Sunday, 12 May 2019

THN: The Dumbing and Watering Down of Reboots/Remakes

With the recent remake/reboot of child's play I have to write and make my voice heard somewhat.
There seems to be something, like some kind of mental block in people involved in these films retellings. Whether it's the executives, the script writers or maybe even the directors choices to make these changes.
It's 9/10 the wrong thing they change or dumb down the wrong type of things. Strangely some of these movies fail in trying to over explain some points which also adds to their failing, more on that later.

Horror movies are rife with reboots and remakes maybe even the odd reimagining. What are the things that I've seen that really degrade or sour the originals plots, storylines or characters.

Child's Play:

Image result for child's play 2019
Take child's play for instance I'll admit I haven't seen it as it's not out yet at the time of me writing this article. But what I have learned of it which may or may not be right is few things I cannot forgive.
The Chucky design, he looks like an anime character, massive eyes and mouth, to me just doesn't like right. the original animatronic chucky seemed more expression full than the newer bland face face of the newer doll.
Good guys replaced by buddi it's not a major change but why change it? Good guys make you think it could be we do no evil, Buddies can be assholes lol.
My main grievance is our titular Chucky is not a killer possessed doll anymore. No it's now a killer ai, now to me that's how you really dumb down a plot. No longer do you have a wise cracking humanised doll you have a bland killer robot.
Now I say bland because no matter how much sass or wise cracking they stick in you'll be asking yourself how did an AI gone wrong learn to be like that?
Maybe there's certain elements that have yet to be seen of this movie that will help explain that situation, only time will tell. The bonuses are that Mark Hamill is voicing Chucky and he's a stellar voice actor. Also Aubrey Plaza is staring as Andy's mum she's always good.
For now I have to wait and see what this film holds in store, you'll see what that entails when I do my inevitable review of the film.

Nightmare on Elm Street:

Image result for nightmare on elm street remake
This remake suffers from something, well two or three something's in my book. Over explaining certain points and removing a much needed tongue in cheek nature that a supernatural dream killer needs. The over explaining is one thing that really irks me in this film. We all know Freddy Krueger was a "child killer" hinted at that it was a little bit more than that too, see hinted at. The newer remake was pretty blatant in its saying he's a child rapist. We know that but we don't need it thrust in our faces especially with how serious the rest of the film is.
They tried to make Freddy scary that's another thing wrong or right, is his look in this where as h does look more effectively burnt I prefer his older look but that's just me, also being more scary? That had been done on Wes cravens new nightmare, pretty well too. Yet even that film managed to turn a tongue in cheek joke (literally a tongue out of a phone) into something more serious but with still that hint of humor of oh look a tongue in a phone!

Friday the 13th:

Image result for friday the 13th remake
Now onto Friday the 13th remake, a remake/reboot I can actually get behind. Some people don't like it for the dumbing down of Jason's back story. This is where it differs for me, as strangely these parts seem like more of a recap to me because in this films case (to me at least) feels like a straight up sequel. Everything from his look to the way he acted was a picture perfect Jason.
Yeah that's right it's like Friday the 13th 9 1/2 to me I really do see this movie as and really feel like it's just more of what I like. Mindless masked killer goodness. That's pretty much all I have I have to say about this film. I do realise what I said can also be used as a detriment to the film instead of pluses.

Halloween:

Image result for halloween 2018
The latest reboot was, good, it had solid acting was nice to see Micheal back with no silly runes or masked society involved. No women riding white horses as in the previous two remakes. The problem I have with these movies is that they ignore sequels.
I know they can say oh this starts from after the first movie, or second whatever unfortunately those movies still exist. You can't just expect people to forget about them.
Where does movie now go in my collection?
In-between one and two?
The thing with Halloween too is this isn't the first time they've done this either, H20 had us ignoring everything after a certain point too.
You can't just jam a new film in the middle of an established series especially one that ignores some past events. If your not good enough to write a sequel that involves most of what went before is it worth trying?

All in all i'm not against remakes, reboots, slot ins, whatever you want to call them. All i ask is you don't mess it up keep it as faithful to the series it's from as much as possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment