"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" as it brought something new to the story and the advanced technical side helped in the FX they were able to pull off.
"The Fly". Cronenberg's film is perhaps the best arguement on why some remakes are valid.
The original was an anonymous Studio B picture with primitive FX and no real personality.
The remake had a very distinct Director's stamp, vastly spread the story's canvas and was able to achieve so much more due to the stronger censorship rules and technical FX advances.
"The Thing" - Again see above for most of the reasoning.
And importantly it was not strictly a remake anyway. It was simply a much more faithful adaptation of the original story, as it used the main idea (replicas) from it.
Hell it does not even have the same title.
And for certain the massive advancement in FX capabilities and what could be shown (as with "The Fly") made it something very different from the original that, VITALLY offered something more.
And that doing something very different and offering something more is why most remakes are utterly pointless.
The love ends here!
i mean for ****'s sake! The remake of "Dawn of the Dead" (from what i have read...I will never see it and support it) went out as an 'R' and actually lacked the graphic flesh eating, chunk ripping FX of the original.
So the point is?
Christ going by that alone, the film offered less than the original...not more. Validity is lost.
Despite the budget Romero's film also had huge scope and scale as well, so that was in no need of expanding either.
Also the original "Dawn" (or the others) is not a lost and obscure film that no one can see.
So even that one crumb of validity is lost.
What extra are we offered, what advances and unique style do we get from the putrid remake likes of "Dawn", "TCM", "Hills have Eyes"?
Just rent or buy the originals.
"Halloween" remake?
Again...it offered something less, something tired and overused.
It gave us a damn redneck 'my momma used to hit me' psychobabble Myers! **** me! Zombie had already done this kind of killer in HIS OWN first 2 (damn good) movies, let alone the dozens that had come years before.
Whereas Carpenter gave us a far more mysterious and unexplained killer. A seemingly normal child from a solid, upstanding urban environment of white picket fences and Girl Guide cookies.
'Daddy used to touch me' Cletus crud was not needed or welcome in it's killer's psychiatric make-up.
It upped the gore and violence...but the original never strived for to be that gory or violent in the first place. It could have been if it wanted to be. But it didn't want to be.
So in this case the extra censorship and FX freedoms that were valid for "The Thing" say...are not here. As they were not MISSING from the original...they were never meant to be part of it.
Also...whereas sequels are known as sequels (that '2' or '3' is a vital element to a film's title as far as identity goes) and as such exist side by side with the originals, or 'based around an original' film has a completely different title (say "House of 1000 Corpses") remakes tend to replace and usurp the original in the younger public's eye and, most shockingly, in history.
Do we want future generations to far more frequently know "Dawn of the Dead" as that film from 2004??!!
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