25 Movie Remakes that you didn't know you wanted: FORGOTTEN EIGHTIES

The Eighties were a great time for movies, and many of them have already been the foundation for remakes. One in particular that evokes strong emotions is Ghostbusters, which is on my list of the five best comedy movies of all time. I liked the female-centric version that came out a couple of years ago, and I’m tremendously excited about 2020’s next-generation version, Ghostbusters: Afterlife (watch the trailer...you’ll be excited too, if you’re a fan). Today’s list consists of really good Eighties movies that would make great rebooted updates in the context of today’s advanced technologies. 

"Game Over" means death!

The Last Starfighter 

The premise of this often-overlooked gem of a movie is that a video arcade “Starfighter” game is actually a recruiting tool for an interplanetary alliance who needs recruits to defend their planets from an evil empire. Just think what modern SFX could do with the concept of a VR video game that the best players get to experience in real-life outer space battles. A remake has been rumored for years; I’d love to see it actually happen. 

Everybody wants to rule the world.

Real Genius 

If you missed this hilarious, thoughtful, subversive little comedy about smart young men and women and the abuses of military overreach, you missed a young Val Kilmer in one of his sharpest, funniest performances. Lasers were still an emerging technology when this movie was made. I bet you could remake it set in 2020 with old Val Kilmer returning to Pacific Tech as a professor who shakes up the physics department and rattles the cages of the academic and political establishment. I’ve also thought for years that this would make a great TV series, if any creative types want to approach it from that angle. 

None of them looks like this today...

Weird Science 

Most of the Gen-Xers I know probably saw this movie, a mostly dumb but sometimes funny version of “horny nerds use computer to create hyper-sexy girlfriend.” Let’s update the movie for the era of genetic engineering while taking on the vicious environment of teenage social media. We can even get Danny Elfman to update the Oingo Boingo-driven soundtrack. For added fun, we could bring back Anthony Michael Hall to fill the Chet role originally played by Bill Paxton (RIP). 

Dabney Coleman = 80s Gold

WarGames 

I can’t think of an Eighties tech-driven movie more in need of a modern upgrade than this classic. In the original, tech nerd Matthew Broderick (who looks 12 years old in this) uses a dial-up modem (that he has to put his landline receiver into!) to break into a Pentagon war games simulator. In doing so, he accidentally brings the world to the brink of global thermonuclear war. Let’s update this baby for the modern Internet era, postwar nuclear anti-proliferation efforts, artificial intelligence, and modern political conflicts. Our global environment is overflowing with potential ideas for a new thriller that builds on the forward-thinking ideas of the original. 

Before Tom got his teeth fixed

The Outsiders 

Another Eighties classic, this movie is likely to get pushback from those who loved the original, with a Brat Pack who’s who cast of young stars (L-R, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise) in a mostly faithful adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel. We can keep the same dynamic of the poor kids versus the rich kids, but we set it in today’s Internet-driven social media landscape with a reimagination of what today’s high school aged youth go through. Look, if we can reinvent Archie and Jughead effectively (Riverdale), this teen classic should be an easy slam-dunk.

25 Movie Remakes that you didn't know you wanted: CLASSIC TALES

These are all movies with ties to classic novels and stories of the past that, in most instances, have not yet been given a definitive film treatment deserving of the source material. I've overlooked countless others, so feel free to add your own ideas in the comments here or on Facebook. 

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Based on the popular comic book of the same name by Alan Moore (Watchmen), the 2003 giant turd of a flop wasted what was left of the immortal Sean Connery's career in a horrid mess of an adaptation. This is a wrong that deserves to be righted. Check out the synopsis of the original and tell me you wouldn't want to see this movie done right: "Renowned adventurer Allan Quartermain leads a team of extraordinary figures with legendary powers to battle the technological terror of a madman known as 'The Fantom.' This 'League' comprises seafarer and inventor Captain Nemo, vampire Mina Harker, an invisible man named Rodney Skinner, American Secret Service Agent Tom Sawyer, the ageless and invincible Dorian Gray, and the dangerous split personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Hell yes!

From Hell/Time After Time 
Speaking of Hell, Hollywood ruined another Alan Moore vehicle with this turgid swamp of further indulgences to Johnny Depp's chronically over-inflated ego. This was supposed to be about a psychic London detective who's trying to track down Jack the Ripper, but almost as if Moore's work is cinematically cursed, it was terrible, and the few who saw it were mostly disappointed. This brings to mind another of my childhood favorites, Time After Time, in which H.G. Wells follows his friend, Dr. John Stevenson (aka Jack the Ripper), into the U.S. in the late seventies. Starring Malcolm McDowell and David Warner, it was a great thriller that would also be a fun remake. Just to be safe, let's do them both.

The Island of Dr. Moreau
Human-animal hybrids are not only the stuff of science fiction, but with modern advances in genetic engineering, this classic tale from the mind of H.G. Wells (the real one) would make an ideal remake. Some of the pluses would include the CGI technology to make the hybrids seem both real and terrifying as well as the current-day ethical questions raised by this technology that have become timely and necessary. This is the kind of film that a big star and well-known director could sink their teeth into. Of course, that's probably what they thought when they cast Marlon Brando in the title role in the 1996 atrocity...come on, Hollywood—get this one right! 

The War of the Worlds
No, not a remake of Spielberg's giant swing-and-miss with Tom Cruise in the lead role, and not an attempt to be true to the H.G. Wells novel, either. I'm talking about a modern remake of the 1953 original starring Gene Barry, one of the foundational sci-fi movies of my childhood, a work of extreme terror and suspense that made the overblown hysteria over Orson Welles' radio broadcast seem wholly plausible. I doubt there's a Gen-Xer out there who loves sci-fi movies who wouldn't be intrigued by this. As an added note, the 2011 sci-fi film Battle: Los Angeles has that same kind of vibe, buoyed by a gritty performance from Aaron Eckhart. 

1984
Yeah, I know, we're living in it. That's why it needs to be made and updated for the social media and cable news bullshit era. I envision a Big Brother who is kind of a messianic Steve Jobs kind of guy who gives the public all the electronic gizmos and entertainment they want in return for slavish obedience. It does sound an awful lot like a documentary, though, doesn't it? I would love to keep this project in British hands, though...Orwell deserves that level of respect.

25 Movie Remakes that you didn't know you wanted: ACTION COMEDIES

Die Hard is the archetype for all modern action movies, pitting ordinary people against diabolical villains in impossible survival situations. That film also gave us the pinnacle of humor mixed against the backdrop of the life-or-death action. Keeping these archetypes in mind, here are five movies from the past that I think would make outstanding action comedies as 21^st Century remakes. (Also, no one ever gets to remake the original Die Hard. Don’t mess with perfection.)

Cannonball Run

For those of you who never saw this, it was one of several Burt Reynold/Dom DeLuise movies from the late seventies. The premise is simple…it’s a cross-country car race with a big prize at the end, and an all-star cast of celebrity actors drive souped-up cars. I would approach a remake like a combination of the Fast and Furious movies crossed with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and have classic duos like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito driving against modern actors such as Seth Rogan and James Franco (stoned, of course). Make the race an NYC to LA affair with $100 million prize for the winners, but the sponsor is a Donald Trump-style swindler who will stop at nothing to prevent ANY of the teams from finishing within the time limit, because he doesn’t really have that much money to pay.

F/X

Today is a great time to update this little gem from the eighties…a movie special effects artist (Bryan Brown) is hired by government officials to publicly fake the death of a mob boss turned informant (Jerry Orbach), only to find out he’s been double-crossed and targeted for death himself. He teams up with a salty detective (Brian Dennehy) who’s been trying to arrest the mob boss for years. You could even keep the basic script, just update the actors and really pump up the special effects tricks. This was a good movie that most people never saw; it would make a really super “mismatched buddies” flick.

The Gauntlet

One of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies, he stars as a renegade detective set up by his corrupt boss to be killed while escorting a witness (Sondra Locke, his girlfriend at the time) to testify in court. Basically everyone, both cops and criminals, tries to kill the two of them, who hook up in a steamy romance along the way. If you wanted to play this up more for laughs, cast real-life awesome couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell.

Sharky's Machine

Another overlooked gem from Burt Reynold’s career, this is a gritty cop drama that could be updated with a bit more “48 Hours” style humor with the right casting, especially with the supporting roles. Here’s the plot summary from IMDB: “Tom Sharky is a narcotics cop in Atlanta who's demoted to vice after a botched bust. In the depths of this lowly division, while investigating a high-dollar prostitution ring, Sharky stumbles across a mob murder with government ties, and responds by assembling his downtrodden fellow investigators (Sharky's ‘Machine’) to find the leaders and bring them to justice before they kill off all his partners and witnesses, including Sharky himself.” Now tell me that wouldn’t make a great remake with an A-list cast…maybe Clooney or Pitt in the lead role with Oceans 11 director Steven Soderbergh directing?

Smokey and the Bandit

Now, wait a minute, and hear me out…

For those of us old enough to remember the late seventies, this classic car-chase comedy starring Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Sally Field, and Jerry Reed is wonderful in every way. I’m not making that argument. But so much has changed in forty years, and a star-studded remake might be as huge as the original. Coors beer is no longer illegal in the eastern U.S., but guess what’s legal in Colorado that’s not so much in many southern states? Yup, Willie Nelson’s wacky tobaccky! So you cast Matthew McConaughey as Bandit, David Harbor (Stranger Things) as Sheriff Justice, Zoey Deschanel as Carrie, and country star Brad Paisley as Snowman. For extra fun, give Willie Nelson the “Big Enos” role who gives the crew its raison d’etre to get all that medicinal agricultural commodity cross-country in less than 48 hours. Cell phones replace CB radios, and get the guy who directed “Guardians of the Galaxy” to helm the project.

Doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it?

25 Movie Remakes that you didn't know you wanted

Jeff's reaction to tomorrow's list...

A couple of weeks ago, Blog Club comrade in comedy Jeff South posted one of his little Facebook gems that generates days of comments. In this particular case, he mentioned an idea that's been floating around the Internet for a while (and almost certainly much longer in Hollywood): What movies from the past were not quite good enough for huge success but might make a really good remake?

This is a great idea that I'm going to run off with in a slightly different direction. Although some mediocre movies would be prime remake fodder, there are also a lot of really great movies from the past that either haven't aged well or were hits at the time that don't resonate as effectively with new audiences on the cusp of the third decade of the 21st Century (the third? Really? Yeah, I know, right?)

So I've basically taken a list of movies that I posted as my reply (okay, series of replies...it's more fun than working) to Jeff's post and divided them up into five broad categories because humans are pattern-seeking creatures. Over the next five days (coinciding with the end of the academic semester...THANK YOU, JESUS!), I'll be sharing my picks with you.

I want to start a vigorous dialog with these entries. You will not agree with me across the board. Some of my picks will be lifelong favorites of yours that you think should be untouched. I have a list of movies of my own that fit in that category, so we can talk about that, as well. But I do invite you to consider how any of these films, brought up-to-date with current actors, new scripts, visionary directors, and modern film and video technology, might actually make something amazing.

Besides, our only other option is an endless series of live-action remakes of classic Disney cartoons. We need something else to fill the rest of the slots at the cineplex.

My categories:
MONDAY—ACTION COMEDIES
TUESDAY—CLASSIC TALES
WEDNESDAY—FORGOTTEN EIGHTIES
THURSDAY—CHEESY SCI-FI
FRIDAY—HORROR

Tune in tomorrow and join the conversation!