Movies Forgettable Movie Remakes/Reboots.... Do you remember these movies?

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
So... this is something I noticed as of late... how quickly remakes or reboots of somewhat iconic films have literally become completely forgotten within years... or even probably months of release. And keep in mind, this is for categorizing the forgettable remakes... not the occasional good one... or ones so bad and notorious they can't be forgotten like Ghostbusters 2016.

And we're talking about 'big budget' remakes that seemed to capitalize on the fact there was a pre-existing property. Not talking about films that are inspired by some old property but try and do their own thing like the 1983 Scarface, release a new film several decades after the original like with the 1999 The Mummy or an American adaption of a foreign film (like Vanilla Sky) movies that were released. Also not talking about sequel/prequel type films such as with the Terminator and Thing franchises either.

So I'm going to list some movie remakes and feel free to tell me if you forgot they existed until I mentioned them, didn't even know it was remade, or you kinda remember and remember it was shite at worst and meh/blah or simply needlessly cashing in on the name of the beloved original... or you remember it as an actual decent reimagining of the original property.

Robin Hood (2018)
100 million budget
86.5 million box office

The Mummy (2017)
195 million budget
410 million box office

The Magnificent Seven (2016)
107 million budget
162.4 million box office

Ben Hur (2016)
100 million budget
94.1 million box office

Point Break (2015)
105 million budget
137.5 million box office

Robocop (2014)
130 million budget
242.6 million box office

Red Dawn (2012)
65 million budget
51 million box office

Total Recall (2012)
125 million budget
211.9 million box office

Conan the Barbarian (2011)
90 million budget
63.5 million box office

Gullivers Travels (2010)
112 million budget
237.4 million box office

Robin Hood (2010)
200 million budget
321.7 million box office

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
80 milliom budget
233.1 million box office

Poseidon (2006)
160 million budget
181.7 million box office

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)
30 million budget
25 million box office

Planet of the Apes (2001)
100 million budget
362.2 million box office
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
The only one of those I actually saw was Magnificent Seven. As a rule I avoid watching remakes, though I'll make exceptions if it's given sufficient positive reviews by people who's opinions I respect.
 

Argent

Well-known member
You named most of the forgettable ones that I can think of. I would argue that most of the general public has also forgotten Ghostbusters 2016. The movie was below average but it was cast and crew in the lead up that lead to most of the drama. Which means that with new culture war stuff that Ghostbusters 2016 has been memoryholed for a lot of people.


Psycho:

There was a remake of Psycho in 1998. Being almost a scene for scene remake took away a lot of the suspense that make the original one so great. Not to mention the color and added sound effects kind of ruined it.

It is telling the original made 50 million in 1960 while the 1998 remake only made 37 million.


I also think that the new Dr. Dolittle movie will be a forgettable movie. While I did not care for the Eddy Murphy remakes in a modern time this new throw back with Robert Downey to a Victorian age adventure movie.

But overall the cast was bloated and the plotlines where a bit of a mess.
 

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
The 2018 Robin Hood is a hilarious travesty I actually went to in theaters. It opens with a draft-notice sent to Robin by the King for the Crusades. It only gets dumber from there. The version from 2010 with RUSSEL CROWE fightin' round the world England for the rights of the people is miles better. It's also campy and dumb, but it's got the SPIRIT of a Robin Hood movie crossed with Revolutionary American/British whig values and principles, so it's wonderfully enjoyable and I don't see the hate it got. I remember it fondly and now want to go find it and buy it.

The Magnificient Seven was...nothing special. Not quite forgettable, I don't think. But it lacked the presence or performances of the original, and I've no impulse to watch it ever again.

The Total Recall, Tim Burton Planet of the Apes, and Red Dawn are also forgettable AND bad. The others, most of which I haven't seen, are also ones I forgot about and have no real impulse to see (Assault on Precinct 13 seems tempting, but the original is hard to pass up).

One I'd propose adding, though it's probably more arguable than others, is the True Grit remake. It wasn't bad, even good. But the massive legacy Wayne left behind kind've makes it less memorable because it sits in that shadow.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Yeah and that's another thing. Even the "good" remakes as listed here, I never really bothered to watch them again. Ben Hur was surprisingly better then I thought it'd be and though it fell dramatically short of the original, it was still perfectly watchable. But I never bothered watching it again.

Same with The Magnificent Seven. It seemed alright but no interested in seeing it again. As quirky Westerns go though, it certainly doesn't compare to The Warriors Way . :cool:

The 2018 Robin Hood is a hilarious travesty I actually went to in theaters. It opens with a draft-notice sent to Robin by the King for the Crusades. It only gets dumber from there. The version from 2010 with RUSSEL CROWE fightin' round the world England for the rights of the people is miles better. It's also campy and dumb, but it's got the SPIRIT of a Robin Hood movie crossed with Revolutionary American/British whig values and principles, so it's wonderfully enjoyable and I don't see the hate it got. I remember it fondly and now want to go find it and buy it.

I didn't even bother seeing the 2018 one and I saw the 2010 one once... and it just seemed to be missing the point of Robin Hood by trying to tell this gritty historical origin story and stretch it out over three hours or so (and gimping the Sheriff of Nottingham who would supposedly be the main bad guy in any sequel). I guess I don't remember it being enjoyable and spirited. Maybe I should give it another look... if I could bother to do so. I honestly can't remember much from it... except Robin being thrown into a cage by King Richard for speaking up, and then he ends up in England... and some guy imports French people to take over England and there's a big battle... and the Sheriff of Nottingham is a total coward already. I don't remember any "good humor bits" so they must've went down the memory hole like 95% of this film for me. :p

What does strike me and why I put up both of these Robin Hoods is that they kind of fit the formula. 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves gets a lot of hate despite being an amazingly classic fantasy film romp, especially with Kevin Costner clearly not giving a fuck about his random accenting or lack thereof in the film (which doesn't matter to me tbh) but it's still the best Robin Hood film of the whole bunch. It's fun and filled with action and adventure and character and drama and melodrama and is just entertaining to watch but still has plenty of substance as well. I have no idea how they managed to toss in a bunch of characters and random things like a Moorish character and Celtic style barbarians and witchcraft but they did and it all worked without being an overly jumbled mess like so many modern films are.

One I'd propose adding, though it's probably more arguable than others, is the True Grit remake. It wasn't bad, even good. But the massive legacy Wayne left behind kind've makes it less memorable because it sits in that shadow.

Psycho:

There was a remake of Psycho in 1998. Being almost a scene for scene remake took away a lot of the suspense that make the original one so great. Not to mention the color and added sound effects kind of ruined it.

It is telling the original made 50 million in 1960 while the 1998 remake only made 37 million.

I suppose Westerns and Horror movies are kind of their own thing. I didn't add any Horror movies because there's been so many and not just remakes but reboots and sequel skipping sequels and more.

There have been a lot of Westerns based on older material though. I never actually saw the original True Grit because I'm a horrible person. I did like the remake though. 3:10 to Yuma was another Western remake that was good and that I only saw once because once was enough. Also... overlooked but fairly quality, Appaloosa with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons as the excellent and charismatic bad guy. Now this isn't a remake (it literally has nothing to do with the just as excellent 1966 Marlon Brando Western The Appaloosa) but coincidentally shares the name of that film which confused me a great deal when it came out.
 

gral

Well-known member
The 2018 Robin Hood is a hilarious travesty I actually went to in theaters. It opens with a draft-notice sent to Robin by the King for the Crusades. It only gets dumber from there. The version from 2010 with RUSSEL CROWE fightin' round the world England for the rights of the people is miles better. It's also campy and dumb, but it's got the SPIRIT of a Robin Hood movie crossed with Revolutionary American/British whig values and principles, so it's wonderfully enjoyable and I don't see the hate it got. I remember it fondly and now want to go find it and buy it.

Eh, best Robin Hood movie still is Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
 

Argent

Well-known member
There have been a lot of Westerns based on older material though. I never actually saw the original True Grit because I'm a horrible person. I did like the remake though. 3:10 to Yuma was another Western remake that was good and that I only saw once because once was enough. Also... overlooked but fairly quality, Appaloosa with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons as the excellent and charismatic bad guy. Now this isn't a remake (it literally has nothing to do with the just as excellent 1966 Marlon Brando Western The Appaloosa) but coincidentally shares the name of that film which confused me a great deal when it came out.

Westerns are like crack for hollywood studios wanting to find a remake in their libraries. The 1940's and 1950's saw westerns everywhere. Even after the height Westerns still pop up a lot.

So they have a bunch older properties that have some cultural vaule as classic but that most people have not seen. Movies like High Noon can easily be made as a remake with an entirely new audience unlike movies like Ghostbusters.

This makes studios not have to get a script but get all the advantages of having almost no one compare the two movies.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
I saw The Magnificent Seven, Robocop, and Gulliver's Travels.

Honestly, I thought they were all okay movies.

Didn't see the Mummy, was not a fan of replacing Brendan Fraser with fucking Tom Cruise.

Replacing Brendan Fraser with Tom Cruise would be... not quite as bad as, but kinda like replacing Robin Williams with Pete Davidson (which itself should be a war crime).
 

Culsu

Agent of the Central Plasma
Founder
The Brendan Fraser "Mummy" and Tom Cruise "Mummy" can't really be seen as original and remake. Except for them featuring mummies they have literally nothing in common.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
The Brendan Fraser "Mummy" and Tom Cruise "Mummy" can't really be seen as original and remake. Except for them featuring mummies they have literally nothing in common.

It was meant to be connected to Dracula Untold, and was an attempt by Universal Studios to start a "Dark Universe" franchise of antiheroes with villainesque powers.

It failed because it had Tom Cruise in it.

That might sound like a joke, but I'm serious. Tom Cruise can't be seen as anything other than Tom Cruise, and he's not a good enough actor like, say, RDJ, to make up for it. So any movie that requires Tom Cruise to play an interesting, compelling character - as opposed to an action flick where the action is all that matters and the narrative is just an excuse for the action - is DOA.
 
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Argent

Well-known member
I saw The Magnificent Seven, Robocop, and Gulliver's Travels.

Honestly, I thought they were all okay movies. Robocop and Gulliver's Travels where well done and different enough to be interesting. While Magnificent Seven was much more simalr to the original work it was still a decent movie. It is just I have felt little desire to rewatch any them.

Didn't see the Mummy, was not a fan of replacing Brendan Fraser with fucking Tom Cruise.

Replacing Brendan Fraser with Tom Cruise would be... not quite as bad as, but kinda like replacing Robin Williams with Pete Davidson (which itself should be a war crime).

Out of all of the ones you named only the Mummy was bad.

The Brendan Fraser "Mummy" and Tom Cruise "Mummy" can't really be seen as original and remake. Except for them featuring mummies they have literally nothing in common.


True. The Brendan Fraser "Mummy" is an action comedy
It never tried 5o be anything but a fun action flick. Not to mention that supporting cast was much better

The Tom Cruise "Mummy" was a super serious action that failed to build up any suspense. I do admit that I like the idea of tieing all the older werid properties together. It could have been an interesting universe and I always like the League of Extraordinary. It is bad that the movie was so bad.
 

Argent

Well-known member
Robocop 2014 was pretty poop as well, let's be fair.

I guess but I bearly remember it and it is not like the original one was that great of a movie too. But I thought they did a decent job expanding on the Cyberpunkness that was brealy there in the frist movie.


I know that Robocop is well remembered but I never thought it was great and sequel is better forgotten.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
I guess but I bearly remember it and it is not like the original one was that great of a movie too. But I thought they did a decent job expanding on the Cyberpunkness that was brealy there in the frist movie.

I know that Robocop is well remembered but I never thought it was great and sequel is better forgotten.

The original Robocop was fantastic you cretin. It was almost one of the most perfect action movies ever made, inasmuch as that there are so few movies that I feel match up to expectations so exactly. Like they marketed Robocop as a cybernetic cop policing a decadent and decaying Detroit at the behest of an giant corrupt megacorporation and it delivered on that near perfectly. It wasn't a perfect movie and it wasn't the best movie of the year or ever, but for what it was as an action movie, its delivery matched expectations almost flawlessly.

The fact that it injected so many more fun characters and side plots and transposed to a new setting (future crumbling Detroit) actually IMHO makes it even better in quality (if not entertainment value) then other amazing action films True Lies or Die Hard or Rambo or whatever. It was a great action movie that delivered what it set out to do... and on top of that was a great satire and on top of that... was set in a near future scifi setting that was just an absolute treat.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
Out of all of the ones you named only the Mummy was bad.

I didn't say any of them were bad, I even liked The Magnificent Seven and Will Smith's I Robot, and Gulliver's Travels was funny.

Why did you edit what my post said when quoting me?

The fact that it injected so many more fun characters and side plots and transposed to a new setting (future crumbling Detroit) actually IMHO makes it even better in quality (if not entertainment value) then other amazing action films True Lies or Die Hard or Rambo or whatever. It was a great action movie that delivered what it set out to do... and on top of that was a great satire and on top of that... was set in a near future scifi setting that was just an absolute treat.

Hmmm... Rambo... Con Air... Air Force One.... My favorite action movies, probably.

Oh, and Tropic Thunder! Does that count as action?
 

Laskar

Would you kindly?
Founder
I didn't say any of them were bad, I even liked The Magnificent Seven and Will Smith's I Robot, and Gulliver's Travels was funny.
This is a thread about forgettable remakes. Do you, perhaps, come from an alternate reality where Harlan Ellison did not piss off Warner Brothers and I, Robot got made?
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
I'll be honest, while some of these reboots were actually decentish or watchable or entertaining or whatever, even in those cases I don't think I ever gave any of these films a second watch. Like I could agree that the remakes of Magnificent Seven, Ben Hur and whatnot had their moments and might've not been that bad, but I never ever had the urge to be like, I wanna see that movie again or considered watching them again if I saw them in a channel guide or whatever.

I did like I Robot a fair bit though. I've watched that a few times. I think it is actually a good movie. Alex Proyas did a decent job in making it interesting enough even if it was pretty shallow, it was still substantial considering it was still basically a big budget Hollywood action move.

The Brendan Fraser "Mummy" and Tom Cruise "Mummy" can't really be seen as original and remake. Except for them featuring mummies they have literally nothing in common.

That's fair. At worst I guess it can be considered a reboot. Calling it a remake would be unjustified. The main thing is I suppose they rebooted the franchise while Brendan Fraser's series of Mummy films were still part of our cinematic memory and thus a reboot seemed more opportunistic and shallow then it might of otherwise would've been. And a lot of people were making at least general comparisons between the two. But I'll edit the thread title a bit to reflect reboots as well.
 

Argent

Well-known member
I didn't say any of them were bad, I even liked The Magnificent Seven and Will Smith's I Robot, and Gulliver's Travels was funny.

Why did you edit what my post said when quoting me?

There was suppose to be more but got lost when I posted.

But mainly I had a couple of paragraphs that talked about how most of the original had something to make them stand out but they left a decent road map to make a forgettable remake as they lack a certain something.

It is a simalr thing that I have seen in some of the Disney's live action movies. While Will Smith wasn't bad he was no Robin Williams. The same goes with Magnificent Seven. There is a reason that people still love Steve McQueen movies decades later. So while actors like Denzel Washington did a decent job they just could not bring about that on screen magic in the same way.
 

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