” made the original, so it must be better. That was the argument presented on the Phil Whelan show this morning on RTHK, where the presenter said that people in Hong Kong were simply being loyal rather than making any kind of objective judgment.

    Why was the remake curse lifted for The Departed? First, it was a good movie – although that’s not the full story, as many other fine remakes have been slammed, despite being excellent pieces of work. The second (and possibly larger) reason seems to have been the mood of the critics. There was a clear feeling that Scorcese deserved a hit that turned into an Oscar victory, after years of being snubbed. Critics were poised to enjoy the movie – they were writing positive articles about it long before it came out.         

   The power of the critics is something to worry about – especially when they behave irrationally and show remarkable amounts of fickleness.

Comments

[C.]

Cool! Spot on observations about HK’s response to The Departed. Although, I think most people in the world are ignorant of the original version. So the average viewer of The Departed are in their way ‘loyal’ to Scorsese’s version.