Is any classic movie too sacred to touch?

[MegoSteve]

Kane II: Revenge of Rosebud.

Someone should remake Showgirls with an all-drag-queen cast.

[david_b]

"A Hard Days Night"..?

[Mikey]

I can imagine Song of the South will never be remade

[gummi]

>If I had to choose one movie that should NEVER be touched it would be Jaws.

Funny you should mention that:
WHAT IF... JAWS WAS MADE TODAY?

Don C.

That pretty much sums it up. I have no doubt that's how it would turn out.

[Sandman9580]

My roommate's got the full DVD box set from a year or two ago, so I believe I've seen every single version now. Even that 60 min. thing made from out takes.

None of the versions were very compelling to me script-wise. As a sci-fi movie I don't think the theme of questioning what makes us human is ever fully realized and the film noir detective/love story just seems paint-by-number job to me. The action only works if we have a stake in the outcome of the characters and I don't in this movie.

Deckard is a complete enigma, he doesn't want to hunt replicants and we don't know why, then he changes his mind and we don't know why. They're using a standard convention of detective film noir, to give the hero some kind of mysterious backstory, but because the character is so lifeless and underwritten I never get an idea of what his backstory meant to him - so he ends up meaning nothing to me too.

The idea of making him a replicant (in at least one of the versions) doesn't improve things for me either. I get the idea that they're playing with the notion that Deckard is the human with no soul, and Roy is a replicant with a soul - but the movie isn't consistent with that, so it just seems a little wishy-washy. It's not surprising to me that it could have gone either way with Dekard being a replicant depending on the editing, because Dekard doesn't seem like a fully rendered character in the first place to me.

Dekard's motives are unclear and his quest is unmemorable because I'm not along for the ride. The movie looks like a detective story, but in a real detective story the audience is trying to figure things out with the hero. We see Dekard kind of doing some detective work - it kind of seems like there's a puzzle going on, but the audience never gets to play with the pieces.

I agree with you that the narration is awkward in the original version, but at least it sort of works as a cheat-sheet for getting inside Dekard's head a bit. Even though I don't like it, I can see why it was added.

There are a few clever lines, and I really do think it's one of the most beautiful films ever made - which is why I keep suffering through it - but overall, meh.

That's a pretty well-thought out critique. I've only seen the original w/narration and the (first?) director's cut w/o narration, in the form of a bare-bones DVD that Warner Bros. released back when DVD packages were still made out of folded cardboard. So even though I consider myself a fan of the movie, and I've read the PKD novel it was based on, I'm a little behind in all the releases that have come out since.

I guess I agree with most of what you say -- the movie does work a lot better when you think of it as a kind of atmospheric tone poem. When I really think hard about the experience of watching it, there's quite a few moments where I wish the script and character development would go a lot further than they do. Dekard is an enigma, and you do have to bring a lot of your own imagination and conjecture to the movie for it to work. Some of that may be deliberate minimalism and ambiguity, and some of that may be... negligent screenwriting. It's definitely a movie where the (great) visual design, atmosphere and music do most of the heavy lifting.

Still, there's enough meaning and emotional resonance in the story for it to work for me. The overall theme seems to be, "Even if the world's a dark, ugly place, it's a good thing to be alive. Enjoy the time you have." And Batty's speech at the end always gets to me! Even if I don't know what c-beams are.

[Sandman9580]

If you want an idea of what a Casablanca remake would look like, check out The Good German with George Clooney and Clate Blanchett. Or, better yet, don't.

[huedell]

Still, there's enough meaning and emotional resonance in the story for it to work for me. The overall theme seems to be, "Even if the world's a dark, ugly place, it's a good thing to be alive. Enjoy the time you have." And Batty's speech at the end always gets to me...

That almost sums it up for me...its just a great emotional flick for
me...especially as the film wraps up. As faor the START of the movie, Deckard not wanting to hunt anymore is just that to me, and I don't think
much about it any more than its like a cop that's just burnt out doing police work.