DARK SHADOWS AND THE REMAKES

    This is not a review. I haven’t seen the new movie starring Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton. Although based on a 60's soap opera that was very successful because included a vampire, ghosts and monsters, the trailers and early summaries of the movie tell us that Burton decided to make it into a comedy.

    When I was a child I loved Dark Shadows. It was shown in my country much later and as a regular night series, not as a soap opera. Apparently both Burton and Depp were also fans of the show, so we can suppose this is some kind of homage. Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas Collins (the star of the show) has a cameo on the film, which I guess lends some consistency to this idea.

    Many people have complained that the American film industry has run out of ideas. Indeed, it seems like in the past few years the amount of sequels, prequels and remakes has increased substantially. Although I think that none of these possibilities is bad per se, the truth is that in most of the cases we end up with mediocre or bad movies. Why?

    Well, regarding prequels and sequels, it stands to reason that if they are organic to the story they probably will be better than if they are made as an afterthought just to cash in the success of the original film. So, in principle at least, when prequels and sequels are planned from the very beginning, because the story benefits from, or even requires, a larger format to say what it wants to say, probably any subsequent movie won’t be too bad comparing to the first one. And even though we know that financial considerations are always important in making a follow-up movie, when only financial factors are considered there are more chances or ending up with a less satisfying product.

    Both The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series are good examples of this: because condensing more that one volume in a movie was impossible without eliminating too much of the details, from the very beginning there were supposed to be at least three Rings and seven Potter films (in the latter case they made eight). The movies were also quite successful both with the critics and the box office.

    This, of course, is not guarantee of success. The live action adaptation of the animation series Avatar: The Last Airbender was supposed to be comprised of three films, one for each season of the series. But the first movie (The Last Airbender), directed by M. Night Shyamalan, did so poorly in terms of reviews and earnings that any plan seems to be suspended or cancelled.

    On the other hand, it seems that it is much more common to come up with the idea of a sequel or a prequel when any movie does well in the box office. So even stories that don’t seem to need any further development are subject to a series of sequels because of their financial success. The Matrix and Star Wars are good examples: in both cases, the movies were self-contained, and although there was always room to explore more, this did not seem necessary. The Matrix, in particular, seemed to have a very definite ending, with Neo discovering his superpowers and starting to free the people from the machines. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the movie was such a success that they decided to continue the story with a sequel that brought more of the same, increasing the quantities and lowering the quality — more fights, more chases, more special effects, more characters; less originality, less resolution of themes. The second sequel, The Matrix Revolutions, was especially unsatisfying, due to the increased repetition of elements, the noise, the pompous blah blah, and with an ending the made little sense.

    And we’re not even touching all the Rockys, Friday the 13ths, Nightmare on Elm Streets and more.

    The remakes are usually motivated by the same factors, but obviously have other sources. When the original movie (or TV series) is a foreign one, it’s even better if people don’t know about it, so the producers have carte blanche to do the modifications they feel they need to do in order to make the story more understandable or palatable to the American public. Sometimes it works, as it happened with The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese, but in most cases it doesn’t, or at least not quite, because when you change some of the things that made a movie or a series good, those things are really not replaced but lost.

    In many cases, the original movie or show is American, and what the studios want in that case is use the fame of that film or TV programme to capture an audience. In other words, part of the publicity surrounding a movie is devoted to inform people about it, about its existence and general theme, characteristics and actors. When the studios do a remake of an old movie, part of that agenda is accomplished without an extra expense in publicity: the audience knows about the theme, the characters, et cetera.

    From an artistic point of view, the producers may seek to improve on the original, because is there really a point in doing the same thing? I didn’t watch the 1998 version of Psycho, directed by Gus van Sant, but I read it followed exactly the same structure of the original, even repeating scenes frame by frame in some instances. What for, if you have the 1960 movie, I may ask? So there have to be some changes. It could be changes in the general looks (so it won’t look dated), in the rhythm (for a generation with attention-deficit tendencies), in the technical aspects (better special effects, better sound, better music). Critics tend to agree that Ocean’s Eleven from 2001 is better than the movie from the 60s, in which the Rat Pack spent most of the movie looking and acting cool. Some argue The Thomas Crown Affair from 1999 is a bit more slick and better built than the 1968 movie, with the possible exception of Pierce Brosnan not being Steve McQueen. And although for purists the only Solaris that is worth watching is the one directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy (1972), there is not doubt that the lighter and much shorter (99 minutes vs. 167 minutes in the original) version from 2002 may have been the only one most of the American public was ready to watch.

    But there are two little conundrums in this approach. First of all, the producers will have to fight the very thing they are seeking: the public’s memory of the original work. If the film or show was bad, then probably the remake will be better, but what would be the point of remaking a bad movie? If the film was good, then it will be difficult to top that or even get close. But it’s not only the comparison of the quality of the two versions, but also what the original meant to the public. If it meant something important from an emotional point of view (because of the experiences associated with watching the movie, or because the film resonated with what the viewer was living at that moment, or for any other personal reason), the comparison will be disadvantageous for the new version, in spite of its intrinsic quality. If the original movie was bad in the eyes of the viewer, he or she won’t go to the theatres to see the new one.

    Of course, in some cases the producer do not care. As far as they can disguise the idea as something that is not completely stupid, and put enough action, comedy, romance, and loud music there so they can sell this spawn, they are happy. Transformers and its sequels are good examples.

    But in some other cases they take something and make some sort of parody out of the original, as it has happened with Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard, Charlie’s Angels and I spy, among others. And among those others, Dark Shadows.

    The second conundrum, then, is related to the first one. None of these shows were great, so chances are people who remember them won’t be inclined to see new versions of said shows. But they were popular and, in some ways, unique, so there’s also the possibility that people remember them fondly, in which case they won’t appreciate the parody and the unnecessary change in some of the element of each show (like the personality of a main character or the importance of a particular part of the plot), which again may result in their decision of not watching the new version. On top of that, many people won’t know or remember those shows, especially the audience who are usually fans of the actors in the new movies; people who like Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson or Johnny Depp probably won’t know or care about those old shows.

    So... what’s the point in making these new versions if the people who don’t remember the original shows would (or wouldn’t) go to movies in which these actors and actresses star anyway, regardless of the fact that these movies are original, remakes, sequels or any other thing? And the ones that remember the shows likely won’t go to the theatre to watch a film based on something that was bad to begin with, or was good enough for him or her to try to protect the memory of such show from spurious and soulless exercises in greed.

    I feel either way depending on the movie, but I particularly resent this version of Dark Shadows, because I loved the show. I don’t think it was a great series, but I watched it as a child and have nice memories of it, in the same way some people may have loved Charlie’s Angels or The Dukes of Hazzard, not because they were wonderful but because in that particular moment of their lives it was great to watch those shows. I don’t see the point in taking the theme, the name and the characters and make a comedy out of it (or a parody of a straight comedy, if you know what I mean). They take away the only thing of a real value in a show like this, the fond memories, and give back nothing but generic material with mediocre acting, which seems to be the specialty of late of the Depp-Burton alliance.