Examiner Calls CARRIE remake a "mess"

www.examiner.com

2 comments:

  1. "I think the many folk looking to remake other King films might take note. There is a growing chorus of "why bother" beginning to circle these movies. Do we need another Pet Sematary? No! If all these remakes would pool their money, maybe someone could get started on The Dark Tower."

    Well, the economic Hollywood seems to work from (based on my own limited vantage point) might be called the "Franchise" model.

    Basically it's focusing all the industry resources on any and all films that can be marketed in as many consumer venues as possible, so it can then take the income generated from all that marketing and feed it back into making more franchises.

    It seems to be Hollywood's main source of income at the moment, rather than movies per se.

    Hence, the glut of superhero films (though I still wonder if Affleck as Batman might cause a drop in franchise popularity).

    What you note about the "Why bother" complaint probably does mean that fans are getting anxious for real films again.

    If so, that's great, though bear in mind it's fans going up against a business model that keep the industry running, and unless the cash stops flowing in from the franchise model entirely, I think it's going to take awhile for anything like a major shift in the way Hollywood does business.

    ChrisC

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  2. I think the characterizations were a bit stronger in this one than in the original. Chris actually seemed human as opposed to a shrieking comic book villain and I thought Moore did a great job (her Margaret was much more disturbing). The prom scene did feel rushed - I would have rather had more build up to it ( I was kind of disappointed that they didn't have a real slow dance scene like in the DePalma version). I did like how Pierce put more focus on Sue and Chris' relationship - and how that might have motivated both of them (I got the feeling that Carrie was more of a tool than a target - Chris was mad at Sue and used Carrie to "get" at her).

    I think part of the problem with Carrie herself was that Pierce tried to combine two different Carries into one. Book Carrie was (at least by the time the blood dropped) an angry, bitter little girl with a great deal of pent up rage. She was already comtemplating using her powers against people (trashing her house if Tommy stood her up etc). In that version it made sense when she did the whole "eye for an eye" thing. DePalma's version was Disneyfied - she was innocent and sweet tempered and didn't seem like she'd want to harm anyone. Pierce tried to combine the sympathetic, lovable part from DePalma's Carrie with the sadistic, vengful part from King's and it just felt kind of off.

    It also seemed like half the film was missing... I'd love to see the cut footage.

    There are a lot of great books out there that could be translated to film (John Alqvist's Harbour etc) - I think that if Hollywood would just hit the local library once in a while, we could probably break the whole reboot cycle.

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