Five Impending Remakes That Just Don't Need To Exist

Remaking a creative work is not a bad thing, inherently; for example, the entire realm of musical theatre as I understand it is essentially built on every amateur and professional company on the planet re-creating Cats at some point, or any other ultra-famous production that has in its life been staged by everyone from school students to professional performers. It doesn't really matter – either way, nobody cries, at some primary school's annual soiree, “Timothy Scott was the one, true Mr Mistoffelees! How dare these charlatans rape my childhood so?”

But film remakes are a somewhat different beast. Movies are not travelling stage shows that are fundamentally designed for reimagining, and most of the classics owe as much of their success to their casts and directors as they do their scripts. It's why, so often, remade movies amount to little more than a steaming pile of cinematic garbage.

Correction: a giant, steaming pile.

Sure, there are exceptions, but, mostly, these costly rehashes – the recently released Carrie and impending do-over of RoboCop among them – are a waste of everyone's time and money.

So, hey, good news: here are a bunch of film remakes in development that are so utterly pointless that even people who bought that car-exhaust burger griller would probably look at them and think, “Goddamn, talk about your wholly unnecessary products.”

5. The Crow (1994/TBA)

There's a good reason that this remake has languished in development hell for several years, and it's not just because the original is an excellent action film. At least part of the hold-up has to be because, each time someone tabled the re-envisioned script, someone would have pointed out it's probably a bad idea to try to retell a story about a vengeful ghost clown that was played by a guy who was killed accidentally during filming, because that's the sort of reckless meddling that invariably gets people murdered in the first five minutes of every episode of Supernatural.

Team Winchester.

I'm aware that several loosely related sequels were made, and that nothing freaky happened to those crews unless you count the momentary resurrection of Edward Furlong's career, but, regardless, the logical, rational side of my brain – the side that says “don't mess around with ghosts” – is telling me that remaking the original, featuring the same character that will be forever haunted by Brandon Lee's tragic spectre, is just begging for Poltergeist-level paranormality that even the acutely death-wishy Winchesters wouldn't want to tangle with. Nonetheless, the remake appears to be well and truly on track to being made, finally, so if some poor key grip gets crushed to death on-set by a wayward lighting rig, don't say I didn't warn you.

4. The Toxic Avenger (1984/TBA)

The original Toxic Avenger was a triumph of DIY D-grade-and-below filmmaking. One of the movies produced by the infamously low-budget Troma Films (which was also responsible for Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical), it followed high-school janitor Melvin Ferd III, who is exposed to radioactive chemicals one evening and undergoes a terrible transformation into the “Monster Hero” Toxie, the Toxic Avenger, defender of the innocent and all-around swell-intentioned guy.

Also, he was hideous. Just. Goddamn. Hideous.

So, what does contemporary Hollywood want to do to the R-rated, filthy, so-bad-it's-good aesthetic of the original? Turn it into a PG, family-friendly tale replete with moral dilemmas, Arnold Schwarzenegger as a character called The Exterminator (that's not a joke) and, presumably, the pro-environmental undertones that permeated the short-lived Toxic Crusaders, an animated show that ran for one season in the early '90s in which Toxie teamed up with four other unfortunate souls forever mutilated but given great power as a result of man's cavalier attitude towards irreparably fucking up the planet. In other words, it's exactly what nobody is clamouring for right now.

3. Scarface (1983/2014)

All right, you've got me – Scarface is, itself, a remake, drawing its inspiration from the 1932 film of the same name. But that perhaps makes this supposedly imminent re-do all the more redundant. Brian De Palma (the man behind the original Carrie, FYI), in one of those aforementioned rare exceptions, basically already nailed tale of the rise and fall of drug lord and one-man murder farm Tony Montana, aided in no uncertain terms by a top-of-his-game Al Pacino in the title role.

Top bloke that Tony Montana.

So, why even bother to try to better it? Who has the balls to step forth and enunciate, “Say hello to my little friend!” in any way that remotely improves upon Pacino? That line – like “Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn,” or “Weeze the juice” – is enshrined in pop culture history, and any new interpretation of it or the film in general is going to come off like a cheap imitation as a result; the Home Alone 3 of gangster movies… all of which doesn't even take into account the fact that we don't even really need any more gangster movies, and especially not consequent stabs at iconic movies that are still widely available on Blu-ray.

2. Point Break (1991/TBA)

Look, I understand the base appeal of remaking any movie that Keanu Reeves has been involved in, but Point Break was kind of, well, pointless to begin with. I just don't see why anybody would need to revisit Johnny Utah and relive his journey from FBI rookie agent who can't surf to grizzled ex-FBI agent who can surf, a skill he only picks up – from an orphan – to infiltrate a ring of extremely competent bank robbers who also happen to love gnarly waves and hanging ten.

You're lucky I don't hand you in to the FBI Surf Division, pal!

Seriously, I cannot overstate how much of a role surfing, of all things, plays in a film that is supposed to be about bank robbers. And you just know when they remake it that it's going to be all close angles and handicams and gratuitous 3D with a soundtrack by Wavves, har har har, and just… ugh. Let it go, guys – just like (Spoiler alert, as if you care) Keanu, when he frees head bad guy Patrick Swayze to let him ride a giant wave to his death instead of bringing him in, because that's just how justice is done in the FBI's surf division, I guess.

1. Jumanji (1995/2014)

This family-friendly mid-'90s adventure flick, starring Robin Williams as an unfortunate man who has been trapped inside a magical board game since childhood, was seminal viewing for anyone who grew up in the age of Tamagotchis and being beaten up for owning a Tamagotchi. The film, which also featured a young Kirsten Dunst and the single greatest representation of a colonial-era British huntsman in movie history, remains a nostalgic favourite among the youngish adults of today. And, even though they're mostly pushing or have just passed 30, they still hold enough love for this gleeful romp for it to have been adopted a couple years back as a meme that still makes me laugh, even though Facebook has long since ruined memes the way that it ruins everything.

That is not a great impersonation of a hotdog, Mrs Doubtfire!

Again, this goes back to the idea that a movie's success relies as much on its cast and crew as it does its story, and when you're talking about an actor such as Williams – or Pacino, or Brando, or Carrey, or Ice Cube – it's that much harder to adequately fill their boots in a remake setting, because what they did the first time around is so utterly unique to their capabilities (or in Ice Cube's case, lack thereof) that it's far harder to not constantly compare the “new, improved” iteration with version 1.0 than if, say, you were planning on remaking anything starring Chris Klein or Vin Diesel or anyone else who seems to forget regularly that the Blue Fairy granted their wish already and they're not actually made of wood any more. If you have to remake something, at least remake those films.