Remakes, for the most part, suck.  This is because of numerous reasons: lack of artistic passion, lack of acceptance amongst filmgoers and, most importantly, extreme senselessness.  Remakes, as University Of Michigan professor Guy Madjar puts it, "Are movies that differ in relative closeness to their predecessors but basically work to mimic the original" (Madjar 30).  Almost all remakes are green lit for one main reason: money.  Movie studios and producers have a preconceived notion that because a film was popular once, it will be again!  They then proceed to make a lazy, and ultimately pointless remake that pales in comparison to the original.  Another reason for remakes is the need to "update the film for modern audiences."  However, this has proven ineffective with remakes like Conan the Barbarian which made back $21 million of its $70 million budget (IMDb).  Lastly, remaking a film is an enormous waste of time.  Tons of money gets thrown down the drain on something that has already been made.  Remakes most of the time do not work because of monetary desires, the butchering of the original story and a lack of dedicated, artistic direction.

One main issue regarding film remakes is the primary purpose.  According to Yohana Desta, an entertainment reporter for the online news outlet mashable.com, "Studios make back-to-back remakes for a laundry list of reasons, chief among them security and bankability  --  movies that were past hits are easy financial wins for the future" (Desta).  Because of this, many remakes such as Gus van Sant's Psycho or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake in 2003 which recent University Of Toledo Film Student Nick Griffin graduate referred to as a "commercialized cinema-king's ransom compared to the original," are extremely disliked by critics and filmgoers alike. (Griffin 32).  Griffin's main reason being the 1974 original was made on a mere budget of $400,000, adjusted for inflation, and has since been deemed an artistic achievement of cinema according to many critics such as Fernando F. Croce of CinePassion who writes that the "grindhouse masterpiece abounds in snuff ambience and cacophonous trauma" (Croce).  The remake, which had a considerably larger budget of $10 million, was a critical failure.  Griffin states in his article that, "Viewers of the original are terrified by the mysteries surrounding the family; viewers of the remake are left bored and disgusted after they learn what makes Leatherface tick" (Griffin 32).  Simply put, the remake removed the mysterious and terrifying ambiguity of the original, thus making the main antagonists considerably less frightening.  Remakes, in general, attempt to warp the original material into something undesirable.

Speaking of the undesirable, Gus van Sant's remake of Alfred Hitchcock's iconic 1960 horror film, Psycho, was produced in 1998.  A prime example of why remakes are unnecessary, the film was essentially a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's original.  No, seriously.  The film is an exact, shot-by-shot copy of the original film.  The only differences being addition of color, and a few modern technology updates; Oh, and the credits are now in black and green.  Thomas Leitch of the University of Delaware writes in his article "Hitchcock without Hitchcock," about the ridiculousness of "The remake's textual closeness to its original.  Van Sant and the executives at Universal had gone so far as to proclaim that Van Sant would not only follow Joseph Stefano's dialogue line by line (as the remake generally, though not unexceptionably, does) but John Russell's camerawork shot by shot (Leitch 249).  He also writes that "No matter how they treated [van Sant's] remake of Psycho, they were wrong, because the remake itself was neither one thing nor another" (249).  This remake, in particular, is utterly pointless.  An exact replica of another film is a gigantic waste of time, money and effort.  Van Sant did nothing to enhance his version of Psycho, he simply remade it exactly how Hitchcock did in 1960.  Roger Ebert summed up the film best by stating that "The movie is an invaluable experiment in the theory of cinema, because it demonstrates that a shot-by-shot remake is pointless" (Manjar 32).  There is simply no point in this remake existing, as it in no way adds anything of artistic, originality to the original source material, but rather sucks the life out of it.  Remakes are vehemently unnecessary and, most of the time, pale in comparison to their originals.

Remakes of popular movies are constantly being produced nowadays, particularly in the horror genre.  However, nearly every horror movie remake has bombed critically.  One recent example is the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left.  Ryan Lizardi of Pennsylvania State University writes in his article "'Re-Imagining' Hegemony and Misogyny in the Contemporary Slasher Remake" about how the remake changed the ending from the original film to make its outcome more hopeful.  In the original, both the daughter and son did not survive; in the remake, "The teenage daughter is able to drag herself, in spite of her gunshot wounds, to her parents' house so that her doctor-father can save her life.  Not only does the daughter live through her ordeal, in contrast to the original, but Krug's teenage son also lives to be rescued from his situation" (Lizardi 120).  By completely altering the dismal, horrifying ending of the original, the remake successfully diffuses all dread and terror present in the film's climax.  This is also the same case for that god-awful Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.  In the original's abrupt ending, the final girl is barely able to escape while Leatherface manically spins about in the middle of the road yielding a chainsaw.  There is still an incredible sense of fear and mystery surrounding the outcome of the girl and Leatherface.  The viewer is left in horror to wonder what possibly could have happened next.  In the remake, the final girl runs over Leatherface, gets away, and saves a baby, somehow.  This ending completely voids the true horror of the original's ending by having a hopeful future for the lead character, and by saving a damn baby.  With this new ending, the film simply does not carry nearly as much fear, suspense or dread as the original.  Completely altering the way a film concludes is one of the many reasons why remakes do not succeed, and are not necessary in the first place.

Most remakes are not made for artistic merit to begin with.  Movie studios produce remakes mainly for the big digits.  Guy Madjar writes in his article, "I've Got Nothing: The Poorly Executed Ideas of a Rich Industry" that "Audiences have been flocking to the theater to watch remakes for over a century.  In 2010, an analysis of American-produced films released in that year showed that 40 percent of the productions were remakes, sequels, prequels, or adaptations" (Madjar 31).  Basically, remakes are doing well enough financially in today's entertainment world for studios to continue producing them; regardless of what filmgoers think of the final products.  For example, recent superhero movies like the abominable Fant4stic.  20th Century Fox only made the film so they would retain the rights to the source material, rather than letting Marvel have them (IMDb).  While this film qualifies as a reboot, rather than a remake, the two terms are in the same ballpark.  20th Century Fox simply did not give a shit about the artistic direction of the film and demanded heavy re-shoots and cut the length of the film by fifty minutes (IMDb).  In simpler terms, they wanted a nice, ninety-minute action movie that will make mountains of cash.  However, the film was a commercial and critical disaster and "Is the lowest grossing film to be released in more than 4,000 theaters in North America.  It is also the only one of those films that made less than $100 million at the domestic box office, making a mere $56.1 million" (IMDb).  This is another prime example of a studio remaking a film simply to earn money, and in this instance, it failed miserably.  When a gigantic lack of care is put into a project, audiences will not spend money to support it.

One other major flaw with remaking a film, in particular a foreign film, are the vast cultural differences.  When Hollywood has remade a foreign film, almost every time, they do not do the original source material justice whatsoever.  University of Iceland professor Bjorn Nordfjord weighed in on this subject with a comparison to Icelandic film Reykjavik Rotterdam to the American remake Contraband.  In both films, the plot revolves around a former drug smuggler who must go back to his old life in order to save his family.  Nordfjord points out that   

"In Reykjavi k Rotterdam Chris/Kristo fer was primarily motivated by his financial difficulties and had little sympathy for the plight of his brother-in-law; in contrast, his return to smuggling in Contraband is solely to bail out his brother-in-law" (Nordfjord 94).  In the original, the main character has a significantly stronger motivation than the remake.  Chris struggling with financial problems and his family's future carries substantially more emotional weight on his character than simply bailing his brother-in-law out.  Also, in the remake, "Secondary characters have been added, such as Chris' jailed father and a ruthless crime boss," flooding the film with underdeveloped characters (94).  There is no reason for the ruthless crime boss to be in the film, as he is nothing more than a cliche, evil boss dude.  This is a strong example of Hollywood "fluffing" a film up.  Adding characters with the intention of giving the film significant depth does not work in remakes because there was no intention of them being there in the first place.  There is also a subplot added to the remake involving a rare Jackson Pollock painting, which has nothing to do with the main plot.  This simply bogs the film down with unnecessary plot elements and characters.  Overall, Contraband is nothing more than a convoluted, mess of a remake, many of which are being produced today.

Remaking a film is an utter waste of time.  Many studios today pour copious amounts of money into green lighting a remake of an already existing movie.  One recent example is the 2012 Total Recall remake.  The film cost $125 million to remake, and it only grossed approximately $58 million.  Not even half of the movie's budget was earned back, thus making this remake pointless.  It was also a critical failure with Peter Travers of Rolling Stone declaring that "The new Recall is totally witless, don't expect laughs. Originality and coherence are also notably MIA (Travers).  As well-respected YouTube film reviewer Cecil Trachenburg of GoodBadFlicks points out that instead of spending $125 million on a remake, "To take that money, and churn out five or ten smaller productions."  He also smartly adds that "A higher chance of return on investment" would be prevalent.  There is a strikingly higher chance of a low-budget film like The Blair Witch Project to become a critical and financial hit rather than blowing millions of dollars on a underwhelming remake.  

On the other hand, there have been some successful remakes.  As Trachenburg specifies, "The best remakes will take elements of the original, but go in a different direction, or tell a different version of the story."  A big example he points out is David Cronenburg's remake of The Fly.  While the narrative of the original unfolded through a flashback in which a woman explains to police a science experiment gone wrong involving a man mysteriously turning into a fly, the remake went in a darker, sci-fi horror direction.  The plot involved a scientist accidentally teleporting himself with a fly, then becoming a hybrid of a human and a fly.  It is vastly different than the original, but tells the same story in its own, unique way.  Later in the video, Trachenburg states that "Adding to the formula while simultaneously respecting what made the original work," is what makes for an interesting remake.  This system does not always work, however.  Rob Zombie's Halloween remake explored Michael Myers' background and family, unlike the original, and went for a significantly darker tone.  However, his addition of an abundance of gore took away the mystery and suspense that made Michael Myers a great villain in the original.  This solidifies the point that remakes are futile.  Going in a completely different direction while paying homage to the original does not always work.  Time and money is incomparably better spent coming up with an original, unique idea.  Films like this tend to be hugely successful and spawn many sequels for the years to come.  Remaking something that has already been established as good, is a complete waste of time.

Overall, an incredible amount of time is wasted on remaking a film.  Most often, remakes are produced for the monetary gain rather than for cinematic achievement.  A decent amount of the time, these remakes flop at the box office!  This adds another layer to the pointlessness that are film remakes.  Also, most remakes completely obliterate what made the original successful.  Major plot points are altered to be "suitable" for modern audiences to the extreme disdain towards fans of the original films.  A primary example of this is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake in which the iconic ending of the original was butchered into something else entirely.  Finally, the lack of strong, artistic direction on most remakes significantly contributes to the failure of them.  One of the main reasons why the original films were successful was because of a talented, unique director.  Remaking a film with this out of consideration is a disgrace to the original film, and a disgrace to cinema.  Remakes of classic films need to be stopped, as it is an utter waste of time, money and effort.  Time is considerably better spent developing an original story, one that will stand the test of time in cinema forever.

