Movies That People Don't Know Are Remakes
This is something that I started thinking about recently, and last night I thought that it would make for a good topic for a blog post. Yes, this will be another blog exclusive post. I probably won't be posting this on DeviantART. I haven't posted any of my new posts on there. I don't know, I'm just kind of lazy, and I don't have to do all the same work all over again, especially on posts where I talk about movies and TV shows, having to italicize all the titles. And of course, all the political or historical posts on here are off limits for DeviantART because I already stated in my very first post that the whole reason I started this blog was so that I could post anything I want, about whatever I want, without any restrictions or limitations. That includes politics and history because a lot of people on DeviantART hate those topics.
More so politics than history, like certain people on DeviantART hate it when you get political. And I just don't to deal with any of those comments telling me not to get political, even if I'm just talking about alternate history or hypotheticals when it comes to war or territorial changes of countries. Like, Russia 🇷🇺 breaking apart into multiple different countries or China 🇨🇳 breaking apart into multiple countries, both of which could happen under certain conditions or circumstances.
That's the kind of politics I like talking about. I like geopolitics and foreign policy topics. I don't really care that much about domestic politics, only in how it relates to foreign policy or affects foreign policy. What are things that American politicians 🇺🇸 do here that affect the way we perceive or interact with other countries or how countries perceive or interact with us? That sort of thing.
I stopped caring about culture war stuff a long time ago because it isn't a real issue. Culture wars are fake and manufactured (mainly by the Right) to distract you from the real issues, and one of those real issues is foreign policy. If more Americans 🇺🇸 actually cared about foreign policy, and cared about our country's place in the world or what's happening to other countries or what other countries are doing and it might affect us, then culture wars wouldn't be a thing. We wouldn't care if transgender people 🏳️⚧️ use a bathroom that corresponds to the gender they identify as, or whether transgender people 🏳️⚧️ play in sports that correspond to the gender they identify as, or if they talk about racial issues in schools, or teach kids about LGBT topics 🏳️🌈.
Or if LGBT people hold pride parades 🏳️🌈, or if crossdressers have drag shows (I say crossdressers because some crossdressers don't identify as trans 🏳️⚧️ and instead identify as non-binary or genderfluid or whatever), or if they sell nutcrackers with rainbow flags 🏳️🌈 at Target, or if the green M&M wears sneakers 👟 instead of high heels 👠, or if a certain character in a movie or TV show was race swapped to be a person of color instead of white, or they were gender swapped to be a woman ♀︎ instead of a man ♂︎, or make a certain character LGBT 🏳️🌈 like gay, lesbian, or bi. Or bicurious, in the case of Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
We wouldn't care about any of that stuff if more people were concerned about what Russia 🇷🇺 was doing, or what China 🇨🇳 was doing, or what North Korea 🇰🇵 was doing, or what Iran 🇮🇷 was doing, or what was happening in Myanmar 🇲🇲, or what was happening in Sudan 🇸🇩. Or even if more people understood and appreciated the NATO alliance and what it has done for our own national security, and for the current global order. Our lives today would be radically different if NATO weren't around, and not for the better I can guarantee that. The only foreign policy issue that most Americans 🇺🇸 actually care about, and get passionate about is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 🇮🇱🇵🇸.
Whenever that conflict flares up, and Israelis 🇮🇱 and Palestinians 🇵🇸 start fighting and killing each other again, Americans 🇺🇸 across the political spectrum get really passionate about it. They automatically take sides, saying that the side they support is morally good and the other side is inherently evil and deserves everything they get, and they just talk about the suffering and humanity of their own side and just ignore the suffering and humanity of the other side.
Pro-Israel people 🇮🇱 only talk about Israeli deaths and Israeli suffering 🇮🇱, and ignore Palestinians deaths and Palestinian suffering 🇵🇸, and pro-Palestine people 🇵🇸 only talk about Palestinian deaths and Palestinian suffering 🇵🇸, and ignore Israeli deaths and Israeli suffering 🇮🇱. All the while, they both ignore the war crimes and atrocities committed by their own side, like pro-Israel people 🇮🇱 will ignore Israeli war crimes 🇮🇱 and pro-Palestinian people 🇵🇸 will ignore Palestinian war crimes 🇵🇸. And both sides will demand action from the US government 🇺🇸 and will demand them to take their side over the other. Even though, usually, the US government 🇺🇸 will choose to support Israel 🇮🇱 9 times out of 10, and hardly ever support Palestine 🇵🇸, or the Palestinian cause 🇵🇸.
Although, now under the Biden administration, the winds are changing slightly. They are being little bit more tough on Israel 🇮🇱 than past administrations, and have been calling for a temporary ceasefire so that more Israeli hostages 🇮🇱 can be released and humanitarian aid can get to Palestinian refugees 🇵🇸 inside Gaza. And they're being trying to pressure the Israeli government 🇮🇱 into calling off their planned offensive in Rafah, which is a city in southern Gaza, which is where all the Palestinians 🇵🇸 in Gaza fled to when Israel 🇮🇱 began their ground offensive inside Gaza.
They're trying to tell not to go through it because an offensive into Rafah would a really terrible idea and would have terrible consequences for the Israelis 🇮🇱 and the Gazan Palestinians 🇵🇸. It would end badly for everyone. But, Israel 🇮🇱 is currently not listening, in defiance of, and against the advice of pretty much everyone, has already begun bombing Rafah in preparation for the offensive. Also, Biden doesn't like Netanyahu all that much, and finds him to be very frustrating and difficult to work with. So, the US 🇺🇸 currently is not 100% on Israel 🇮🇱's side, and is becoming increasingly more frustrated with Israel 🇮🇱's actions and how they're conducting this war, and they are trying to support humanitarian efforts inside Gaza to help Palestinian refugees 🇵🇸.
People in America 🇺🇸 do this, even if they themselves are not Jews ✡️ or Muslims ☪️, or even Arabs. I live in New Mexico, if you didn't read the location down below each post, and I remember going to the Frontier restaurant in Albuquerque, next to UNM (University of New Mexico), recently like back in January. I went into the bathroom, and in addition to smelling the foul stench of marijuana (because a guy was smoking weed in one of the stalls), I saw some graffiti on the side of one of the stalls that said, "Free Palestine 🇵🇸."
Another time, I was riding in the passenger seat, my grandma was driving through Albuquerque, we had just dropped my dad off at his dentist appointment, and we happened to drive past a house that a pro-Israel sign 🇮🇱 on their lawn, that had the Israeli flag 🇮🇱 and I think it may have even said, "I stand with Israel 🇮🇱" or "I support Israel 🇮🇱." So, even in my little corner of the world, I still see stuff relating to Israel 🇮🇱 and Palestine 🇵🇸. You can't escape it no matter where you live in the US 🇺🇸.
It is the only foreign policy issue that most Americans 🇺🇸 across the board care about and care about passionately, that doesn't directly involve the US 🇺🇸. The US 🇺🇸 involved in it because we support one of the two sides directly, we give them weapons and equipment. But, we aren't directly involved in any of the fighting that goes on. American boots 🇺🇸 are not on the ground in Israel 🇮🇱 or Gaza, and aren't directly engaging Hamas or Hezbollah militants in combat. Hezbollah hasn't gotten directly involved in the Israel-Hamas war 🇮🇱, but they have been lobbing rockets at northern Israel 🇮🇱 from Lebanon 🇱🇧 (the country they're based on), causing some headache for the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces 🇮🇱), but nothing that they can't handle and haven't dealt with. It's nothing on the scale of the fighting going on in Gaza. But, you know what I mean.
But, luckily, for those people who hate reading things about politics, even things about geopolitics, or even history, this post isn't about any of those things. Instead, it's about movies that people didn't know were remakes. There's actually quite a bit of those, a lot more than you would think, and I'm going to try and go through them all. The first one, and the biggest example of this is John Carpenter's The Thing, a sci-fi horror movie that bombed at the box office 💣 and was hated by critics at the time of its release, but has since gone on to be a cult classic.
In fact, it's more than a cult classic at this point. It's achieved mainstream popularity, in part thanks to word of mouth, and thanks to the generation that grew up with that movie and saw it on home media (VHS 📼 and DVD 📀) being old enough to express their opinions, and take control of the narrative about this movie away from the old stuffy critics who originally hated the movie and gave it bad reviews. Now, many people consider John Carpenter's The Thing to be one of the greatest horror films ever made.
It even spawned a franchise of its own with a 2002 video game and a 2011 prequel, which many mistakenly thought was a remake but wasn't. It was an indeed a prequel set before the events of 1982 movie, focusing on the ill-fated Norwegian base 🇳🇴. It didn't help the 2011 movie was also titled The Thing. But, the 1982 movie has the John Carpenter's part of the title so that you know that it's from John Carpenter. That's how you can tell the two movies apart. The 1982 movie is called John Carpenter's The Thing and the 2011 movie is just called The Thing.
But, what most people don't know, or at least, most people under the age of 60, don't know is that John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake in and of itself. It's a remake of a 1951 movie called The Thing From Another World produced by legendary producer at the time, Howard Hawks, who was also an uncredited writer on the film. The whole reason that John Carpenter made his version of The Thing is that he grew up with The Thing From Another World, and he wanted to remake it to pay homage to a movie that got him into horror movies, sci-fi movies, and just made him want to be a filmmaker in general. He designed the title sequence to be exactly like the title sequence of The Thing From Another World. He even included footage from it in the original 1975 Halloween 🎃, the very first one. So, his remake of The Thing was just as much of a passion project for John Carpenter, as Peter Jackson's King Kong remake was a passion project for Peter Jackson.
People also don't know that both The Thing From Another World and John Carpenter's The Thing were based on a book 📖, a novella called Who Goes There? But, that's beside the point. John Carpenter's version is more faithful to the novella BTW, just to let you know. The Thing From Another World is a much looser adaptation of the novella. In fact, that was the main way that John Carpenter decided to set his version apart from the original which is make it closer to the novella.
There are a few key differences between The Thing From Another World and John Carpenter's The Thing. One being that unlike John Carpenter's version, The Thing From Another World is not set in Antarctica 🇦🇶. Instead, it's set in the North Pole. The Americans 🇺🇸 are also the first ones to discover the spaceship and the alien, and they're the ones who end up freeing the alien by mistake, not the Norwegians 🇳🇴 like in the John Carpenter version and the 2011 prequel. In fact, there are no Norwegians 🇳🇴, there is no Norwegian base 🇳🇴 in this version. It's just the Americans 🇺🇸, it's an all American affair 🇺🇸.
The other big difference is the alien. The alien in The Thing From Another World is not a shapeshifter like in the John Carpenter movie or its 2011 prequel, or in the original novella. Instead, the alien is a vegetable, it's made out of vegetable. So, it's technically a plant creature 🌱, but everyone in the movie refers to it as it as a vegetable monster, they constantly say that it's made of vegetable. The alien also had a more definitive humanoid form, like it straight up looks like Frankenstein's monster but with spikes on his hand, that's what the alien in The Thing From Another World looked like. Whereas the alien in the John Carpenter movie and its 2011 prequel (the Carpenterverse if you will) had a more amorphous form. It didn't really a have clearly defined form. Its body kept changing from the different lifeforms it was imitating, its DNA 🧬 kept changing. It also multiplied, and pieces of it broke off and because their own individuals and would infect and imitate people or animals on its own. So, it wasn't just one creature, it was several.
The alien in The Thing From Another World also multiplied. Its offspring were being growing out of the ground like plants 🌱 do. But, the offspring never grow into fully fledged adults and attack the humans at the base. It's just that one singular creature the whole time. And they do actually succeed in killing it at the end. I believe they burn it alive 🔥 and kill its budding offspring before they have the chance to grow into fully fledged adults. Whereas in the John Carpenter version, it's a bit ambiguous whether or not the creature is actually dead or not, or if there's a piece of it still living, and if one of the two remaining survivors is an imitation or not.
The Thing From Another World was not some obscure movie when it came out, or in the years afterward. It was a pretty popular movie for its time, and it was pretty influential. The line, "Watch the skies. Keep looking, keep watching the skies" is an iconic line that's quoted a whole bunch of times throughout pop culture. It's pretty much the motto of the entire UFO conspiracy community 🛸. And yet, the movie's kind of faded into obscurity now, and very few people even know it exists because everyone only ever watches the John Carpenter's version. For a lot of people, the John Carpenter version is the only version they've ever seen in their entire life. In addition to that, these people haven't done any research on the movie, and learned anything about the making of it, and thus, they're ignorant of the fact that it's a remake of a 50s movie.
Another big one is the 1999 version of The Mummy, the one directed by Stephen Sommers, and starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, and Arnold Vosloo. This one is kind of personal to me because last month, on January 6, I was at one of my cousins' house, celebrating King's Day with them, and we all talking about different stuff, and the conversation came around to The Mummy. I was astonished and surprised that everyone in my family didn't know that The Mummy (1999) was a remake, and in fact, they all thought (erroneously) that the 2017 Mummy was a remake and that the 1999 movie was the "original." No, that's not the case at all. The 1999 movie, as good as it is, is not the original Mummy movie.
The actual original Mummy movie was from 1932, before me and anyone in my family were even born (at least the ones at the party that day). The original 1932 movie starred Boris Karloff, the same actor who played Frankenstein's monster in the original 1931 Frankenstein. He played Imhotep in the 1932 Mummy movie. Similar to John Carpenter's The Thing, it so funny how so little people today know that the 1999 Mummy movie is a remake because the director, Stephen Sommers made a such a big deal out of the fact that it was a remake of the 1932 movie.
Like, if you watch the special features on the DVD or Blu-Ray 📀💿, specifically, the featurette documentary called "Building a Better Mummy," the entire first half or first third of it is Stephen Sommers talking about how much he loved the 1932 movie, how it was the only one of the original Universal monster movies that actually scared him, and how he specifically based his movie off of the 1932 movie, using the same mummy, and using the same concept of having a mummy who was mummified alive and then go from being undead to being a living person over the course of the movie, and avoid having "guys wrapped in bandages" as he said like all the Mummy movies that came after the 1932 movie did. He even created a new character for his version, and named him after the cover name that Imhotep gave himself, Ardith Bay. That's where Ardith Bay's name comes from, it comes from the 1932 original.
But, with this movie, it does make sense why the 1932 original is so forgotten, and why so many people falsely believe that the 1999 movie is the original and the 2017 movie is the remake, or at least, the first remake. Not a lot of people today watch black and white movies. They don't watch movies that were made in the decades before the 1970s. This was the case when I was a kid, and it's especially the case now with the kids of today. People just have no appreciation for the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and even 60s cinema. They're just ignorant of it, and they don't go out of their way to seek it out unless they're really deep into movies. Only film buffs really care about movies from those decades. This might also be one of the reasons why The Thing From Another World isn't remembered all that well today, and why so many mistakenly think John Carpenter's The Thing is an original movie and is the first of its kind.
Another reason why most people are ignorant of that fact that the 1999 Mummy is a remake of a 30s movie is one of the reasons I talked about for The Thing From Another World, and that's people just don't do research. When people go into a movie, most of them never do any research beforehand or after, and thus, they never learn any key facts about the movie and why it was made. This is mostly an issue with movie critics and movie reacters, who should do research and do due diligence whenever they talk about a movie or react to a movie, and a lot of them. So, they not only remain uninformed, but their audiences also remain uninformed.
But, it could also be the original 1932 original was kind of one of the least popular of the original 30s Universal monster movies, like it was already kind of lesser known and it was already kind of ignored, even when it came out. I don't know how it did at the box office, but it seems it was one of the more slept on Universal monster movies. Everyone just kept talking about Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Invisible Man (1933) and very little about The Mummy (1932). Still, people still talked about more than The Wolfman 🐺 (1941) and Phantom of the Opera (1943). It even got a bunch of sequels that weren't really sequels, but that's beyond the scope of what this post is about.
The next movie that people don't know is a remake that I would like to discuss here is The Fly 🪰 (1986), the sci-fi horror romance drama film from director, David Cronenberg and starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. The Fly 🪰 is a remake of a 1958 movie of the same name. What separates this case from the last one I discussed is that The Fly 🪰 (1958) was not some obscure or unpopular movie when it came out. It was a very popular movie when it came out, it's still considered a classic by film buffs and film historians, and it's a very influential movie. It inspired a bunch of other sci-fi movies and sci-fi TV shows, books, etc. in the decades that followed. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 🐢🥷 character, Baxter Stockman was directly inspired by the 1958 version of The Fly 🪰.
On top of all that, the 1958 movie wasn't even in black and white. It’s in full color, one of the few 50s movies at the time were released in color, and in filmed in Cinemascope. So, it's crazy that it's so forgotten now, and it's been so overshadowed by the David Cronenberg version from 1986. These movies really should be equal with each other in terms of popularity and recognition, but they aren't. The 1986 movie is more popular and is more well known than the 1958 movie. When people think of The Fly 🪰, they think of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, not David Hedison, Patricia Owens, or Vincent Price.
Now, similar to The Thing From Another World and John Carpenter's The Thing, both versions of The Fly 🪰 are based on preexisting source material. They're based on a short story that was published in Playboy magazine of all things. That's something that a lot of people today are unaware that The Fly 🪰 is based on a short story. Also similar to The Thing From Another World and John Carpenter's The Thing, there are few differences between the two versions of The Fly 🪰. The first and most noticeable difference is that in the 1958 movie, the scientist simply gets his head and left hand swapped with a fly 🪰's. The teleportation device just switches their heads and left arms/appendages. So, the scientist has a fly head 🪰 and the fly 🪰 has a human head. While in the 1986 movie, the scientist and the fly 🪰 who he gets teleported with end up fusing together on a molecular level, and the scientist starts turning into a grotesque human/fly hybrid 🪰.
The two movies are also kind of different genres and are structured very differently. The 1958 is much more of a detective murder mystery 🕵️ type of movie, where these two detectives (one of them played by Vincent Price) investigate a murder at this house, and the interview this widow (played by Patricia Owens) who turns out to be the wife of the scientist who accidentally swapped his head with a fly 🪰's. They think that she killed him because this guy (I think he was like a groundskeeper for the house the scientist and his wife live at because they're rich or he might've been a neighbor) spotted her next to his dead body.
They interrogate her, and the entire story of the film is told to us in flashback with the wife recounting all the events that lead to her being accused of murder, and the two detectives showing up at her house to interrogate her. And the two detectives and the audience learn of the shocking tale of how a scientist accidentally swapped his own head and left hand with that of a fly 🪰's using his teleportation device, and how that lead to him want to end his own life and have his wife be the one to put him out of his misery. But, the scientist doesn't actually give up on life right away, he actually tries to fix himself, and he tells his wife to try to capture the fly 🪰 that he swapped heads with, so that they can do through the teleporter again and reverse the head and hand swap.
But, she fails, and doesn't capture the fly 🪰 (or at least she doesn't capture the right one), so realizing that he's out of options and they'll never be able to reverse what happened to him, the scientist decides to kill himself. But, he doesn't do the deed himself. Instead, like I said, he makes his wife do it, by putting his own head under a press and having his wife press the button to squash his head and kill him. That's why she was spotted next to his dead body at the beginning of the movie. She did technically kill him since she's the one who pressed the button and crushed his head with the press.
But, she only did it because he told her to do it (not with words but with writing on a chalk board and body language). It wasn't like she intended to commit murder and kill her husband out of malice. But, she's still probably going to jail or prison since she confessed and straight up said she killed her husband, and this is the 50s. Not exactly the best time to be a woman ♀︎ if you know what I mean. Then, the movie ends with the detectives actually spotting the fly 🪰 that the scientist swapped heads with, caught in a spider web 🕸️, about to be eaten by a spider 🕷️, and calling out for help since it has a human head and human vocal cords.
Being absolutely disturbed by what they're seeing, one of the detectives grabs a big rock 🪨 and uses it crush the spider web 🕸️, killing the spider 🕷️ and the fly 🪰 in one fell swoop. That the detective played by Vincent Price tells his partner that technically speaking, he committed murder just as much as the wife did, since he killed a fly 🪰 with a human head and she killed a human with a fly head 🪰. If she murdered, then so did he, and the partner just says, "I know, who's going to believe us? They'll say we're both mad." Mad as in crazy, since people used the word "mad" describe someone who was insane back then in the 50s.
I haven't actually seen the original 1958 movie, from what I've heard about it and seen of it from the behind-the-scenes documentaries and featurettes about the making of the 1986 movie, it seems like a pretty dark and twisted movie for the 1950s. They took what could've been a really silly B movie concept, and turned into this really dark and kind of disturbing (for the time) movie that's framed as a detective movie 🕵️, and ends with the characters essentially failing to save the day, and turn the scientist back to normal, and ends with the scientist's wife killing him per his request to put him out of his misery, and with one of the detectives killing a fly 🪰 with a human head.
The 1986 movie is much different. In fact, they're pretty much completely different movies. There are almost no real similarities between them. The 1986 movie doesn't have the same characters or the same names. The scientist in the 1986 movie (played by Jeff Goldblum) is not the same character as the scientist in the 1958 movie (played by David Hedison). And the female lead ♀︎ of the 1986 movie is not the scientist's wife like the one in the 1958 movie. In fact, they're not even really boyfriend and girlfriend. The woman ♀︎ in the 1986 movie is a journalist working for a publishing company run by her ex, and she just starts having an affair with the scientist behind her ex's back.
Well, I mean, her ex knows that she's seeing the scientist and having sex with him, but it's still an affair because the two aren't dating and the scientist is supposed to be her subject. She isn't supposed to get emotionally or physically involved with her subject, but she does anyway. She broke the basic rule of journalism right there. Given that they aren't married or even officially dating in this movie, you can probably surmise that they're also childless in this version as well.
The scientist and wife duo in the 1958 movie had a son, who sort of contributed to the plot, but not really. The closest thing is that the journalist gets pregnant with the scientist's baby after the two have sex the night after he tested the teleporter on himself and fused with a fly 🪰. Meaning that their child will be a human/fly hybrid 🪰 as well. Speaking of which, the only thing the two versions really have in common is the basic premise of a scientist creating a teleportation device, testing it on his himself, a fly 🪰 getting into that device while he's testing it on himself, and that causing all kinds of problems.
Except here, as I said, instead of the scientist simply swapping heads with the fly 🪰, the scientist fuses with the fly 🪰 on a molecular and genetic level 🧬, causing him to start transforming into a disgusting human/fly hybrid 🪰. It's a more gradual process throughout the film than an instantaneous one like in the 1958 movie. We see the scientist, Seth Brundle's body deteriorate as he becomes less and less human, and more and more fly-like 🪰. The 1986 movie is much more of a body horror romance drama that many people have interpreted as being a metaphor or allegory for disease (specifically AIDS) and the grief of losing your loved one to a disease that they can't cure.
It still has the same darkness and twistedness of the 1958 movie, only just cranked up to 11, because of the body horror stuff involving Seth's transformation into Brundlefly 🪰 (the name of the hybrid creature that will result from his transformation), the journalist being pregnant with Seth's baby post-fly fusion 🪰, the ex getting his hand melted off by Seth's acidic fly vomit 🪰, Seth finally transforming into Brundlefly 🪰, trying fuse him and the journalist together in a last ditch attempt to make himself more human, him getting fused together with part of the teleporter, and being in such pain and misery that he makes the journalist shoot him in the head with the same shotgun her ex brought to kill him.
The movie has no happy ending, unlike the 1958 movie, which kind of tried to force a happy ending by having the detective (the one played by Vincent Price) tell the scientist's son why he died and why he was foolish for try and play God and experiment with teleportation, and then them and the wife walking into the sunset (so to speak) while triumphant music plays in the background. The 1986 movie is a tragedy through and through. Everyone loses in that movie.
I think the reason why they decided to go in that direction with the 1986 movie is that it's not only a great way to differentiate it from the original, but I also kind of think that the people who made 1986 movie didn't really respect the 1958 movie and thought they could improve upon by making it a darker, gorier 🩸, and more sexually charged film. That's why they hired David Cronenberg to direct. That's why the two movies have so little in common besides the basic premise. The people who made the 1986 movie didn't like the 1958 movie, thought it was silly, and thought they could do better. And I guess they were sort of right, because the 1986 movie is remembered better than the 1958 movie. It's remembered so much better that most people alive today who have seen it don't even know it's a remake.
There is one thing that both versions have in common though. They both have sequels that both lesser known than the first one and also considered inferior to the first one. The Fly 🪰 (1958) has Return of the Fly 🪰 and The Fly 🪰 (1986) has The Fly II 🪰. On top of that both sequels to both films are both about the son of the scientist from the first movie doing the same type of experiments with teleportation as his father, and having similar fly troubles 🪰.
The son in Return of the Fly 🪰 gets his head and left hand swapped with another fly 🪰 just like his dad did, and the son in The Fly II 🪰 becomes a human/fly hybrid 🪰 just like his dad did because he already had fly DNA 🧬 within him due to being conceived by his father and mother after his father fused with that fly 🪰 in the teleporter. Unlike their respective first movies, both sequels have happy endings where the son turns back into a regular human and gets the girl ♀︎ in the end because the son has a love interest ❤️ in both sequels. I thought that there should've been a Fly III 🪰 when I was younger, and I even tried writing a script for one. I even thought that it should be even more of an action movie with the son fighting against other insect human hybrids. Nowadays, I don't. I don't think that there should be a The Fly III 🪰 and I don't think they should remake The Fly 🪰 again. Let's just leave it at that.
The next movies that I'm going to talk about here I have lot less to say about, not because I didn't see them necessarily because I know a lot less about them and how they compare t their respective originals. The next one is Flubber, which is 1997 live action Disney comedy movie that starred Robin Williams and Marcia Gay Harden, and was co-written and co-produced by John Hughes, the writer and producer of Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Home Alone 3, Dennis the Menace, and Beethoven to name a few. He also co-wrote and produced the Miracle on 34th Street remake, the one with Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle.
Flubber is a remake a 1961 movie called The Absent-Minded Professor, which was also a live action Disney comedy. Unlike today where Disney's all in on remaking all of their animated movies, back in the 90s and 2000s, they were all in on remaking their live action movies. The Shaggy Dog, The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, That Darn Cat, and Race to Witch Mountain were all apart of this trend too. Of course, the reason why I included Flubber in here is that a lot of people don't know it's a remake either. Like, you could watch this movie and go without even knowing it was a remake of a movie from the 1960s, like I did for many years. Unlike the other ones I talked about here, it's easier for people to not know that Flubber is a remake. It's not titled as a remake, it has a completely different title from the original, and it certainly wasn't marketed as if it were a remake.
I also wanted to talk about Flubber in some capacity because it is a childhood movie of mine, and a lot of the reviews I've seen of the movie over the years have overwhelmingly been negative. Most of the criticism for the film has been towards the cartoony slapstick humor, the use of CGI, the boring villains, and the way the Professor Brainard character was written. People had problems with the fact that the Professor kept missing out on his wedding 💍 with Marsha Gay Harding's character, Sara, who's the president of the college, and how he didn't think to sell his robot companion, Weebo to save the college.
The wedding thing 💍 is understandable, especially when you think about it from Sara's perspective, but the thing about him not selling his robot to save the college doesn't make sense and is unwarranted criticism. Like, you can rationalize why Brainard didn't sell Weebo or present Weebo to investor to pour more money 💵 into the school. Maybe he didn't want to sell her because he saw her as more than just an invention and saw her as a genuine friend and assistant, and perhaps saw her as more valuable to him than to any potential investor.
Like, he still needs her around to make inventions or do some sort of scientific experiment. Plus, he's an absent-minded professor. He doesn't think things through, and didn't realize certain things or snap even when it's staring him right in the face. I mean, this is the same man ♂︎ who missed his wedding 💍 twice because he was too caught up in his work. What makes you think he'd realize that Weebo was an impressive enough invention to sell off to make money 💵 for the college? Also, I like the "Flubber Mambo" sequence, and don't think it's as bad as some make it out to be. Sure, it doesn't really make that much sense in context with the rest of the movie, and it was clearly only in there to show off the CGI effects and have something flashy to put in the trailers and TV spots, but it's still pretty entertaining.
Another one is Mighty Joe Young 🦍, another remake by Disney, only this one isn't a remake of one of their own movies from their own catalog. It's a remake of a movie that was owned by RKO that Disney bought the rights to since RKO no longer existed by that point. But, they still included the RKO logo at the beginning, only modernized and done in color. There's a lot of people who have watched this movie that don't even know that it's a remake of a movie from the 40s, and people would watch it without researching it beforehand and finding out that it's a remake of a movie from the 40s.
And it's not hard to see why the original 1949 Mighty Joe Young 🦍 is so forgotten and why the 1998 version is remembered a lot better. It's a black and white movie from the 1940s, and as I've established earlier, a lot of people these days don't like watching those kinds of movies. People don't research movies and learn more about them before they watch them. And also the 1949 movie really isn't all that well remembered anyway. It wasn't that big of a hit when it came out, and it sort of faded in obscurity for many years due to being overshadowed by King Kong (1933). It's also not really viewed as a classic and held in the same regard as the 1933 King Kong. It is regarded better than Son of Kong though, that's for sure.
The plots of the two versions are mostly the same, where it's about a giant gorilla 🦍 named Joe who's brought to Los Angeles by his human companion, who's a young blonde woman ♀︎. The difference is the reason why Joe is brought to human civilization. In the 1949 movie, they bring him over so that he can be entertainment. His female human companion ♀︎ named Jill brings him over just so that she can use him to become famous and make money 💵 basically. But, don't worry, it's not for her own selfish gain or greed 🤑. It's so that she can save her family homestead because she and Joe lived on a ranch in Africa together, and it's facing financial problems I guess.
In the 1998 movie though, they bring Joe over to Los Angeles in order to save him from poachers. The blonde girl ♀︎ in the 1998 movie, who's also named Jill wants to protect Joe, and Bill Paxton's character, Greg O'Hara promises her that he can keep him safe inside of his animal conservatory. Of course, the reason for bringing Joe to LA eventually gets corrupted from its original purpose, but it was done with a more altruistic and animal conservationist intent in mind. It's not to become famous and make lots of money 💵 as a Hollywood starlet like in the 1949 movie. Also, the Joe in the 1998 movie is a lot bigger than the Joe in the 1949 movie, and the Joe in the 1949 movie was already pretty big.
The next movie is a really huge example of this sort of phenomenon (if you can even call it a phenomenon). I really should've put this one further up, but I nearly almost spaced it out, so I'm putting it here, Scarface (1983). Scarface (1983) is not only more well remembered than the 1932 original, but it's also considered more of a classic than the original 1932 movie.
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Like, you're more likely to hear people say that Scarface (1983) is a classic and is one of the greatest movies ever made than you are Scarface (1932). It's also way more influential than the 1932 movie ever was. I mean, how many times have you heard the "Say hello to my little friend" quote be used in another movie or TV show? I'm going to guess, a lot because that line has quoted thousands of times at this point. Plus, it got a video game sequel in 2006 called Scarface: The World is Yours. It all comes to Al Pacino's legendary performance as Tony Montana, and Brian de Palma's masterful direction. Still, the fact that it is a remake of a movie is 30s is something that should bear mentioning.
The biggest differences between the remake and the original is that the original 1932 movie has Italian gangsters 🇮🇹 as most mafia movies do, while the 1983 remake has Cuban gangsters 🇨🇺. Tony Montana is supposed to be Cuban 🇨🇺 in case you didn't know. That was something that drew controversy from the Latino community, especially from the Cuban community 🇨🇺, who didn't like the fact that a white man (an Italian-American guy 🇮🇹🇺🇸) was playing a Cuban 🇨🇺, and that Cubans 🇨🇺 were portrayed as violent criminals in the film. How do they think Italian-Americans 🇮🇹🇺🇸 feel? How do they think Russian-Americans 🇷🇺🇺🇸 feel considering that most of the gangsters in mobster movies these days are Russian gangsters 🇷🇺?
How many action movies have you seen in the past decade that had Russian gangsters 🇷🇺 as the bad guys, or just Russians 🇷🇺 as the bad guys in general? I mean, it does make sort of sense considering the kind of stuff the Russian government 🇷🇺 and the Russian military 🇷🇺 are up to these days. But still, your average Russian 🇷🇺 or Russian immigrant 🇷🇺 is not a violent criminal, or evil spy, or evil government bureaucrat, or warmongering general, or war criminal. I'm sure quite a few of them would not be too happy about Russians 🇷🇺 being portrayed so unsavory in film, TV, and video games, about the stereotypes being perpetuated.
To be perfectly fair, Cuban gangsters 🇨🇺 and the Cuban mob 🇨🇺 were pretty violent. In fact, all organized criminals are violent. Crime syndicates tend to attract violent people, and they use violent tactics. Still, I can see having non-Cubans to play Cuban roles 🇨🇺 could be offensive, especially when there are actual Cuban actors 🇨🇺 ready and willing to act in movies. Maybe not back then in the 80s, but certainly now.
The next couple of movies are remakes of movies that are actually pretty obscure and weren't all that popular when they originally came out. And they both happen to star Steve Martin. Those movies are Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) and Father of the Bride (1991). Those are also coincidentally the only two movies that I actually knew Steve Martin from for the longest time. I've seen never seen Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, or The Jerk, or Three Amigos. These are ones that I just barely found recently were remakes too. Like, all this time I didn't know that Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen were remakes of older movies from decades prior until I started watching videos talking about the two Pink Panther movies that Steve Martin starred in.
Father of the Bride (1991) is a remake of a 1950 movie, and Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) is a remake of another 1950 movie. From what I understand, neither of the two original 1950 versions of these two movies were all that popular or well-known by the time they were remade. So, this could've very well been a case of movies that should be remade actually getting remade. Like, these were movies that weren't all the great, and could've been a lot better, and these remakes came along and really levitated their respective concepts.
Those are the kinds of movies that should get remade, movies that were bad or mediocre and could've been a lot better. But, that's not the reason why Hollywood remakes movies most of the time. Most of the time, they just remake a movie or reboot an already existing franchise just for name recognition and to cash in on nostalgia 🤑. That's more often times, the movies getting remade are movies that are well-regarded and are bona fide classics. But, this case, these were movies that should've been remade and did, and the remakes are a lot better than the originals and are thus remembered better than the originals.
They were so much better than the originals that they actually got sequels. Father of the Bride (1991) got Father of the Bride Part II and Father of the Bride Part 3(ish). Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) got Cheaper by the Dozen 2. It even got a remake or reboot on Disney+ in 2022 starring Gabrielle Union. So, it was a case of the remake getting a remade. A remake of the remake. I'm also kind of surprised that they've never made a genderbent remake or reboot to Father of the Bride called Mother of the Groom. You'd think it'd be a no brainer, but I guess not.
It's funny how Steve Martin was in so many remakes and reboots during this point in his career in the 90s and 2000s. I also noticed that during this time too, he was in movies that only got one sequel. Father of the Bride (1991) only had one sequel for the longest time until Father of the Bride Part 3(ish) came out. Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) only has one sequel. And of course The Pink Panther (2006) only has one sequel, The Pink Panther 2. It's kind of funny how that happened. It's a funny coincidence.
Before I close this out, I will mention a couple of honorable mentions. Those honorable mentions are The Parent Trap (1998) and Freaky Friday (2003). These are honorable mentions because while they are remakes, and they are more well known and well known than their originals, there are still enough people who know that they are remakes because there are so many different versions and these just ones of many. More so Freaky Friday than The Parent Trap, since there's at least three or four different versions of Freaky Friday at this point. But still, there are enough people who have watched the 1998 version of The Parent Trap and the 2003 version of Freaky Friday who are completely unaware that they're even remakes at all.
Like, I'm sure there's plenty of people who think The Parent Trap (1998) is a completely original movie, and people think who think that Freaky Friday (2003) is the original while Freaky Friday (2017) is the remake. It's not. They're both remakes, and the 2017 movie is a remake of the remake just like the 2022 version of Cheaper by the Dozen was to the 2003 version of Cheaper by the Dozen. People are even more unaware that all the Freaky Friday movies are based on a book 📖.
I would also put The Parent Trap (1998) and Freaky Friday (2003) of remakes that people think are better than the originals. More so The Parent Trap (1998) than Freaky Friday (2003), but also Freaky Friday (2003) too. Like, there are so many people who say that the 1998 version of The Parent Trap is way better than the original 1961 version, even if they've never seen it. A lot less people say that about the 2003 version of Freaky Friday considering most people these day criticize the movie for its more "problematic" elements like the rather stereotypical portrayal of Chinese people, or the way Jamie Lee Curtis's character, the mom behaves and treats her daughter, Lindsay Lohan's character in the first half of the movie before they switch bodies.
The Chinese thing I fully understand, but Jamie Lee Curtis's character being a bad parent? Well, that's kind of the point. She's supposed to be a bad mom who doesn't understand her daughter, and is neglectful towards her and her son (the younger brother) at first. And it's through the experience of switching bodies that she understands her daughter better and what she goes through on a daily basis, and becomes a better parent as a result.
But, the 2003 movie was so popular when it came out, and it's still pretty popular now (mostly because of nostalgia), and when it is brought up in conversation with the 1976 original, people tend to rank it above the 1976 movie. So, it definitely counts. Scarface (1983), Father of the Bride (1991), Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), Mighty Joe Young 🦍 (1998), and even The Fly 🪰 (1986) also count as remakes that people think are better than the originals, or at least, as the good as the originals. These all just the ones that could I think of off the top of my head. What are some remakes that you can think of that people don't know are remakes, or remakes that people think are better than the original or as good as the original?
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Update (Tuesday February 27, 2024):
I can't believe I spaced this one, but Man on Fire 🔥 (2004), that's another movie that people don't know is actually a remake. I should've included it in the main text, but I didn't even think of it at the time I was writing it. But, it would've been a good one for it. People don't also know it's a Tony Scott movie either, even though it was under his brother's production company, Scott Free Productions. I mean, Tony Scott really isn't a household name like his brother, Ridley Scott is, but he was known throughout the film world by film buffs.
The movie he's the most known for by far is Top Gun, but he directed a lot more movies than that. He directed Beverly Hill Cops II, Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, The Fan, Enemy of the State, Domino, Déjà Vu, and Unstoppable. He directed another movie that a lot of people don't know is a remake, The Taking of Pelham 123, which also starred Denzel Washington. Tony Scott collaborated with Denzel on five different occasions, including Man on Fire 🔥. Tony Scott was going to direct a remake of The Warriors, a movie that people would've known was a remake since The Warriors is so iconic, but that project fell through.
He was also going to direct the second Top Gun movie before his tragic death by suicide in 2012. Tom Cruise carried on with the project without him. That's how we ultimately got Top Gun: Maverick. But, the movie was still dedicated to him because the first Top Gun would have been what it was, and there wouldn't have even been a Top Gun: Maverick at all if it weren't for Tony Scott. Still, it would've been interesting to see what he would've done with it, and how different it would've been with him at the helm instead of Joseph Kosinski.
It isn't hard to see why people don't know that Tony Scott directed Man on Fire 🔥. You wouldn't really know it was him if all you knew him from was Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cops II, Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, or even Crimson Tide. It looks nothing like those movies. Tony's editing style and his whole aesthetic completely changed in the 2000s, starting with this film. That sort of frantic, chaotic, and disorienting editing that Man on Fire 🔥 (2004) has, it's completely different from any of Tony's earlier films. He continued with this editing style on Domino, but he went overboard with it, and everyone hated it, and so he toned it down significantly in the movies he made after Domino.
Man on Fire 🔥 also an example of a movie that most people who know it's a remake think that it's better than the original. The original 1987 version has kind of faded into obscurity, but the people who have seen it and seen the 2004 version say that the 2004 version is better. They said it really elevated the concept. It's also an example of a movie that people don't know is based on a book 📖. Man on Fire 🔥 was a book 📖 first, and then it was adapted into a movie, which was the 1987 movie, and the movie was remade in 2004. There's actually a lot of movies where people don't know that they're based on books 📖. I can name a couple right now, Stuart Little (1999) and Forrest Gump. Bet you reading this didn't know that Forrest Gump was originally a book 📖 before it was a movie until you read this.
The biggest difference between the 2004 movie and the 1987 movie as well as the book 📖 is that the book 📖 and the 1987 movie are both set in Italy 🇮🇹, while the 2004 movie is set in Mexico 🇲🇽. Tony Scott was actually asked in an interview with Charlie Rose (before he was MeTooed) why he changed the setting from the original movie and the book 📖, and he said that it was because in the 1990s and the 2000s, by the time the 2004 movie takes place, Mexico 🇲🇽 became the kidnapping capital of the world. Italy 🇮🇹 was the kidnapping capital of the world back in the 1970s and 1980s, but a couple of decades later, Mexico 🇲🇽 took its place as the country where the most kidnappings happen. So, it no longer made sense to have the movie still take place in Italy 🇮🇹. He certainly didn't want the movie to be a period piece, he wanted set in the present day, so he changed the setting to Mexico 🇲🇽 to fit with the times.
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Update (Saturday May 11, 2024):
There's another movie that I completely forgot to mention in the original text of this post, and that's Gone in 60 Seconds, the car crime movie about a group of career criminals who boost cars. This was a movie that I myself did not know was a remake until recently, and by recently I mean like 6 or 7 years ago. I've known it was a remake for a while mostly thanks to watching reviews of it on YouTube. I love this movie. I wouldn't go as far to say that it was a childhood favorite of mine, but it was one that I watched plenty of times as a kid, mostly because of my dad and him playing it on all the time on DVD 📀.
And I still really like it to this day. It's a classic action crime type movie, and just a classic car movie in general. Like, this movie is one of the best car movies ever made, right up there with some of the best Fast & Furious movies, pre and post-Fast Five. It has a great cast. Nicolas Cage obviously is wonderful, but you also have Giovanni Ribisi, Will Patton, Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie, Vinnie Jones, Christopher Eccleston, Delroy Lindo, and many more. It has a great soundtrack. It has one of the best uses of "Lowrider" by War I've seen in a movie, and whenever I hear that song, I think of this movie. That, and A Knight's Tale too.
The car chase at the end with Eleanor is pretty cool, and even Eleanor herself is beautiful. I wouldn't mind having a car like that. I actually saw a toy or model of Eleanor at Hobby Lobby once. Like, it wasn't just a random Ford Shelby GT500, it was the Eleanor, and was an official piece of Gone in 60 Seconds merchandise. I didn't buy it, and whenever I've been to Hobby Lobby since then, I haven't seen it. I should've bought it then, but I didn't.
The movie also probably has one of the best PG-13 sex scenes I've ever seen, where Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie's characters, Memphis and Sway respectively are stealing this car from this presumably rich guy or rich couple (given the house they're in), and they'll just watching them and waiting until they go into the bedroom 🛏️ and do the "deed" if you get what I'm saying. And that gets them all hot and bothered, and they almost start having sex in the car they're about to steal, until Memphis or Sway (I don't remember) sees the couple go into the bedroom 🛏️, and then they see that's their cue to drive off with the car, and take it to the warehouse.
Though to be honest with you, I was more invested in what the couple in the house were doing what Memphis and Sway were doing in the car. I mean, at least the couple were actually getting naked and doing the stuff. Although, they are definitely going to have rough awakening when they get up in the morning to see their car is missing, or the guy's car is missing. I'm sure if the couple inside the house were an actual couple, or if this was like a one night stand type of situation. Either way, they're not going to be happy knowing that their car was stolen while they were having sex.
This is definitely another banger from Jerry Bruckheimer. There are very few, if any, bad movies on his resumé as a producer. He knows how to pick good script, and pick talented people to adapt those screenplays into motion pictures that the majority of people can enjoy. Like for example, the movies that Michael Bay made with Jerry Bruckheimer were some of the best of his career, hands down, except for maybe Pearl Harbor, although I still like Pearl Harbor a lot.
I actually don't know how similar or how different Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) is to the original 1974 film, other than they're both crime movies involving cars presumably (grand theft auto and all that), and they both feature Ford Shelby GT500s named Eleanor. I've never seen the original 1974 Gone in 60 Seconds, and I don't know anyone who has. Most people, in fact, the majority of people I know have only ever seen the 2000 version with Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie. I might consider watching the 74 version, but probably not anytime soon.
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