Dan's Top 9: Movies That SHOULD Be Remade

by Dan Moore
@SouthieDanimal

DAN'S TOP

A little while ago, my esteemed colleague Justin Ballard wrote an article about unnecessary remakes. I agreed with all of 'em except Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I have no loyalty to the original and the remakes, prequels and sequels have been decent (albeit forgettable) horror movies. It got me to thinking though…what flicks are out there that need a new version? These aren’t all necessarily bad movies; just flicks I feel need an updating. Starting off here with a few sequels.

9. Beverly Hills Cop 3

The first two Cop flicks are two of the funniest Eddie Murphy movies ever made. They show Murphy at the very apex of his comedic powers. Both of them are eminently re-watchable. Then they laid this turd on our doorsteps. While the first two are filled with hilarious jokes and boobies, this one is a hodgepodge of boring set pieces and an unreal annoying Eddie Murphy performance. Need this remade with the true Axel Foley, cursing up a storm and shooting bad guys with his friends, Detectives Taggart & Rosewood.

George Lucas cameo’d in this, and even the maker of the
Star Wars prequels couldn’t believe how bad this was. 

8. Lethal Weapon 4

Filled with two of the most memorable cops ever put to screen, Riggs & Murtaugh became friends to all of us that have watched the original 3 over and over again. Incredible action scenes and a real sense of comradery between the two leads make Lethal Weapons 1,2 & 3 some of the best buddy cop movies ever made. And then part 4 showed up. With NOTHING resembling a cohesive script and chock full of waaaay too many characters, Lethal Weapon 4 was DOA. They shoulda went with a less-is-more approach like the original cause this movie SUCKS.

7. Battlefield Earth

When watching a movie with 10-foot dreadlocked aliens, I’m always hoping for veiled messages from a space cult delivered by an overacting John Travolta. This is an awful movie filled with all kinds of subliminal speak for L. Ron Hubbard’s Space Diary, er I mean, "Religion."  But at its very basic level is a decent sci-fi movie idea: Aliens took over earth, and hundreds of years later a human rebellion tries to take it back. Too bad it was all gummed up with the word of Xenu.

Yeah, this is all your favorite Hollywood stars' religious deity. Makes sense.

6. Event Horizon 

A buncha astronauts head up to space to help some other astronauts that disappeared years earlier down a black hole. They get on the lost ship and realize that black hole led straight to HELL. Awesome premise, right? The first 60 minutes are AWESOME. They set up such a great idea and lose it completely in the last half hour. It’s not scary, it’s silly, all leading up to a scarred-up Sam Neill in a diaper dispatching the rest of his crew. Why would a space movie need to have a slasher last half hour? Oh wait…

5. Sunshine

…here’s another one in space that shits the bed on the landing. The sun is fading away, a buncha scientists and astronauts go up in space to drop a nuke on the sun to restart it but disappear. A new buncha scientists and astronauts go up to drop another nuke, find the old ship, and AGAIN it devolves into a slasher flick. Which is a shame, because up until the last half hour, Sunshine is a very intelligent sci-fi flick. It tries to show this unlikely premise with some reality until Jason X shows up and kills everybody. Director Danny Boyle can’t make a good movie and fuck up the ending again, can he?

4. 28 Days Later

JESUS CHRIST, AGAIN WITH THIS, DANNY BOYLE? Zombies decimate the world, a bike messenger escapes downtown London with some friends out to the country, and they come upon some army soldiers in a giant house. These army guys are HORNY and wanna do the womens, YEEEEAAAAHH. And then the bike messenger beats up the army guys and save the day. THE FUCKING BIKE MESSENGER. 28 Days is one of the scariest flicks around, filled with gore and the living dead. ZOMBIES are more believable than the ending where an emaciated ginger bicycle boy beats up trained army soldiers.

This guy took out a platoon of soldiers.  Yeah ok.

3. Dune

This is an overly long movie about some people in a distant desert world riding giant sand worms. With a bunch of gross people with boils and shit oozing from their faces. And Sting is in it. The singer, not the wrestler (though, HOLY SHIT, how much better would that be?) This flick needs to be remade solely because I don’t understand a fucking thing about it. Not a fucking thing. But there’s something there that could be good.

Just not this guy

2. Spawn

This superhero flick could really benefit from the fact that superhero movies now are taken a bit more seriously. This is an ugly-looking movie filled with far too much CGI. You make it now with more practical effects, a more serious take on the subject (a la Batman Begins) and Todd McFarlane’s demonic creature might start up a franchise.

1. Reign of Fire

This movie still pisses me off. Amazing premise. Kid goes into subway, finds a goddamn DRAGON and unleashes a flying lizard army upon the world. The Dragons scorch the earth and it’s awesome. Oh wait, no, we don’t know that its awesome because it’s told with fucking newspaper clippings. Yeah, the cool idea of dragons destroying earth and all of mankind is told in flashbacks due to, I assume, too small a budget. This movie wastes two decent performances from Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey. There’s like three dragon scenes in the whole movie. The rest of the movie is crybaby humans in a basement of a castle bitching about dragons. What are they bitching about, I DON’T SEE ANY DRAGONS. Such high hopes for this movie, and it delivered nothing it promised.

There's more action in the poster than the actual movie.