The Best Movie Remakes - RANKED (Part 2)
- Chase Gifford
- Jul 13
- 8 min read
Let's be honest, most of the time remakes are bad news. They usually come half baked, devoid of a soul or heart any kind of life retaining organs. They are lifeless shells. Money grabs for studio execs to pad their bottom lines so they can exclaim what a great year they had. But sometimes, the planets align, the stars burn brighter, lightning strikes a bottle and a remake comes along and surpasses every aspect of its predecessor. Remember, rare is not never and these 21 reimagined films are proof of it. Let's celebrate when things just work out with this silly little list of mine.
This is Part 2 of 2.
10 - 1
10. Airplane!
While not technically a remake, it’s more of a reimagining, I’m including it because this is my list and I do what I want. If anything I’m adding it because without Zero Hour!, Airplane! wouldn’t exist. At least in the way that it does and that just sounds like a tragedy. It’s a comedic powerhouse the likes of which few have ever come close to reaching. It’s a masterclass in comedy by one of the best to ever do it, Leslie Nielsen. Endlessly quotable, utterly timeless, perfectly executed. It is the tier of comedic prowess for which all other comedies are compared. If you don’t understand why this is on any list other than some crazy person placing it on a ‘Worst of’ list, short of that, you must not have seen it, which is its own kind of affront.
9. The Mummy
No offense to Boris Karloff, but the greatest Imhotep is and always will be, Arnold Vosloo. His greatest adversary? Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell. Stephen Sommers gave the most nostalgic hungry generation one of its greatest gifts with The Mummy, a remake of the 1932 original which between the two saw one other attempt at the material in 1959 featuring the talents of the late great, Christopher Lee as the titular mummy. But all of this pales in comparison to the snark, the tenacity, the machismo of Rick O’Connell with his rugged good looks and epically bad ass roll of weaponry always at the ready for any undead wanting the smoke. All this adventure and you still manage to add the relentlessly beautiful Rachel Weisz and the unwaveringly cowardice and comedic timing of Kevin J. O’Connor as Benji and it’s an automatic recipe for success. From the time of nostalgia, I present to you one of the best of its time. And for all time since.
8. True Lies
If I were making a list of movies I had no idea were a remake, this would be at the top of the list. It also belongs at the top of every ‘Missed opportunity’ list. If ever there was a movie that demanded a franchise, this was it. This should have been a trilogy at the bare minimum. James Cameron, Arnold, Jamie Lee, and a surprisingly top notch Tom Arnold. This was a whirlwind of circumstance that resulted in one of the best action comedies ever made. Yeah I said it. Imagine Harry and Helen Tasker going on adventures and giving terrorists their comeuppance. It sounds like so much fun! But alas, it was never meant to be. So the one and only we must adhere and cherish what we do have. A perfectly balanced comedy action hybrid that sacrifices neither for the sake of the other. The comedy is clever and sewn into the fabric of the story. The action is visually stunning and consistently thrilling. It builds to an epic finale featuring Arnold in a harrier jet launching missiles with terrorists attached for a quick kind of justice rarely matched. The original is a 1991 French film titled La Totale!. In case you were wondering.
7. Let Me In
When you have reverence for a film you are trying to adapt, you are already on the right track. You can see and feel the care director Matt Reeves took on reimagining the 2008 Swedish horror classic, Let the Right One In into his own vision. To take the setting to the opaque and gloomy Los Alamos, New Mexico was a stroke of genius. It feels like the town mirrors the emptiness of its characters, whether they are intentionally directionless or forced through violence, the characters feel downtrodden simply because of where they live. Add in an honest look at what vampirism might actually look like and you have an upsetting but undeniably effective concoction of hopeless horror that feels burrowed in, at a depth that is unnerving on a good day.
You can see the recurring cycle starting over and suddenly this becomes a murky, indiscernible mess of people and creature that are neither evil or good, but simply living beings adapting to what has been given to them which in this case is a snowy tundra, in 1980s New Mexico where horror is more than vampires looming in the shadows, but bullies lurking in a locker room or in the deep end of the school pool like sharks hungry for blood.
6. Evil Dead
I will always love the original and its sequel but much like the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 2013 Evil Dead was a surprisingly effective homage to the classic of their shared identity. It kept the lore, adhered to the rules of the grotesque and unthinkable, it brought back the vine of nightmares, and with the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis to set things in motion, with hints of comedy to top it all off, and you have this blood soaked thriller that wholly understands the demand of making the audience grit their teeth from secondhand terror and vicarious carnage. Something I think the most recent follow-ups, decent enough in their own right, have been missing. The most recent additions of the Evil Dead franchise are missing the moments that force you to look away out of disgust. The 2013, Fede Alvarez directed remake nailed it with gory accuracy.
5. The Thing
Sometimes a musician will cover a song and what comes of it is a reimagining of something that feels so honest and new that certainly the artist that covered it is the original creator. The Thing was created in 1982, based on 1951’s The Thing From Another World. John Carpenter took this concept and made it something unforgettable and entirely his own. A revolution of practical effects, The Thing is a marvel of the beginning of the modern era of Hollywood. An ambiguous ending, an insurmountable villain, a plethora of paranoia. The Thing is masterful horror no matter the decade. To Howard Hawks, producer and writer of the original, thank you for the inspiration but this one belongs to Carpenter.
4. Man on Fire
For some reason this movie always stuck in my memory as one of the biggest misfires on behalf of film critics when they collectively decided Tony Scott’s Man on Fire is “entirely too serious the longer it goes on.” Should it have had a dance number in the middle as a refresher? Talk about off-base. In a long line of notable films directed by Scott, Man on Fire is one of his best. The 1987 Scott Glenn led action thriller has its merits but it’s the 2004 Denzel Washington starrer that finds the depths of such a soulful, albeit vengeful journey of worldly course correction. Washington is brilliantly lost within himself at the bottom of a bottle with little desire to leave its embrace. As Creasy he portrays a beautiful tenderness whose polar opposite is an insatiable bloodlust for those that wronged his own semblance of humanity. And they will pay. Dearly. Completely. It’s one of Washington’s best, one of Scott’s best, and one of the best action dramas of its decade. Despite being released twenty-one years ago, the fire still burns bright and as furiously as ever.
This movie is a double edged sword for me. It is a masterfully dark, disturbing, even violating investigative thriller. The performances are award worthy as is the cinematography, writing, and visual effects. Rooney Mara is particularly ferocious as well as endlessly clever and cunning. She is revelatory as Lisbeth Salander. It is David Fincher at the height of his powers. If there is anyone that does subject matter as twisted, deplorable, and pristinely executed as Fincher I’ve yet to hear of them. If operating in familiar territory is a synonym for operating within one’s wheelhouse, Fincher built this wheelhouse with his bare fucking hands.
But, and here’s the second edge, whenever I watch it or just plainly think of it I’m reminded of a constant truth, however unfair it may be and it’s this: Money in Hollywood will forever determine what gets made and what doesn’t. One of the great cinematic tragedies of the 2010’s is Sony’s refusal to greenlight the second and third chapters of what could have been one of the best trilogies of all-time. Oh what could have been.
2. HEAT
I’ve talked about this movie so much on this site it’s slowly becoming a HEAT fansite. But if you’ve seen it you understand why I can’t stop talking about it. It’s thirty years old this coming December and it holds up as if it came out last weekend. With a sequel literally in its casting phase as I type this, the original is a hefty legacy to live up to but I believe in Mann and if certain casting rumors prove to be true, I trust in the cast as well to continue this action masterpiece’s legacy. I won’t even bring up the heist scene and how it’s one of, if not thee greatest single gunfights in cinema history. And if you need more proof of its legitimacy, look to its opening sequence, or its final confrontation between professional bad guy and professional bad guy wrangler. Or perhaps watch two men sit across from one another in an unassuming diner over coffee breathing life into a genuinely riveting scene as quiet and still as it is impactful and lasting for these two opposites of the lawful spectrum. It is a perfect movie.
1. The Departed
From October 2006 to October of 2017, The Departed was my favorite movie. It was dethroned but to this day remains one of my favorites. Ever. It is a crime drama that is all at once timely and dated featuring flip phone scene transitions that simply couldn’t deliver the same impact in a modern day setting with screen touch smartphones. Scorsese. DiCaprio. Nicholson. Damon. Wahlberg. Sheen. Winstone. Farmiga. Monahan. The director, his cast and the writer together for what ended up as a decade defining, Oscar winning effort that is as powerfully brutal, perfectly acted, and as highly unexpected as it was over a decade ago.
This was the film that took in DiCaprio the boy and sent back a grown man, ready to prove his worth as one of the greatest actors of his or any generation before or since. It's a crime drama featuring morally ambiguous characters doing questionable things, killing indiscriminately, and somehow still managing a certain amount of charm and proficiency. Basically, it’s Scorsese doing what he does best with a genre he practically constructed himself. Well maybe he didn’t construct it but he definitely envisioned and brought to fruition its refurbishment and overall sheen. Powerhouse films like this come once in a decade and must be taken care of accordingly. To the creators of the Hong Kong film Internal Affairs, thanks for the inspiration. The Departed is unquestionable, undeniable, and unyielding. It rarely gets better than this. If ever.
The end is here. I’m sure I missed some, a lot probably. But remember, it’s just one jamoke’s silly little opinion. Don’t let it ruin your day or mine. Maybe share what your top five is? I wouldn’t mind that. Regardless, thanks for reading.
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