Films that can not be remade

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What films do you think could never be remade. No matter what the budget, cast, director, or special effects are thrown at it, they would never be able to capture the brilliance of the original?

When I say remade I mean that there is no attempt by the makers to present it as a different film (e.g. Into The Blue, which was really a remake of The Deep)

Most remakes are embarrassing I think. The only ones that have worked are the ones where they modified the storyline but kept the essence of what was going on.

Some good ones are:

The Thomas Crown Affair
The Time Machine
King Kong

Bad ones are too numerous to list.

I watched Alien again last night for about the 200th time and I got to thinking whether they could remake it and come up with something good. My conclusion was no. It seems too many things came together for that movie for any production team, cast, or director to pull it off again.

The Dark Knight.

I don't think the following films could, or should, be remade because the actors & direction was perfect the first time around. Unfortunately, somewhere up the road, Hollywood will try.

The Godfather
Amadeus
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Pulp Fiction
Scarface
Back To The Future
Gandhi

Office Space, Goonies, and The Princess Bride - I say these three because they're to good in its movie format to ever be duplicated without changing so much that it ends up being that person from the otherside of the world that supposedly looks like you but is in fact not in any way the same. The problem though with Office Space is that it's a comedy about a type of work environment. There are other movies out there that have made light of specific jobs such as Men at Work(Garbage Men), Served(Restaurants), Talledega Nights(Race Car), Used Cars(Selling Used Cars), etc... So really it can be remade but not with the same target of the joke. The Goonies is almost impossible to duplicate, but probably will be for either the current or next generation of kids growing up. I expect it to fail compared to goonies. And the Princess Bride(as the movie it is) is to good at what it is. A simple tale of revenge and love and revenge with comedy and action elements all throughout. I expect all of them to be duplicated/remade at some point but I don't expect the clones to succeed.

Also one thing that I think affects whether a remake can even succeed or not is the fact that the original is still around. It's not like we've gone 500 years in the future and the only copies of what media is currently in the here and now are obscure and relegated to a few who history buffs.

If they do a remake of any of those i am to mention below, i'll get a very serious tantrum/seizure..

- A Clockwork Orange
- One flew over the cuckoo's nest
- 2001 A space Odyssey
- Taxi driver
- Vertigo

JUST DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

Blue Velvet

Blade Runner.

So many things just came together at once... I cannot imagine how it can ever be replicated... pun intended...

Anything can be remade. If a film successfully captured something of the time and place in which it was made, then the remake should update it to reflect a more modern setting. There were plenty of people crying blasphemy when Scarface was remade, because the 1932 version was so perfectly relevant to the world of 1932. But the 1983 remake was successful, among many other reasons, because it made the story relevant to the world of 1983, without sacrificing the integrity of what the human story was all about.

Memento! So original, it just wouldn't make sense to repeat it.

Some others I can think of would also be
Usual Suspects
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Princess Mononoke
Shaun of the Dead
Airplane,
Battle Royale
and probably loads of others I can't think of right now!

Goodfellas
The Great Escape
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Unforgiven
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Platoon
Schindler's List
Apocalypse Now
Saving Private Ryan
No Country For Old Men
The Wild Bunch
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
The Shawshank Redemption

The Wizard of Oz (i hate that there are live action sequels, prequels, and spinoffs in existence that try to connect itself to this version)

Mary Poppins

Lord of the Rings trilogy

If somebody decides to remake Jerry Lewis' The Day the Clown Cried, I'm not sure if I would give him a beating or a medal for his courage.

Eraserhead
The atmosphere is perfect, better effects or filming would lose that dream like state.
Plus,
Whoever could sing as well as this:-



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJiWzZqvL0[/youtube]