Hollywood vs The Original Idea

Last Friday saw the UK release of Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a crime-thriller set in the murky underworld of the Boston-Irish Mafia. A well-crafted piece that sees Scorsese return to the cinematic heights he once scaled with GoodFellas, the film is a remake of recent Hong Kong crime-thriller Infernal Affairs. As such, it's the latest entry in a long line of Asia-to-US remakes, which, for all their individual merits, represent perhaps the most cynical side of Hollywood film production. Over recent years, classy Japanese horrors such as Ringu (The Ring), Dark Water and Ju-on: The Grudge, have provided fresh material for Hollywood to plunder, in a time when home-grown originality is increasingly scarce in the mainstream.

Despite being freely available, in their original forms, on both sides of the Atlantic, these movies' collective status as "Foreign Film" has hindered their circulation in all but the most enthusiastic film clubs, academic-film circles and late-night TV schedules. The major US studios, however, are not about to miss out on an opportunity, and as a result all three of the aforementioned titles have been remade in the US, with The Ring and The Grudge spawning more-of-the-same sequels in mirror-image of their Japanese origins. The foreign locations are swapped with suitably eerie American counterparts, big-name or up-and-coming Hollywood stars are signed up to multi-picture deals (as production executives predict franchises), in the case of The Grudge the original Japanese director is hired, and, crucially, the characters all speak English with American accents; two hours of subtitles are often unwelcome in the multiplex environment on a Friday night.

Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with originality. The major studios tend to operate best when a problem can be solved by throwing money at it, which is great when creating a summer blockbuster where regular fireworks will keep the popcorn-audience entertained. Money buys technology, improvements in technology produce better-looking fireworks, and studio-executives everywhere go home happy, slapping each other's backs and giving the effects techie a bonus (maybe). In contrast, original material - namely, decent writing - is harder to come by, and when it does appear, it can be a gamble. It's untested, it's risky, and it's invariably more cerebral, a word which is less likely to appear on the wish-list of the average movie-goer in the multiplex on the all-important opening weekend.

Over the past few years (or longer, as some would argue), the well of originality in Hollywood has become particularly dry, with studios falling back on big-screen versions of classic TV shows, hoping to cash-in on nostalgia and long-established fan-bases, whilst never underestimating the help of modernised premises and current big-name stars. Think of Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels (and its sequel), Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell in Bewitched, Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville in Dukes of Hazzard... I would go on, but for a sudden pain in my head.

Remakes are as effective an exercise in risk-reduction, although the studios have for some time now been gleefully raiding their own archives, as well as those of the Far East. Occasionally entertaining but ultimately soulless "reimaginings" of The Poseidon Adventure (renamed simply Poseidon, perhaps to cater better for the 21st-century attention-span), The Omen, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, to name but four, have all hit cinemas over the last year or so. The occasional involvement of big-name directors appears to offer a degree of validation to the otherwise cynical practice. Of course, each has his own motivation. Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds stemmed from his lifelong enthusiasm for the story. Although massively rushed (barely a year passed from the moment Tom Cruise first read the updated screenplay and committed, to the film hitting cinemas), his version turned into an effective modern invasion-thriller, and has been interpreted, in my view rightly, as the director's response, through allegory, to the events of 9/11. As a 12 year-old boy, Peter Jackson tried remaking King Kong, the film that inspired him to become a filmmaker. As a 12 year-old he failed, but last year his second attempt benefited from thirty years experience and a $200 million budget-increase. While the finished product doesn't quite match the quality of the 1933 original, it comes pretty close. Even 80s indie saviours the Coen Brothers have given it a go, with their version of The Ladykillers, while Steven Soderbergh has given us a remake of Ocean's 11 and a sequel, with a third coming our way next year. With Soderbergh also a former indie saviour, it's almost enough to make you cry. For all the wrong reasons.

Still, these "reimaginings" would dry up without the support of the audience. Whilst the cultural revolution of the 1970s produced an abundance of groundbreaking cinema, from Easy Rider to Scorsese's own Raging Bull, this was before the time of today's primary cinema-going audience, many of whom were not aware that the recent Poseidon was a remake at all. This cinematic amnesia works in the studios' favour, as they take it upon themselves to "reimagine" the hits of the past, in the same manner in which they've approached classic television. Rough-and-ready production-values (originally necessitated by low-budget filmmaking), enthusiastic directors and unknown casts have all been completely reversed, and this trend is set to continue. This month, for example, sees the cinematic release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a prequel to the remake of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and apparently unrelated (except in name, of course) to the two sequels spawned by said original. Next year, we'll be treated to Hannibal Rising, which will be not the first, nor the second, but the third prequel, in terms of narrative chronology, to The Silence of the Lambs. Telling the story of the young Hannibal and how he came to be 'The Cannibal', it's doubtful whether Anthony Hopkins was too upset over losing that particular gig. Instead it serves as still more evidence of how far Hollywood will go to make a buck.