Geek vs Life

This trend is really starting to bother me. There are perfectly good Japanese films getting remade for American audiences. Unfortunately, these remakes are of movies that were made, in some instances, a couple years ago and are just word for word remakes with an “American” audience.

The leading theory behind why this is happening is sheer racism. Hollywood believes that American audiences do not like all-Asian casts. If such is the case, why have movies like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “House of Flying Daggers”, “Hero”, and “Memoirs of a Geisha” done so well in the box office. However, this is a thinly veiled excuse. Hollywood is just incapable of saying they have no new ideas, so they have to pull them from other countries, hoping that they can draw audiences in that are ignorant of the original movies.

For example, “The Eye” with Jessica Alba, which is coming out in the next few months (Feb 1, 2008. Sorry, mia culpa-Ed.), is an Americanization of the original. At best, it is just going to be shot in an American style with effects that American audiences are “used to.” After seeing the preview, and having seen the original, the similarities are too close to even bother with going to see such a blatant rehash. Likewise “One Missed Call” which gives credit to its Japanese forbearer appears to be a word for word redubbing with a white cast.

All in all, this trend, along with remaking movies that have done well before and turning every wildly popular book into a movie. Reasons like these are why people are not going to movies anymore. Well, that and extortive ticket prices.