Keeping Movies Weird

When movies get remade, don’t eliminate all of the rough edges.

It’s the scene in The Empire Strikes Back that I dreaded most as a kid. 

Our heroes had arrived at the supposed sanctuary of Cloud City. 

After a shocking first act that sent our heroes on the run through the second act, we arrive at the city in the clouds, desperate for a respite from the Empire’s relentless pursuit. 

But as everyone knows, that was not to be.

Ever since the Cinemantics crew chatted about our formative movies, I’ve been considering what movies impacted me the most growing up. And while I wanted to go away from obvious choices with my three picks, it was tough to choose a Star Wars film that wasn’t Empire because of that film’s sheer number of moments. 

The Wampa, the speeder rescue, the battle on Hoth, the Asteroid Field, meeting Yoda, “This is no cave,” the list goes on and on. While it’s tough to pick a specific moment from the third act, the image of Vader rising from the dining table and Han’s subsequent torture immediately stick out in my mind when I think about how that movie stayed with me through my childhood.

I thought about that scene when I saw the news that Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Twilight are all set to be resurrected in one form or another in the coming years as studios re-visit well-trodden intellectual property. 

The first thought that comes to mind is the knee-jerk “can’t we make anything new anymore?” thought about decadence and Hollywood’s endemic lack of originality. 

But it also got me thinking about how I revisit movies from my childhood today and how I would reintroduce those films to the next generation of moviegoers. There is obviously a ton of merit and timeless craftsmanship that makes these movies age well.

But there are also some aspects that … haven’t held up against the test of time. 

We constantly talk about revisiting movies from our childhood with more mature, aged eyes, and we love to opine on how a movie has “aged.” What the news of these re-imaginings asks is, what if we wouldn’t have to do that? What if we could introduce the next generation to a new set of movies based on safe, familiar intellectual property that ironed out the aspects of the originals that made us cringe and say, “that hasn’t aged well”? 

Having a new set of movies based on the familiar stories we love would mean that we get to revisit the originals with a safe and secure distance. 

Of course, in many ways, the opportunity to revisit old stories means telling them with new eyes turned towards modern sensibilities. Perhaps new audiences will find that that’s exactly the best way they can connect with those stories. There’s no need to deal with the awkward and cringey moments of these old works if new storytellers can smooth out those rough edges while making the bones of the story alive and fresh. 

But I worry that by striving to make these stories cater to modern preferences, the powers that be (read: movie studios (read again: Disney)) will lose sight of what made some of these movies so impactful and formative. It wasn’t just universal themes of good and evil or iconic characters. It was, well, a little bit of weirdness and a willingness to be a little disturbing. And I hope that creative minds don’t lose sight of that when they remake these stories today.

Here is a brief list of examples of scenes that stuck with me that come to mind:

The aforementioned betrayal and subsequent torture at Cloud City, or the horrifying “shoot her!” opening scene of Jurassic Park featuring a worker being eaten alive by a barely-seen, unstoppable velociraptor in a cage, or Doc Ock murdering a roomful of doctors in Spider-Man 2, or the immortal jump scare at the beginning of Ghostbusters, the goblin-like twist of Bilbo’s face in Fellowship of the Ring, heck, pick any number of moments in the original Indiana Jones trilogy. 

I think what made these movies so timeless is that they weren’t planned out ahead, that while they were made in studio systems, they were still a mishmash of the weird and zany tastes and passions of their creators, that they weren’t afraid to challenge their audiences and had scenes that would keep kids up at night and moments that I could conjure up in an instant decades after seeing them for the first time.

So I hope that when these stories get retold, some of that weirdness will be kept even as creators look to iron out other rough edges and retell the stories with an eye toward what contemporary audiences can connect with. 

All I ask is, just don’t eliminate all of the rough edges. 

I remember the sleepless nights worrying that a velociraptor would dart out of my closet much better than I remember the nights where I slept soundly.

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Readers, what movies kept you awake at night? Are there any recent remakes that left you disappointed? Let us know in the comments below!

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