cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17624291
Warning: spoilers ahead!
The Danish director of the original Speak No Evil has hit out at the new remake for rewriting the “entire ending”, saying: “I don’t know what it is about Americans”.
Speak No Evil – which is an American remake of the 2022 Danish film of the same name – was released in cinemas on September 13. Written and directed by James Watkins (The Woman In Black, Eden Lake), the film stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi and Scoot McNairy.
Now, the director of the original, Christian Tafdrup, has criticised the film’s remake for a number of significant changes.
The remake changes the nationalities of the families to British and American and Watkins has divided fans by completely changing the ending to the film.
And that is where I am leaving it until I’ve seen both. If you are discussing spoilers innyhe comments, please us the spoiler tags - ! in a triangle in the standard web interface.
I don’t watch horror movies, but this article got me curious and I checked out the plot summary and then the snippets of the 2022 movie. Can confirm, I’m an American.
Americans are optimists and having an ending where the heroes die, unable to change their fate, is inherently hard for Americans to agree with. Most Americans will point at parts of the movie and try to find some way they would have done it differently, using the hind sight of knowing the outcome of some decisions, to avoid the Danish ending. It’s a deeply rooted cultural experience and why the people who put multiple millions and a few years into making a movie want to appeal to the audience they are making it for. The same effect can be seen with food - make the food the customers want, not the food that represents a culture few understand.
didn’t even know this “new” movie was another remake of a foreign film. had no interest in watching it but now this makes me wanna see the foreign original, which is always better.
Either CEOs want something more focus grouped, or nepo babies behind the scenes need to add their own “flair” to it.
Eh, I’d rather the remake makes some changes, otherwise what’s the point of just doing the same thing again. Generally speaking the closer the remake is to the original the less value it adds. Sometimes these changes work and sometimes they don’t but I’d rather they take a swing. Like Psycho or Funny Games or Oldboy or anything Disney has done in the last decade are exactly like the original and feel completely pointless. Even when they’re done well like the Ikiru remake Living they just feel a little hollow.
All this being said, I think the most successful ones are where they have a completely new take from the ground up. Compare the new Planet of the Apes remakes to the 2001 Tim Burton one. The new ones go in a whole new direction and feel like they matter whereas the Burton one was a complete failure. Scarface and Oceans 11 also come to mind as successful remakes because the director got to put their on flair on the story.
I feel like there’s a difference between remakes of old movies and remakes of very recent movies that just weren’t American
Yes to both.
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