Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelMyers
And yet, Villain: recent versions of Little Shop of Horrors, The Fly, The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers were all "reboots" of original films. And they all surpassed their predecessors. So, too, may Godzilla 2014 surpass its reptilian ancestors along with Jaws.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Villain
See now that's a matter of opinion. To me, however good the new movies that you stated are, they do not surpass the originals with the exception of maybe The Thing. It stands though that no matter how popular they have become, they wouldn't be there without the originals.
Also the original Godzilla is much more iconic and famous then any of the movies you mentioned. So to say that this new Godzilla may surpass the original, to me is hard to believe.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelMyers
Villain: no question Godzilla 2014 has a long way to go to surpass its original. I just take exception to the notion that horror films can't become iconic or memorable because they are re-makes. The films I listed show that it is not not a disqualifying factor for a horror. Same holds true in other media, such as music (e.g., Johnny Cash covering NIN).
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I agree with MichaelMyers, a remake or reboot is not inherently less than original. There are cases, in my opinion, where the remake was definitely better than the original. Of the examples that MichaelMyers provided, I would agree with David Cronenberg's The Fly and John Carpenter's The Thing. Don't get me wrong, I love The Fly (1958) and The Thing From Another World. They were classics, but they were more along the lines of a 1950s B-Movie. To me, both remakes transcended that and went far beyond that. In fact, I would say both The Fly (1986) and The Thing (1982) are among the greatest horror films ever made. With Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and the 1980s remake of Little Shops of Horror, I believe that the originals were better, though both were solid remakes. As for the Godzilla reboot, I do not think it will surpass the original. The thing with the remakes of The Thing and The Fly was that they did not simply remake the films, they re-imagined the stories and reflected on the concerns of the 1980s. While the 2014 version of Godzilla did re-imagine the story Godzilla, I feel it was less successful at bringing the story to 2014. It kept the original focus of the atomic age. While nuclear concerns still exist in our world today, I think they are at a much lower level than they were in the 1950s. Climate change, the role of technology, and so forth are of much greater concern to modern audiences. I think that the reboot should have kept the spirit of the original, while adjusting it to fit the concerns of 2014. Don't get me wrong, it was a solid film, but it just does not have the markers of transcendence that film like The Fly (1986) or The Thing (1982) possessed. That is the way that I see it.