American Idiot: Take 2

Remakes, rehashings, retellings, redoings.

I have had it up to the hind teeth with America's needless retelling of stories that were told perfectly well the first time. Type in Frankenstein into a IMDB search and you will come up with 16 movies with the title alone, all of them retelling Mary Shelly's original story.

Now I'm not saying I object to all remakes, provided they add something. The Producers was a fantastic little film back in the 60's that was perfect in terms of comedy and story telling, show it to someone today and it will still get a laugh. When they remade it they added musical numbers and made an entirely different movie, characters were taken out and sub plot's put in. I can live with that and I know a lot of people can do because it was a decent retelling and it added something to make it worthwhile.

Psycho however was a gripping movie done by Hitchcock, it was brilliantly made and shot and after the movie ended there didn't need to be any more... until the box office returns came in. What followed was threee pointless sequels and a shot-for-shot remake of the original. Nothing added, nothing gained, what's the fricking point?

Then there's America's fascination with taking shows that worked perfectly when aired overseas and so they insist there be a US version. Kath & Kim was a worldwide success, one of Australia's most beloved programs and one of the few shows we were able to send around the world and have them love. Then America came along, took out all the good parts and vomited out something that was nothing like Kath & Kim and it died in seconds. Then there's Little Britain which was a great little English comedy that again had huge appeal worldwide, but apparently that's not enough. Little Britain USA was born and while it had the same writers and the same actors in it there was something that just felt needless about it. It didn't need to go over to the US, it's called Little BRITAIN and so should be set in Britain. Seems like logic to me. Now there's rumors going around about the US doing their take on Torchwood, a great little BBC series that is like a more cool version of Doctor Who. Why? Why the hell is a US take on a great british tale needed or even wanted.

Now I understand sometimes when the US makes remakes of films that are 30 years old. The latest Friday The 13th remake, while oddly pointless and in my opinion stupid, made some kind of sense because it'd based on a 30 year old movie. I understand trying to reboot a franchise. The remake problem starts however when you remake a film 3 years later, which is what they're doing with Death At A Funeral which in case you're wondering is a film that failed at the box office. It barely made back it's budget during it's release and yet they're going to make it again.

Pardon me for sounding a little petty but what the fuck? Are we out of original ideas already? Has it gotten to the point where originality is a lost art and we're going to end up remaking movies over and over again, making countless sequels that add nothing to the story just to pad the pockets of a few people? This is one of the reasons why there's piracy in the world, maybe if Hollywood (And I specify them because America is where most of the movies and TV we see nowadays comes from) learned some originality then maybe there'd be less people hitting the torrent sites and grabbing the work for free.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but flattery will get you nowhere