It’s no surprise that when I posed the question, “What movies should never be remade,” I got enough answers to make a two part post. There are a lot of classic films out there that have very passionate fans who might just cause a riot if Hollywood tried to remake/reboot their favorites. On the other hand, there’s also some films that are so awful some would rather scratch their eyes out than see it remade. Check out some films from each of those categories below.
IanGonzales Anyone who tried to remake The Warriors needs to get Cyrus-ed.
JJisBroBeard oh wow, plenty, most if not all. 140C’s does not begin to cover this.
mmc311 Rocky!! Oh and that Spice girls movie! lol
WicKed_rAd the goonies! Footloose too but i guess im too late for that
Alderbaran Hellraiser, The Godfather and Taxi Driver. They’re only ones I can think of at the moment.
Singleton_Paul Taxi Driver, Casablanca, Fargo, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather. Maybe I just don’t like remakes, at least of good movies.
YourGodFearsMe Actually, Judge Dread should never have been made in the first place..
simplyskyy Umm good one. I will say gone with the wind lol RT
YourGodFearsMe Judge Dread!
JayJayMay jaws
FilmSamurai Apocalypse Now should never ever get remade.
DaniLanzarotta The ONLY movies that should get remade are the ones that can benefit from changes in technology.
Singleton_Paul Good movies that should NEVER be remade: Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up, Raging Bull…
REALjtCarter2011“Star Wars”, obv. And “13 Going on 30.”
boogeyman8 the last mimzy…
QuickBMX they already have remade the movies that I think they shouldn’t have
maljunaibi Lassie
bearsurprise ROBOCOP. It’s too perfect, to of-its-time.
REALjtCarter “Star Wars”, obv. And “13 Going on 30.” RT
gbwilliams Goodfellas
jwong1209 Back to the Future or Ghostbusters
eddiesooner A Hard Days Night
ScootieMT It’s a Wonderful Life
polymorphicone All of them
deselfleur Harold and Maude.
SETKacir Fitzcarraldo
StevenStiller If i can’t say all, I would go with either Jaws, Casablanca or Last of the Mohicans
ebrown2112 Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull…any Scorsese film, basically.
SenorNerd Back to the Future. Scareface.
Tearsinrain78 Footloose, backtoFuture
ScootieMT Godfather
LeoOlmos Pretty Woman.
gruesomegull bewitched
SDCCnerdsattack silence of the lambs
JohnVFerrigno They should NEVER remake Citizen Kane!
drzarron Many that already have been. But “Forbidden Planet” is tops of my list.
BassGJJRay at the rate Hollywood is butchering them… all of them shouldn’t…. better question is “Has there been a good remake?”
GrahamOffen Indiana jones and the crystal skull
Girlsplosion Beetlejuice.
steplow Citizen Kane. Obvious choice, but I don’t think it even could be remade.
TheCloudyWolf The Iron Giant
johnhmaloney The Godfather. They got it perfectly right the first time.
sedp23 juice and cb4
thecollector22 The Boondock Saints
Kazytauginas At this point they should just stop remaking movies, PERIOD. It’s out of control.
sexxiblac ~ 28 Days Later, the producers and writers should be fined for making such a DUMB MOVIE!
JavTheGhost Scarface
Pegaso_Saint Die Hard! Perfection only happens once.
justinruff Straw Dogs… wait. How about Citizen Kane?
KevinDavidBurke The Exorcist, hands down.
THE_Blerman Ginger Dead Man. If you’ve never heard of it or seen it consider yourself lucky.
DAREALGUMMY Any til it’s at least 50 years old.
gottabezac If anyone touches Rosemarys Baby I think my head would explode. #whatswrongwithoriginality
MannysPlace Star Wars…..oops Lucas already fudged that up!!! #dummy
slimjedi Goonies, because it’s epic and it would be horrible to mess with it’s awesomeness!!!
zscout370 Good, Bad and The Ugly
OnyxPrimal Scarface. No one else can be Tony except Al Pacino.
EvlBert let me qualify…it should have never been made in the first place
yak_face Raiders of the Lost Ark
Matticus182 Beetlejuice and Ferris Bueller
the_frontera Clockwork Orange
shirleydennise The SPY next door! I’m sorry but even with Jackie Chan, that movie was weak, I love Chan, such a great actor. The movie, no.
Decker_d_Artist Casablanca! You can’t improve perfection.
jimmy_boots Ghostbusters. Back to the Future.
dashawns2cents et star wars Indiana Jones
luisitoFTW back to the future
DSB_IV Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
realityfree easy Back to the Future
RCMurphy A Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh… wait.
DonnaFromSpace The Wizard of Oz, and Mac and Me- for different reasons.
OverlordOf_Evil The Wizard of Oz.
selenetaron The Brave Little Toaster!
edward_thefirst Star Wars episode V: Empire strikes back
ItalianStaIlion the Goonies #TruffleShuffle
JenVonLee Labyrinth
Lastonetoleave Gone With The Wind
EvlBert ultraviolet
vtress29 Dirty Dancing.. Oh wait.. Nm.
GuyfromQuincy The Godfather
Nightman_C0meth all of them
RADarnell Never try to remake ANY of the Evil Dead movies!! Never ruin a cult classic!!
johnny_williams All of them. I’m sick of remakes and this Point Break news has put me over the edge. Why can’t Hollywood just be original?
YogiKai Back to the Future! Perfect as it is 🙂
Fredo_Corona The Godfather
brownbearmm The Crow
THEJimCase Requiem for a Dream. Perfect the first time
MattJHenson Star Wars. Enough said.
parisianfeline Ugh, the list is so long… The Matrix comes to mind. RT
jhogan3132 soul plane
MC_Mustard Japanese horror movies and Total Recall
Matty_G_ Planet of the Apes #whoops
The_Chatterbox A Christmas Story
moviesbybowes I’m gonna go obvious: CASABLANCA. It would almost literally be blasphemy.
robert3242 None. But specifically, “Casablanca,” although it was remade once. RT :
SofaKingEvil First Blood & First Blood 2
Lunachique Edward Scissorhands
LetsGomez edward scissorhands, natural born killers, lost boys and a ton more.
souls_blossom A Clockwork Orange… or The Shining… or The Princess Bride. None of them should be remade.
mauler85 The Original Ghostbusters!!
elorfinthendt Mars Attacks. Seriously. It traumatized me.
matthewc0le spiderman…oh wait…damn
cmurda323 Beverly Hills Cop
lksriv Ishtar.
kyleclutch the crow is a movie that should never be remade
HockeySavants American Psycho
samanthajmathis Casablanca
Mr_Swerve Scarface. That should never be remade….but you know it will, somewhen.
gikkt Alien.
IACEZ Casablanca!
MGShogun The Godfather, period.
JediCat1965 They should never remake Buckaroo Banzai! It’s perfect just the way it is.
JnAStudios Human Centipede
Church4252 Superman. Oh, wait….
SomberStitches A Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh wait…
TNOReality Uhm… all of them?
SquirrelyShoe footloose… Oh, wait….
FasterthanShaun Birth of a Nation.
What Movies Should Never be Remade Part 1?
This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve been kicked in the ass!
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hmm.. all good movies I agree they should be left as classics. I see all these films some repeeats of others in the list… but a few come to mind that should never be remade like..”Swamp Thing” it had a lot of corny one liners. “Reanimator” YIKES! Leave it DEAD! don’t follow it’s example. Basket case was just horrible, but manages to live on as a cult classic.. “TOXIC Avenger” Just had corny written all over it. That’s my bad movies should be left in the trash list i can recall. I have a hard time thinking back over the years.
My good ones that should be left alone… All the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns that were actuially a trilogy. leave Die hards 4 movies alond as well as the Indianna Jones series. Definately leave the hell boy’s alone! Ron Pearlman plays the character very well! None of the “OH GOD!” Series should be touched. George Burns will always make for the perfect character of “GOD”. I mean the list goes on forever as to movies I can recall that should never be remade for many reasones.
But You and me both know hollywood never leaves thigns alone during a trend decade wich we are starting into now..
So glad to have you as a friend!
I’m with whoever said leave it alone unless it can really be bettered by technology. The problem is Hollywood seems to think everything can be made better by technology which isn’t the case. I also think no movie should be remade that isn’t at least 30 years old and closer to 40. This current run of remaking/rebooting everything to wring a few more dollars out of a known franchise is disturbing and severely lacking in creativity.
A couple sidenotes: 1) I’m not sure any old TV show needs to be made into a movie. 2) It’s ironic a number of you say “Scarface” should never be remade when the 1983 flick you’re all referring to is actually a remake.
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I research remakes and adaptations, and my view on the matter is always nicely summed up by a quote from Ratatouille (of all places!) –
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations – the new needs friends.”
I look at remaking, and I see opportunity. Stories have been retold right throughout history, and there’s something about a new voice that is quite exciting, wondering what they’ll do with the story, what they think is important enough to keep (and praying their idea is the same as ours)…though sadly, these filmmakers can often miss the mark (I hated King Kong, for example, aside from the moments with just Kong and Naomi Watts – if that was the focus of the film, without all those action sequences, I think it would have been a stunning piece of cinema). I actually rather like Rob Zombie’s Halloween (even after a year of studying just slasher remakes!) – I think what he tried to do, whether you like it or not, was brave and certainly interesting, I like that he tried to show us the child Michael and see where that went. I didn’t much like A Nightmare on Elm Street’s remake (as a general rule, I loathe Platinum Dunes) but I liked that they thought Freddy should look like a “real” burn victim, and tried to fill a hole in the original (why Freddy was only coming back now) in their own way. Nolan’s “remake” of The Killing Joke (The Dark Knight), with the characters’ experiences under the Joker all switched up and blended in with his own ideas and continuations from Batman Begins, was absolutely brilliant. Yes, remakes are often awful – but the fact we find them awful is interesting in itself, and their attempt to contend with a giant and be both original contributors and respectful remakers is a feat much harder than spouting criticism (as much fun and poignant as that can often be).
So…I would be very, very hesitant to say any film shouldn’t be remade. I think every story has potential to be retold in a way that makes us re-think not only the content of the original, but also how we’ve engaged with and understood it.