Flashback: I’m lying in bed; scrolling through the wonderful world of procrastination called “the Internet,” when suddenly I see a poster for a remake of The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau (Cowboys and Aliens, Iron Man). It would also feature Ben Kingsley as Bagheera, Bill Murray as Baloo, Scarlett Johannson as Kaa, and Idris Elba as Shere Khan. Now, I’m sure there are going to be some people out there who will be excited for it, but I just thought to myself “OK, now allow me to groan for a good ten seconds.” Why remake a movie like The Jungle Book? Why change what’s already perfect? Did we not learn anything from disasters like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (or was it Underland?) and Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Well, to answer that, we need to look back to see what remakes have done well, and what they have done poorly.
Whenever I think remake, the first thing that comes to mind was the movie-musical The Wiz, based on the hit Broadway adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Yup, a remake of a remake, REMAKECEPTION! Now, how best to convey the funkiness of the original play than casting Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow (you heard right, they took one of the most exciting dancers of all time and tied him to a pole), and hiring the guy that gave the most kickass superhero of all time bat-nipples? The movie flopped; of course, because everyone realized that having Diana Ross and Michael Jackson sing while pointing the camera at their goddamn backs was a horrible idea. That should’ve been the end of it, but our story is far from over.
In the years that followed, especially the 2000s and 2010s, Hollywood kept giving us bad remake after bad remake. With very few exceptions (*ahem* Dark Knight), remakes have been consistently terrible, from the shot-by-shot remake of Psycho, to the abomination that was The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Tim Burton coined the phrase “reimagining” when advertising his terrible Planet of the Apes movie, implying that he wasn’t trying to make the 1968 classic even better, he was trying to offer a different interpretation of an already timeless masterpiece. He didn’t succeed, we all know that, but his heart was in the right place. Our good friend Tim also ruined Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, ensuring they’ll never be remade again, so we have him to thank for that.
What these filmmakers don’t realize is remaking a movie that was perfect to begin with is like trying to make an opera by Mozart better, it simply can’t be done. No one’s ever going to remake To Kill a Mockingbird or Citizen Kane because even idiots like Michael Bay know that the two greatest movies ever made are so perfect they can never be topped. You’re never going to find an actor on par with Gregory Peck, or a director on par with Orson Welles. With The Jungle Book being remade soon, I thought to myself: is it going to be bad? Yes, of course it is. Hopefully, though, when enough of these movies fail, maybe we’ll finally get directors who understand that adding or removing something from art that is already perfect is just wrong. Don’t try to be better than the masters, appreciate the master’s creation.
