Rethinking Hollywood do-overs, from 'Scarface' and 'Straw Dogs' to 'The Lion King'

By Sarah Sluis

New York Magazine recently hired producer Gavin Polone (who has pretty solid IMDB credits) as a columnist. His first article's point? Hollywood is making so many bad remakes they're driving everyone away from the theatres. He cites specific movies as examples, concluding that it can be "good" or "understandable" to make remakes, as long as "the filmmaker brings something new to it." (Example: True Grit, Rise of the Planet of the Apes for its special effects). Isn't that self-evident? Yet he brings up movies where scripts have been recycled verbatim (The Omen), and the disappointment of last week's Straw Dogs, which tried to remake a classic.

Indeed, there's a certain irony that in the sea of remakes, a re-release like The Lion King can make $30 million in a weekend. Disney didn't have to reshoot or recast the movie, or turn it into CG animation. They didn't even have to show it in 3D (Disney's one upgrade), since many of the viewers chose to see it in 2D. People want to see a good, memorable movie. They want to be entertained. Yet the only way Hollywood can think of to do that is to make bad remakes of good movies? What about seeing the originals?

After reading Polone's article, I came across a short announcement in Variety. Universal plans to remake Scarface, that epic 1983 gangster movie. Will it contribute anything new? According to the article, it "will take elements from the 1932 Howard Hughes pic and 1983 Al Pacino version, wherein a refugee or immigrant rises the ranks of the criminal underworld to eventually become a kingpin." How much does a change of scenery actually mean? From a cultural perspective, it will be interesting to frame the violence in the context of another immigrant group's struggle, but it's not like we have our doors wide open to immigrants anymore, thanks to 9/11-related policies. If the first 1932 film centered on Italian immigrants and the second Cubans, where do we go after that?

It's also worth noting that 51 years elapsed between the first and second Scarfaces. If this project goes into development/production quickly, it will be around 30 years between the second and third films. The speed at which projects are recycled has increased to an untenable point. I can understand non-cinephiles not wanting to see the black-and-white Scarface with production code-level violence. But 1983's Scarface is still incredibly watchable, if a little heavy on the cheesy excess of the era. I just saw it for the first time last year! Taking an iconic, much-loved, still-watched movie and remaking it is a recipe for disaster. It didn't work for Straw Dogs, and it won't work for Scarface unless it dramatically overhauls the entire movie--and then, at that point, why do a remake? Why not just start fresh using different plot points? Because that, my friends, is how Hollywood works.