Is This Trip Really Necessary?

"If I had my life to live over, I would do everything the exact same way - with the possible exception of seeing the remake of ‘Lost Horizon.’"
- Woody Allen

"Is this trip really necessary?" Originally posed as part of an American drive during World War II to conserve important resources like gasoline and rubber (and used as a recurring gag in Looney Tunes cartoons at the time), the question takes on another significance in the moviehouse as we screen questionable remakes of movies, the original versions of which were best left alone.

The 100-plus-year history of cinema inevitably accommodated the production of remakes, from the landmark transformation of silent films to sound motion pictures and black-and-white photography to color, to staggering achievements in special makeup effects and computer generated imagery, not to mention dramatic shifts in screen acting, from melodramatic emoting to subtle naturalness. (It should also be noted that a number of remakes are Americanized versions of foreign films.)

Particularly noteworthy among remakes is director Peter Jackson’s "King Kong" (2005), a remarkable film which boasts eye-popping, state-of-the-art special effects yet retains the simplistic sentimentalism and wide-eyed wonder - as well as evoking the time period - of the 1933 original.

But what intrigues us in the moviehouse are those uncalled-for remakes, genuine head-scratchers that make you wonder who asked for them. Case in point: the recent remake of "Red Dawn." The original "Red Dawn" depicted a handful of small-town, Colorado high school students who band together as impromptu guerillas (calling themselves "Wolverines," after the school team) to combat an armed invasion of the U.S. by troops from the Soviet Union, along with Cuban and Nicaraguan allies, playing on Reaganistic Cold War paranoia that already seemed dated when the movie was released in 1984.

Writer-director John Milius was in a close fraternity of filmmakers who emerged in the late 1970s, dubbed by Time magazine the "Movie Movie Gang" - George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Milius - directors "who received their training in film schools, not studios…Together, they have almost taken over the industry." The authors of 1979’s The Movie Brats: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood, Michael Pye and Lynda Myles, included Brian DePalma in this close-knit tribe who "took over the demoralized Hollywood of the 1960s and 1970s."

Steven Spielberg, John Milius and George Lucas pretend to  read a script

According to a puffed up George Lucas, as quoted in The Movie Brats, "We are the guys who dig out the gold. The man in the executive tower cannot do that. The studios are corporations now, and the men who run them are bureaucrats. They know as much about making movies as a banker does. They know about making deals…They obey corporate law…They go to parties and they hire people who know people. But the power lies with us - the ones who actually know how to make movies."

In a similar highfalutin mood, Milius himself boasted at the time, "Nobody in a studio challenges the final cut of a film now. I think they realize the filmmakers are likely to be around a lot longer than the studio and executives. Now, power lies with the filmmakers, and we are the group that is getting the power."

Power lunch with Spielberg, Scorsese, DePalma, Lucas, and Coppola

This self-important era was derailed in the early 1980s by box-office train wrecks like Steven Spielberg’s "1941," which was co-written by John Milius, who also served as executive producer, Francis Ford Coppola’s "One From the Heart," which garnered a measly $636,000 on a $27 million budget, and director Michael Cimino’s "Heaven’s Gate," which practically bankrupted a major studio, bringing to an end the shortlived, costly risk of surrendering control to filmmakers.

But we digress. As a fledgling screenwriter, John Milius hammered out "gutsy, sometimes intelligent, action scripts" for "Magnum Force," the 1973 sequel to "Dirty Harry" (as an uncredited script rewriter for the 1971 original, Milius took credit for Clint Eastwood’s "Do you feel lucky?" spiel), "Jeremiah Johnson," and "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean." Milius also took credit for contributing actor Robert Shaw’s haunting recollection of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II in "Jaws." He shared an Academy Award with Francis Ford Coppola for the screenplay to 1979’s "Apocalypse Now."

(While some film buffs know that John Goodman’s gun-toting character, Walter Sobchak, in "The Big Lebowski" was based on John Milius, a good friend of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, true movie aficianados know that Milius was, as well, the inspiration for Paul Le Mat’s hot-rodding character, John Milner, in George Lucas’ "American Graffiti."

John Goodman in
"The Big Lebowski"

John Milius with a gun

Dissatisfied with what directors were doing to his scripts, Milius decided to direct his own screenplays. His feature film debut as a director, 1973’s "Dillinger," was a romanticized ballad of the Depression-era bank robber (played by the underrated Warren Oates), interrupted abruptly by eruptions of violent gun battles. The movie established the filmmaker’s ongoing fascination with, in the words of critic Leonard Maltin, "myths, codes of honor and individual choice."

At the helm of "Big Wednesday," "Conan the Barbarian" (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s major motion picture debut), "Red Dawn," "Farewell to the King," and "Flight of the Intruder," as well as scripting "Extreme Prejudice" and "Geronimo: An American Legend," Milius - nicknamed "Mr. Macho," "General Milius," and "General Patton of directors" - depicted, in Leonard Maltin’s words, "heroes who willingly embraced violence to serve their purposes."

A self-described "Zen anarchist," John Milius has aligned himself with political conservatives. An avid firearms hobbyist, authority and collector, as well as a vocal opponent of gun control, he served, at one time, as a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association.

Milius had attempted to enlist in the Marines in the late 1960s but was rejected due to chronic asthma; he would ascribe his obsession with guns and the military to his subsequent disappointment. Under his command, the youthful Wolverines of "Red Dawn" endured an intensive eight-week course of military training before filmed commenced.

 "Red Dawn," the first motion picture to be rated PG-13, had  the dubious achievement of being named the most violent movie by the Guinness Book of World Records, averaging 2.23 acts of violence per minute. (The DVD edition of the film featured an onscreen "Carnage Counter.") The movie received mixed reviews, outraging liberal critics while being embraced by the left. National Review Online would name it #15 in a list of "Best Conservative Movies."

"Red Dawn" was the 20th highest grossing film of 1984, thanks largely to the charismatic cast, which featured a reunion of two of the "Greasers" from Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Outsiders," Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell, along with Swayze’s future "Dirty Dancing" costar, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen, in his first major screen role, and Lea Thompson, future star of "Some Kind of Wonderful" and the "Back to the Future" films, all holding their own amidst the formidable presence of grizzled veterans Powers Boothe, William Smith, Ben Johnson, and Harry Dean Stanton (whose over-the-top plea, "Avenge me!" was lampooned on "South Park").

The inimitable William Smith as Col. Strelnikov

In the 1990s, John Milius was a creative director in the early development of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), purportedly coming up with the idea of an eight-sided cage, and he co-created the HBO miniseries "Rome." The military plan to capture Saddam Hussein was dubbed Operation Red Dawn with target sites named Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. "I was deeply flattered and honored," Milius commented. "It’s nice to have a lasting legacy."

Milius was credited as providing the story for "Homefront," the 2011 computer game with more than a passing resemblance to the original "Red Dawn" in its depiction of a North Korean invasion of the U.S. Which brings us to the unnecessary 2012 retooling of "Red Dawn," which relocates the Wolverines to Spokane, Washington, to defend America from a North Korean invasion, which gives one pause, contemplating the militaristic strategy of a nation with a population of 24.5 million launching an attack against a country with 315 million people.

The remake initially cast the Chinese army as the invaders when the picture was shot three years ago. When Chinese media started running such headlines as "U.S. reshoots Cold War movie to demonize China" and "American movie plants hostile seeds against China," and, more importantly, when, in critic Roger Ebert’s words, "a marketing genius figured out that China is one of the biggest markets for American movie exports," an additional $1 million was pumped into the film to reshoot scenes, redub dialogue and digitally change flags, uniforms and military insignia, transforming the enemy into North Korea (which, according to Ebert, "generates unimpressive box-office bucks for Yank product").

The 2012 Wolverines

Director Dan Bradley, better known as a veteran second unit director and stunt coordinator, stated that he made "Red Dawn" "keeping in mind the post 9/11 world that we’re in." This time around, the Eckert brothers (originally played by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen) are portrayed by Chris Hemsworth (star of "Thor" and "Marvel’s The Avengers") and Josh Peck (costar of the Nickelodeon sitcom "Drake & Josh"). The supporting cast includes Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s 17-year-old son, Connor Cruise. The villain of the piece, North Korean commander Captain Cho, is played by Will Yun Lee, an American-born actor of Korean descent best remembered by 007 fans as the evil Colonel Tan-Sun Moon in "Die Another Day."

Was this trip worth it? The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck noted, "An already silly premise is given a ham-fisted treatment in this ill-advised remake," while, in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis pointed out "the bargain-bin special effects, bad acting and politics." Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times called it "reasonably dopey fun," while Roger Ebert was left scratching his head as the plot grew "confusingly murky."

"The Italian Job" (1969) was a lighthearted British caper film about the heist of a multimillion dollar gold shipment bound for Turin-based automaker Fiat. Director Peter Collinson evokes the Mod atmosphere of ‘60s England with Michael Caine (riding high after breakout starring roles in "The Ipcress File" and "Alfie") at his Mod-est as Charlie Croker (above), the Cockney ex-con who plans the heist with the financial backing of Mr. Bridger, a criminal mastermind who runs his gangland empire from prison. In a casting coup, Mr. Bridger was portrayed by 70-year-old Noel Coward, the British playwright, composer, director, actor and singer renowned for his flamboyant wit (perhaps it wasn’t much of a casting coup after all, considering that Coward was director Peter Collinson’s godfather). The cast also includes British comedian Benny Hill as Professor Peach (below), an eccentric computer expert with a distracting fondness for large-bottomed women.

The jazzy music soundtrack by the great Quincy Jones features Caine’s distinctive Cockney vocals in the bouncy "Get a Bloomin’ Move On (The Self Preservation Society)," which underscores the film’s legendary chase sequence, featuring Italian police pursuing three Mini Cooper S’s through the streets, markets, church steps, rooftops and sewers of Turin. (The chase scene became so popular that during the first season of the television series "MacGyver" in 1985, an episode shamelessly "borrowed" footage from the 1969 film.)

"The Italian Job" was not a success in the U.S. (the American distributors, Paramount Pictures, originally wanted Robert Redford to star), which Michael Caine blamed on misleading and unattractive advertising. Screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin (who would follow up "The Italian Job" with another memorable caper about a multimillion dollar gold heist, "Kelly’s Heroes," starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Donald Sutherland) disliked director Peter Collinson’s treatment of his script but would grow to secretly enjoy the loyal following the film eventually earned. "I’m quite happy to be associated with it," he said. "Usually, if they’re lads they always poke you in the chest and say, ‘You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!’" (In a British poll of 1000 moviegoers in 2003, Caine’s exasperated cry was voted the greatest one-liner in cinema, beating out Clark Gable’s legendary, "Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.") "When I wrote it," Kennedy Martin said, "I had no idea that people would be quoting it forty years down the line."

Kennedy Martin scripted only six movies in 50 years, devoting most of his talent to writing for British television, including creating the long-running BBC police series "Z-Cars." He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1988 Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick "Red Heat," directed by Walter Hill, and his last script was for "Red Dust," the 2004 feature film debut of "The King’s Speech" and "Les Miserables" director, Tom Hooper, starring Hilary Swank.

When word of the 2003 "The Italian Job," which would start with a heist in Venice, followed by a complicated revenge plot and chase in Los Angeles, first came out, Michael Deeley, producer of the original, said the remake "sounds like a complete waste of money to me." He commented, "It’s absolutely ludicrous to set the film in LA. It misses the entire point of the 1969 film, which was about us kicking European ass (what one production executive called ‘the Brits vs. Italians’). It was the first Eurosceptic film."

Tara Collinson, son of the late director, Peter Collinson, remarked, "I wish the new film well, but I really can’t see it having the same impact. It’s trying to ride the original’s coat tails, and I just can’t see it working." An important fabric in those coat tails is the iconic chase sequence, only in 2003, the Cooper Mini S’s were replaced by BMW Minis. An anonymous production executive noted, "The whole point of using the Minis in the original film was that they were able to drive down narrow Italian streets. What’s the point of using Minis in…a city crisscrossed by six-lane highways?" He added, "The new film might as well be called ‘The LA Job.’"

Freddie St. George, secretary of the Italian Job Club, which runs an annual Italy-London rally inspired by the film, said in 2002, "It’s a pity it’s not going to be able to recreate the cheeky British humor that is such a feature of the original. If the film is going to be an aggressive, guns-blazing, all-action vehicle for Mark Wahlberg, it’s going to be a completely different kettle of fish. It needs to be lighthearted, comical and a little eccentric. Without that, it’s just going to be a forgettable, run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie."

As it turned out, 2003’s "The Italian Job" was an aggressive, guns-blazing, all-action vehicle for Mark Wahlberg, as Charlie Croker, with Donald Sutherland as an ill-fated Mr. Bridger and Charlize Theron as his daughter, Stella. The cluttered supporting cast includes Edward Norton, Jason Statham, Seth Green, and rapper Mos Def, which should not come as a surprise considering that director F. Gary Gray directed several music videos for such rap and R&B artists as Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, TLC, Outkast, and Rick Ross. Gray described the film as "an homage to the original," which meant the use of a film clip from "Alfie" with Michael Caine on a large-screen TV.

Speaking of things Anglophilic, "Judge Dredd" (1995) was based on one of England’s most popular comic book heroes. Depicted as an American law enforcer in a violent metropolis of a dystopian future, when armored "Judges" act as police, judge, jury and on-the-spot executioner, Judge Dredd was created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra and debuted in a comic strip in 1977 in the British science fiction magazine "2000 AD."

As a teenager, Luton, England-born Danny Cannon entered a contest to design a poster for a possible Judge Dredd movie. A fan of the 1982 sci-fi film noir "Blade Runner," Cannon envisioned Harrison Ford in the title role (above). At the age of 27, Cannon seized the opportunity to direct "Judge Dredd," which garnered star Sylvester Stallone (below) a Golden Raspberry Award nomination as Worst Actor.

Years later, Stallone recalled, "I loved that property when I read it…It had political overtones. It showed how if we don’t curb the way we run our judicial system, the police may end up running our lives…All the people were dwarfed by the system…it shows how insignificant human beings could be in the future. There’s a lot of action in the movie and some great acting, too." The cast did feature the always reliable Armand Assante as Stallone’s genetic evil twin, along with Diane Lane, Max von Sydow, and Joan Chen, but, for crying out loud, Rob Schneider, a former "Saturday Night Live" second banana who owes his film career to bones tossed his way by Adam Sandler, bears the onus of providing alleged comic relief as a hapless hacker named Fergie (below).

Costumes were created by internationally renowned fashion designer Gianni Versace, and the closing credits theme, "Dredd Song" was performed by The Cure, but John Wagner, co-creator of the character, was not impressed. In a 2012 interview he said that "the story had nothing to do with Judge Dredd, and Judge Dredd wasn’t really Judge Dredd." Roger Ebert wrote, " ‘Judge Dredd’ never slows down enough to make much sense; it’s a ‘Blade Runner’ for audiences with Attention Deficit Disorder."

"It just wasn’t balls to the wall," Stallone commented in 2008. "It probably should have been much more comic, really humorous, and fun…we shouldn’t have tried to make it ‘Hamlet,’ it’s more ‘Hamlet and Eggs.’"

In 2012, Karl Urban (best known as Éomer in the second and third installments of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) starred as Judge Dredd (above) in "Dredd" (also known as "Dredd 3D"), directed by Pete Travis, who made the 2008 political thriller "Vantage Point." John Wagner, who acted as a consultant on the movie, maintained that it was a new adaptation of his comic and not a remake or reboot of the 1995 Stallone picture. "I liked the movie," Wagner remarked about "Dredd." "It was, unlike the first film, a true representation of Judge Dredd." The true representation received mixed and average reviews and earned $36 million on an estimated budget of $50 million.

One of the most curious remakes of note has to be the 2004 production "Man on Fire," starring Denzel Washington as John Creasy, a world-weary former Marine and ex-CIA operative hired by a businessman in Mexico City to protect his nine-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning) from potential kidnappers. The screenplay, by Brian Helgeland, who also scripted "L.A. Confidential" and "Mystic River," was based on a novel by A.J. Quinnell. That same novel was filmed years earlier in a genuine gem of cinema obscura. 1987’s "Man on Fire" starred Scott Glenn (a memorable presence in a number of films, including "Urban Cowboy," "The Right Stuff," "Silverado," "The Hunt for Red October," and "The Silence of the Lambs") as the burned-out former CIA agent hired by a wealthy family in Italy as a bodyguard for their 12-year-old daughter (capably played by a precocious Jade Malle).

A curious coming together of a French director, Israeli producer, Italian screenwriter, English cinematographer and U.S. actors - notably Brooke Adams, Joe Pesci, Danny Aiello, and Paul Shenar (best known as the ruthless drug lord Sosa in Brian DePalma’s "Scarface") - along with British actor Jonathan Pryce, "Man on Fire" emerged as an intriguing, if flawed, hybrid of European art film and American action flick. The Lexington Herald-Leader noted that the movie "veers erratically between existential meditation and conventional vengeance drama."

Despite director Elie Chouraqui’s flair for taking advantage of dazzling Italian landscapes (including Lake Como, Milan, and Rome) and, in the words of Desmond Ryan of the Philadelphia Enquirer, "making ‘Man on Fire’ visually interesting," he "has forgotten that what you hear matters as much as what you see." Eleanor Ringel of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that the director "obviously has an excellent eye for actors but no idea how to use them once he’s cast them." "As often happens in these international productions," the Houston Chronicle’s Michael Spies wrote, "actors make hello-goodbye appearances including Brooke Adams, who has perhaps one line…and Jonathan Pryce…has maybe a couple more."

Scott Glenn keeps an eye on Jade Malle in "Man on Fire"

According to Spies, "Man on Fire" "not only lacks emotion, it lacks wit and cool. It just has lots of atmosphere." Leonard Klady of the Los Angeles Times said that the script "limps along as badly as its protagonist" and the film "is simply cold-comfort movie-going," while The New York Times’ Caryn James said that the movie "always seems about to slip into unconsciousness." Lloyd Sachs of the Chicago Sun-Times noted, "Unfortunately, when it’s required to make sense, ‘Man on Fire’ doesn’t," and John H. Richardson of the Los Angeles Daily News dismissed it as "a pretentious revenge picture…just another ‘Death Wish.’"

Original author A.J. Quinnell said the film "was so bad it became a cult movie in a European country. The director had never read the book…I couldn’t recognize anything I wrote." Quinnell, who died in 2005, was much more satisfied with the 2004 remake, which was directed by Tony Scott. Coincidentally, Scott wanted to direct the 1987 "Man on Fire," but, with only one film to his credit at the time (1983’s vampire romance "The Hunger"), he was considered too inexperienced by the producer.

Alongside Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning, the cast features Marc Anthony, Christopher Walken, and Mickey Rourke. Quinnell thought the screenwriter "did a good job with ‘Man on Fire,’ and I loved the chemistry between Creasy and the girl…When I first heard Denzel was playing the part of Creasy I missed a couple of heartbeats, but he played the part brilliantly."

Our last remake isn’t a remake yet but one that has been talked about for some time - "Pet Sematary" - and again we are left to ask, "Why?" As directed by Mary Lambert, 1989’s "Pet Sematary," based on Stephen King’s 1983 novel, was universally regarded as relentlessly grim. The author of Creature Features, John Stanley (dubbed "the Leonard Maltin of horror"), summed it up best by stating that the film is "rooted in pessimism, and so dark in its statement about life that one comes away with a deep sense of dread." According to Stanley, "At no time does director Mary Lambert allow a ray of hope to penetrate the doom-laden atmosphere."

In fact, the subject matter was too gloomy for Stephen King himself, and, according to Lisa Rojak in Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King, on the advice of his wife and his friend, writer Peter Straub, he shelved the manuscript and only reluctantly submitted it for publication after his publisher pressured him to fulfill his contract. A stupid doctor and his family move into a quaint house too close to a highway used by too many speeding semis and too close to a spooky cemetery that can resurrect the dead buried there, except they come back as pissed off zombies.

The story is basically an updating of the old chestnut of a horror tale, 1902’s "The Monkey’s Paw." In W.W. Jacob’s story, a monkey’s paw from India has the mysterious power to grant three wishes, but each wish comes with a tragic price for interfering with fate.

Of course, as any horror fan could predict (especially after King used the same plot point in The Shining), the spooked boneyard used to be an ancient Indian burial ground. ("Poltergeist" threw out a clever twist on the ploy when the greedy land developer, who moved headstones but left the graves to make room for suburban crawl, says, "What’s the problem? It’s not like it was built on an Indian burial ground.")

"Pet Semetary" was the first film based on a Stephen King novel with a screenplay written by the author himself (he had previously scripted 1985’s "Cat’s Eye," but that was based on short stories). King has a cameo in the movie as a minister overseeing a funeral  George Romero and Tom Savini were considered as directors before Mary Lambert got the assignment. Lambert had directed several music videos by Madonna, along with Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston, before making her first feature film, 1987’s "Siesta," an erotic ghost story of sorts, starring Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Jones, and Julian Sands, with more than a passing resemblance to David Lynch’s "Blue Velvet," not to mention Madonna music videos. Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, called "Siesta" an "excitedly bad, artily experimental film."

Ellen Barkin and Jodie Foster in "Siesta"

Critic Leonard Maltin called "Pet Sematary" "a box-office hit whose contempt for its audience was sensed even by undiscriminating moviegoers." Particularly referring to the tragic fate of the stupid doctor’s toddler in the film, Richard Harrington, in The Washington Post, noted that "in the last 15 minutes it turns very ugly." Harrington commented, "Two-year-old Miko Hughes is a classic cute little boy (he’s been in Charmin commercials), but some of the things he’s asked to do, and to suffer in the film’s finale are disturbing." John Stanley observed, "What happens to these four decent people will depress you to the core of your soul."

In the fall of 2010, director Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy," "Pan’s Labyrinth") voiced an interest in directing a remake of "Pet Sematary." By the summer of 2011, a script was written by Matt Greenberg ("Halloween H2O," "The Prophecy II," "Reign of Fire," "1408"), but in October of 2012, a new writer, Dave Kajgarich (who is working on the upcoming feature film version of Stephen King’s It), was attached to the project, possibly to be directed by Alexandre Aja, who made the remakes of "Piranha" and "The Hills Have Eyes," as well as "High Tension" and "Mirrors."

As for Mary Lambert, in 1992, she directed "Pet Sematary II," which proved to be even more gruesome and mean-spirited than the original. Still managing to eke out a living, in 2011, Lambert directed teen queens of yore Deborah (formerly known as Debbie) Gibson and Tiffany (above) in "Mega Python vs. Gatoroid" for the SyFy Channel. The film, which succeeded in killing off its two stars, featured an embarrassed Mickey Dolenz as himself. Apparently unable to obtain rights to Monkees hits, the 66-year-old guest star is swallowed by a giant python before he can sing.

Instead of looking at an aging Mickey Dolenz,
we thought you'd enjoy a picture of the catfight
between Deborah Gibson and Tiffany.