Don't Remake Escape From NY!

A good amount of the news I've posted here has come from AV Club; I've almost exceeded the point of feeling merely grateful, but I made an effort to focus on things that I find elsewhere, hence the drop in remake-itis and sequel-itis news. I get an extra thrill when I catch an update on another site before reading it on AVC, like this announcement.

Of course, "a thrill" is very difficult for me to feel when The Daily News informs me that Escape From New York is going to be remade. Once we've gotten to the point that Hollywood is remaking cult action films from over 30 years, someone needs to stage a f--king intervention.

The sadder part is that this isn't even a decision by a massive studio like WB or Fox: Joel Silver's Silver Pictures has teamed with StudioCanal, and I have to assume that there were maybe 5 people involved in pitching and approving this. So this isn't even due to over-sized corporation stupidity...

Mr. Silver: I know you love money, and movies, and you are partly responsible for some great films, but FOR F--K'S SAKE, PUT THE REMAKES DOWN; "A LOT OF PEOPLE WATCH IT WHEN IT AIRS ON TBS" IS A POOR REASON TO FILM A PICTURE TWICE. You could try re-releasing the first picture, and then prepping a movie that passes the story of Snake onto someone else if you want to franchise this.

Worst case, I believe, is that it doesn't make its money back, sullies the rep of the original works, and doesn't even underperform badly enough to discourage more stupid remakes. What the amazing Kurt Russell did there is hard to reproduce.

It gets worse, of course. I went to Wiki, whose EFNY article has already been updated, 'natch, and I read these toe-curling words:

On March 18 2013, Joel Silver and his studio company Silver Pictures has team with StudioCanal required the the rights for the reboot as a trilogy, starting with an origin story in a fashion similar to the way fashion simliar to Rise of the Planet of the Apes restarted that franchise.

F--kity f--k f--k! You realize what this means, right? It means that everything that's just mentioned in passing in the original - Snake robbing a bank, Snake having been a great soldier, Snake losing an eye - all that s--t is gonna be explained and revealed and spelled-out and shown to us. Will they get Russell to make a cameo?...

So now I've gotten an extra-helping of bad news, and that's before we even get to what's probably the biggest point here: The Thing remake got universally "meh" reviews (36% on RT). The new Assault on Precinct 13? Better, but still not good (60% fresh). The Halloween reboot? I don't care which one of the 3 we're talking about, they were all received poorly (53%, 11%, 25%, and 21%). Every John Carpenter remake effort has produced mediocre results - and that's actually sub-mediocre, considering that they aren't even original ideas anymore!

Being original merits a certain amount of respect and regard, and it's the very quality that's being forgotten about. We deserve better as viewers - I can ignore what people think they deserve as fans, but not as people in the audience.