Last summer was dubbed the summer of remakes at the movies and maybe that is why revenues are down. I do not mind movies being remade, but I think the wrong movies are being done.
“War of the Worlds” was not the best; the book and the original were much better. Plus they did not create a monster in Tom Cruise jumping up and down.
“The Bad News Bears” was a classic movie and having Billy Bob Thornton play Walter Matthau’s role was a good move on the filmmaker’s part. It was the kids, however, who were not nearly as good as the original actors.
I am here to give Hollywood a list of movies that should be remade and those who should play their roles.
First, “Risky Business” should be remade, just for the theme music alone. This is a very hard thing for me to say because “Risky Business” is one of my favorite movies of all time, but with the new technology and with much better-looking Porsches, it could work. But I do not need Tom Cruise playing this role again, especially if there is going to be an underwear scene.
I think a good actor to play Cruise’s role would be Topher Grace, from “That 70s Show.” He has the characteristics that made that role work well for Cruise. In Rebecca DeMornay’s position, I think a young, sexy actress, such as Scarlett Johansson, would be perfect. Who would not want to see her play a bad girl role?
A second movie that I believe should be remade is “Teen Wolf.” I thought this was a really good movie, with the exception of the short basketball shorts and weak basketball moves. Although I never did see the sequel, probably for good reason, the original was a good flick.
To play Michael J. Fox’s role, Jason Biggs of “American Pie” would work well. He is short, dorky and could be funny with a lot of hair, dribbling the ball.
OK now, lets get to the movies that are more meaningful to today’s world – such as George Orwell’s “1984.” With all the current talk about government supervision and freedom being taken away, this movie would hit theaters hard.
It would be really cool if Steven Spielberg directed it and gave us his unique touch. The perfect actor for this role would be Adrian Brody. He is someone who I could see trying to change the world.
Another great movie that can be redone and relate very well to our time is “All the President’s Men.” I say this because we now have access to most of the new information about Watergate since Deep Throat came out to the public last year.
It would be really interesting to see if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would be willing to play their own roles. I do not think that would happen, however, and we would be left with other people to play them. I do not know if Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman would be willing to play those roles again, and I do not know if they should. This movie was made 20 years ago, after all.
I could see someone like James Woods playing Redford’s role of Woodward, but Hoffman could play Bernstein again.
This is obviously just a short list of some of the movies that could be remade. But I guarantee that these remakes would be a lot better than some of the others that have been redone.
Justin Satzman can be reached at sports_sundial@csun.edu.
