Hark

With this trend thats appeared in the movie industry over the last decade, has it got you wondering if theres any orignality left?

The area which Im looking into is the trend of J-horror remakes in Hollywood. The Ring started it all off with the remake of Ringu. Then came along the remake of Ju-on which became Grudge. And recently the remake of Dark Water. I havent seen either of the Dark Waters yet. Im prefer the orignal Ringu becuase I found it alor more scarier.

Ju on Grudge was alittle more difficult becuase they had the same Director. What do you guys think? Which one did you feel was scarier?

Ringu or The Ring
Ju on or The Grudge
The orginal Dark Water or remake?

Aurakles

It depends. Sometimes we get stuck in nostalgia land, elect ourselves president of that state, never leave...and thus fail to realize that we were young(er) when we saw an original and that shaped our reference and love for a particular work. Moreover, sometimes the original sucked and it takes a remake to make us realize that. I know this is often not the case, but the notion of originality or that original = good is equally flawed. Besides, what makes an original an original…because it was the first time you saw ideas arranged that way, presented that way, visualized that way, or are the ideas themselves original? Oftentimes what we think is original is just a limitation of how far back we reach. Still, the first movie version of a film is either limited or aided by its time, the director's vision, the skill of the actors, budget, etc. I know I have ideas that people have formulated/expressed differently, if not better, so I think it all depends on perspective. Anyway, I know I am getting overly philosophical, but I will admit that some remakes do beg the question: why?

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Reese

Remaking isn't exactly recent. The Magnificent Seven(1960) was a remake of Shichinin no samurai(Seven Samurai 1954) Not to mention every story made seems to draw from shakespeare and Disney's biggest and best cartoon films are taken directly from fairy tales like the Brothers' Grimm and others. I guess you could argue that these aren't exactly remakes because the original wasn't made for movies but I believe it's no different than Peter Jackson taking a very old and outdated film(King Kong) and retelling the story.

Stories have been retold for thousands of years, I see no reason to quit now.

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Aurakles

I couldn't agree more. Look at the film War of the Worlds, which is based on a book (by H.G. Wells) of the same title. It has actually been made several times, just in a different way. Independence Day is the same film, with the same theme and plot, but told differently.

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Hark

Sorry guys I seemed to have confused myself as well as u guys with my above my statement. I ment to say the recent trend of J Horror remakes.....not remakes in general. Sorry

Im doing a major project on comparing J-horror films with there hollywood remakes. Im trying to find out which version the public prefer and why. Please help ur imput would be greatly appriciated.

Leto

Darn! I was about to jump in with my treatise on Cheaper By the Dozen...

Oh well, another time, another thread.

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Charlatan

The thing about Western remakes of J-horror films is that if they didn't get remade, they would never reach the kind of audience they do in the West.

Let's face it, North American audiences don't like to watch foreign films in any great numbers. Remaking the films with familiar faces, in English, is just plain good business.

The upside is this: If you don't like remakes, the originals are available on DVD, or in some cases, in arthouse cinemas.

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Cynthetiq

hmmm I haven't seen the original japanese of Ring, Dark Water, or the Grudge. I did see all of them this past year and wasn't all that impressed with the actual "nemesis" of the story. I just couldn't "suspend disbelief" enough for some reason.

All of them were creepy and I did enjoy that aspect of it. But no more or no less than any Jason or Freddy movie.

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Leto

i agree with Charlatan's point. The fact that the ring and Grudge were made caused me to be curious about japanese film (beyond the obvious pixilated goodies) and I have started to rent the originals.

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trickyy

while i usually prefer "the original," i tried to come up with remakes i liked better. the best example is cape fear. the remake had a lot of claustrophobic cinematography and was quite intense, which made the original seem pretty weak.

the studios also do a lot of instant psedo remakes. cheaper by the dozen (the remake) spawned another movie with 18 kids with dennis quaid, i think. two movies about mars came out at the same time....and how many movies feature a spunky secretary/assistant/housekeeper/dancer who woos some big shot lawyer/producer/doctor/playboy who has recently sworn off love? (industry heads obviously hope foreign or past successes will work here and now.)

CSflim

Well to answer the OP's question; I tend to judge films purely on their merit, not on the basis of being a remake or a sequel. (Judging films on their merit gets me into a lot of heated debates, when I insist that an adaptation of a novel was a good film in its own right, whereas someone else insists that since it wasn't rigidly faithful to the novel it automatically becomes a bad movie).

So for the three "J Horror" (god I hate that phrase for some reason) films:

I saw Ringu before I saw The Ring and much preferred the original.
I saw Ju-On before I saw The Grudge and I thought that they were both reasonably good, with neither one having much over the other (I think The Grudge was paced and plotted better, and was more cohesive as a film, but this reflects Ju-On's origins as being destined for a TV series).
I saw Dark Water but haven't seen the remake. Didn't think much of it to be honest. What was presumably supposed to be tension and foreboding just felt slowly paced, boring and wiht not much of a pay off.

(I included which order I saw these films because I think that this can affect your judgement; if you see two film that a very similar, the first one of them you see might appear to be groundbreaking, fresh and new, where as the second one you see might just appear as "same ol', same ol'", regardless of which one is the original and which the remake)

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