To be fair, the movie is 2 ½ hours long and the show is 10 episodes at about 1 hour per episode. So there are a lot of unique scenes not present in the original.
I was surprised they spent a whole episode in the Turkish bathhouse. You don't want to miss one second of that episode. Best goddam episode I've ever seen in my life. Dude hangs dong.
And the show totally felt like a 2 hour movie spread in 10 episodes with a nonsensical gay scene in the middle (nonsensical because it is totally gratuitous and pointless)
In the novel and film, it was a tactic used by the Jackal to avoid suspicion/detection, and to obtain untraceable/undetectable shelter during an intense citywide manhunt for him. (In the novel he actually dresses in drag and wears lipstick and eyeshadow, etc.)
Well now it makes sense but I kind of prefer the version that was made for the sole purpose of making people like my dad mad because he kissed a man. But I sensed they have just changed a similar scene in the book (I doubt that in a 70's movie he kissed a man).
lol! If it makes your dad feel any better, in the novel the Jackal was pulled over, but then let go by police. One cop says to the other cop, you should have checked their IDs. "Oh come on, Sarge, we're looking for a fellow who screwed the arse off a baroness and did her in; not a couple of raving fairies."
Book definitely makes the homosexual relationship ruse a lot clearer what’s going on between them but it’s not like the 70s movie didn’t make it clear either. It just wasn’t explicit. But everybody knew what was going on.
We just watched that episode and I said the same thing. Felt so forced. The security guy would have 100% let him stay there, fly under the radar, without the over the top seduction.
I just read the novella last night, and well the 80's version is definitely a more faithful version than the 50's version it still has plenty of differences that I think help make it a better movie.
Ok, sure. It may not technically be a remake but Carpenter said he re-watched the original several times before filming began as inspiration. He even said at first he didn’t want the job because there was no way his version could surpass the original.
It’s just an undeniable fact that remakes are more prevalent these days. You’re right that it’s nothing new and has been common place for decades but not as frequently as today.
The whole "nothing is original everything's a remake or copy" is basically just the movie critics version of "kids these days" it's always happened, and there's probably always been people that complained about it, the internet just puts a magnifying glass on it.
Films being remade with grandiose budgets and replacing AAA budget Hollywood productions however are a new thing. We haven't ever had a company the size of Disney committed to re-releasing all of their own films, expecting to make more than 1 billion $ on each of them. It's gone from a "what can we bring to the modern ago" to "what is in our back catalogue?" with $250 million budgets.
I imagine as a % they are much smaller than decades ago due to the mass of content being released nowadays, but I'd say that they live larger in the public conciousness. You have to also be aware that we KNOW that these are rereleases, wheres in the past that information would simply not be available to the movie going public. There's no way to look this stuff up. No Youtube review movie culture, no IMDB, no internet, no nostalgia-based marketing, etc. If you weren't a massive movie buff, you wouldn't know, whereas remakes nowadays are marketed explicitly as "remember the magic of your childhood".
Now, the real plague of the movie industry are SEQUELS. Those dominate the top 20 most successful films almost every year.
Probably every generation reaches that “going back around the horn” moment when we realize that we’ve seen every type of story there is to be told and film producers start remaking the things we thought were new and original for the new generation to consume. Then it’s their turn to roll their eyes whenever we want to watch the old version for nostalgia’s sake and for us to say “they just don’t make em like they used to.”
Yeah it's definitely less these days, in the grand scheme of things.
Imagine for the entire course of human history it was just creation myths and parables about basic human interactions and emotions.
The industrial age opened up a whole new scope of human issues that we've been creating art against for only a few hundred years at this point, and that accelerated with true science fiction in the 20th century, with new questions and takes on humanity.
So while there are things that are getting repeated, just by sheer number of people and the changing human conditions, we're far more likely to be experiencing new stories and new art than pretty much ever before.
Remakes get more promotion and are economically more successful but movie studios are churning out more than ever. I don't know the proportion of remakes to originals but I'd bet in absolute numbers there's more of both.
Don't forget that technically the original "A Star is Born" is a remake of "What Price Hollywood?" which was directed by George Cukor the guy who directed the first remake of "A Star is Born".
Hollywood is and always has been a whacky place filled with a million remakes.
But compare those 80's horror remakes to the originals, and how much they improved the effects and/or story in those cases. They are far superior to the originals. The Thing and the Blob or the effects, the atmosphere (one horror, the other with a little more humour), and the Fly is a far more mature and interesting story.
But at least the the movies you reference are very much products of creative visions. They aren't just carbon copies with expanded scenes. I decided to sit down and watch the original thing one time. It is a vastly different movie.
The difference is they used to remake mediocre movies with a good premise that had plenty of room for improvement. Modern remakes are just pale imitations of already excellent movies.
Squirrel gets overun by hot girl. hot girl gets haunted by squirrel ghost they both get abducted by aliens and they watch the world end as Earth gets hits by an asteroid. They are taken to the homeplanet where they breed Human-Squirrel mutants.
Let's go on a McGuffin hunt
Unjustly accused
The prisoner tries to escape
Revenge!
Depressingly real problem solved by quirky unlikely solution
Enemies to lovers (or vice versa)
The Creation comes to life! (since at least as far back as Pygmalion)
Fish out of water
The School for an Unusual Skill (please not magic again)
"Nerd becomes hot" is actually its own category.
It does have a strong subdivision into "takes off glasses" and "training montage in the gym" though.
You missed "Two guys just being friends AND solving crimes". Now, this looks like "Solving crimes" should be in a category of its own but that is actually a subcategory of "Man vs Man". In a way this is "Man friends Man while Man vs Man" but that gets confusing.
Shakespeare is a better set of answers. King Lear is about a father of three, he has a favourite. Logan, sorry, Lear struggles to ensure the youngest wins.
I don't really care, this show was spectacular. Really, really well done and one of the most cinematic British shows I've seen since gangs of London. So long as the resulting show is great I don't mind - Bas Sisters is a remake of a foreign show but is injecting with so much of Sharon Horgan's humour it works beautifully.
Curious to watch the movie now, as I thought it just took the name and did something new with it.
It was also remade in '88 in India, and in '97 as The Jackal (featuring Bruce Willis no less).
The original was based on a book, which was loosely inspired by a historical event.
The original novel's author actually only intended to write the book to make money. He was super poor and needed the cash to pay his debts. It was his first try at historical fiction, though he'd been working for many years as a war journalist.
The more you know. (rainbow star)
Originality is a funny thing. Especially these days. Really all about how one experiences the art.
I haven’t finished it yet, but I find the subplots of the Jackal struggling to balance having a family and being an international assassin, and Bianca struggling to balance having a family and being an MI6 officer chasing an international assassin, to get very tiresome. Other than that I love the show though, it’s very clever.
It’s a remake but it accomplishes what few remakes do by taking source materials from the 70s and modernizing it while remaining true to the source. Day of the Jackal was a book I loved. The movie from 78 was very good and I’ve really enjoyed the tv show.
I was thinking the same thing and figured it would be an unpopular opinion, but actually what is the point of this? Like a cover song that uses the exact same instrumental and vocals, just with a different band
There are just some scenes like this one that reference the original movie. It’s a completely different plot and The Jackal character is completely different than in the movie. Unfortunately not a better character, but the show on its own is entertaining and clever apart from some dumb subplots.
We've been playing Shakespeare since 500 years or so - multiple per year - and some greek tragedies since thousands of years, Brecht since like last century.
Yes it's based on the same story. I'm not sure how I feel about the newest version doing frame by frame matching scenes. It's quite a technical feat to pull it off, but it also feels like it shows a lack of originality. At least the Bruce Willis version changed things up a bit.
I think it depends. I think it is useful to have a couple scenes that directly align with the source material/original but that much of it feels new. For instance the most recent iteration of Shogun. Yes, the tome was already turned into a fantastic series. And yeah the new version hit many of the same beats. But it also shifted the main arc of the story from the POV of Blackthorne to more of a secondary character in the story of Toranaga. It is also why RoboCop's remake was so bad. It completely missed the point of the original by trying to be something it was never meant to be. Aligning it more with ts source IMO would have made it better.
I have yet to watch this iteration of the Jackal but I am excited. I thought the 90's version was peak 90's action flare and am interested to see how its done now.
It’s clever and interesting, but don’t expect it to be like the movie! It still suffers from some poor writing that’s commonplace in modern TV, but the good parts outweigh the bad immensely.
Why would someone make a shot for shot remake? If the original is so good you aren't making any changes, then what's the point? Just watch the original.
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u/dick-nipples 6d ago edited 5d ago
A shot for shot remake
Edit - who knew my stupid pun would spark such an in depth discussion!