TOTAL FAILURE

Do you ever think you could do as well as one of those overpaid Suits who decide which movie projects get greenlit and which do not? I do. All the time.

Unlike many of today's discerning moviegoers, I'm not totally against remakes. I've always looked forward to them, and I will continue to do so in the future. Remakes have been around since the dawn of the movies, and as far as I am concerned they are a legitimate form of the art of the cinema.

Of course, the shit has gone overboard in the last decade. They seem to be remaking everything that turned a profit in the past. And in the not-so-distant past, too.

Case in point: Total Recall. When I heard that it was being remade (or rebooted, or reinvented, or whatever doublespeak you care to think of it), I thought to myself: "Total Recall? No way. This will be a box office catastrophe."

And it has been. The new Total Recall was released last weekend, and the returns have been pretty dismal. Why? People like big-budget SF, don't they?

Part of the problem, I think, is Joe Multiplex's idea of what Total Recall was. No-one but a few of us who care about fiction think of it as a Philip K. Dick adaptation. No, they have a specific notion of what the movie is, and that notion is all about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Like Arnold or not, his presence dominated a lot of box office winners. His movies tended to be a lot of fun, with lighthearted moments intersected with exciting action scenes. Colin Farrell can't compete.

Maybe, hopefully, this will give Hollywood a lesson. Not everything should be remade.

Of course, something can be safely remade with no fear of monetary loss from the studios. I was at the theater on the opening weekend of The Amazing Spiderman. I stood in line for my ticket, and I stood in line for my refreshment. Both times I was surrounded by fans decked out in their superhero regalia, and both times I overheard basically the same conversation. It was impossible to NOT hear it. These people tend to voice their opinions very loudly. The gist of it was like this: "WHY ARE THEY REMAKING SPIDERMAN ALREADY? FUCKIN' SELLOUTS!". I felt like grabbing them by their tee shirts and screaming, "WHY???? Because they know that you, and a billion people exactly like you, will go out and see it. You'd go see the same movie next year, and the year after, and the year after that!".

In the meantime, support original horror and science fiction movies if you hate remakes. If you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself.