I’m going to start this week’s post with a question for the under 25s: How many of you have seen Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 version of Total Recall, or Sam Raimi’s take on Spider-Man from only a decade ago? Judging by the new trailer for Len Wiseman’s remake of the former and a screening I caught earlier this week of Marc Webb’s reboot of the latter, Hollywood is banking on its key box office demographic not having ever watched either movie.
I can just about accept filmmakers’ current penchant for plundering the 1980s (hey, it’s been a while), but rebooting entities that have had only 20 or so years or, in the case of Spider-Man, just 10 to establish a legacy seems like a cheap trick. The key, if they must, is to ensure that the new version is bigger and better than the original, or failing that, radically different.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond, Casino Royale, are remakes or reboots of a sort, but all managed to surpass or offer a fresh take on the films that preceded them. It’s a legacy I can’t see this latest crop living up to.
First to Wiseman’s Total Recall. While the Underworld director has reportedly jettisoned the original’s wonderful third-act sojourn to Mars and tacked on a generic Orwellian backstory about warring megapowers, the promo has me thinking I’m watching virtually the same film minus Verhoeven’s brilliantly barmy and bombastic razzamatazz.
The Dutch director’s over-the-top, B-moviesque schtick was the perfect vehicle for the larger-than-life Arnold Schwarzenegger; the film’s surreal futuristic storyline far out enough to make you forget in the first five minutes that you’re watching a 20-stone guy with an Austrian accent in a world where everyone else is normal-sized and American.
This time we get the rather more orthodox form of Colin Farrell, a fine actor whose scene-stealing turn in Minority Report a decade ago always hinted at a fertile future in science fiction. The problem is that the scenes in the trailer appear to be taken from a film that is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the original.
Just like Arnie, he visits Rekall to get an adventurous memory implanted, kills everyone in the room when something apparently goes wrong, ends up in a fight with the woman who may or may not be his wife, takes advice from himself via a recorded video message, and even gives the glad-eye to a three-boobed woman who’s interested in his hard-earned wonga.
Tell me again why I would want to watch such a perfect movie remade by a film-maker who lacks 1% of Verhoeven’s dazzling, hyper-real vision, especially as the production design seems to be a mishmash of Blade Runner and Minority Report? Is the way the future appears in Hollywood movies so set in steel now?
No doubt there are readers straining at the bit to inform me that the new Total Recall is a straighter adaptation of Philip K Dick’s short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, upon which Verhoeven’s film was also based, and therefore a wholly reasonable remake. Well, I’ve read the original tale and I don’t remember anything about 1984-style warring superstates, resistance leaders or multiple-mammaried ladies of the night. Do you?
Deep breath, and on to The Amazing Spider-Man, about which I cannot say too much as none of you will have seen it yet. Firstly, this is without doubt a well acted, well-directed and scripted film. But it is not a well-conceived movie.
For rights reasons, studio Sony has decided to bring the wall-crawler back to the big screen only a few years after the failure of Raimi’s final effort, Spider-Man 3, to please critics. Webb and his creative team have done their damnedest to mark the new Spidey as a different beast from the version starring Tobey Maguire: he has a new backstory, love interest (Gwen Stacy, not Mary Jane Watson) and enemy in the form of the Lizard.
Unfortunately, and despite everyone’s best efforts, anyone who saw 2002’s Spider-Man is likely to suffer a considerable degree of deja vu. There is only so far you can shift a Spidey origins tale before it is no longer the same character, and Webb has wisely erred on the side of caution.
Unfortunately, this means we still get a huge dose of poor, old Uncle Ben’s “With great power comes great responsibility” gubbins from the first movie, though the screenwriters are working so hard not to use those exact words that one can almost hear the biros squeaking in anguish. Likewise, there is a similar high school scene involving a bully.
Some of the methods used to avoid repeating scenes wholesale from Raimi’s film are ingenious, but I still felt uncomfortably aware of the fact that they were being employed when I should have been able to sit back and enjoy the movie.
The worst thing about the film is the villain, the Lizard. In order to save the Green Goblin and Doc Ock for later, Webb has plumped for a lesser-known bad guy, who comes to life appallingly on the big screen. The CGI is deeply incongruous, and both Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 looked better, despite technology having supposedly advanced in the intervening years.
The Amazing Spider-Man is getting good reviews from the critics, holding an 80 per cent “fresh” rating on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator website. And if Raimi’s film had never existed, I would be roundly in agreement. Unfortunately, Webb and Sony have failed to do what Nolan did so impressively with 2005’s Batman Begins: namely to craft an origins story radically different from the previous iteration that feels like the definitive take on the character.
The Maguire/Raimi Spider-Man feels like the definitive version for me, and I suspect Total Recall could be remade 1,000 times without approaching the bonkers majesty of Verhoeven’s film. Come on Hollywood, pull your finger out. I’ve already seen this movie.
