You know we’ve been talking about remakes, sequels, prequels and re-visualisations for sometime now, and the general view is that it’s a lazy practice resulting in some really poor and often totally crappy movies.
Yet we’re not giving a lot of credit here, because look at Batman Begins, Harry Potter, or Lord of the RIngs. These are some of the success stories. Then you have the contrast of the Matrix trilogy, Predator, Exorcist…the list could go on, and there’s the huge raft of movies that are in development that fall into these categories (Wicker Man anyone?), particularly Asian remakes (Infernal Affairs?), none of which look promising at all.
So we’ve all moaned and argued about it, but what actually makes a good remake, prequel, or sequel? What rules should film makers follow to be true to the original movie or franchise and make a successful movie? Is it “more of the same”, go back to the source material, keep the original characters? What?
If you examine the movies you’ve actually seen that fit in the realm of “successful coming from a remake, prequel or sequel”, then what can you see in them that makes them work? If you were to look at Batman Begins, what were the reasons that was successful and the previous movies weren’t? Okay, that’s a slightly obvious one, let’s take another couple of examples that are a bit more cloudy. The Godfather series where there is much contention, Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon, all these series had stronger and weaker sequels…why were the good ones good and the bad ones bad? What are the rules to make a good one?
