10 Movie Remakes Nobody Expected Or Wanted

There's nothing inherently wrong with remaking a film. In fact, some of the greatest films of all

time are remakes. And even when remakes aren't particularly good, there's usually some sort of

logic as to why they got made, even if it is a cynical, financially motivated sort of logic

But sometimes there are remakes that don't make much sense to anyone. Films that make everyone

ask, what was the point? So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture, and here are movie

remakes nobody expected or wanted. The Italian Job. The Italian Job is one of the great British

films of the 1960s. A bunch of cheeky chappy Cockney stereotypes led by Michael Caine in

Decktown Minis execute an audacious heist in Milan, all while trying to outwit the fearsome

Italian mafia. During production, Fiat offered to pay for all cars used and abused if the iconic

trio of Mini Coopers was swapped for Fiat 500s. The filmmakers said no. And then there's the 2003

remake. It isn't necessarily bad. It's an enjoyable enough 2000s action film with some good set pieces

but it's hard not to feel like the minis could have been swapped out for any other brand of car

and the film released under a totally different name without anybody noticing. And unlike most questionable remakes

there isn't the argument that it's trying to bank on name recognition, since the original wasn't particularly successful in the United States

It doesn't even bother to remake cinema's most impressive and most literal cliffhanger

I mean, what is even the point? Psycho. The original Psycho is one of the most iconic films ever made

made by one of the most influential directors ever to work in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock

Remaking it would be like trying to remake Citizen Kane or The Godfather. There's nothing you can add that would improve it, so why even bother

But the bizarre thing about Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake is that it doesn't try to add anything at all

Psycho isn't just similar to the original, it's basically a shot-for-shot remake

Same framing, same dialogue, same editing, same music, even the same special effects in some instances

The only noticeable differences are the actors, it being shot in colour

and some random abstract shots intercut with the murder scenes. Putting aside the fact that the original Psycho is shot the way it is specifically to take advantage of the black and white film that they were working with

and that Vince Vaughn's take on Norman Bates' pales in comparison to Anthony Perkins

the biggest issue with this film is that it's impossible to get past the question of why

What could this possibly have been trying to achieve? The answer largely remains, well, who knows? The Mummy

Universal's monster movies have a long and storied tradition in Hollywood, so it's not

hugely surprising that eventually somebody somewhere decided the studio should have another

crack at them. What was surprising was their decision to forego any series of fun or adventure

and instead try and use it as a vehicle to jumpstart their already failing Dark Universe The Dark Universe was Universal attempt at copying the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and much like the DC Extended Universe it tried to jump the gun and get straight to the team

without laying any of the groundwork. This is why we ended up with a Mummy film where the

secondary antagonist was Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, as well as one which spent half of its plot setting

at Prodigium instead of having fun adventures. The most frustrating thing about The Mummy is that

not only had previous remakes been successful, but also that many people did want a continuation

of the franchise. What almost nobody was looking for, though, was generic Tom Cruise action film

number 387, Red Dawn. There might not be any film more 1980s than the original Red Dawn

the story of a group of high school teens heroically defending their small middle American

town from invading Russians during World War III. The film captures so much about the era that it's

practically a time capsule. So when MGM decided to have another go at it in the late 2000s

there were likely a few heads being scratched. The idea of Soviet troops parachuting into small

town USA was already stretching reality when the original was made, and was the sort of nonsense

you could only get away with in the glorious days of 80s action cinema. Transplant that into a post

Cold War world, and the idea of any country having both the justification and the resources to launch

a full-scale land invasion of the USA becomes laughable. This is a problem the filmmakers soon

ran into themselves when they realized that China, their original USSR replacement, was actually on

comparatively good terms with the US in 2010, and would not appreciate their portrayal, to say

nothing of the diminished box office receipts that would come from ditching the Chinese box office

To fix this, they replaced China in post-production with the second biggest baddie they could think of

North Korea, a country that, although in possession of a sizable military, would not have the

logistical capabilities of invading the United States. Red Dawn just isn't the sort of plot that

made much sense in the 2010s, which explains why it failed on both a critical and commercial level

Point Break If the original Red Dawn is the mid-80s incarnates, then Point Break is the same for the early 90s

If someone had never heard of Point Break, all you would have to do is tell them the premise

Keanu Reeves is an FBI agent who must go undercover to infiltrate a bunch of surfer

dude bank robbers, and they'd more than likely be able to guess which decade it was made and

released in. Even Reeves' character's name, Johnny Utah, exudes that sort of

90s extreme with an X cool you just don't get anymore. So what do you get when you take a film

that could most accurately be described as radical and remake it in a post-2000s cynical

realism-obsessed media landscape? Funnily enough, you get a bland and uninspiring action film

In its defence the 2015 remake got a fair amount of impressive extreme sports sequences but it ended up taking itself way too seriously and lost that genuine sense of fun that made the original film what it was

Also, how do you compete with Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey, and Patrick Swayze

This remake lost the battle before it was even fought. Total Recall

There are some directors whose films have so much personality that it's impossible to imagine them being made by anyone else

There's a reason Tarantino films are Tarantino films before they're anything. else. So what happens when you try to remake a film that is defined by a director's style

Well, if 2012's Total Recall remake is anything to go by, you get something uninspiring. As with

a lot of the other films on this list, Total Recall isn't terrible. It just isn't very good

either. All of the style and atmosphere that made the Arnie-led original So Beloved is gone

and in its place is generic 2010 sci-fi action. Most of the major changes sit somewhere between

confusing and pointless, and everything that stays the same becomes a pale imitation of the original

Nothing sums up Total Recall better than how it deals with the is-it-a-dream plotline

taking one of the most interesting parts from the original, repeating it, and somehow making

it totally uninteresting. It asks all the same questions, but never bothers to get you to care

what the answers are. The Thing. 2011's The Thing isn't technically a remake of John Carpenter's

1982 horror masterpiece. It's actually a prequel, depicting what happened at the Norwegian base

right up to the original's iconic opening scene of a helicopter chasing a snow dog through the

Antarctic desert. Counterpoint, it's literally called The Thing. It may link up narratively

with Carpenter's original, but you could remove the mid-credits scene and call it a complete remake

with next to no issue. It's closer to the 1982 film than it is to 1951's The Thing from Another

world, which is the original original. Even a poster is pretty much a remake. If anything

the 2011 film's existence in the purgatory between remake and prequel puts it in a worst

of both worlds scenario. It manages to retread the beats of Carpenter's film with the bland

monotony of the least inventive remakes, while simultaneously falling into the standard prequel

trap of over-explaining minor details and providing answers to questions that nobody ever asked

Not quite one, not quite the other, and definitely not the continuation of the thing that anybody was looking for or interested in

Get Carter Another instance of location swapping a British film to the USA

the Sylvester Stallone-fronted remake of Get Carter swaps out the Newcastle of 1971 for Millennium Era Seattle

a difference so massive that swapping out the script wouldn't have made as much difference

Newcastle might not be in the title of Get Carter but the North East England city is an integral location as you ever find in a film The city defines the original arguably providing more character and personality than Carter himself

Taking a film so fundamentally rooted in time and place and shifting it to a different where and when

was always going to be a questionable move. But it's not just that they moved it out of Newcastle

It's where they moved it to. America had no shortage of grim post-industrial decay in the late 90s

and somewhere like Detroit, Philadelphia, or even Chicago could have had the potential for at least

an attempt at translating the neglected northern atmosphere so important to the original's

atmosphere. Seattle, however, is none of those things. What's left is a reasonably generic mid-2000s

action movie that hits all the narrative beats of the original, but completely fails to maintain

the one thing that tied it all together in the first place. Ben-Hur. It's unlikely that there

was anyone in the early 2010s who heard, they're remaking Ben-Hur, and thought it was a good idea

The 1959 Swords and Sandals epic was the second highest-grossing film of all time when it released

has been seen by millions on TV in the years since, and with 11 Oscars, shares the record

for most Academy Award wins over 60 years later. Granted, the 1959 version was itself a remake

but considering 1925's Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ was a black-and-white silent film

it was really more of an adaptation than anything else. The 2016 version did not have that benefit

Nothing short of the greatest film of all time could avoid being a disappointment when compared to the originals

The result was rather predictable. Hardly anyone went to see it, and those who did had few positive things to say about it

Cabin Fever It could be argued the original Cabin Fever was unexpected and unwanted

And it's not even a remake. Released in the midst of the early 2000s, thousands, it followed a group of friends as they slowly succumb to an aggressive flesh-eating virus

It's a fine enough film if you like that sort of low-budget schlocky horror where a bunch of drunk

horny teens go out to a cabin in the woods and die horribly. But it wasn't exactly revolutionary

and didn't have much mass-market appeal. It didn't make much of an impact, and after a couple of

straight-to-DVD sequels, the franchise quickly slipped into dormancy. So it's both surprising

and more than a little confusing that in 2016, only 16 years after its premiere, a remake was

released. Even more baffling, it's mostly the same film again. While not a shot-for-shot remake like

Psycho, the new Cabin Fever still retreads the original pretty much beat for beat. Even the

deaths, one of the biggest draws for this type of film, are nearly all identical, just with slightly

updated special effects. Cabin Fever is perhaps the epitome of an unexpected, unwanted remake

Nobody was crying out for it before it was made, and nobody cares now that it exists