The Most Annoying Types of Remakes and Sequels

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Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho had the weird USP that it would never be anyone in the world’s favourite film. How could it be? It was a word-for-word, shot-for-shot re-over of Alfred Hitchcock’s original, so the most it could hope for was being almost as good as the first one. Which it wasn’t. Eli Roth recently began filming a remake of his own 2002 film Cabin Fever, using the same script and just renaming some of the characters. It’s not even like the original is (a) a classic or (b) impossibly dated—if it was full of people talking about Bebo we’d kind of get updating it. As it is, the whole thing seems incredibly arrogant and completely fucking pointless really.

How annoying? Enormously. It’s like everyone involved is an idiot.

Nobody loves the Hellraiser franchise like Doug Bradley. Bradley plays Pinhead, the lead Cenobite, in eight films, and became so good at applying the needle-gimp makeup and costume that he ended up being credited as a makeup artist on several of them. The one he refused to appear in is Hellraiser: Revelations, a micro-budget entry in the series made in a few weeks, screened once and released on DVD to universally awful reviews. The only reason it was made was to ensure Dimension Films retained the rights to the franchise—it didn’t need to do well, it didn’t need to be good, it just had to exist. A Fantastic Four film made by Roger Corman in 1994 exists for the same reason—Stan Lee later said of it “The movie was never meant to be shown to anybody”.

How annoying? Oh, horribly. Imagine working on a project designed to never see the light of day. What a depressing, cynical exercise in bullshit. 

The Robocop remake that came out earlier this year would be an infinitely better film if it wasn’t called Robocop. It had Michael Keaton (whose current career resurgence is fucking fantastic), Samuel L Jackson and Gary Oldman in it, some sharp satirical bits and decent action scenes. It just… it just wasn’t Robocop. With about six changes to the script it could have been its own film—the writer and director could have happily said they were influenced by Robocop, and the whole thing would have seemed like a homage rather than a slightly toothless reboot. The Total Recall remake from 2012 was similar—with no original to compare it to it would be a totally adequate action movie, but Colin Farrell is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. ​

How annoying? Deeply annoying. A potentially good film has its wings clipped, and the legacy of the original gets diluted.  

Sometimes studios want to make a sequel to a successful film, but the lead actor’s career is going too well, so they don’t want to do it. The filmmakers simply abandon their character and pick a supporting role to follow, often pissing on the ending of the first film in doing so. For instance, Kickboxer ends with Jean-Claude Van Damme beating the villainous Tong Po. Kickboxer 2 begins with Van Damme’s younger brother (Sasha Mitchell) finding out he’s been killed, by Tong Po. It kind of lessens the whole “victory” element, you know? This doesn’t happen solely in the lower echelons of the film world though—after triumphing in 2002’s XXX, Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage is vaguely mentioned to have died offscreen in the Ice Cube-led sequel. 

The Mila Kunis/William Shatner rubbishfest American Psycho 2 ruins the ambiguous ending of the original (and even if it didn’t, would still be a big load of shit).

How annoying? They’re awful—they retroactively ruin the original by making the hero rubbish in hindsight.

Hanging out with your friend’s dad without your friend there is pretty weird, right? What about hanging out with your cousin’s friend’s dad, without your cousin or his friend there? That’s the behaviour of a weirdo, yes? It’s also how the straight-to-DVD spinoffs of the American Pie films work, with Eugene Levy delivering advice to offshoots of the Stifler family for no fucking reason we can work out. They’re like the theatrically-released American Pie films without any of the charm or, like, actual functioning jokes. They’re not alone in the needless teen sequel world—Road Trip got an appalling follow-up with DJ Qualls shifted to the Tom Green role, Van Wilder got a sequel without Van Wilder in it, and there are five Bring It On films. FIVE. 

How annoying? Beyond being rubbish, and a bit sad for anyone that returns. American Pie: The Naked Mile says Stifler’s a porn director, but American Reunion shows he isn’t—it’s a real pain in the ass for American Pie purists. The conventions are a nightmare.

The dust had barely settled on the Blu-Ray of Spider-Man 3 before The Amazing Spider-Man was announced, a series reboot telling the not-at-all-forgotten origin story of your friendly neighbourhood webslinger. It felt a bit like they were doing it just because they’d found a director with the surname Webb and got overexcited. Rebooting so soon brought its own problems—in trying not to ape the previous film too closely, they mangled the “with great power comes great responsibility” line. It’s Martin Sheen looking like he wishes he was elsewhere, paraphrasing one of comics’ snappiest mottos into thirty or so words of utter rubbish. Next year’s Fantastic Four film isn’t in any way connected with the 2005 or 2007 Fantastic Four films. Every few years someone has another go at making a good Punisher film and balls it up.

Ben Affleck’s Batman will be on screen just four years after The Dark Knight Rises. Come on, comics people. Look at how well the Iron Man/Captain America/Avengers films work. They’re so much better than seeing yet another Punisher origin story (“Thanks for the skull t-shirt, son! Son? SON!???!?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”).

How annoying? Incredibly annoying—they confuse audiences, insult their intelligence, and to non comics fans, it looks like there are only about three superhero stories worth telling. 

Remember The Land Before Time? The dinosaur cartoon? Aww, it was sweet, wasn’t it? THERE ARE NOW THIRTEEN FILMS IN THE LAND BEFORE TIME SERIES. Thirteen. Jesus fucking Christ. Imagine being hired to work on the eleventh. Would your heart soar with pride, or would you just push out any old shit, stick a song about friendship on it, get it to 72 minutes or so and call it a day? The Lion King not only has a sequel, it’s got what’s best described as a revisionist interquel, the first film’s story retold from a different perspective BUT WHY BUT WHY BUT WHY? Mulan II exists. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame II exists. There are three films about The Brave Little Toaster, and they were released in the order 1, 3, 2. PERHAPS IT’S TIME THE WORLD ENDED AND ALL OF US JUST DIED.

How annoying? Possibly the worst things that exist in the whole world.

If someone’s dead, let the franchise die with them. You can get away with a key character dying in a sitcom (Cheers, 8 Simples Rules, er, Sealab 2021), but not a film series. If Kurt Russell had died shortly after Tango & Cash came out, they wouldn’t have done a sequel just starring Sylvester Stallone called Tango. It would have been really sad. Such logic didn’t stop three Pink Panther sequels coming out after the death of Peter Sellers, Fist Of Fury II coming out after Bruce Lee’s death starring a semi-lookalike called Bruce Li, or an awful Lost Boys threequel after Corey Haim died.

The news that the long-gestating third Ghostbusters film will be a reboot rather than a direct sequel is great, as it saves us seeing a portly Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson standing next to a framed picture of Harold Ramis (RIP) and explaining that Peter’s off sick today. 

How annoying? It can damage a legacy, but it’s more sad than annoying really. We’re probably going to have a bit of a cry in Fast & Furious 7. 

A few years ago, the phrase “gritty reboot” seemed like it was the key to Hollywood millions—take a well-known and well-loved franchise, make it gnarly, cash some cheques. Doing it to horror films seems a bit daft though, like with the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street. There’s no point in doing a gritty reboot of a film about a child molester who got burned alive and now kills people. It’s already really horrible. Taking away the macabre humour doesn’t result in a serious, credible film, it just makes the whole thing seem pointless. WWE films acquired the rights to the (very silly) Leprechaun franchise as a vehicle for Hornswoggle, a 4’5” wrestler who wears a leprechaun outfit in the ring. The resulting film, Leprechaun: Origins, is a laugh-free shitfest in which he doesn’t really play a leprechaun.

How annoying? The Rob Zombie Halloween reboot wasn’t bad, but whoever thought they could make a good Nightmare On Elm Street film without Robert Englund was, er, dreaming.

Troll 2 has nothing in common with Troll, the film it’s ostensibly a sequel to. This is because it wasn’t anything to do with Troll—it was made under the title Goblins, nobody involved had seen the film Troll, and there aren’t any trolls in it. Things sometimes get sillier than that, though. The 1986 horror film House, starring Cliff from Cheers, was followed by a sequel, House II: The Second Story which was marketed in Italy as the sixth film in the La Casa series. The La Casa series doesn’t exist—it’s other films renamed for their Italian release. That series goes Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Ghosthouse aka La Casa 3 (an unofficial Italian quasi-sequel), Witchery ( La Casa 4, a direct sequel to Ghosthouse, featuring David Hasselhoff), Beyond Darkness (La Casa 5, a sequel to those two), House II: The Second Story (nothing to do with any of the previous American or Italian films), The Horror Show (released in some markets as the third part of the House series, released in Italy as La Casa 7, and absolutely shit). A fourth House film, House IV, is somehow not in the La Casa series. It’s just complete fucking nonsense, the whole thing. Even reading about it is impossible if you aren’t drunk. Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 is the same thing, but we’re so tired from the La Casa saga that we’ll leave that to you to look up. 

How annoying? Not that annoying really—it’s sort of fun, means splatter fans get to watch more splatter films, and led to the cult success of Troll 2, which is incredishit.​

Sometimes a film is pretty much just an idea, and if it works, it seems worth doing again. It’s the filmmaking equivalent of when someone learns how to do a headspin, then you go on a night out with them, and they do a headspin to every single song. It’s a good trick, but duuuuuuuude, try another thing. The Saw, Final Destination and Paranormal Activity franchises have token overriding stories to them, but they’re all pretty much standalone films that just revisit the same idea again and again. Less standalone, but definitely revisiting the same idea, is Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s Bloodfist series. He’s made eight films in the franchise, Bloodfist to Bloodfist VIII, and played eight different characters in them (not a different guy in each film—that would make too much sense. One character appeared in two films, and for no good reason Wilson seems to play two different people in part eight). 

How annoying? The law of diminishing returns always steps in—how many times is an elaborate trap or a really contrived accident surprising?—but there’s a lot to be said for knowing exactly what you’re in for when you pop a film on. It’s the incredibly violent equivalent of a cosy romcom.

The crossover sequel is theoretically an amazing thing—it brings two franchises together, potentially doubling the audience, and brings answers to the kind of “who would win in a fight between X and Y?” questions that stoners never tire of. The reality is often a bit different—the second Alien Vs Predator film, AvP: Requiem, is the shittest shit out there. In Freddy Vs Jason, neither of them really win (the comic series Freddy Vs Jason Vs Ash, bringing the Evil Dead films into it, is way more fun). Dollman Vs Demonic Toys, Puppet Master Vs Demonic Toys, King Kong Vs Godzilla… they’re all less interesting in reality than in fans’ heads. Although The Avengers is basically one of these and that was awesome, so maybe we don’t know.

How annoying? Usually pretty annoying due to a feeling of unfulfilled potential. But occasionally wonderfully non-annoying. Life’s so hard.