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So there I was this past weekend, perusing the Arts and Entertainment section of my local Sunday paper to see what new movies are coming out on Friday. And what are the three big studio releases for the second week of February, 2014? About Last Night, Endless Love and RoboCop. After double-checking the date on the newspaper to make sure I didn’t pick up a back issue from 1987 by mistake, I couldn’t help but marvel at such a “perfect storm” of short-term Hollywood nostalgia hitting theaters over the course of a single weekend.
Of course, filmmakers have been cannibalizing their own children since the earliest days of the medium (Not that this can’t be a good thing; the 1931 Frankenstein, 1939 The Wizard of Oz and 1941 The Maltese Falcon have it all over their predecessors.), but this upcoming trifecta is just the latest volume in an ongoing series of Reagan-era reminiscing. Over the last five years or so, audiences have been “treated” to remakes/reboots/rehashings of Fame, Clash of the Titans, The Karate Kid, Arthur, Conan the Barbarian, Footloose, The Thing, Red Dawn, and various horror outings (as described in a 2009 MovieFanFare article here), not to mention big-screen translations of such ’80s TV favorites as The A-Team, The Dukes of Hazzard and Miami Vice.
It doesn’t seem to faze studio executives that the success rate of these projects is a little less than 50 percent, because even more are on the way or in pre-production, from Denzel Washington taking over for Edward Woodward as The Equalizer to a remake of Dirty Dancing (which has to do better than 2004’s pseudo-sequel Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights) and a third-go-around for the gangster saga Scarface (gee, maybe this time they can be a little less prudish on the language).
Now, far be it from me to denigrate this weekend’s time-warped trio after only having seen the trailers for them. After all, About Last Night is trying to present an updated, African-American take on David Mamet’s original play, and RoboCop offers a cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman behind Joel Kinnaman’s title cybernetic lawman, to say nothing of the inevitable “upgrade” of CGI effects (although I still have a fondness for the original’s stop-motion-animated ED-209). But, seriously…a remake of Endless Love (or, as a Movies Unlimited rental customer once wrote down direct from the box cover, “lessloveendlessloveend”)? Was there really a groundswell of demand for another version of the Brooke Shields teen soaper which was overwhelmingly panned upon its ’81 release, with a script so saccharine and over-the-top it could have come from a Nicholas Sparks adaptation?
If today’s filmmakers (many of whom, it seems, must have been in high school and gone to matinees at their local mall during the ’80s) truly have their hearts set on continuing to mine the era of headbands, rolled-up jacket sleeves and legwarmers for their projects, might I humbly suggest:
Flashdance, with Miley Cyrus as the steelworker by day, twerking dancer by night (Twerking is something that will never go out of style, right?).
WarGames seems ripe for a high-tech re-boot, although the idea of one lone computer whiz getting into heavily guarded U.S. government databases and making off with top-secret info does sound a little far-fetched now, I guess.
How about a big-budget revamping of 1981’s The Legend of the Lone Ranger, with more explosions and…oh, right, I forgot they tried that already.
With the World Cup set for this year, it’s a wonder that no one is currently shooting a remake of the Sylvester Stallone soccer-themed rouser Victory. Move it from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom, with Vin Diesel in the Stallone role, Jason Statham filling in for Michael Caine, and Bend It Like Beckham’s Parminder Nagra in place of Pelé.
A CGI updating of Howard the Duck, with former insurance spokesfowl Gilbert Gottfried taking over as the voice of Howard, fits in with the current trend of comic book movies (Come on, Marvel, you could then connect this to the rest of your cinematic universe).
Adam Sandler, why haven’t you announced plans to remake Caveman and offered Ringo Starr a cameo as the tribal elder?
And finally, how about a new verison of the 1984 laughfest Night Patrol, with The Unknown Comic’s lead role to be played by Shia LaBeouf, who apparently is already getting into character?
Oh, and that 2009 article I mentioned earlier about ’80s horror movie remakes? The author concluded it with “What’s next? A remake of Leprechaun?” Well, guess what WWE Films has on its release schedule for later this year? That’s right, Leprechauns: Origins, with diminutive pro wrestler Dylan (Hornswoggle) Postl in the title role. Brian, you should be working in Hollywood!
What about you, movie fans? Which awesome–0r gnarly–1980s movies do you think merit remaking and/or updating…or do you think enough is enough? Sound off in the comments below!