Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

I've hashed this out before:

Hollywood has run out of ideas.

The box office is full of sequels and prequels and remakes and there hasn't been an ORIGINAL idea in the movie industry in years. And as bad as something like "School of Rock II" pisses me off (yes, it is real), nothing gets my dander up like a bad remake of a favorite movie from my youth.

The movies themselves didn't have to be good - hell, most weren't, but they were a part of your childhood and to see them jazzed up and given a cast fresh out of Dawson's Creek is almost sacrilegious. So in that vein, here are five up and coming remakes that'll you see previewed soon....

...and the reasons WHY they should never be remade.

The Last Starfighter

Summary - A dorky kid who isn't really "dorky", but HOLLYWOOD dorky, which means he is still handsome and has muscles and things like "deltoids" is really good at an arcade game. He obsesses over it day and night (maybe he IS one of us) before finding out that it's not really a game, but an actual space themed simulator that has trained him to be the best fighter pilot in the galaxy.

Why we love it - Because this is every geek's wet dream, and in the back of our minds we knew it all along:

The game we were playing MATTERED!

We weren't just plunking in quarters stolen from mom's laundry money cache to feed a gaming addiction or to fill that empty spot in our soul left void by the fact that we had no friends, we were TRAINING! Training to save the WORLD from intergalactic badasses who despite years of actual space combat and experience would NEVER be as good as a kid with a pocket full of purloined quarters.

We f***ing KNEW it.

Why it shouldn't EVER be remade: Because the movie is better in our heads and hearts than it is on the screen.

Think about it.

There's a INTERGALACTIC WAR and the best and only hope is some white kid who spanks it nightly to the thought of Mrs. Pac-man's bow?

Really?

In all of the galaxy there was NO ONE better suited for the job? No one more experienced and trained than a kid who is good at video games? How does THAT conversation go down in the war room?

"The name is Jensen, I fought the Quignar at the battle of Nektine. I've over 1,000 confirmed kills and I'm the best that the Mukah have to offer."

"I'm Bortag. Proud Orkian warrior and hope to die in battle for the pride of my people."

"Yeah, hi. I'm Harold. I'm REALLY good at that Starfighter video game. I've played it like TWENTY TIMES and then beat it! My three initials are at the top of the screen now...well, not MY initials, I kinda messed up at the end so instead of HTM it is HTN, but that's still me - HEY, are those cheetos?"

Ever see a 800 pound Bortag wet himself? No? Send him into battle with a skinny white kid whose only training is a few rounds of Space Invaders.

And then get the mop.

The Evil Dead

Summary - I shouldn't even have to summarize it. The Evil Dead series should be required viewing for any TRUE geek, but since we have the occasional visitor, I'll explain for the mortals in the crowd.

But ONLY them.

Everyone else pan down.

Summary: (Take II) - A group of young men and women frolic happily in a cabin deep in the woods in hopes of getting drunk, stoned, and laid in all of its clichéd glory. Instead they unleash demons from hell that possess and murder them all using up all of the film's 47 dollar budget in the first seven minutes.

Why we love it -Because it frigging SUCKS.

It is the epitome of "B Movie" and if it were any cheesier it would be adopted by the French.....who would promptly surrender to it. Horrible dialogue, concept, acting and script, Evil Dead is so horrible and cheesy and lame that it does the impossible:

It is so bad, that eventually it's good.

A rare formula indeed, and not one lightly cooked, Evil Dead sucked so hard that it was good. You couldn't HELP but like it for the lame effects, campy dialogue and the dimple chinned antics of the legendary Bruce Campbell. It personified the term "Cult Classic" and is chunk of the spine that makes up the backbone of geekdom.

It sucked so bad that it was good. How can you NOT love that?

Why it shouldn't EVER be remade -Because it is done.

The magic is there, it cannot be recreated, and anything that tries too will suck in the sucking way, not in the good way that this movie sucked. You can't recreate something that was accidentally created and hope to have the formula exactly right again.

Besides, Bruce is getting kind of old, and I'm not sure that I can ever forgive him for that whole "The Man With The Screaming Brain" thing.

The wounds are just too fresh.

Remaking a bad movie in hopes of making it good, will only make it bad and open a paradox in the universe in which we are all swallowed.

Clash of the Titans

Summary -Perseus gets on a magical flying white horse that you only now as an adult recognize as "a little fruity" and saves Ancient Greek from the Medusa, the Kraken, and a guy who seems to be Clancy Brown's father by fighting claymation skeletons.

Why we love it -Because when you are eight, this movie is sheer awesomeness. Flying mounts, epic battles, swords and sorcery! Hell, you don't even NOTICE the strings half the time, or the thumb print left on some clay monster's forehead by a rushed stop-motion-photographer.

Robot owls, hot chicks and decapitation - this is the stuff that little boys are made of.

If you locked 50 hyperactive 8 year olds in a room full of sugar and gave them paper and pens, after only TWO hours, there would be like 900 paper airplanes, hats, and all the walls would have the word "poopy" written on them. But that's not the point. The point is, if you were to unfurl the planes and hats and little boats, you would see drawings of every scene from Clash of the Titans depicted in the cave drawing scratch that only an 8 year old boy can create.

This movie was AMAZING and a HUGE part of my childhood - and it reminds you that no matter how old you are, you can ALWAYS go back.

Why it shouldn't EVER be remade -Because you can't ever go back.

I caught this on TNT a few weeks ago and watched with excitement....for like four minutes. Then I realized how cheesy and horrible it was and that the whole "Medusa Head versus the Kraken" just didn't make sense.

You just aim the head at people? How did the Kraken even see her eyes? Did the Kraken even HAVE eyes?

It bothered me and ruined an amazing childhood memory. Any remake that I'll be forced to see (because I will have to see it) will only further destroy my memories, especially if it is pretty good. Because then I'll NEVER be able to re-watch the movie I have no intentions of ever watching.

But you know, like doubly so.

Footloose

Summary -Kevin Bacon gets within one degree of himself as the rebellious kid who moves to a town that is literally part of the buckle in the Bible Belt. He is the outcast, the tough guy, and the badass, and he fights back the only way that he knows how...

By DANCING.

Why we love it - Because we were young and didn't know any better - or we had a sister or girlfriend or other female influence in our lives who convinced us it was a good movie. But let's face it:

When the movie's badass rebels by DANCING, you are doomed from the start.

Dancing just isn't that rebellious of an act. Even in "No Dancing" zones, which I've never in my life actually SEEN, but I know that they probably need more of. Dancing makes you look dorky and spastic, not cool and mysterious, and it just doesn't factor into the real world. No one has ever stood around at work in tight knit groups whispering in awe about a show of defiance that involves someone busting a move.

"Did you see what Johnson did during the board meeting when Old Man Winters told him that he couldn't dance?"

"No! What?"

"He danced! He stood up and danced with all of his might! I've never seen that much heart poured into a single man!"

"Oh my GOD! What did Old Man Winters do?"

"Called security. Yeah, they tazered the shit right out of Johnson, fired him, and threw him into the street."

"Wow. Dibs on his stapler."

Why it shouldn't EVER be remade -I blame Footloose for every "Bring it On" "Kick it" "Stomp tha yard" type of movie ever to grace television, and remaking it would just send the message that dancing is a cool way to settle your problems.

Which is just dangerous to kids. Don't believe me? Ever wonder what happened to the Sharks and the Jets from West Side Story? Yeah, well they met the Crips and the Bloods and all of the cool tough guy dance moves in the world couldn't save them from the rebellious act of being shot in the face.

Although the world may very well need MORE tractor fights.

Poltergeist

Summary -A family builds their new home over a cemetery which pisses off a ton of ghosts who send a TV to eat their daughter.

Why we love it -Because it scared the holy hell out of us.

Poltergeist didn't have to scare you with high tech effects or CGI ghosts popping out of corners, instead, they went inside your head with a nightmare stick and stirred it around until you were forced to sleep with the lights on for a month. This wasn't some ghost haunting a family, this was an unseen force doing freaky things that they didn't expect and were powerless to stop.

Possessed clown dolls? Tree monsters ripping through windows? TV's eating little kids?

It might not sound scary from the safety of your computer as you roll your eyes and call me a dork, but I'll tell you flat out: For YEARS to come - if my TV ever cut to static, for ANY reason?

I peed a little bit.

Poltergeist was the fear of the unknown, of the unseen, and of forces beyond our sight and ability to comprehend. But it did teach us a lesson...

...if someone tries selling you a home for thirteen dollars, you might want to check into it just a bit before opening your wallet. There are always strings attached, and these strings might lead to slime covered tennis balls shooting out of Meg's ass.

You've been warned.

Why it shouldn't EVER be remade -Aside from the various crappy sequels and the obvious "can't recapture the mood" points, this movie just doesn't NEED to be remade. It stands on its own like few other movies can.

Jaws, Stand by Me, Goonies and a handful of others that will never NEED to be redone, because the originals still shine to this day. Yet where there is a buck to be made, there will be some sleazy Hollywood type shilling for a new flick and ignoring what the movie meant to us, or the fact that it was perfect as is.

I'm ashamed of the remakes that pale to the original. So ashamed. Humiliated.

And Hollywood should be ashamed too. It should sit there in its chair, humiliated and ashamed....

...and then maybe take off its top and walk around bowing a lot.

...

....crap.

What was I saying?

-Coyote