Hollywood’s never-ending obsession with cannibalising John Carpenter
Remakes have been a standard practice for much longer than anyone can admit, but it’s only in the last couple of decades they’ve become so rampant to induce eye-rolling. There are very few movies that can unequivocally be deemed safe from a do-over, and it’s become increasingly clear that none of them were directed in their original form by John Carpenter.
There are directors who have directly or indirectly influenced more thinly veiled imitators – with Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock standing out in that regard, even if it was proven in court that Disturbia wasn’t a Rear Window rip-off – but in terms of having their back catalogue cannibalised for a never-ending string of substandard remakes, Carpenter has the competition licked.
To put things into perspective, the director helmed ten features between 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 and 1988’s They Live. Of those ten, four of them have already been remade, one of them gave rise to a 13-film franchise, another spawned two direct-to-video sequels, one led to a short-lived TV series, and three of them have made repeated attempts to get a fresh coat of cinematic paint.
That’s not a single film from the most fruitful and prolific period of his career that’s been left alone, and it’s impossible to say that any of them needed to exist beyond their respective end credits. The Halloween franchise was running out of gas long before David Gordon Green breathed new life into the seminal slasher saga in 2018, but as popular as the opening chapter in his brand-new trilogy turned out to be, the follow-ups fell off a cliff.
Kudos to anyone who even remembers Jean-François Richet’s mundane 2005 re-tread of Assault on Precinct 13, or the brave souls who persevered with 2005’s update of The Fog, which was deservedly named as the winner of the ‘Least Scary Horror Movie’ category at the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, to illustrate the sort of quality that’s defined Carpenter remakes at large.
2011’s The Thing claimed to be a prequel but told pretty much the exact same story and shot itself in the foot during post-production for good measure when it was decided garish, unsightly and unconvincing CGI should replace the practical effects used during shooting. In a recurring theme, it was savaged by critics and declared dead on arrival at the box office.
A remake of Christine has been lodged firmly in the mires of development hell for almost three years at this point, although it might be able to stir up the benefit of the doubt for now, given that Hannibal showrunner and Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller is poised to write and direct. The other two elephants in the room, however, exist on an altogether different plane.
A new spin on Escape from New York has been in the works since 2007, and since then, it’s passed through the hands of countless actors and filmmakers, including Gerard Butler, Brett Ratner, Breck Eisner, Robert Rodriguez, Leigh Whannell, and Luther creator Neil Cross before ending up in the hands of Radio Silence, the filmmaking collective who did admittedly do a sterling job rehabilitating Scream.
That being said, alarm bells were raised when they described this iteration as a “requel,” the latest industry buzzword that doesn’t really mean anything at all. It’s been almost two decades of trying to make it happen; it still hasn’t happened yet, and it won’t be anywhere near as good as the original, so what’s the point?
It’s nowhere near as distressing as Dwayne Johnson circling Big Trouble in Little China, though, which he’s been ominously hovering above since 2015. A completely unique, inimitable, and demented genre-bending caper, there’s literally no need for the story to be told again, especially when ‘The Rock’ is far from a Kurt Russell-type everyman. It’s a nauseating proposition, a sentiment shared by more than one of the original’s key players.
Carpenter blasted the remake by accurately saying, “They don’t give a shit about me and my movie” when asked for his thoughts on Johnson’s potential reinvention, while the legendary James Hong told Comic Book the best approach was simply to “leave the classic alone”. That might yet prove to be the case, but every single one of these remakes falling well below the standards of its forebear has done nothing to dampen the industry’s desire to keep trying to outdo Carpenter, which unfortunately means it’s set to continue.
