Repackaged Movies

I think Hollywood should find out who owns the recycle sign and use it as their symbol, since that's what's become of tinsel town. Currently its the trend to do remakes, and turn old shows or cartoons into movies. Sometimes these efforts work like they did with Spider-man and the first Pirates of the Carribean trilogy, but a lot of times it fails like it did with Fantastic Four (both of them), Incredible Hulk (both of them), GI Joe and, as it seems to be, with Prince of Persia. Obviously the director and producers want to make a movie that will be a cash cow in the theaters and in the DVD sales market, but how do you get that without a good story. When filmmakers try to modernize these stories, they seem to forget what made them popular. Take Transformers for example; the draw of that cartoon was not a hot woman; and the robots didn't look like hunks of metal crashing into each other. The cartoon Optimus Prime looked like a truck; the movie comes out and he looks like every single bit of metal on earth was used to build him. The cartoon was about telling the human story through robots, basic battles of good and evil, greed and humility. The movie tries to hard to force people into the story.

Personally I'd prefer original stories. I think these remakes tend to make the filmmakers a little lazy because the story is already created. That leaves the special effects, which seem to engulf the entire movie. But, if this is direction Hollywood wants to go, then bring in the people who created the material. Don't just make them consultants; they created the damn thing. They know what works and what doesn't. As long as quality is being sacrificed to spectacle and money, we're going to keep getting stink bombs in the theater and bins at Wally world overflowing with $5 movies.