10 Worst Film Remakes Since 2000

source// Columbia Pictures

In the early 2000s, Hollywood discovered a temporary cure for “sequelitis”, the disease that gave them the uncontrollable urge to make a sequel to every successful movie. By remaking every picture ever made instead, they could trade upon famous titles and wouldn’t have to come up with new stories.

The flaws in their thinking quickly became apparent with the release of Thir13en Ghosts (2001), The Ring (2002) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), but far more dispiriting were the remakes of mainstream titles. From The Karate Kid to Bad News Bears, no movie was safe.

In corporate speak, they weren’t remaking films at all, they were “reimagining” the original story for a modern audience, updating the themes and characters and adding cutting edge special effects. If Rollerball and The Pink Panther were any indication, the intended audience was a focus group who’d never watched a movie before.

On the basis of the following, conspiracy theorists could advance the theory that not only do pod people run Hollywood, they’ve been there for a long, long time.

10. A Nightmare On Elm Street

When Platinum Dunes rebooted the Elm Street franchise in 2010, they ran smack-bang into the franchise’s biggest problem: how do you re-introduce a villain who’s such a part of popular culture that he was a “nostalgic” gag in Adam Sandler’s The Wedding Singer?

Unfortunately, the company wasn’t interested in Freddy Krueger and viewed him only as money in the bank, hence this sluggish, humourless reboot that pleased nobody. “Actors register as body count,” wrote one critic, “characters go undeveloped and sensation trumps feeling. A nightmare, indeed.”

Had the movie been given to French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, who made Inside (2007), the film would’ve been “a dark version of The Goonies.” Instead, Platinum Dunes went the tried-and-tested route and even though the film made $115 million worldwide, we’ve still to see a sequel.

9. Robocop

This reboot of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original isn’t a movie at all but a glorified series pilot, so bland and asinine that it belongs on the Sci Fi Channel. The wit, violence and satire have been stripped away, and all that remains is a generic revenge story told in a PG-13 fashion.

There’s a funny scene in the original where Ronny Cox’s corporate villain says he had a guaranteed military sale with ED 209 – renovation program, spare parts for 25 years, the works. Then he says, “Who cares if it worked or not?” That’s this movie in a nutshell.

Even a watered down, lifeless Robocop movie has an audience, not to mention franchise potential – who cares whether it works or not? Just add some cool effects, throw in a bunch of name actors (something the original didn’t really have) and you’ve got a guaranteed sale. Now shut up and show us the money.

8. The Truth About Charlie

Starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Donen’s Charade is one of the great comedy thrillers of the 1960s, as charming as it is exciting. Directed by Jonathan Demme, this remake makes so many odd choices that it distances the viewer and calls attention to itself at every available opportunity.

Winning Best director for The Silence Of The Lambs must’ve gone to Demme’s head because he’s not interested in making a chase thriller – for some reason, he just wants to reference French New Wave cinema, and even has Charles Aznavour (as “himself”) make an appearance. All in a movie starring Mark Wahlberg, no less.

Throw in a cacophonous musical score, overbearing camerawork and Tim Robbins as a too-shifty-to-be-believable government official and you’ve got a film that instead of exciting the audience leaves them wondering what they just witnessed.

7. Friday The 13th

Made without its tongue in its cheek, this remake isn’t aiming for post-modernism or nostalgia, it’s just another soulless product that wants to take your money. Slouching from one overly familiar set piece to the next without irony, the film seems to have been assembled from tried and tested ideas by marketers.

There are characters who tell the story of Jason Voorhees around the campfire, a bunch of creepy locals (including a yee-haw redneck straight out of central casting) plus an incompetent Sheriff who doesn’t believe that the disappearances are the work of a maniac in a hockey mask (what is this, Scooby Doo?), but what really grates are the groaning attempts at humour.

“Comic relief” is provided by a stock stoner character who talks to his bong in a funny voice and performs some pratfalls that end up with furniture being broken. This necessitates a trip to the woodshed, and you know what that means. Yes, the token ethnic guy wanders off alone, in the dark, to his doom. It’s like Scream never happened.

6. The Invasion

If ever an era needed a remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers it was the corporate-owned 2000s and Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) was just the filmmaker to pull it off. He envisioned a subtle and atmospheric movie shot in claustrophobic spaces that utilized virtually no special effects, but Warner Bros had other ideas.

When the studio balked at Hirschbiegel’s first cut, producer Joel Silver brought in the Wachowskis to add more action and their contribution must’ve been substantial judging by the $10 million spent on reshoots. In the final version, the movie flirts with paranoia and chase scenes, but isn’t particularly accomplished at either.

Neither a very good sci-fi movie nor a very good thriller, the movie groans along for 99 minutes and not even Daniel Craig can save it. The human drama is flat, the action lacks spark and the ending is the limpest of any of the Body Snatchers movies. Where’s Donald Sutherland when you need him?

5. The Day The Earth Stood Still

Based on a story by Harry Bates, Robert Wise’s The Day The Earth Stood Still is one of the landmark science fiction films of the 1950s. Directed by the guy who made Hellraiser: Inferno, this remake casts Keanu Reeves as an alien named Klaatu who visits Earth in a giant sphere.

The original ended with Klaatu leaving Earth after giving the world’s leaders a choice: you can join the other planets in peace or you can extend your violence into space, in which case “this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.”

Having none of that, the remake dissipates the impact of the story by having Klaatu abandon his plans when Jennifer Connelly and Jaden Smith persuade him that humanity is just swell. Now shut up and watch and these special effects.

As if casting Smith as Connelly’s stepson wasn’t odd enough, the movie also throws in Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defence and John Cleese (playing it straight) as a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Rumours that Uwe Boll was cast as the US President turned out to be untrue.

4. The Wolfman

Described by a former studio head as “crappy” and “one of the worst movies we ever made”, this remake follows in the footsteps of Van Helsing and The Mummy and successfully attempts to turn another of Universal’s classic monster movies into a bloated effects film.

In no other respect is the movie a success. Rushed into production with an unfinished script, the movie tries to give its characters something to do, and the harder it tries, the more apparent the problem becomes: the material does not support the blockbuster treatment.

The film has multi-million dollar production design and the best effects that money can buy, but the filmmakers have mistaken the titular character for a superhero. We didn’t need to see him turn into a CG creation who runs across rooftops and leaps in front of traffic, causing vehicles to crash. That detracts from the human element, which is sorely lacking in this soulless mess.

3. The Hitcher

Ladies and gentlemen, the Platinum Dunes formula for remaking popular hits: if it doesn’t move at speed, explode or get naked, out it goes.

Gone is Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character, while lead Jim Halsey becomes a college student driving to Spring Break with his lingerie model girlfriend, who wears short shorts and is first seen removing her top. To make sure the target demographic doesn’t get bored, every let up in the action has been removed from Eric Red’s original story, which works amazingly well if their intention was to suck all the life out of the movie.

In the same year that Michael Myers returned with an overlong backstory, John Ryder (Sean Bean – who was better as the bad guy in The Island) was back as the hitchhiker your mother warned you about. There are no flashbacks to Ryder’s messed-up childhood here, just a ton of cheap shocks, ripped-out throats and it-was-all-a-dream moments, none of which appear in Robert Harmon’s film. With no proper build-up, no suspense and nobody worth rooting for, we’re all of a sudden adrift in a movie with plenty of running around and stuff blowing up, and very uninteresting it is too.

2. Planet Of The Apes

If you need convincing that blockbusters in the early 2000s were churned out for an audience of gurgling test subjects, look no further than Tim Burton’s “reimagining” of Planet Of The Apes. Judging by the level of wit and creativity on display here, a “reimagining” means a rushed and pointless film that throws out the original in favour of a third-rate Twilight Zone episode.

The 1968 original is incredibly subversive, with characters arguing that religious dogma (read “creationism”) should not be substituted for scientific fact, but this movie is having none of that. Instead, Mark Wahlberg runs around, there are some special effects, and Charlton Heston turns up to say “damn them all to hell” (as will you).

So incredibly slipshod in its storytelling that neither Burton nor his cast could explain the plot, Apes ’01 has the distinction of being the only movie in the franchise where nothing is satisfactorily explained, characters and plot points are introduced and discarded at random and the big ‘reveal’ at the climax still leaves viewers scratching their heads.

Does Ape-raham Lincoln have a monument in his honour because he emancipated the apes? Or did he free the human slaves? If you expect answers from Burton’s DVD commentary, you’ll be disappointed.

1. Total Recall

When Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall opened in June 1990, it cost a whopping $70 million (making it the most expensive movie since Rambo III) and packed in more blood, gunfights and mind-bending ideas than any other film in a summer that included Robocop 2, Dick Tracy and Die Hard 2.

Jump forward two decades and this wet fart of a remake has taken the scissors to the original script, cutting out all the zingers, all the fun and most of the plot. So much story has been removed, and replaced by blah chase sequences, that all the life gets sucked out of the story. Jessica Biel suddenly appears, and there’s a chase. Bill Nighy suddenly appears, and there’s a chase. Bryan Cranston (criminally underused in the Ronny Cox role) appears, and blah blah blah.

Another disappointment is that the director is LenWiseman, who made an auspicious debut with Underworld (2003), followed it with Underworld Evolution (2006) and burst onto the Action Director’s A-list with Live Free Or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4.0, if you’re European), for our money the best Die Hard sequel. Total Recall has none of that movie’s verve or excitement (no free running Frenchman, either), and since we’ve literally seen it all before, done better, there’s no reason to bother with this boring failure.