The one movie Spike Lee would “come back from the dead” to stop from happening
Remakes are a plague that have contaminated Hollywood over the years, doing nothing more than lazily rehashing pre-existing ideas and sucking the originality out of the cinematic medium.
Regardless, sometimes there are some exceptions to be made. When Brian De Palma took on Scarface, he brought much more violence and excess to the classic rise-and-fall tale, and Al Pacino’s performance was undeniably brilliant. What about Dune (sorry, David Lynch)? And The Thing? Clearly, a remake can have plenty of merit if it’s executed well enough, although there are plenty of genuinely awful remakes that make a strong case for the concept being disregarded for good.
The question of why Nicolas Cage decided to star in an awful remake of one of the best horror movies of all time, The Wicker Man, remains as big a mystery as the existence of aliens, while Gus Van Sant’s bizarre remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking Psycho is also one of cinema’s biggest enigmas. How were these films given the green light? That’s something we might never find the answer to, but if there’s any remake that needs to be questioned the most, it’s Spike Lee’s Oldboy.
Who in their right mind would allow an American remake of Park Chan-wook’s intense thriller to be made? You’d think that putting someone as accomplished as Lee in the director’s chair would at least make this remake somewhat decent, but it was instead worse than you could’ve ever imagined. It was genuinely awful, with Josh Brolin taking on the main character originally played by Choi Min-sik.
Sanitising the film of everything that made the first one so shocking and stomach-turningly disgusting, Lee made a movie to be ashamed of. Perhaps Park should’ve been more vocal in stopping a Hollywood remake of his best film, because Lee is adamant to ensure that a certain movie of his is never, ever, remade.
In fact, he went as far as to say, “As long as I’m alive, there will be no remake and, if they try, I’m coming back from the dead to stop it”. There’s no messing with Lee, even when he’s dead and buried. The filmmaker is, of course, referring to Do the Right Thing, his seminal tale of racial tensions that reach a fever pitch on a long and hot day following a clash between the Italian-American pizzeria owners and the local Black residents in a Brooklyn neighbourhood.
The movie is an indisputable dark comedy masterpiece that delivered a no-holds-barred depiction of racism and police brutality to screens, and Lee never wants to see another person attempt to bring the movie to a newer audience through a modernised remake. That’s the beauty of Do the Right Thing: while it might have an aesthetic that is quintessentially 1980s, the message at its core is unmistakably timeless, lending it the relevancy it enjoys. The tale sadly still rings true today, as racism continues to erupt in violent protests and clashes, while police are still murdering people based on the colour of their skin, seemingly without impunity.
Lee doubled down on his plans to do all he can to make sure Do the Right Thing forever remains untouched, adding, “Hahaha! I promise you, I will come back from the pearly gates, from the upper room, to stop a remake. So help me God. I will bring him with me, and Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Bill Nunn, Frank Sinatra. Anybody that’s passed; we’ll all come back to stop a remake.”
If only the mortal beings had such powers to stop Lee from helming Oldboy back in the day.
