In recent years, Hollywood has become known for reducing, reusing and recycling plot lines from various books, television shows and even other movies. While my childhood would have felt empty if I hadn’t been able to grow up with Harry, Ron and Hermoine on the big screen, I could have lived without “The Last Airbender” ever being made.
The real attack against original thought, however, seems to be the pattern of taking foreign films and remaking them with English-speaking American actors. I’m referring to this week’s big box office horror film, “Let Me In.”
In “Let Me In,” the protagonist, Owen, is a lonely young boy who is constantly bullied by those around him, until a girl named Abby befriends him ““ the only catch is, she’s a vampire. Only two years ago the Swedes put out a movie called “Let the Right One In.” It’s about a lonely young boy named Oskar who befriends a young vampire named Eli. Movies are reincarnated all the time, but only waiting two years (less if you consider how long they’ve been working on the film) seems insensitive. If your parents started redecorating your room at home the day after you left for college, you know what I mean.
And, to top things off, “Let the Right One In” is based on a book.
But before you start a letter campaign to Warner Bros., consider this: The writer of the Swedish novel (“Let the Right One In”), the writer of the Swedish screenplay and the writer of the English-language screenplay are the same guy. John Lindqvist has been there, pen in hand, every step of the way.
Think back to “Funny Games,” the Austrian art-house thriller that came out in 1997. In the film, a family goes on vacation to a house in the country, where they’re terrorized by two young men who like to play sadistic games. 10 years later, Michael Haneke (the director) filmed a shot-by-shot remake of the film with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as the mother and father. In his case it wasn’t so much that he wasn’t capable of an original thought but, perhaps, the reason was no one had really seen his first go at it.
There’s no one explanation for this sort of thing. Harley Joffe, a second year pre-communications student, said she thinks it’s all about the actors appealing to the American audiences. In that case, imagine Susanne Lothar duking it out with Naomi Watts at the box office (both played the mother in their respective versions of “Funny Games”). According to Joffe, whatever captures people’s attention seems to be the most important thing, regardless of the ethics behind recycled ideas.
Then there’s the idea of the pre-sold story, said Howard Suber, professor emeritus in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Suber pointed out that most of Shakespeare’s plays were based on preexisting works. Most of the Greek and Roman plays were based on stories the audiences already knew. In the end, it seems to come down to just trying to predict what sort of movies people want to watch and are willing to watch. Some Americans are intimidated by subtitles and tend to ignore movies based on things they’ve never heard of, unless they’re bombarded by advertisements at every corner. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that there’s still a significant audience in America that has not seen the Swedish original.
As Suber said, the people in charge of green-lighting a film are much more likely to say yes to a film when they know it already works. If a film is successful in one language, it will most likely be successful in English, and while that’s bad news for the mountains of original screenplays pining for love and attention in production studios, it’s good news for an industry that seems to be sinking.
_E-mail John at ajohn@media.ucla.edu with your favorite vampire-free foreign remakes. _