A remake/reboot/reimagining/whatever is truly not a bad idea at the surface. There are many films or even ideas that are not fully realized in their original form whether it suffered from technological limitations, poor production, or other issues. Other than the George Lucases of the world, most filmmakers or companies are not able to retroactively go back and fix problem areas in an already released movie. The problem comes in when a remake offers nothing over the original other than a polished look, a slew of teen actors, and a more modern setting. The Nightmare on Elm Street remake is one of those offending movies.
For any movie, whether it is based on an existing property or somewhat original idea, the goal should be to create something not only enjoyable but a film that can stand on its own. The Nightmare remake (which PBF did a wonderful job summarizing my thoughts before I had them in his review) leans far too much on the existing films to be seen as anything other than a money-grab from nostalgic fanboys like myself.
To find the essence of a good, nay spectacular, remake let’s look at 2004′s Dawn of the Dead. It had zombies and people in a mall. Other than cameos and a few repeated lines, there was little else in that remake that was ripped from the remake. In contrast, I would guesstimate approximately 68% of everything in the NOES remake was either directly lifted from at least one movie of the original series or a sometimes subtle, and at other times not, homage.
Like PBF said before, if you are going to rip off iconic shots from a movie, do it shot-by-shot like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho. It might not turn out well but at least it had a clear intention. Others, like Dawn, take the mere essence of the story and branch off. Would I have been upset to have a movie titled “A Nightmare on Elm Street” that had the burned-face Freddy Krueger hunting kids in their dreams? No, as long as the story was something that I hadn’t seen before.
Where I will give the remake credit is that the underlying story was different than the original films and largely interesting. A group of kids have similar nightmares, discover that at one time they knew each other, and have to piece together both their connections and the man of their dreams.
In fact, the main crux of the tale is what would stop me from labeling it as crap. In fact, it was pretty cool. It takes the pop-culture knowledge of Freddy and further vilifies him as Krueger is not merely a child killer but a child molester. Add to that the guilt that the characters feel thinking that their accusations may have killed an innocent man and we’ve got a pretty decent story going. Why does Freddy then have a razor-blade glove in the flashbacks? Oh, just another stupid allusion to its source.
What isn’t cool is to rip me out of this story to have gratuitous callbacks to the original movie (and even the sequels which I really did not understand). For the sake of nostalgia, I was willing to forgive the inclusion of the bathtub scene or the hallway that turns into a blood-red sea of unwalkable sludge like the stairs from the original. What I was not forgiving of was random quips like “How’s this for a wet dream?” or pointless shots like Freddy coming out of Nancy’s wall (albeit in horrible CGI) which quickly cut to another scene with no further reflection.
I hate that movie producers are so quick to harp on those that bash a remake because it is a remake. Well, geniuses, if you weren’t reminding me every three minutes that you are unoriginal enough to fill your movie with pointless references to another film, I might be more open-minded. That argument holds as much water as someone remaking Star Wars as ‘Star Battles’ with a character named Jon Soho complaining about the constant comparison.
Going back to the Dawn remake, it had rather subtle references to the original movie. Ken Foree had a brief part as a preacher. A store was called Gallen Ross (one of the actors in the original). These sorts of things are homages, not blatant plagiarism. There was some subtly here though with Nancy driving a Volvo station wagon (that type of car shows up at least three times in the original series) or a particular shot of Kris driving in her convertible that mirrors a shot in Nightmare 4. I’m convinced these cannot be accidentally but purposefully included for the fans like me who grew up on this series.
Why then must the characters of Kris and Jesse (obviously patterned after Tina and Rod but named after previous series characters) have expanded storylines? They die. We know this. But every minute they are on screen, we have less time with Nancy (Nancy) and Quentin (Glen) which makes their time together so awkward that their casual conversation consists of “What’s your favorite color?” Whereas in the first film, we had a firm grasp on Nancy and her personality as it slowly became unraveled, no one character gets time to expand because of another stupid reference shoehorned into the movie!
To summarize, I agree with PBF’s assessment that you cannot like both the new and old NOES. If you like the old, you will find the new one irritatingly different and similar at the same time. If you like the new, you have not seen the old. If that is the case, you should rectify that as soon as fucking possible. /endrant
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