|
I don't know -- I don't think all of it will be bad. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has the potential to be really good. The original movie is a classic, but even it is ishtty compared to the book. They had to insert a plot and a moral for the movie and change certain parts of the book that they didn't have the technology to make in a movie at the time. I think that a remake of this could be fantastic given the technology we have now and could delete some of the 1970s cheesiness of the movie, although I hope we don't lose ALL of the campiness of the original. There are some parts that could be just amazing with new technology (I'm thinking particularly of the scene where they first walk into the room with the chocolate river, etc.). I also think that the remake can learn from some of the mistakes of the original -- the half-assed musical numbers, the LSD-inspired hallucinations in the tunnel (what the hell was that about?), etc. I have to admit that I would not be nearly as excited about this without Johnny Depp's involvement, but I think he'll do a good job and that makes me look forward to the movie as a whole.
I don't think all of this stuff is necessarily doomed to be horrible -- after all, the third Harry Potter was a definite improvement over the first two. I think the Chronicles of Narnia could be good if done well (like the Lord of Rings, which along with Harry Potter undoubtably inspired the idea of making a movie out of it). I do think that the movie is almost always sub-par when compared to the book, but I've given up on people reading the books to most of these movies that come out -- although in some cases, the movies push people to read the source material, which is always a good thing. And I'd rather see a good movie that's based on an earlier book/movie than a bad original script.
But yeah, overall, Hollywood's lack of originality is pretty sad. I think the thing that disgusts me the most is that they now push for a sequel to any movie that did remotely well (Miss Congeniality 2, what?) just to make money, even if a sequel doesn't make sense to the story or characters. It's especially frustrating when they sacrifice the first film to do it (i.e., the first film is all about two characters falling in love, but for the sequel, they can only get the female lead to come back, so they come up with some flimsy excuse for them breaking up and give her a new love interest for the second film even though they spent the entire first film convincing us the first two were in Tru Luv, etc.).
|