As many of you have probably heard by now, Ridley Scott is going back to one of his greatest masterpieces and royally screwing it up. That's right, Blade Runner is coming into the era of pointless remakes and sequels, drawing the ire of every fan who ever saw the original. Literally, I have yet to see one post, comment, or article where anyone, apart from Scott himself, that says "Oh goodie, they're making a an unnecessary sequel/prequel to a sci-fi classic 30 years after the fact!"
Let's face it. Hollywood has run out of ideas. I know, big news, huh? You all know that; we've all known it for years, but that doesn't change the fact that it still hurts. A vast majority of current and future projects are either sequels or remakes of perfectly good films (see Ghostbusters 3, Men in Black 3, Jurassic Park 4, etc). There is a method to their madness besides lack of creativity. One, it does bring in a new audience, a younger generation that might otherwise have dismissed it as their square parents' piece of crap. Take Star Wars, for instance. I know a lot of people who had never even heard of the original trilogy until the prequels came out. Unfortunately, these reboots offer a lot more Jar Jar Binkses than Darth Mauls, which brings me to my second point.
They are out there. Everywhere. You work with them, go to school with them, may even live with them, and you may not even know it. They are...the fanboys. When filmmakers decide to redo a movie or revive a movie series, I know what a lot of them are thinking. They are thinking about how much they loved the movie when they were a kid, but now they've got a billion dollars and want to do it their way. The problem is there are other people out there who love those movies as well, so much, in fact, that they don't want people screwing with the original or its legacy. When news hits of a remake/sequel/prequel, the first question asked by the general public is "Will this live up to the original?" The first question from fanboys is "Why the &@#$ are they doing this? There was nothing wrong with the original!" The problem with a lot of directors is that you can't just use the same title and pretend its just as good. There's more to a beloved movie than just good acting or special effects. Take the recent Clash of the Titans remake, for instance. I enjoyed it for what it was, which was a pretty action film. However, it lacked the camp of the original. Yes, the first was cheesy with the claymation effects, but that's what made it so enjoyable. You could totally redo The Ten Commandments and add an actual river of blood instead of painting the scene, but it would never be the same.
Now don't get me wrong. Sometimes the remakes do work. The original Piranha was dismissed as just another Jaws ripoff, which it was, but the remake set up for the dvd release and did fairly well at the box office. Rob Zombie's Halloween is another good example, or even the new Fright Night. Both take relatively tame, slightly cheesy movie classics and give them that sexier, more violent new millennium shine. But all of these are horror movies. Horror franchises can put out films until kingdom come because people go to see them to either be scared, to see terrible people ripped in half, or to see gratuitous nudity. Nobody goes to a horror movie for story and characters, which are the backbone of good movies like Blade Runner and can't be replicated, no matter how much money they pour into it. Maybe it will be good, maybe it won't. I'm not holding my breath, but I will withhold final judgment until its release in 2014. At least Ridley Scott is toying with his own movie. The Dirty Dancing remake, on the other hand? That guy can go fuck himself. RIP Patrick Swayze.
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