Remakes Are (Frequently) Horseshit

Novels are translated from one language to another. One never assumes, "Well, Dostoevsky's themes really won't play in the U.S., we should get Dean Koontz to re-write his novel for American audiences." Furthermore, I'm sure Cormac McCarthy would take it personally if a French author re-wrote The Road to make it more acceptable for a foreign language audience -- hell, the guy is still alive and his book is still new! In film, however, the respect for a piece of narrative art is minimal if existent at all.

A good foreign film is tossed to American filmmakers like a piece of raw meat heaved into a jackal cage. They tear at it madly -- unable to execute an original idea of their own, they feed off other people's art. How utterly insulting to have a film you made -- a film JUST NOW being released in the use -- being remade before it even hits theaters. "Americans won't read subtitles" is a total piece of bullshit - just look at Passion of the Christ, Pan's Labyrinth, Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. At least let the original breathe on its own before snuffing it out when no one has had a chance to see it in its pure form. And don't try to mask your creative bankruptcy with some veil of "I'm exposing their ideas to a larger audience," because that's also complete hackery.

This tantrum is not for nothing, by the way...

Magnolia Pictures will be releasing Let the Right One In in LA/NY October 24th with more cities to come [Slashfilm has details] and I would urge everyone to see the original before it's remade for U.S. audiences. In short, it is an art house horror film that defies every horror film convention and fashions a perverse love story that will haunt you relentlessly. It doesn't really matter if I find the remake insulting because it's not my film to begin with, so here is what the film's Swedish director Tomas Alfredson told Moviezine:

Remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong. I’m very proud of my movie and think it’s great, but the Americans might be of an other opinion. The saddest thing for me would be to see that beautiful story made into something mainstream.… I don’t like to whine, but of course – if you’d spent years on painting a picture, you’d hate to hear buzz about a copy even before your vernissage!

The less you know the better, but this trailer should help you decide if you want to Let The Right One In...and by "right one" I mean "original," so kudos to Magnolia for releasing it here in the U.S.