When Did Remakes Go Bad?

[snichols1973]

It seems that Inspector Gadget 2 was actually closer to the animated series than its prequel; in the first movie, Gadget and Dr. Claw had aliases and origins (John Brown and Sandford Scolex), while in IG2, they're simply known as Inspector Gadget and Dr. Claw, and Claw is represented as an elusive villain whose face is never seen, and the "John Brown" and "Sandford Scolex" aliases are dropped from the sequel, in consistency with the original series.

 

[Mo Frackle]

I also think French Stewart played a better Gadget then Matthew Broderick.

Then again, I haven't seen either movie in years.

 

[BobThePizzaBoy]

I also think French Stewart played a better Gadget then Matthew Broderick.

That's a lot of gadgets.

 

[snichols1973]

That's a lot of gadgets.

And very few of them work right.....

 

[Drtooth]

It seems that Inspector Gadget 2 was actually closer to the animated series than its prequel; in the first movie, Gadget and Dr. Claw had aliases and origins (John Brown and Sandford Scolex), while in IG2, they're simply known as Inspector Gadget and Dr. Claw, and Claw is represented as an elusive villain whose face is never seen, and the "John Brown" and "Sandford Scolex" aliases are dropped from the sequel, in consistency with the original series.

And they reference other MAD agents. There's still all that damage done by the first movie (refusal to call the city Metro City, Brain being a live action dog and the Gadget Mobile talking), but it manages to actually be Inspector Gadget like. French does a better job, albeit he's quite whiny as Gadget.

The one I really like is the CGI Inspector Gadget's Biggest Case (Last Case was alright). But even then they still insisted on the Gadget Mobile talking. I love how oblivious Penny is in that movie. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That's what her character secretly needed. Too bad it didn't invigorate the franchise.

Speaking of remake sequels, I feel that George of the Jungle 2 is underrated. Sure, it's cheap. They reuse some of the old animatronics from the first movie and cheaply CGI in new mouths, as they weren't the ones that were rigged to talk. But the constant lampshade hanging about how they were too cheap to get Brendan Frasier back was genius.

 

[BobThePizzaBoy]

Oh shoot.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/how-grinch-stole-christmas-remake-419447

 

[Drtooth]

Beat you to it. it's got its own thread.

 

[CensoredAlso]

The Brady Bunch movies aren't remakes. They are closer to satirical parodies.

The Adams Family movies are closer to remakes and one of the few franchises to do it well. As other fans have said, they took a good idea and made it ten times richer.

For me personally, Bewitched was the moment where remakes of old TV shows became a thing to dread, lol. They just tend to suffer from incredibly awful writing and bare no real resemblance to the source material. Though I suppose Inspector Gadget also helped start that trend earlier.

 

[Drtooth]

Gadget and Underdog have the same problem. They have the barest shred of the concept, but forgot absolutely everything that made the shows special in the first place. I highly suspect they had generic scripts for other projects and slapped the franchise names on them because they were about to lose the license.

Dragonball Evolution, and I SWEAR this is true... that was slapped together because Fox was just about to have the license expire (they bought it 2000 or so at the height of the show's American popularity) and they didn't want the same thing to happen with Watchmen. And we all remember that, but in case we don't... Fox had the license to make a Watchmen movie that never happened in the 90's, and when Warner Bros was working on it, they sued and lost because someone else was going to make the movie they didn't when they somehow had a license that didn't expire, despite them not doing anything with it. So, out of fears that someone else would get the license to make a DB movie, they threw a terrible one together last minute. But hey, at least we got Dragonball Kai out of it.

Bewitched is a very interesting case. I'd never call it a stupid movie. In fact, quite the opposite. They did something clever and original with it... so clever and original that it stunk. Instead of a blatant remake, they made the movie about making the remake. Clever, yes... but all together too smart for its own good. Not an elitist smart, but they cloyingly cute smart of some overly gifted little kid that can spell complicated words that NO ONE uses. The reaction of having to make an "Oh, isn't that adorable" face or comment, when you're really thinking, "get this overly precocious brat the heck away from me before I break something." Though I applaud Steve Carell's cameo as Uncle Arthur.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Though I applaud Steve Carell's cameo as Uncle Arthur.

Oh me too definitely, I enjoyed that part. The movie had a lot of great ideas but desperately needed an editor to focus on one of them and follow through with that one idea.