Is America Souring on Remakes?

As the much hyped and well reviewed movie “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” fails to live up to expectations (as did the Hollywood remake of another Swedish blockbuster “Let Me In“), people have been wondering how and why this movie somehow came in fourth place at the box office when the book sold over thirty million copies and the Swedish version of the film was box office gold in Europe. So we have to ask if America is starting to sour on remakes from across the pond.

I think the answer is simple enough. I think (or hope) that we finally are.

While I think mostly when it comes to “Dragon Tattoo” is that Sony, the studio behind the film, chose Christmas weekend to release it when this time of the year people are mostly looking for escapist films to loose themselves in and get away from the insanity that comes along with the holiday than the subject matter that “Dragon Tattoo” (rape and incest, along with murder) contains. However, other star-driven follow-ups to foreign-language hits have been flops as well.

When the trend first took hold of American audiences (mostly during the nineties) with Asian horror films and Action dramas, we as audience were looking for something fresh is a very stagnant market. I know that I, for one, were sick of the countless squeals to movie franchises like “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13^th”, where the ideas were just getting plain stupid and dull. So when movies like the “Ring” and “Ju-On” hit the theaters I was excited, especially since I was already starting to watch the original Asia movies as it was. Now, however, it seems that just about everything these days are either foreign remakes or reboots of films that have already run past their prime -not to mention all the things being re-released in 3D. And it doesn’t just happen to be in the realm of the movie houses.

Television has been stealing ideas for some time now. Channels like SyFy and Showtime (just to name two, but they all seem to be doing it) are big in the foreign remake game with “original” shows like “Being Human” and “Shameless”. Both shows have had long runs (especially “Shameless” that has been on the air for eight seasons) on BBC. Even the much hyped and now cancelled Mtv “original” show “Skins” had a long run their as well.

Hopefully enough is enough when it comes to the remake game, but unfortunately I doubt it. Hollywood seems to be tanking more and more, wondering why they still seem to loose money. But I can not cry to the fact that they are since Hollywood continually raises the price to go to the movies and continue to turn out crappy film after crappy film. I had the unfortunate chance at seeing a few trailers to things on the horizon for 2012, and the movie landscape doesn’t look pretty.

My suggestion to though that be in power in Tinsel Town. Lets try something out of the box, try to recapture that magic that was going to the movies and stop remaking everything you can because there was once an audience for those films back in the day. There are plenty of “Indie” filmmakers out there turning out things that would be of a far better quality if they had some sort of budget, or maybe if you are keen on just using your crappy stock of writers that seem to be at your call try sending them to a bookstore and find something. Hell, it worked for you with “Harry Potter”.

But hey what do I know? I’m just your target audience.