Ten Movie Remakes I Prefer to (or at Least Don’t Like Less Than) the Originals
(I wish this list were more original or surprising than it is, but the remakes that exceed or equal the original are few and far between. Aside from The Thing and The Fly, which are touchstones for me, I’ve excluded movies that seem like wholly independent adaptations of well-known preexisting books or stories; otherwise, the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz would certainly make the cut, as would Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American. I’ve come up with these ten films, which I’ve arranged in order of preference, with asterisks beside the ones I think are truly superior to the earlier versions.)
The Thing (directed by John Carpenter, 1982) *
Twelve Monkeys (directed by Terry Gilliam, 1995)
Airplane! (directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, 1980) *
The Departed (directed by Martin Scorsese, 2006)
The Fly (directed by David Cronenberg, 1986) *
Heat (directed by Michael Mann, 1995) *
Heaven Can Wait (directed by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978) *
The Mechanic (directed by Simon West, 2011) *
Gloria Bell (directed by Sebastián Lelio, 2018)
Insomnia (directed by Christopher Nolan, 2002)
— December 27, 2021