5 Remakes: Who Did It Better?
From revenge plots to Hollywood tragedies.
It's indisputable. Remakes have been a part of cinema since its earliest days. They reflect shifts in technology, audience tastes, and cultural perspectives. Some interpret past classics. Others merely update them for a new generation. In this series, I examine ten of them and evaluate who did it better. From revenge plots to Hollywood tragedies, here are ten films illustrating the evolving history of remakes.
Oldboy (2003, dir. Park Chan-wook) / Oldboy (2013, dir. Spike Lee)
Spike Lee's controversial remake of the South Korean revenge classic, Oldboy, maintains the core plot but alters key elements. In doing so, it loses some of the original's emotional and stylistic impacts that made it such an instant cult classic.
A Star Is Born (1937, dir. William A. Wellman) / A Star Is Born (1954, dir. George Cukor)
George Cukor directed the first of several A Star Is Born remakes. His version transforms a Hollywood tragedy into a musical showcase for Judy Garland. Arguably, this added ingredient deepens the emotional arcs while preserving the cautionary tale of fame and decline.
Infernal Affairs (2002, dir. Andrew Lau, Alan Mak) / The Departed (2006, dir. Martin Scorsese)
The film that finally earned Martin Scorsese an Academy Award for Best Director is actually a remake of the Hong Kong movie, Infernal Affairs. Marty's take maintains the original's tense undercover cop narrative and intricate nature, while transplanting the story to Boston's Irish mob, enriched by excellent performances from its star-studded cast.
Yojimbo (1961, dir. Akira Kurosawa) / A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars was profoundly influential, as it kickstarted the Spaghetti Western movement, a primarily Italian take on the American Western. The movie was itself a worthy, albeit unofficial, remake of one of Akira Kurosawa's masterworks, Yojimbo, replacing samurai with gunslingers.
Suspiria (1977, dir. Dario Argento) / Suspiria (2018, dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Luca Guadagnino's reimagining of Dario Argento's giallo horror classic is more of a radical reinterpretation than a traditional remake. Here, themes of power, motherhood, and history are expanded upon, aligning it more with a wider cultural shift, but that is probably destined to age it a lot more.