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remake

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Horror Fuel

A Whole New Thing: When a Remake Isn’t a Remake

It’s Not A Remake The Thing, 2011, is NOT a remake. It is a prequel. I just did more than the entire Universal Studios marketing department with that clarification. John Carpenter got royally screwed on his 1982 masterpiece. Some call The Thing his greatest film. Others, like me, call it one of the greatest films ever made for any genre. Carpenter’s film was buried in 1982 by a candy pilfering alien and Spielberg. Between a lackluster marketing campaign by Universal Studios and America’s pop sugar desire for heart glowing aliens, The Thing, 1982, never really had a chance. Carpenter himself saw the handwriting on the wall after exiting a plane to giant advertisements for ET: The Extraterrestrial. “We’re done,” he lamented. However home video and cable gave his film a new life, and eventually the tortoise caught up and passed the alien. Today, Carpenter’s film is regarded as timeless and as mentioned, by many, his best. The film is deserving

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Capt McNeely
Nov 12, 2015
Horror Fuel

Consuming Cynema PART II

The Remake The road to the remake is a winding one. There is no clear pathway toward the answer of whether they are good or bad, needed or unwanted. They exist. They will continue to be made because there is demand. My previous article opened with a quote from George Bush’s post 9-11 speech which hinted at “living life” is a series of consuming events that follow an image that has been dictated to us by a media assault that has shaped us since birth. So what does that have to do with filmmaking and entertainment? Does art imitate life or the other way around? Why is Disney the Mecca of family vacations? Who said women are to look a certain way, smoking is glamorous, drinking a soda makes you like Michael Jackson or Beyonce? We have a new generation growing up with incredible access to entertainment. Cell phones, tablets, video game systems and computers allow instant access to everything,

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Capt McNeely
Aug 24, 2015
Horror Fuel

NOT A REBOOT. NOT A REMAKE. IT’S A REPACKAGING

The Summer of the Dinosaur Dinosaurs clobbered the combined super hero talents of The Avengers. They also handed Schwarzenegger his T-800 ass. Interestingly all three films are bred from the same cynical experiment that might have started in JJ Abrams’s lab…repackaging. Cynema has evolved or been upgraded much like Arnie’s T800 at the end of the latest Terminator franchise. My definition of Cynema says that a movie is made deliberately bad even if the filmmakers have the means to do it better. In the case of Jurassic World, Terminator Genysis and Star Trek: Into Darkness they are beautifully produced films, but all the more deceptive. These films all lack a central thing: a well done script. All three of these films are not unfolding stories, but rather set pieces stitched together with basic dialogue and character development to push things toward the next set piece. The argument could be made, that in a few years, the need for directors and

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 12, 2015

More from remake

Horror Fuel

A Whole New Thing: When a Remake Isn’t a Remake

It’s Not A Remake The Thing, 2011, is NOT a remake. It is a prequel. I just did more than the entire Universal Studios marketing department with that clarification. John Carpenter got royally screwed on his 1982 masterpiece. Some call The Thing his greatest film. Others, like me, call it one of the greatest films ever made for any genre. Carpenter’s film was buried in 1982 by a candy pilfering alien and Spielberg. Between a lackluster marketing campaign by Universal Studios and America’s pop sugar desire for heart glowing aliens, The Thing, 1982, never really had a chance. Carpenter himself saw the handwriting on the wall after exiting a plane to giant advertisements for ET: The Extraterrestrial. “We’re done,” he lamented. However home video and cable gave his film a new life, and eventually the tortoise caught up and passed the alien. Today, Carpenter’s film is regarded as timeless and as mentioned, by many, his best. The film is deserving

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 12, 2015
Horror Fuel

Consuming Cynema PART II

The Remake The road to the remake is a winding one. There is no clear pathway toward the answer of whether they are good or bad, needed or unwanted. They exist. They will continue to be made because there is demand. My previous article opened with a quote from George Bush’s post 9-11 speech which hinted at “living life” is a series of consuming events that follow an image that has been dictated to us by a media assault that has shaped us since birth. So what does that have to do with filmmaking and entertainment? Does art imitate life or the other way around? Why is Disney the Mecca of family vacations? Who said women are to look a certain way, smoking is glamorous, drinking a soda makes you like Michael Jackson or Beyonce? We have a new generation growing up with incredible access to entertainment. Cell phones, tablets, video game systems and computers allow instant access to everything,

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 24, 2015
Horror Fuel

NOT A REBOOT. NOT A REMAKE. IT’S A REPACKAGING

The Summer of the Dinosaur Dinosaurs clobbered the combined super hero talents of The Avengers. They also handed Schwarzenegger his T-800 ass. Interestingly all three films are bred from the same cynical experiment that might have started in JJ Abrams’s lab…repackaging. Cynema has evolved or been upgraded much like Arnie’s T800 at the end of the latest Terminator franchise. My definition of Cynema says that a movie is made deliberately bad even if the filmmakers have the means to do it better. In the case of Jurassic World, Terminator Genysis and Star Trek: Into Darkness they are beautifully produced films, but all the more deceptive. These films all lack a central thing: a well done script. All three of these films are not unfolding stories, but rather set pieces stitched together with basic dialogue and character development to push things toward the next set piece. The argument could be made, that in a few years, the need for directors and

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Aug 12, 2015