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From shot-for-shot copies to misguided franchise starters, these remakes left audiences asking one simple question: what was the point?
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00:00There's nothing inherently wrong with remaking a film. In fact, some of the greatest films of all
00:04time are remakes. And even when remakes aren't particularly good, there's usually some sort of
00:08logic as to why they got made, even if it is a cynical, financially motivated sort of logic.
00:14But sometimes there are remakes that don't make much sense to anyone. Films that make everyone
00:18ask, what was the point? So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture, and here are movie
00:23remakes nobody expected or wanted. The Italian Job. The Italian Job is one of the great British
00:29films of the 1960s. A bunch of cheeky chappy Cockney stereotypes led by Michael Caine in
00:34Decktown Minis execute an audacious heist in Milan, all while trying to outwit the fearsome
00:40Italian mafia. During production, Fiat offered to pay for all cars used and abused if the
00:45iconic trio of Mini Coopers were swapped for Fiat 500s. The filmmaker said no.
00:50And then there's the 2003 remake. It isn't necessarily bad. It's an enjoyable enough
00:552000s action film with some good set pieces, but it's hard not to feel like the Minis could
01:00have been swapped out for any other brand of car, and the film released under a totally
01:04different name without anybody noticing. And unlike most questionable remakes, there isn't
01:08the argument that it's trying to bank on name recognition, since the original wasn't
01:12particularly successful in the United States. It doesn't even bother to remake cinema's most
01:17impressive and most literal cliffhanger. I mean, what is even the point? Psycho.
01:21The original Psycho is one of the most iconic films ever made, made by one of the most influential
01:27directors ever to work in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock. Remaking it would be like trying
01:31to remake Citizen Kane or The Godfather. There's nothing you can add that would improve it,
01:35so why even bother? But the bizarre thing about Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake is that it doesn't
01:41try to add anything at all. Psycho isn't just similar to the original, it's basically a shot-for-shot
01:46remake. Same framing, same dialogue, same editing, same music, even the same special effects in some
01:52instances. The only noticeable differences are the actors, it being shot in colour, and
01:57some random abstract shots intercut with the murder scenes. Putting aside the fact that the
02:01original Psycho is shot the way it is specifically to take advantage of the black and white film that
02:06they were working with, and that Vince Vaughn's take on Norman Bates' Pales in comparison to
02:10Anthony Perkins, the biggest issue with this film is that it's impossible to get past the question
02:14of why. What could this possibly have been trying to achieve? The answer largely remains, well,
02:19who knows? The Mummy. Universal's monster movies have a long and storied tradition in Hollywood,
02:24so it's not hugely surprising that eventually somebody somewhere decided the studio should
02:29have another crack at them. What was surprising was their decision to forego any series of fun or
02:34adventure, and instead try and use it as a vehicle to jumpstart their already failing Dark Universe.
02:39The Dark Universe was Universal's attempt at copying the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
02:44and much like the DC Extended Universe, it tried to jump the gun and get straight to the team-ups
02:49without laying any of the groundwork. This is why we ended up with a Mummy film where the
02:53secondary antagonist was Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, as well as one which spent half of its plot setting
02:58at Prodigium instead of having fun adventures. The most frustrating thing about The Mummy is that
03:03not only had previous remakes been successful, but also that many people did want a continuation of
03:08the franchise. What almost nobody was looking for, though, was generic Tom Cruise action film number
03:14387, Red Dawn. There might not be any film more 1980s than the original Red Dawn, the story of a
03:21group of high school teens heroically defending their small middle American town from invading
03:26Russians during World War III. The film captures so much about the era that it's practically a time
03:31capsule. So when MGM decided to have another go at it in the late 2000s, there were likely a few
03:36heads being scratched. The idea of Soviet troops parachuting into small-town USA was already stretching
03:42reality when the original was made, and was the sort of nonsense you could only get away with in the
03:46glorious days of 80s action cinema. Transplant that into a post-Cold War world, and the idea of any
03:52country having both the justification and the resources to launch a full-scale land invasion of the
03:57USA becomes laughable. This is a problem the filmmakers soon ran into themselves when they
04:01realised that China, their original USSR replacement, was actually on comparatively good terms with the
04:07US in 2010, and would not appreciate their portrayal, to say nothing of the diminished box office receipts
04:12that would come from ditching the Chinese box office. To fix this, they replaced China in post-production
04:17with the second biggest baddie they could think of, North Korea, a country that, although in possession of
04:22a sizable military, would not have the logistical capabilities of invading the United States.
04:27Red Dawn just isn't the sort of plot that made much sense in the 2010s, which explains why it failed
04:32on both a critical and commercial level. Point Break
04:35If the original Red Dawn is the mid-80s incarnates, then Point Break is the same for the early 90s.
04:41If someone had never heard of Point Break, all you would have to do is tell them the premise.
04:45Keanu Reeves is an FBI agent who must go undercover to infiltrate a bunch of surfer dude bank robbers,
04:50and they'd more than likely be able to guess which decade it was made and released in.
04:54Even Reeves' character's name, Johnny Utah, exudes that sort of 90s extreme with an X call
05:01you just don't get anymore. So what do you get when you take a film that could most accurately
05:05be described as radical and remake it in a post-2000s cynical, realism-obsessed media landscape?
05:12Funnily enough, you get a bland and uninspiring action film. In its defence, the 2015 remake got a fair
05:18amount of impressive extreme sports sequences, but it ended up taking itself way too seriously,
05:23and lost that genuine sense of fun that made the original film what it was.
05:27Also, how do you compete with Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey, and Patrick Swayze? This remake lost the
05:32battle before it was even fought. Total Recall
05:35There are some directors whose films have so much personality that it's impossible to imagine them
05:40being made by anyone else. There's a reason Tarantino films are Tarantino films before they're
05:45anything else. So what happens when you try to remake a film that is defined by a director's style?
05:50Well, if 2012's Total Recall remake is anything to go by, you get something uninspiring. As with a lot
05:55of the other films on this list, Total Recall isn't terrible. It just isn't very good, either.
06:00All of the style and atmosphere that made the Arnie-led original So Beloved is gone, and in its place
06:06is generic 2010 sci-fi action. Most of the major changes sit somewhere between confusing and pointless,
06:12and everything that stays the same becomes a pale imitation of the original. Nothing sums up
06:17Total Recall better than how it deals with the is-it-a-dream plotline, taking one of the most
06:22interesting parts from the original, repeating it, and somehow making it totally uninteresting.
06:28It asks all the same questions, but never bothers to get you to care what the answers are.
06:32The Thing
06:342011's The Thing isn't technically a remake of John Carpenter's 1982 horror masterpiece.
06:39It's actually a prequel, depicting what happened at the Norwegian base right up to the original's
06:44iconic opening scene of a helicopter chasing a snow dog through the Antarctic desert.
06:49Counterpoint, it's literally called The Thing. It may link up narratively with Carpenter's
06:53original, but you could remove the mid-credits scene and call it a complete remake with next
06:58to no issue. It's closer to the 1982 film than it is to 1951's The Thing from Another World,
07:04which is the original original. Even a poster is pretty much a remake.
07:08If anything, the 2011 film's existence in the purgatory between remake and prequel puts
07:13it in a worst-of-both-world scenario. It manages to retread the beats of Carpenter's film with
07:18the bland monotony of the least inventive remakes, while simultaneously falling into the standard
07:23prequel trap of over-explaining minor details and providing answers to questions that nobody
07:29ever asked. Not quite one, not quite the other, and definitely not the continuation of The Thing
07:34that anybody was looking for or interested in. Get Carter. Another instance of location swapping
07:39a British film to the USA, the Sylvester Stallone-fronted remake of Get Carter swaps out the Newcastle
07:46of 1971 for Millennium Era Seattle, a difference so massive that swapping out the script wouldn't
07:52have made as much difference. Newcastle might not be in the title of Get Carter, but the North East
07:57England city is an integral location as you'll ever find in a film. The city defines the original,
08:02arguably providing more character and personality than Carter himself. Taking a film so fundamentally
08:07rooted in time and place and shifting it to a different where and when was always going to be
08:13a questionable move. But it's not just that they moved it out of Newcastle, it's where they moved
08:17it to. America had no shortage of grim post-industrial decay in the late 90s, and somewhere like Detroit,
08:23Philadelphia, or even Chicago could have had the potential for at least an attempt at translating the
08:28neglected northern atmosphere so important to the original's atmosphere. Seattle, however,
08:34is none of those things. What's left is a reasonably generic mid-2000s action movie that
08:39hits all the narrative beats of the original, but completely fails to maintain the one thing
08:44that tied it all together in the first place. Ben-Hur. It's unlikely that there was anyone in the early
08:492010s who heard, they're remaking Ben-Hur, and thought it was a good idea. The 1959 Swords and
08:55Sandals epic was the second highest-grossing film of all time when it released, has been seen by
09:01millions on TV in the years since, and with 11 Oscars, shares the record for most Academy Award
09:07wins over 60 years later. Granted, the 1959 version was itself a remake, but considering 1925's Ben-Hur,
09:14A Tale of the Christ was a black-and-white silent film, it was really more of an adaptation than
09:19anything
09:20else. The 2016 version did not have that benefit. Nothing short of the greatest film of all time
09:26could avoid being a disappointment when compared to the originals. The result was rather predictable,
09:31hardly anyone went to see it, and those who did had few positive things to say about it.
09:35Cabin Fever. It could be argued, the original Cabin Fever was unexpected and unwanted,
09:41and it's not even a remake. Released in the midst of the early 2000s, it follows a group of friends
09:46as
09:46they slowly succumbed to an aggressive flesh-eating virus. It's a fine enough film if you like that
09:51sort of low-budget schlocky horror where a bunch of drunk, horny teens go out to a cabin in the
09:55woods
09:56and die horribly. But it wasn't exactly revolutionary, and didn't have much mass-market appeal. It didn't
10:01make much of an impact, and after a couple of straight-to-DVD sequels, the franchise quickly slipped
10:06into dormancy. So it's both surprising and more than a little confusing that in 2016, only 16 years after
10:13its premiere, a remake was released. Even more baffling, it's mostly the same film again.
10:18While not a shot-for-shot remake like Psycho, the new Cabin Fever still retreads the original pretty
10:24much beat for beat. Even the deaths, one of the biggest draws for this type of film, are nearly
10:29all identical, just with slightly updated special effects. Cabin Fever is perhaps the epitome of an
10:35unexpected, unwanted remake. Nobody was crying out for it before it was made, and nobody cares now that
10:40it exists.