Fenzel, Dr. Zhivago

Movies should be remade when the script, concept or other material was really great, but the interpretation, direction, art direction, score or other execution leave you some room for improvement.

Admit it: It looks a bit unprofessional; a bit too much like a high school play.

Movies tend to get remade primarily because they had wonderful scene-stealing acting performances or really great composition that the filmmakers want to emulate. If you’re only going to remake relatively few movies, don’t remake the ones that nailed it the first time, especially in ways you can only aspire to copy. Remake ones you know you can, and must, make differently and better.

Personally, I think movies should be remade much more frequently. It is a tragedy to see so many great roles and scripts to be interpreted only once. Imagine if Mel Gibson’s was the only version we ever had of Hamlet? But as much as I’d love to watch the Hugh Grant Under Siege, effective remakes are all about doing it for the right reasons.

Whereas this is just gloriously insane.

The Ten Commandments would be the absolute worst movie to remake. You’ve got the two grandest, most inimitable film actors ever (Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner), a supporting cast full of film legends doing wonderful work, captivating set and visual design, legendary direction, and a script that sounds like it was written line by line on an Etch-a-Sketch (and shaken between takes).

This is why the remake of Battlestar Galactica (the original had a cool concept, but dumb execution) was such a good thing, why remakes/special editions/reimaginings of Star Wars (the original had a bad script, but wonderful execution) are almost always artistic failures, and why I suspect the remake of Star Trek (the original and TNG had boring concepts, but marvelously charming execution) might not be that interesting.

The best possible movie to remake? My vote goes for Dr. Zhivago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAWrXTn5Www

Many actors give really good performances in Dr. Zhivago, but they’re not the kind of performances that eat up the room left over for those who come later. Omar Sharif is great, but he’s better in other roles than in this. Same with Sir Alec Guinness. I always thought the pacing of this movie was really flat, the acting wasn’t urgent or naturalistic enough, especially for a drama that aspires to humanity above all else, the direction was too focused on splashy imagery and didn’t have enough dynamism, and the whole look relies a lot on convention to the extent that it looks way more dated than comparable movies — it’s like the director took the storyboards a bit too literally. It’s still a solid movie, but it succeeded in spite what I think are of a lot of dropped balls and had massive unrealized potential.

Your mom has a huge crush on this guy.

Zhivago is a sweeping, dramatic story with action, spectacle, compelling characters, exotic locations and cunning double-crosses. Exploring Revolution-Era Russia right now has tons of fresh resonance, given how much has happened to Russia and the world since Zhivago came out back in 1965 and the stresses cutting across the core of our societies these days.

There are a lot of sequences in this movie that were a bit too ambitious at the time, but would be a blast to see with today’s techniques. The blizzard scenes alone are almost as good as the desert pratfall scenes in The Ten Commandments — but I still think they can be done better.

In the remake, they get to lower the sheets several inches from their necks.

I say Ultimate Zhivago 2012 (working title) would be a slam dunk. Clive Owen could win the Sean Connery Memorial Fake British Russian award and rake in a few hundred million dollars in the process.

Actually, Clive Owen probably isn’t the guy for it. You need somebody more sensitive. Like Ben Affleck.

Oh God, what have I done!!! >smashes stone tablets<