Enough With The Remakes Already

One of my favorite traditions in my household is movie and pizza night.  It usually happens every Friday, where we enjoy pizza, then all cuddle together to watch a movie. When David Bowie passed away, I knew I'd be failing as a Dad if I didn't share "The Labyrinth" with them.  In much the same manner, after Robin Williams had passed, we watched "Jumanji".  Both movies are fantastic fantasy adventures MADE by the defining role David Bowie and Robin Williams played in them respectively.  So when I heard "Jumanji" was being redone, I was frustrated, because how could you make that movie any better.  And now, just a week after Bowie has left us, there's talk of redoing "Labyrinth".  What?  Why?

There seems to be this constant need in Hollywood to take something and, well, improve upon it years later.  I know it's really nothing new. However, it definitely seems to be happening more and more.  For superhero movies, it's all about the "reboot" as opposed to the remake.  I ran into that this weekend as my son and I were discussing what movie to watch on boys night.  There's "Hulk" (with Eric Bana) or "Incredible Hulk" (with Edward Norton), there's the Tobey Maguire "Spiderman" or the Andrew Garfield "Amazing Spiderman" series. We finally settled on the Batman movie.  No, not Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, or Christian Bale... but Adam West circa 1966.  (I forgot just how bad it was, although hysterical.)

There's movies that need to be remade, and then the ones that become viral that some executive must think it's a great idea to cash in on that fad.  Most of the time, it just doesn't work.  (And don't get me started on unnecessary, years later, sequels.)  Let "classic" movies be, please.  If you want to remake movies, reinvision them, like how "Hook" put a fresh spin on the Peter Pan tale, (even if it was a sequel technically). Or how the live action "Maleficent" made us look at Sleeping Beauty differently.  But another "Labyrinth", really?