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America Remaking Japanese & Korean Horror Movies Before They Are Released In The West

Throw said:
NB Point of order - the American Ring 2 isn't a remake of anything, it's a new script.
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I thought they where going to remake Ring 2.

The American ring's not bad atall. I've not saw the origional but it's scary and haunting and...well I'd like to see them do the same thing with their OWN stories.
 
Gore Verbinski (assuming he hasn't yet jumped ship, as happens quite a lot) is making a film called Ring 2 but it's not going to be a remake of the Japanese film called Ring 2. It's going to carry on the story but apparently they're starting from scratch with the events - nb Naomi Watts' character is still going to be the protagonist. Last I heard, anyway.

Hang on a minute. So you haven't seen the original version of the Ring? VQ, I can see where you're coming from and I do admire your sentiments but - well, although it is a Japanese film, based on a Japanese book, with Japanese actors and actresses, set in Japan, it's not a quintessentially Japanese movie - ie, it was conceivably made with universal appeal in mind. I think the conception a lot of people have nowadays is that just because something is made in Japan it's as culturally unique as Basho. While the Ring does contain aspects of horror which you do tend to notice as persistent tropes in Japanese filmmaking (long dark hair, water, creepy wells, etc) it also contains enough general edge-of-your-seat scariness and (if you strip away the marginally "esoteric" explanations) enough universally-recognisable ghostliness to have itself been conceivably influenced by Western movies. Being influenced by an existing movie/book/whatever is no bad thing, no matter where it came from. And I'm sure that everyone who's criticised American studios poaching and remaking movies like this would be similarly baffled by criticism levelled at a Japanese director who chose to remake The Innocents in Okinawa, say.
 
Throw said:
VQ, I can see where you're coming from and I do admire your sentiments but - well, although it is a Japanese film, based on a Japanese book, with Japanese actors and actresses, set in Japan, it's not a quintessentially Japanese movie - ie, it was conceivably made with universal appeal in mind. I think the conception a lot of people have nowadays is that just because something is made in Japan it's as culturally unique as Basho. While the Ring does contain aspects of horror which you do tend to notice as persistent tropes in Japanese filmmaking (long dark hair, water, creepy wells, etc) it also contains enough general edge-of-your-seat scariness and (if you strip away the marginally "esoteric" explanations) enough universally-recognisable ghostliness to have itself been conceivably influenced by Western movies. Being influenced by an existing movie/book/whatever is no bad thing, no matter where it came from. And I'm sure that everyone who's criticised American studios poaching and remaking movies like this would be similarly baffled by criticism levelled at a Japanese director who chose to remake The Innocents in Okinawa, say.
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and Ju-On has bits of Taranteno and Amicabus (sp?) in it. The difrence that I see is that Asia is producing new and imaginitive work like America used to produce, taking common concets and making them new.

Insted of siting up and teking notice of this America's responding by carrying out raids on Asian cinema and in the end debasing but that and their own heritige.
 
So was John Woo denying the cinematic heritage of Hong Kong when he ransacked Peckinpah? And I heard that there's this guy Kurosawa who's decided to re-do Shakespeare - but in Japanese! Whatever next??
 
Throw said:
So was John Woo denying the cinematic heritage of Hong Kong when he ransacked Peckinpah? And I heard that there's this guy Kurosawa who's decided to re-do Shakespeare - but in Japanese! Whatever next??
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Oh comeon Throw: I answerd that point in my last mail!
 
But how can you say that films like the Ring (original) are "taking common concets and making them new" when you haven't even seen it? You'll also notice that the remake strips out the aforementioned tropes AND the esotericism overly evident in the original if you actually put the two side-by-side and stopped being so concerned with the impression that an original must necessarily be better. They are different films, and in turn different from the books which (if I recall correctly, and I am prepared to stand corrected here) are about a haemorrhagic virus which, again, is a reasonably global concept.
 
Throw said:
But how can you say that films like the Ring (original) are "taking common concets and making them new"
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I was discusing th films I'd saw Throw not the ones i havn't.
 
and you know the worst thing about it?

A few months ago a 18yo I know invited me back to watch some movies at his. when we got there he said 'I bought The Ring today.'
'Great, I've not seen it!'

He got out the remake and looked at me blankly when I asked him if he didn't have to origional...
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Badda bing!

EDIT: Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to start a fight here. However, if you've seen the remakes of the Eye, Ring 2, Ju-On (Western remake) and the Tale of Two Sisters then I will be mighty impressed.
 
Look VQ let's not get bogged down in animosity. You stuck your neck out to make a point and it's one that I heartily disagree with, so all I'm trying to do is point out why. You say that you are only talking about films you've seen. If you're criticising remakes based on the strength of the remake of the Ring (which you have seen, and the existence of which, from your post quoted above, seems to be symptomatic of some modern ill) it stands to reason that you should really see the original first to make a reasonable judgement as to whether it's better or worse. Similarly, yes a lot of other Asian films are being remade by America, but until they actually get released and we can see them next to each other then we don't really have a leg to stand on in criticising them. I don't think that many mainstream movies are UNIQUELY of any nationality nowadays since, thankfully, a lot of directors the world over are choosing to wear their influences on their sleeves and bring bits of movies they like - regardless of where they're made - into their own work. Therefore, let's see the films for what they are - the work of a director, made for an audience.

I do think that the attitude that a lot of people have in which once HAS to dis a remake because the original was Japanese (or something else which is "cool") is quite pseudy. Let's face it, most people wouldn't care two hoots if the original version of the Eye was shot in Swansea and then remade in Hong Kong.
 
But Throw I actualy praised the Ring remake. I said it was good, I called it brave. I havn't seen the origional true but does that meen i can't comment?

One of my posts talks about how the spate of remakes comes from the sucess of the Ring, as a result of it and that's why it's in the list of remakes.

If you can't see why the wholesale plundering of another nation's cultural output is a bad thing then I realy worry about you.
 
I don't intend to cause anomosity but how can you posibly justify these acts of gross cultural imperialism, these films comissioned because the execs assume your to stupid to ge the origional, these films commisioned because they want to keep writers locked out of movie making?
 
Worry all you like, VQ, but I will still stand by the conviction that remaking movies which conceivably owe a debt to the American film industry anyway does not, in any way, constitute a "wholesale plundering of another nation's cultural output". I know you praised the remake of the Ring. Now, what happens if you see the original and decide you like the remake better? It seems to me that you've already made your mind up that you won't. Say you enjoy the remakes of all of those other films more than you enjoy the originals. What then?
 
And I hardly think that a director and a studio deciding to bring a film to a wider audience doing things like (in the case of the Ring) stripping out all of the bits about goblins and psychics which seem a little odd and replacing it with a similarly-conceivable backstory about horses is an act of "gross cultural imperialism". But again, maybe that's just me.
 
Throw:

you rampent anti-intilectulism is as boring as snobery is.

Yea I only like Asian cinema because it's in a foreign language. Likewise I like silent cinema because it's got no sound.
 
Throw:

you rampent anti-intilectulism is as boring as snobery is.

Yea I only like Asian cinema because it's in a foreign language. Likewise I like silent cinema because it's got no sound.
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Oh good lord, it's like arguing with an HTML application. I'm relishing being accused of "rampant anti-intellectualism" given the previous conversations that you and I have had about similar topics under this username and my previous one, and rest assured I won't take it to heart. If you're determined not to see my point about remakes not necessarily being bad things, and that it's hard to compare one to the other without seeing both, then so be it.

Rampant anti-intellectualism *shakes head*. Genius.
 
There hasn't been an original idea out of Hollywood for the last forty years because there aren't any original stories left to tell. The only thing that ever changes is the style the movie is made in and you can argue that because America has been spewing out movies for almost 100 years it'd be impossible for it not to effect the movie industry of another culture.
However what you then have is an hybrid of ideas and styles which sometimes manage to reach out to the whole world not just the motherland of that particular movie.

So you have to ask yourself this.
Do you prefer to see something that's the product of two cultures coming together in such a perfect forum as film or do you want to see Hollywood americanise everything totally?

My vote goes to seeing the "originals" everytime and yeah okay they're roughly shot and not as polished as the western versions but that's all part of the art form.
 
While the Ring does contain aspects of horror which you do tend to notice as persistent tropes in Japanese filmmaking (long dark hair, water, creepy wells, etc) it also contains enough general edge-of-your-seat scariness and (if you strip away the marginally "esoteric" explanations) enough universally-recognisable ghostliness to have itself been conceivably influenced by Western movies.
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Japanese film-making does have it's own character, and often a subtely that's missing in US filmmaking. Not specifically referential to Ring, the Japs are very good at using silence in their films, and cues for when something is going to happen tend to be subtle or even absent. One of my friends summed up the feel of their horror movies quite nicely when he said "Someone will walk into a room and you feel scared".

Some people have literacy issues with subtitled films too VQ, or have trouble reading fast enough to keep with with the subs and watch the film at the same time. (Ichi the killer had subs that changed so fast I actually missed a few myself!).
 
Indeed. I liked Donnie Darko, but not so much Fight Club. Not seen the other few films you mention except The Matrix, which although fairly entertaining I felt was rather derived from fairly standard "stuck in VR and possibly don't even know it" science fiction stories ;) Much like that daft Cronenberg film eXistenZ, which I didn't like very much since it just seemed to be a confusing mishmash of things happening ;)
 
So you have to ask yourself this....do you want to see Hollywood americanise everything totally?
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Of course not. But suppose you were to magically prevent American remakes of foreign films. Does that mean more people will go and see the original? No. Does it give the original more of a chance if there's no remake? No. Chances are more people will see the original having heard of it because of the remake.

Gross cultural imperialism my big fat arse.
 
Fortis said:
There's a long history of making remakes of Japanese movies.

...

I'm pretty sure that it has happened in the other direction as well (though to be brutally honest I'm struggling to think if an example.)
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Having just watched Ringu 1, Ringu 2 & Ringu 0, I'd say they were incredibly derivative of David Cronenberg's two films; Videodrome and Scanners.
I love Cronenberg's films and I like Ringu 1 so that isn't a criticism.
 
lemonpie said:
Of course not. But suppose you were to magically prevent American remakes of foreign films. Does that mean more people will go and see the original? No. Does it give the original more of a chance if there's no remake? No. Chances are more people will see the original having heard of it because of the remake.

Gross cultural imperialism my big fat arse.
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Why comission a remake of a film nobody has heard of?

The fact has to be that a lot of people have heard of the original and that it is already very popular for a remake to be considered commercially viable.

And yes chances are more people will see the original because of the remake in the same way as Dawn Of The Dead which was another remake I criticised, along with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for being the rape of America's own cultural output.
Both of those films drew their influences from a wide arena of political and social problems ranging from the baby boomers of WW2 to the Vietnam war to Watergate and were therefore the product of an almost entirely different society.

But hey some people say Godzilla represents Japan's fear of the atomic bomb and others says it's a mutated CGI iguana attacking New York. The difference is I know which one I prefer and apparently so do a hell of a lot of other people.
 
The fact has to be that a lot of people have heard of the original and that it is already very popular for a remake to be considered commercially viable.
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Actually I think this might be one of the points that VQ was upset about -
they're remaking fimls before they've even been shown in the west?
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I'm certainly not saying that I like this apparent trend to re-make old films - I'm no highbrow film buff so The Italian Job is the one that springs to my mind. Personally I think it smells of bankruptcy of ideas and taking the percentage shot. However I don't think it's fair to excoriate all remakes of foreign films. I think 'cultural rape' is a fairly extreme term for something that could equally be described as borrowing.
 
It's remakes of modern films that everyone's getting really upset about. I think that the point isn't about whether or not they're any good, only that the original is SLIGHTLY more marginal than the mainstream version. Let's not forget that being upset about a remake is a way for a lot of people to crowbar "oh I've seen the original" into a conversation (not that I'm saying anyone here does that of course).

The Magnificent Seven is widely believed to be a remake of The Seven Samurai, or at least another version of the source material which borrows heavily from the earlier movie. It came out six years after the original, which still counts as pretty soon to me, particularly when you consider the comparitive size of the global film industry now compared to how it was back then. Where is that film in this list of lamented remakes?

In categorising a rebuttal of the idea that "all modern remakes of Asian films are bad" as anti-intellectual, VQ, you've revealed that you - and many more people - think of the Japanese originals as "intellectual" movies - when, as we know, they are just ordinary films but a bit culturally different to a Western audience. Most of the ones we've talked about here are, in fact, pretty dumb. It's this conceit - that the intellectual appeal of a film which has been lent by circumstance rather than content can be compromised by opening it up to a wider audience - that you're worried about. And it's this that I tend to heartily disagree with. Do we understand a little bit more about what I'm trying to say here, now?

EDIT: I'd also say that using terms like "cultural rape" and "gross cultural imperialism" in this context - ie a pretty lowbrow discussion about movies - is quite out of order, as not only does this reduce an argument to hyperbole, but it also devalues the immense perjorative impact of the words themselves, which should hopefully only ever be heard as infrequently as possible. But that's a separate discussion.
 
Throw said:
Let's not forget that being upset about a remake is a way for a lot of people to crowbar "oh I've seen the original" into a conversation (not that I'm saying anyone here does that of course).
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This reminds me of a time a friend of my ex-wife's came round and remarked on my copy of "12 Monkeys", asking me what I thought of it. I replied that it's one of my favourite films, a superbly acted, hugely imaginative movie that keeps you thinking long after the credits roll.

She replied that it was OK, but not a patch on the original. Now, I'd read a bit about the "original", and said "Oh, La Jette? You've seen it then?"

She replied in the affirmative and went off on a long discourse about how originals are always better than remakes, and the ways in which La Jette was superior to 12 Monkeys.

But it became obvious to me during the course of this rant that she had no idea that La Jette is just a half hour procession of still images, not a convential "motion picture" at all.

Secure in the knowledge I hadn't seen it, she bullshitted away about the realisation of the concept, quality of the performances, tension blah blah blah, and how it was all ripped off by Gilliam. Just to be sure she was talking about a full-length movie as we'd understand it, I tested her a couple of times, and there could be no doubt - she hadn't seen it, but was just making it all up to sound a bit clever and put my film down.

I couldn't be bothered to say anything - someone daft enough to make crap like that up to try and sound intellectual isn't worth bothering with.
 
The Virgin Queen: could you please give me your definition of 'Cultural Imperialism'?

Thank you in advance.
 
Conners said:
I couldn't be bothered to say anything - someone daft enough to make crap like that up to try and sound intellectual isn't worth bothering with.
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A part of me which is possibly evil feels this is a great shame. Although I can't think how you'd point out that she was speaking nonsense without just stating it and then effectively announcing "Ha! I win the argument!", which is the sort of way nobody likes ;) I suppose you could have started by asking questions relating to the unusualness of "La Jette" (which I've never heard of, but liked Twelve Monkeys :) ), like "What did you think of the unusual cinematic style?" and try and freak her out ;)
 
My biggest problem with any remake is that they're done solely for the purpose of cashing in on the original's reputation and nothing more. Although I do agree there are some notable exceptions to the rule, Ocean's 11 comes to mind.
But as it happens Asian cinema and horror movies in general are popular at the moment so we have a glut of "re-imaginings" as they seem to have become known which always lack the whatever it is the original version had.

If you're all happy trotting down to your local multiplex paying to keep Tom Cruise in Gucci shoes or whatever then go for it, it's your choice and I'm not about to try to convince anybody otherwise.

I'm assuming though you all went to see the remake of Psycho in 1998 and Planet Of The Apes in 2001. You'll also most likely be off to see The Ladykillers too?

EDIT:
I'd also like to point out that I said America was culturally raping itself in my earlier post and that I have listed remakes of American films as examples of this.
If I was so inclined I would try to list every known, or considered to be, remake ever made but I really don't have that much time.
 
My point was that I felt hollywood had become very lazy over the past ten years or so. They made some great horror pics in the 80's, Reanimator, Evil Dead, Return of the living Dead, (awsome soundtrack), and the wonderful The Thing, (a remake but what a wonderful cast). Even the crap ones like FrankenHooker and Basket Case had a certain charm.

Recently we have had Scream 1,2and 3? We know what you did last summer. Jeepers Creepers. The only ok one was the one about death hunting down those that escaped the plane crash, which name escapes me at the moment. The Others was ok, but predictable. I find the recent hollywood horror movies pretty tedious. The Halloween and Freddy pics god awful. Jason vs Freddy for christsakes! Bad in every department apart from flashy effects. Also the constant sequals and plundering of comics, cartoons and TV shows, I hear Garfield is on its way, why? Please Hollywood don't do Calvin and Hobbes!

Thats why my favourite recent horror films, with the execption of the Dawn remake are all non-hollywood. Dog Soldiers, Brotherhood of the wolf and The Grudge.
 
I'm assuming though you all went to see the remake of Psycho in 1998 and Planet Of The Apes in 2001. You'll also most likely be off to see The Ladykillers too?
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Yep. Do you mind if I ask what your point is?
 
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