Bastards. It ain't broke, why this urge to fix it? If they can do it without screwing it up -- and it is possible with some tight casting and writing -- great. (This may actually turn out to be the case with the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Guess we'll find out Friday.) Otherwise, leave a sorely underrated cult classic alone. Does anybody write anything original anymore, or are we just spinning endless reams of remakes and comic-book franchises?
They don't even have a writer yet, which kinda makes me wish I had the chops to drop a spec script stat. But James Gunn might be an interesting choice there, since he would keep the sardonic humor of the original intact.
The most difficult thing to preserve would be the patience that Carpenter had in developing the narrative. Even when the pacing worked against it at times, the way they stuck with it and let the scenes unfold and breathe really made it a unique movie. If it's just a bunch of smash cuts and blood spatters, they already did that shit with 28 Weeks Later and it was just fine. No need to belabor it.
Yeah, I loved Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects, so I gave his version of Halloween a try, despite my spidey-sense telling me that messing with perfection is bound to be disappointing. Holy merciful fuck, did that suck. What the hell was he thinking, to feel like he could somehow improve on that story by introducing us to little Mikey Myers, the chubby outcast with the alcoholic stepfather and clueless stripper mom? Just ruined the whole mystique of this evil incarnate who kills because...well, because.
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