What Is A "Remake", Anyway?

I rewatched Ben Stiller’s beautiful “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (2013) and realized I still haven’t watched the original version of this movie. Did you know that there’s a 1947 version of Walter Mitty starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo? I have had it on my watch list for years.

I finally requested the 1947 version from my library and, as I picked it up from the holds section, I found myself thinking, “Well, this version won’t be as good, but I’d better see it anyway.”

What is THAT all about??

What right do I have to be assuming that am older movie is “worse” than the remake when it was potentially the original text that started it all?

Well, I thought to myself, maybe it wasn’t that it was the original text that inspired it, but they saw a gap in its potential. Maybe the movie was remade because the original wasn’t good.

So, what exactly is a remake is supposed to be?

Should a remake be a movie that needed to be remade? Or should a remake be a totally different thing because the original didn’t need to be remade?

It all comes down to the individual recipe and assets of each film, but even so, a remake is a fascinating animal. A remake can be spurred by so many individual factors that there’s really no way to look at an original and know if it is going to be better or worse than the remake.

What do we want from a remake? Probably the same thing that we want from a sequel: the same thing, but different.

That means that it could have been remade for any reason, good or bad, and that producers could be relying on the originals success or even on the original’s failure to provide what they think they could provide in a contemporary version (ie special effects, modern speech and trends, etc.).

The question you have to ask yourself is, “WHY was this movie remade? Is it because the original is “worse” than the remake (ie. the original is out of date or didn’t live up to its potential) OR is it because the original was “better” than the remake (ie. the original is a brilliant movie that inspired remakes because of its lasting impact)?

What spawned the remake? An original that lacked or an original that inspired?

This is why remakes are so fascinating. It could be a good original, a bad original, or any combination of both.

Which is why I want to make an effort not to assume anything about an original until I watch it for myself. Half of the fun is just analyzing the original to see why producers thought that there was potential to remake it today.