Old Stories

On remakes, legacyquels, the old & the new

In this week’s Catholic Movie Club column, I covered Norman Jewison’s 1971 adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, continuing my Musicals Month series. I mostly focused on what the story has to say about living an eternal faith in a constantly-changing world, but I also got metatextual looking at how Jewison adapted the stage show to the cinematic language of the times. At the risk of being more obnoxious than usual by quoting my own work, here’s what I said:

When “Fiddler” came out, the American movie industry was reeling from the shockwaves of the gritty New Hollywood movement. Compared to complex, groundbreaking films like “The Graduate” or “Midnight Cowboy,” big gaudy musicals felt passé. So Jewison opted for verisimilitude, creating a lush, tactile period drama instead of the stylized, Marc Chagall-inspired design of the stage show. …This is not to say that movies should always conform to the most popular trends…. But, sometimes, it’s worth telling an old story in a new way.

I have remakes on the mind because last weekend’s D23 expo announced the line-up of upcoming Disney movies, almost all of which are sequels, prequels, or remakes. Looking up the movies showing at my local theater reveals the same (Deadpool & Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, Twisters) plus a few adaptations of existing stories (It Ends With Us, Borderlands). Check what’s coming out in the fall and you’ll find more (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Crow, Speak No Evil).

Remakes are nothing new, of course — we’ve been retelling and reinterpreting old stories since before we could write them down — and I realize it’s hardly a new observation that our current mainstream film landscape is overrun with retellings (and regurgitations) of existing stories. I’m not, on principle, opposed to remakes (as you can tell from the quote above). But I also think there’s a difference between telling an old story in a new way and telling the same stories over and over.

What I appreciate about my favorite remakes (or sequels/spin-offs/whatevers) is that they reveal a new layer of the original story (the Matrix sequels, Spielberg’s West Side Story), build on or complicate its themes in interesting ways (Kill Bill Vol. 2, the Godfather sequels, The Last Jedi), or allow a new audience to connect with an old story by translating it into a more familiar idiom (Gerwig’s Little Women, de Wilde’s Emma., The Birdcage). To depart from movies for a minute, I usually identify Gregory Maguire’s Wicked as my favorite novel of all time.¹ Obviously that’s taking a pre-existing story — L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and the film version of The Wizard of Oz — and reinterpreting it to tell a new sort of story. The Broadway musical, in turn, reinterprets the premise and characters of the novel in less complicated but still emotionally-resonant ways.² In both cases, the old stories exist as a foundation for creating something new.

My problem with the current glut of remakes is that they don’t offer, or seem at all interested in, anything new. “Legacyquels” like recent entries in the Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, and MCU/DC series exist solely to remind you of other movies. Fans get excited because they’re seeing something familiar — an actor, a plot element, a bit of iconography — not because of what’s being done with them. “Look, here’s a thing you like!” the movie says. “Isn’t this great?!” They are, essentially, two-plus-hour, very expensive versions of getting a lunchbox with your favorite characters’ faces on it: objects that are only potent because of their ability to tap into older, better stories.

Case in point: one of the new trailers is for Mufasa: The Lion King, which is a prequel to the 2019 remake of The Lion King (the snake gagging on its own tail at this point). I tend to think of the Disney live-action remakes as pretty soulless, and that goes double for The Lion King which isn’t live-action at all but photorealistic CGI. Like Fiddler, this is another example of a stylized musical getting a more realistic remake, but in this case the motivation seemed to be “because we can.” It definitely wasn’t in response to what audiences want: I guarantee that no eight-year-old cares that the lions look like real lions. The fact that it’s one of the highest grossing movies of all time is, I would argue, more a testament to peoples’ affection for the first movie than anything about the remake.

Anyway, they’re making a prequel now about Mufasa in the same style and what strikes me about the trailer (aside from continuing to be mystified as to why they make these movies so brown and drab) is that it’s offering nothing new. Technically we’ve never heard this story before but why should we care outside of filling in a few narrative blanks that are explained by inference in the original story? Just so we can find out how Mufasa met Zazu? So we can find out how Scar got scarred? The unnecessary complication of changing the story so that Mufasa and Scar aren’t biological brothers feels like a desperate attempt to inject something surprising into what’s otherwise going to be a formulaic corporate IP exercise.³ And to add insult to injury, this is Barry Jenkins’ first movie in six years.

Maybe I’m wrong; I know I’ll end up seeing this anyway (especially considering how many times my kids have asked to watch the trailer) and I’m always open to being swept away by the Magic of the Movies. But at this moment, it looks like an amalgamation of elements and dialogue from other movies, slapped together beneath the thin veneer of something semi-new. The other movies teased at D23 feel the same (Woody’s back at Bonnie’s house in Toy Story 5? What are we doing here?). This isn’t about telling perpetually-relevant stories to a new audience; it’s about pressing the nostalgia button in your head over and over so that you keep giving them money. It’s crass and boring, a masquerade of actual creativity from people who congratulate themselves on telling (owning) the greatest stories in the world. 

This is also why it’s important to celebrate and uplift the new. Right now the only original film playing in my local theaters is Shyamalan’s Trap (which I reviewed for America). Obviously I’m in the tank for Shyamalan generally, but I’d still be more interested in seeing something like Trap than, say, Deadpool & Wolverine because it’s an original film with genuine artistic intention and passion behind it. It’s also very goofy and fun, probably the most fun I’ll have in a theater this year. You might feel differently, but that’s part of the risk of seeing something new: you don’t know what to expect, and can’t rest assured that you’ll have all of your familiar itches scratched. But that’s how we discover art we love and expand our horizons. Old stories are a kind of comfort zone: familiar, reassuring. Sometimes, it’s worth telling them in a new way. And sometimes it’s worth seeing what else is out there.⁴

1. It’s between that and Richard Price’s Clockers.

2. The upcoming movie adaptation will, I’m sure, put its own spin on the material. I’m anticipating a Trumpian Wizard and a partial reclamation of the novel’s queerness, but probably not in any way that matters.

3. Although I will say, making the villains a pride of white lions is a very funny bit.

4. The cynical stinger to all of this is that in 2020, the same year Mufasa was announced, there was also news that there would be a new movie adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof from Hamilton director Thomas Kail. If/when that happens (there hasn’t been news aside from that initial announcement), it’ll be interesting to see if it feels new and vital or if it’s just coasting on name recognition.