Will is annoyed by the Karate Kid (2010 version, not the 1984 version), not the least because with Jackie Chan involved, you’d be expecting… Kung Fu right? Weren’t we supposed to have stopped confusing the forms back in the 70s or so? People are up in arms about this all over the web it seems. I’ll lay off the whole thing since I’m not an expert in the etymology of the terms anyway, but more to the point I’m just tired of having my childhood memories cynically smacked around by pointless remakes, if the truth be told.
Anyway, to help himself vent, Will wrote some amusing synopses for other remakes Hollywood might do where the details are… modified. Here are a couple I liked:
Nightmare on Elm Street — On Elm Street Maple Drive, a group of teens aging boy band members are tormented in their dreams during lunch by a clawed six-fingered killer nursing home janitor named Freddy Krueger Skippy Gunderson.
Jaws — A shark marmot makes a resort coal-mining town its private public feeding breeding grounds.
See here for more! Wanna roll your own? Go ahead and share your results in the comments if you like!
-cvj
Ha! _Love_ the last one especially!
-cvj
Unsatisfying remakes of classic westerns.
A Fistful of Credit Cards: The Man With A Name (Mike) comes out of the wilderness to a small town, and convinces two rival gangs of outlaws that violence is not the way forward and that they should all become friends and get involved in the community.
The Good, The-Not-So Good And The-Not-So-Good-Looking: The Man With a Name Returns and forms a partnership with a sadistic bounty hunter and a violent outlaw, whom he thinks are misunderstood and are actually really great guys. After ending the American Civil War through vigorous negotiation with both sides, all three work together as a team to find a consignment of buried gold and share it all out equally before donating it to charity.
Ulzana’s Raid: A legendary bounty hunter comes out of retirement and joins forces with US cavalrymen to track down and have strong words with a renagade group of Native Americans who are acting in an irresponsible way and causing a bit of trouble.
The Excitable Bunch:
Sam Peckinpah’s contraversial western is retold. A group of aging outlaws head to Mexico and tell everyone there that they are very welcome in the US, especially in Arizona. Their adventures culminate in a last stand at the border involving a very vigorous red paintball fight.
Is nothing sacred? They will be re-making Crossroads next. As Steve Vai is still the flashiest guitarist on the planet he might reprise his Jack Butler role. Alternatively a promising but volatile young (classical guitarist) string theorist appals his professors by quitting (Julliard) Harvard and seeking out the key to (the blues) the physics of climate change. His quest climaxes as he cuts heads with Al Gore, the IPCC and Peter Woit- no – no-one would believe it.
🙂 !!
Thanks Clifford! When I changed Citizen Kane from a publishing tycoon to an astronomer, I did so with you in mind!