Friday Favorite: The Wicker Man: Why I hate Hollywood

Today, Aaron from Electronic Cerebrectomy made some observations on two lists of remakes James Gunn had blogged about, and one of those remakes just happened to be The Wicker Man, and it made me remember a post I had made right after I found out about that particular remake. For something I just started riffing on, I think I ended up being frighteningly accurate in my assessment.

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I know, I know I'm not the first blogger(or professional journalist for that matter) to write disparagingly about the glut of remakes that have been coming out the last few years, but you know, it still needs to be said.

The basic jist of most of those articles is that in general remakes suck.... and they are right.

With that in mind, I want to just mention that I hate the fact that not one but TWO remakes of the Wicker Man are being made.

If you haven't seen The Wicker Man, it is a cool, atmospheric and on some level, utterly believable horror movie that had an ending which still chills me to this day. And after seeing what modern Hollywood did to Assault on Precinct 13, I am scared... no very, very scared of what is going to become of The Wicker Man in their *ahem* capable hands.

Edward Woodward was perfect for the lead in the original... I mean, this is the man who became the the Equalizer for the love of...-- does that mean nothing?!? I know that Nick Cage has... what's it called... oh yeah, "star power", but that isn't an excuse. Neil LaBute, what are you doing to us?

Some of you may be saying, well, MC, Neil Labute's made some decent movies in the past, so it won't be so bad. Well, the fact that the director of the original, when he heard about some of the changes being made to the original plot and structure of the movie for the remake, asked that his name be removed from all the promotional materials for the new film says a lot. And then he went further.

Robin Hardy decided he was going to reimagine The Wicker Man, using the same setting but creating a new story around it. Cowboys For Christ isn't really a sequel so much as it is a re-examination of the same themes. Of course, the way I see it is CoC is basically Hardy flipping off the whole remake.

You know something is off when many of the figures from the original movie start working on a competing project. I mean, how bad is the Labute version really going to be? I think one only has to look at the two competing Exorcist prequels to answer that question.

Tags: wicker man, edward woodward, nicholas cage, equalizer, cowboys, christ, christopher lee, robin hardy, howie, exorcist, remakes