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So, we've come to the part where even classic films like Point Break can't escape the remake monster. So in a theoretical where all those classic actions get remade (I'm taking same plots, same characters, just slightly more modern with more modern explosions and extra "extreme" stunts and gak added), who would you cast in these films? For reference, some examples of what kind of films I mean


Terminator (1 and 2)
Alien
Rambo: First Blood
The Shining
Fight Club (god forgive me)



etc?


The only rules being; you have to use "new" actors, you can't recast the originals. So no, no elderly Sig Weaver as Ripley's elderly daughter in Aliens.
For simplicities sake, let's leave Superhero films out of this one as they get remade every week anyway.

I'd remake Gladiator, except the Emperor would be the Emperor, and Maximus would be Horus


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I'd also personally remake Kingdom of Heaven, but get someone with some more screen presence than Orlando Bloom to play Balian of Ibelin and focus a lot less on melodramatic bs. I want to see people hitting people with swords damn it (maybe some pondering about "kingdoms" and "god" in the middle ).

Honestly, Gerard Butler I think might have made a good choice, but his career has kind of become a joke imo. 300 was his high tide. Brad Pitt's performance from Fury might make a decent translation over to Balian. The movie took a heroes journey approach to the narrative, but Balian grew up in Jerusalem and was a political and combat veteran, not some bright eye'd person looking around completely lost. Probably the last true bad ass Jerusalem produced after Baldwin IV.

Huh, or maybe just remake the movie focusing on Baldwin IV. That be pretty sweet

I would remake none of those.

 Frazzled wrote:
I would remake none of those.

You can of course make suggestions. Even relatively recent films with classic source points are welcome. As long as it is underthreat from the remake machine, go for it

I would remake

Howard the Duck with Sly Stallone as the Duck.

Grease with Helen Miram, and Ian McKellan

The Caine Mutiny with Donald Trump as Captain Queeg

Tora Tora Tora with Donald Trump as Yamamoto, and Mel Torme as a hotshot young pilot who discovers and manages to sink the Japanese fleet.

I would remake London Has Fallen with Arnie Schwarzenegger as the US President, and Bruce Willis as the secrete service bloke who goes around killing everyone.

The Shining with Nicolas Cage as Jack.

I would remake Commando with Dwayne Johnson as every character (including the kidnapped daughter)

Shia LaBeouf as Indiana Jones

A lot of movies have been remade. Once in a great while the remake is superior to its predecessor like recent True Grit with Jeff Bridges. More frequent are the abominations like Witch Mountain, The Karate Kid, Arthur, etc.

Some remakes like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are truer to the original story but they lack the soul or whatever ephemeral quality made the original movie so beloved. The Music Man with Matthew Broderick was technically superior to the Robert Preston version in almost every way but was also sterile and soulless. Both remakes seemed to have missed the point of the originals entirely.

Still, there is something to say in favor of "re-envisionings". The second Galactica series was, well like the song said, "it makes the others look like a ship full of clowns."

Lawrence of Arabia with Danial Craig
Shogun with Tom Cruise

Any John Wayne movie with a clone of John Wayne

47 Ronin with actual Japanese main characters

........how far back we going here?

Starship Troopers with The Rock replacing Casper Van Deen.

Predator with the cast of Furious 7....actually Furious 8 should just have Predator in it. They have no other way to one up 7 anyways.

Baseketball with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

Bloodsport with The Rock as every fighter.

Alien with Christopher Walken as the Alien and Emma Stone as Ripley.

Ghostbusters with an all female cast.

Bladerunner with Sharlto Copley.

Road Warrior and Mad Max with Tom Hardy...just so they all look the same.

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Predator with the cast of Furious 7....actually Furious 8 should just have Predator in it. They have no other way to one up 7 anyways.

I would watch this.

Highlander remake:

Jeremy Irons as Ramirez
Karl Urban as MacLeod
Manu Bennett as Kurgan

You *could* go with Gerard Butler as MacLeod, but I think it would be type casting....lol

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Predator with the cast of Furious 7....actually Furious 8 should just have Predator in it. They have no other way to one up 7 anyways.

I too would watch this, and with the development of Men in Black meets 21 Jump Street, have to consider it plausible.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
The Shining with Nicolas Cage as Jack.

That actually might be really good

 Breotan wrote:
A lot of movies have been remade. Once in a great while the remake is superior to its predecessor like recent True Grit with Jeff Bridges. More frequent are the abominations like Witch Mountain, The Karate Kid, Arthur, etc.

I'd half to disagree with you on Karate Kid. People judge it too much as a remake. It's certainly not as good as the original but it's decent in it's own regards.


Hmmmm...

So for giggles
Shrek live action.
The Incredibles 2 (oh wait)
Rambo 4
The Land Before Time XXXIV (34)

For realz.
Expendables 4
The killing joke DCAU (OH WAIT! YEAH!!!!)
Ultramarine (only good this time)

The one thing I appreciated about Karate Kid is that it reminded me Jackie Chan is a very talented actor when he actually tries. His role was the one good thing that I think came from that film, which otherwise was positively 'meh.'

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Highlander remake:

Jeremy Irons as Ramirez
Karl Urban as MacLeod
Manu Bennett as Kurgan

You *could* go with Gerard Butler as MacLeod, but I think it would be type casting....lol

You know... that's actually sounding pretty great! I like the original Highlander a lot, but it is VERY 80s in every way, it's one of the few 'classic' films I'd genuinely look forward to seeing a more modern take on... provided the Queen soundtrack stayed, of course!

 Jihadin wrote:

Shogun with Tom Cruise

NO no no non nonnnonon onn no no nein nada jangan iye kinjiru no non absolutely not.

Then again, hearing Tom Cruise say 'I'm not a God-cursed sodomite" might be interesting.

Also, I think Ken Watanabe would make a good Toranaga, seeing as Toshiro Mifune is no longer with us. I hope they can find someone a bit less fat to be Yabu. He was supposed to be a butt-hole, but also a rather tough feller.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Christopher Walken as ship captain
Christian Bale as the Lead Scienctist
Fluffly as the ship mechanic
Megan Fox as Lab Assistant

Some Red Shirts

I would watch the hell out of a Sean bean Carl urban fight club.

And Kathryn win nick in alien would be awesome. She could do a great bitter cargo operator.

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Road Warrior and Mad Max with Tom Hardy...just so they all look the same.

I like this idea, but you'd have to include Thunderdome as well.

I'd bet all my money they'd cast Peter Dinklage as Master

I will take the films listed in the OP but strightly change the rules of the thread and see if and how they could be remade

Terminator (1 and 2)
Terminator was a low budget film, a 'remake' is possible in that the animatronics and puppetry can be remade or fixed with CGI overlays. The scene where the terminator fixes his damaged eye in the bathroom was badly done and was barely forgivable even back in the 80's, allowing for the quality of work possible in The Thing which released around the same time.
a remastered version of the orginal Terminator film would go down well, but it need not be remade.
Terminator 2 doesnt need remaking.

Alien
This film holds up very well allowing for that it was filmed in the 70's, it has hardly dated at all. Ridley Scott could be given a budget to remaster some scenes, a holographic GUI for Mother would be better than two colour text and a keyboard. I think Mother should be voice operated and both Skerrit and Weaver should be hired to add the dialogue. They both did dialogue for Alien Isolation. other than that this is a film that ashould be left well alone.
Alien is part of a small category of science fiction films that has refused to age, and Ridley Scott has a lot to be credited for in his choice of visuals. Aliens is the more famous film, but Alien was the masterpiece. Science fiction dates very quickly in many cases, very few films truly stand the test of time. Alien and Bladerunner both look as fresh (if that is an appropriate word for the worn future look) today as when the films were made and remarkably little looks out of place.
Frankly i think its not only unnecessary but an insult to fully remake a film that has aged so well as this

Rambo: First Blood
No just no, because First Blood had its time in the moral climbdown from Vietnam. Modernising the story means modernising the conflict, and applying to American society today, and the US military today, both of which moved on a long way since unwanted veterans came from from the 'Nam and were ostracised by society.
Yes there are veterans who slip through the safety net of society, especially as America has a relatively poor public benefit system, but the current day John Rambo's have recourse, and a remake would send the wrong message and no longer fit.
You could just have a mentally scarred veteran go postal, but that isn't the same story really.

The Shining
This one is possible, but its a classic and it would be a tough job to match the directing and lead performances, especially as Kubrick intentionally made Shelly Duvall suffer to make the film and it would be difficult to match her performance without unnecessarily putting someone else through same.

Fight Club (god forgive me)
I dont know enough to comment, only watched it once and was only moderately impressed. Why remake it though? its fairly recent in its timing casting and style.



Films and film franchises that could be remade and get away with it (though I will expect the cash in producers to feth them up anyway):

Logan's Run.
Seventies classic that looks like a seventies classic. That in itself is no excuse to remake, But Renew Renew? Maybe.

Casting - I would go with a primarily American cast this time around, I cant call who to give the title role to, casting Jessica will be relatively easy as she ought to be mostly ditzy and out of her depth, just not annoying at it, with a nationality reversal twist cast Tom Felton as the psychotic Francis he is the right age for current filming. The orignal cast were mostly a little too old to play characters who renew at 30.

Wing Commander
The original sucks, though I am a closet fan of it nonetheless, so yeah there is definitely room to get it right. I am convinced that a film or film trilogy set in Chris Roberts universe would sell, a hundred million pledged for Star Citizen sort of backs that too.

Casting - No idea, the casting was mostly ok, and Maniac will always be hard to cast, it was the rest of the film that needed fixing.

Dr Who
It has been a long time since a Dr Who film was made, and even longer before a theatrical release film was made. Sixties with Peter Cushing I think. So long as it was done properly and the BBC outsourced the licence to a major studio rather than do a made for TV cheap production I think there is a lot of room here for a film franchise. The Doctor really should come under the superhero category, but unlike most supeheroes he doesnt get a revolving door remake, and deserves one more than most.

Casting - Kevin McKidd would make a good doctor, though for a major studio release I am thinking Cumberbatch.

Quatermass
A long dormant opportunity. Quatermass is one of the rarest things, a hero against the mythos. Quatermass is a nerdy tweedy professor with a solid mind and enough of both caution and imagination to get to find the scroll that sends the mythos beast back to the abyss and still be back for more.
He is still the only plausible choice for a hero based Lovecraftian story franchise as Professor Quatermass actually stands a chance against the Great Old Ones, albeit indirectly.
The Quatermass story arcs are long buried but the character is resurrectable in modern form, his stories were never directly connected to the Lovecraft mythos, but were broadly comperable.

Casting - Sean Pertwee in title role. He should grow a full beard to look professorly. He would also make an excellent older looking Doctor (see above) for obvious reasons


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 Jihadin wrote:
Lawrence of Arabia with Danial Craig

Remaking that film would be flat out heresy, regardless of who you get to do it.
Any director worth their trade wouldn't touch it, because the only way to even try to top it would be with a lot of CGI crap. Sir David Lean was excessive even for the early sixties and the era of epic in this film. He spent six weeks on just one line of script 'the arab army comes over the hill'. The modern film production methodology just wouldn't allow that to happen anymore, and Lean found it hard to get away with even then.

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Starship Troopers with The Rock replacing Casper Van Dien.

Johnny Rico doesnt need too many muscles, he isnt that type of hero, even in the Imperium of Man/Leatherneck/Waffen SS style hybrid army the film gets away with.
Though an actual tru(ish) to the book remake with full on marauder suits and skinnies and not not-Tyranid style bugs. That could really work and is a good call.

2001. I tried watching this the other day as never really watched it all the way through. It is so bad. Loud classic used to hide the fact that they had nothing to say or during the flight scenes. "Hey look us with our clever SFX of space ships" Talk about wooden acting as well. Got to the scene where the astronauts were watching their interview and gave up.

 Orlanth wrote:

Alien
This film holds up very well allowing for that it was filmed in the 70's, it has hardly dated at all. Ridley Scott could be given a budget to remaster some scenes, a holographic GUI for Mother would be better than two colour text and a keyboard. I think Mother should be voice operated and both Skerrit and Weaver should be hired to add the dialogue. They both did dialogue for Alien Isolation. other than that this is a film that should be left well alone.

I think it would be a very big mistake to put that kind of technology in the Alien franchise, especially on the Nostromo. Simply put, that level of technology will most likely never be present on a ship like the Nostromo as it is completely pointless. Mother having a holographic display does nothing to improve the cost-efficiency of the ship over a normal screen and neither does voice operation as it is more liable to break or incorrectly identify a command than a keyboard.

When you're in space you want things to be simple, to work right away and to keep on working. Adding complexity to your systems which is unnecessary for the operation of the ship and the safety of the crew is just building in more things which can go wrong. All of the technology in the Alien franchise has captured that fact wonderfully. Leave the shiny holograms to Star Trek, real space travel will not feature them for a very, very, very long time.

Not a remake but I would really like to see a film made of Haldeman's The Forever War. Great book.

A remake I would like to see is War of the Worlds, set in the correct time period and location. Tom Hiddleston for the Reporter just because Tom Hiddleston.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Alien
This film holds up very well allowing for that it was filmed in the 70's, it has hardly dated at all. Ridley Scott could be given a budget to remaster some scenes, a holographic GUI for Mother would be better than two colour text and a keyboard. I think Mother should be voice operated and both Skerrit and Weaver should be hired to add the dialogue. They both did dialogue for Alien Isolation. other than that this is a film that should be left well alone.

I think it would be a very big mistake to put that kind of technology in the Alien franchise, especially on the Nostromo. Simply put, that level of technology will most likely never be present on a ship like the Nostromo as it is completely pointless. Mother having a holographic display does nothing to improve the cost-efficiency of the ship over a normal screen and neither does voice operation as it is more liable to break or incorrectly identify a command than a keyboard.

Right. Because an M class starfrieghter, a really expensive piece of kit, cant afford a modern GUI on its AI maincore interface assess.

They have full AI cyborgs capable as passing as human, but cant even develop menu bars let alone touchcreen or voice operated controls on main ship system AI computers, so they use keyboard only interface and controls that make MS DOS look advanced. Sorry can't buy that, won't buy that.

Alien ... in space no one can operate a mouse

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

A remake I would like to see is War of the Worlds, set in the correct time period and location. Tom Hiddleston for the Reporter just because Tom Hiddleston.

This was tried just recently, and horribly fethed up. I could go with a properly budgeted 1900 timeline War of the Worlds.

 Orlanth wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Alien
This film holds up very well allowing for that it was filmed in the 70's, it has hardly dated at all. Ridley Scott could be given a budget to remaster some scenes, a holographic GUI for Mother would be better than two colour text and a keyboard. I think Mother should be voice operated and both Skerrit and Weaver should be hired to add the dialogue. They both did dialogue for Alien Isolation. other than that this is a film that should be left well alone.

I think it would be a very big mistake to put that kind of technology in the Alien franchise, especially on the Nostromo. Simply put, that level of technology will most likely never be present on a ship like the Nostromo as it is completely pointless. Mother having a holographic display does nothing to improve the cost-efficiency of the ship over a normal screen and neither does voice operation as it is more liable to break or incorrectly identify a command than a keyboard.

Right. Because an M class starfrieghter, a really expensive piece of kit, cant afford a modern GUI on its AI maincore interface assess.

They have full AI cyborgs capable as passing as human, but cant even develop menu bars let alone touchcreen or voice operated controls on main ship system AI computers, so they use keyboard only interface and controls that make MS DOS look advanced. Sorry can't buy that, won't buy that.

Alien ... in space no one can operate a mouse

You may not agree but that is often how space travel works, utility over luxury. A touch screen on a space ship is a very bad idea. What happens if the gravity generation breaks down? You might have objects entering commands into your touch screen as they drift around. And, as everyone who has owned a smart phone will attest to, touch screens break an awful lot more than non-touch screens as they have to be made of thinner glass to allow for the interactions between user and screen.

As you make a system more complex, you increase the amount of things that can go wrong and also the knowledge required to fix those things. Keep it simple, keep it safe.

Even allowing for that, films set in the future should probably look more futuristic than "now". Alien did upon release, but now, not so much.

Prometheus had the same problem that Star Trek Enterprise did; trying to make it look more futuristic than the "present" (relative to when it was made) but less futuristic than the original, which now looks dated.

Anyway, back on-topic; I was going to say that there already was a Terminator 2 remake, starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, but it turns out Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey actually came out the month before T2.

I'd like a remake of Short Circuit, so I can watch it without cringing at the horribly racist caricature that is the Indian sidekick. Casting an actual Indian might help.

Predator with the cast of Furious 7

Please no. Not ever.
Predator 1 still ranks as one of my favs of all time. Imagine the producer when the script guy walks in
So pitch it to me.
- 7 guys in a jungle hunt a giant lizard
That it?
- Pretty much.
GTFO of my office.

but from that they created an absolutely brilliant piece of film.