I read today that Michael Bay is set to produce a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic, The Birds. Leaving aside my initial thoughts of ravens and crows exploding to a rockin' soundtrack, my next feeling was one of indifference. Yes, I don't care that much that there is apparently going to be a remake of The Birds. How can that be you ask? It's probably going to be awful. But that's just it; I rarely get myself worked up about remakes of classic films because I just don't see them as a threat.

Remakes are often used to slam the film industry, usually under charges of lacking imagination and being afraid to take risks. It's an argument with some merits, certainly. But it's an argument that ignores that remakes have always been part of film-making. I would agree that we've seen an increase in the number of remakes, but then there has also been something like a fivefold increase in the number of films in general being made annually. But remakes aren't a new phenomena - The Maltese Falcon was a remake of a 1931 film. Similarly, Hitchcock himself made The Man Who Knew Too Much twice, and Cecil B. DeMille made The Ten Commandments twice also.

There's generally an assumption that remakes are going to be bad, and it is perhaps a fair assumption to make. But there are notable exceptions, both past and present. The Departed was a remake of the Hong Kong film Internal Affairs, Peter Jackson's King Kong was warmly received, and the much praised The Talented Mr. Ripley is a remake of the film Purple Noon. There's no doubt that a lot of remakes are inferior, but we are sometimes blessed with ones that improve upon the original.

If we are therefore working on the assumption that most remakes are just plain bad, then I don't really see the problem. In the short-term, there is some validity in the suggestion that a bad remake will tarnish the good reputation of the original. But as time progresses I think this argument carries less and less weight. You ask anyone who is even vaguely interested in film who directed Psycho, and they will tell you it was Alfred Hitchcock. Very, very few people will even remember that Gus Van Sant made a crappy remake of it in 1998 with a bland Anne Heche and a pervy Vince Vaughn. I would suggest that people who know very little about film at all would even remember this particular remake, and this ties in with my final argument which we shall come to in a moment. But broadly speaking, unless a remake is actually any good, they are by and large forgotten about by film fans and more casual viewers alike. Will people still watch Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in 30 years? Of course. Will they watch the 1997 made-for-TV remake? Almost certainly not.

It's fair to say that there might be some unfortunate people who latch onto a bad remake, either because they like it, or because they think it's the original. This is a shame, but I do think it remains a minority occurrence. But what is perhaps most significant is that these bad remakes often fail to make a profit. We claim remakes are just part of the endless pursuit of easy money, but quite a few of them actually make a loss. Look what happened to last year's The Wicker Man remake; it made something like a $20 million loss. While there certainly are some which make money, it's important to recognise that every bad one that fails to turn in a profit is just another nail in the coffin. If you want to be rid of bad remakes, actively discourage people you know from seeing them rather than just complaining about it.

I sympathise with anyone who feels their favourite film has been bastardised by a poorly made and money-grabbing remake. But I still feel there is a certain amount of overreaction and false indignation whenever Hollywood announces its next big remake. If it's any good then it'll be a welcome addition to its respective genre, whereas if it's bad it will most likely be forgotten about or might even result in a loss for the studio. But perhaps most importantly, whatever happens, we will always have the original.

© David Mercier
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