It’s a well known Hollywood adage, “If it’s worth doing once, rip it off again and again and again.” This is also what’s known as the “Disney” effect, or Direct to Video syndrome. It was revealed today that director extraordinaire Steven Spielberg has chosen his next project. He’s going to remake Harvey. For anyone who hasn’t seen the original it stars the late great Jimmy Stewart as a man who sees a six foot tall invisible rabbit. Yet despite the silly premise its a fantastic movie, what else would you expect from Stewart. While Spielberg is a fantastic director, I think one of the best, the question shouldn’t be Will he make a great movie?, but instead Should this be done at all?It comes as no surprise that Hollywood produces very few original movies these days. You only need to look at the number of this years summer releases to see an ever increasing trend of films with ever growing numbers on the end. Star Trek 11, Harry Potter 6, Transformers 2, Terminator 4, Wolverine (X-Men 4) Origins, and many more.

It surprises me that someone who has been as original and revolutionary as Spielberg has run out of ideas to the point that he has to remake an American classic. However this is the way of Hollywood. Remakes are the way of things. Even some of the other classic films are themselves remakes. The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart and released in 1931, was the third filmed adaptation of this story.

I suggest a new rule. I call it the “Joss Whedon” rule. If you’re going to remake a movie you must remake, and improve, a bad movie. Whedon took his terrible film of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and turned it into a fantastic TV series. We can be done, we have the technology. So before Spielberg can remake a beloved classic he must remake something terrible. I personally would love to see what he could do with an update of Road House, or Supergirl.

What think you?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.