Actually Good Remakes/Reboots

[King Billi]

I have no problem with remakes or reboots, some stories are just ripe for reinterpretation every now and then especially if the film being remade/rebooted is based off of another pre-existing source already.

Although that said it does seem strange when you consider this is a practice almost exclusive to film... Can you imagine though walking into a bookshop and seeing a new version of "The Lord of the Rings" rewritten by some guy trying to make the book more accesible to modern readers... Sounds weird then.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Batman Begins and Casino Royale are two of my all all-time favourites. You might be able to consider Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to be a reboot as well.

I wasn't born in time for the original, but after reading up on the other non-Beast Wars series and watching Season 2 I'd consider Transformers Prime to be the best Transformers series yet, potentially ever, although it is competing with the Bayformers to make it look even better by comparison.

 

[Saltyk]

I don't really think it's a reboot, so much as it is an adaption, but the live action Rurouni Kenshin movie is a very good one. The characters look like the characters (you will know Kenshin, Megumi, and the rest on sight). The fight scenes are well done and faithful to the source material. And the story is pretty good.

There are some minor things in the story and character department, but it's still a very faithful adaption of the series and well worth a watch.

 

[NihilSinLulz]

The Thing
Scarface
The Fly
Nolan Batman movies
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Dredd
Little Shop of Horrors

Here's some excellent reboots/imaginings that haven't been mentioned.

In the Loop
The Crazies
LOTR + The Hobbit
The Phantom of the Opera
King Kong
Nosferatu
The Departed
3:10 to Yuma
Savini's Night of the Living Dead
Insomnia
Funny Games
Man From Earth
True Grit
The Mummy
Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I think as long as the director has an original vision for the property, it really shouldn't matter that something is remake.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Because it offers a new take on an existing franchise.

That new take usually being an extremely cursory joining of dots. Not always but those examples you gave fit the bill.

 

[NihilSinLulz]

*cynicism intensifies*

Because it offers a new take on an existing franchise.

That new take usually being an extremely cursory joining of dots. Not always but those examples you gave fit the bill.[/quote]

That's true of most films. Hell, the majority of most things are crap.

 

[Something Amyss]

Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness!

*has angry mobs of people with torches and pitchforks march towards my house*

I-I just really liked em okay! They were solid entertainment for what they were.

I'm amazed at the hate they get. My dad's one of the original Trek fans and he enjoys the reboot. He hasn't seen into Darkness, though.

I can only picture how people would have reacted to the 1939 Wizard of Oz if the internet had been around.

 

[cojo965]

I watched The Evil Dead remake today, it made me so uncomfortable which marks it as a successful horror remake in my book. What good remakes/reboots can you think of?

Yes! Not only did I think that the new Evil Dead was of the best reboots ever, but also one of the best horror movies in many years. Since 2000, the only other films in the genre that blew me away were The Ring and V/H/S.

You know the biggest complaint I can level at the film is the ending is dragged out tortuously long. We actually go through three different events where any one of them could serve as our climax yet it insists on padding the runtime out. By the third time it pulled this shit I was like, "alright movie, you made me squirm throughout you, well done, but please just fucking end already."

Godzilla 2014 would be another one, but this is me, who made a minor name for himself here on the movie so I don't need to say anymore.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness!

*has angry mobs of people with torches and pitchforks march towards my house*

I-I just really liked em okay! They were solid entertainment for what they were.

"Another set of mobs heading to my house too*

I'm with Trizzy since I felt it was an excellent reboot for those who aren't into the franchise like me since that was the problem I had with their previous films as it felt you had to watch the series first before watching it!

Other than that I also voting it for the Thundercats 2011 reboot. I liked the new lore, the animation was top notch (it was anime like) and the story, well... a couple were bad at the start but for the most part were good.

The only injustice made to that show was there was no season 3 so now the plot/ story is stuck in limbo like the rest of the unfinished cartoon cliffhanger limbo never to get resolve!

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I watched The Evil Dead remake today, it made me so uncomfortable which marks it as a successful horror remake in my book. What good remakes/reboots can you think of?

Damn OP caught me. The Evil Dead remake was frickening great, the definition of a good remake to me. I'm also the minority who thought Predators was pretty good too if you can count that. That ending fight-mud covered Adrian Brody versus a predator was pretty damned awesome.

 

[Evonisia]

Totally counts Oz the Great and Powerful as a reboot even though it's a different story and is set before the original Wizard of Oz, which itself was just an adaptation.

Maleficent was pretty kick ass, and while the second act does drag along a bit I find the combination of horrifically dark rape metaphor and Disney whimsy to be oddly appealing. Also I'm glad with what they did with the character, seeing as the original Maleficent was so evil and had one of the most bullshit deaths I've ever seen. If only it didn't rip off Frozen in that one scene near the end.

Lana Del Ray's cover of Once Upon a Dream is also pretty good, better than all of her new album anyway.

 

[Something Amyss]

I actuallly didn't realize they were so reviled until Into Darkness came out and Trekkies exploded in nerd rage like they do with every new Trek movie.

Every new Trek anything.

This came up a while back on here, where people were saying things about Abrams leaving and how we could finally get back to the Trek we all loved. And my question was: what Trek was that? It wasn't the last TV series, or the last movie. It probably wasn't any of the TNG movies, or Generations, in fact. Voyager divided the fanbase (To put it nicely), as did Star Trek: Babylon 5. Fans were bitching as far back as the aborted Phase 2. I can imagine it'd be worse if it was a time with ubiquitous internet. Hell, the death of Spock prompted newspaper ads to be taken out in protest--oldschool Trekkies were hardcore.

 

[Total LOLige]

I enjoyed the Prequel/Reboot of The Thing. Can I say that I liked the "remake" of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo without having seen the original? I don't think films based on books that have had a film previously can be considered remakes because they are based on a book. That means all you Total Recall(2011) haters can do one(never seen it myself) unless you're comparing which was truer to the source. I liked Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it was great. I agree OP, Evil Dead was great. Gore has come a long way since Evil Dead 2, it would seem. I can't handle the gore of today it feels to bloody realistic(the look at least, maybe not quantity). I'm struggling to think of which remakes and reboots I've seen, I may have to update my post later.

I must say that I do have a great beef with people that cry when stuff gets remade or rebooted or whatever, like an awful remake somehow diminishes the quality of the original.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I watched The Evil Dead remake today, it made me so uncomfortable which marks it as a successful horror remake in my book. What good remakes/reboots can you think of?

Damn OP caught me. The Evil Dead remake was frickening great, the definition of a good remake to me. I'm also the minority who thought Predators was pretty good too if you can count that. That ending fight-mud covered Adrian Brody versus a predator was pretty damned awesome.

Predators was a sequel, not a reboot. And it was terrible.

I've never seen a movie wallow so deeply in its predecessor (Listen to the sound track of Predator, then of Predators), and yet miss the mark so severally, in both tone, quality, and canon. It also has the distinction of being one of two movies I have walked out on in theaters (Though I ended up walking back in, because I had gotten a lift from a friend who wanted to stay), the other film being Cloverfield (A film I walked out on the moment I realized that the shaky cam bullshit wasn't just an intro move, but the entire movie).

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

As far as remakes go, I actually quite liked the remake of The Karate Kid. Shame about the title, but Jaden Smith was actually quite a decent actor in that movie, Jackie Chan completely owned his role, and I appreciated the fact that they didn't tone down the brutality of the original Karate Kid because of the kids being younger. Gave a fair bit of impact.

And that scene with Jackie Chan in the wrecked car...that is, to me, easily the equal of the "Mr. Miyagi drama scene" in the original.

Both have their place, but I find the remake to be better in some ways than the original.

---

As for reboots, my second favorite Bond movie is Casino Royale. It's just a great example of a series that went too far in being ridiculously over-the-top, realized it, then rebooted with the basics...and made it work.

 

[Ratty]

OT- That remake of "The Maltese Falcon" was pretty good. You know the one with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre.

Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness!

*has angry mobs of people with torches and pitchforks march towards my house*

I-I just really liked em okay! They were solid entertainment for what they were.

Yeah but have you seen Wrath of Khan? I don't think you really have to have watched the show first to enjoy it, I didn't. That's a movie that's all about characters and emotions. Regret, the fear of getting older. The power and destructive nature of blind hatred and lust for revenge. But also about hope for the future and actually growing as a person as you grow up and cope with the realities of becoming old. Fantastic movie.

I actuallly didn't realize they were so reviled until Into Darkness came out and Trekkies exploded in nerd rage like they do with every new Trek movie.

Every new Trek anything.

This came up a while back on here, where people were saying things about Abrams leaving and how we could finally get back to the Trek we all loved. And my question was: what Trek was that? It wasn't the last TV series, or the last movie. It probably wasn't any of the TNG movies, or Generations, in fact. Voyager divided the fanbase (To put it nicely), as did Star Trek: Babylon 5. Fans were bitching as far back as the aborted Phase 2. I can imagine it'd be worse if it was a time with ubiquitous internet. Hell, the death of Spock prompted newspaper ads to be taken out in protest--oldschool Trekkies were hardcore.

I take it "Star Trek: Babylon 5" is a DS9 joke? But yeah the fanbase has had a few notable schisms but not any more than one would expect from a franchise that's been going on almost 50 years, spanning about a dozen movies and hundreds of TV episodes across 6 series.

The biggest schisms didn't come until after Gene Roddenberry died. DS9 "betrayed" Roddenberry's utopian model of the future, which a lot of people would say is the whole point of Star Trek. Traditional Trek purists would say that Star Trek should be about hope and exploration, with characters who are mostly static on episodic adventures. While Niners put an emphasis on deeper more complex characters (and character relationships) with darker, more mature and intricate storylines.

While both of the shows that followed DS9 certainly have fans Voyager was frequently dumb and could be said to have betrayed the Trek vision in its own ways[footnote]Janeway would violate the prime directive all the time, unless the plot said she'd decided to follow it that week so they'd stay lost and the show could keep going. But she outdid Kirk by violating the Prime Directive in her very first episode.[/footnote] and Enterprise was canceled before it finished the story it was telling. Add to that the fact that 3 of the last 4 pre-reboot Trek movies were just awful and it's not hard to see why opinions might differ on which is the "best" version of Trek and how far back we have to go to get to it.

But the reboot doesn't really deliver on anything most older Trek fans would like. Not the hopeful vision of the future, or the exploration, or the darker and mature storylines with deep characters. Basically it turned Trek into another generic action franchise.

 

[FPLOON]

Thundercats 2011 reboot

This so much! I hated how it got cancelled right when, I believe, they were at the half-way point of the whole series in general... (Stupid marketing philosophies that killed this show and Young Justice... *mumblemumblegrumble*)

OT: Outside of 2011 Thundercats and that Evil Dead remake, I liked the 2012 Dredd reboot(?) despite not actually knowing the [full] source material in question...

Other than that, I liked the new take on Where The Wild Things Are as well as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs... Honorable mention to 21 Jump Street because I didn't actually see the original series in question beforehand...