Why remakes and adaptations don't work

Film and television aren’t what they used to be. In our over-schooled society, the industry is no longer capable of developing new ideas. Instead, they look at past success stories and resort to remakes and adaptations. These don’t work.

When a show succeeds, it is due to a variety of factors. You have interesting characters who were partially altered to reflect the actors playing them. This might not always be visible in the first season, but it becomes clear as the series progress. It becomes even more clear when the modern actors try to replicate the characters.

Another issue is that things tend to change over time. A show or movie reflecting life in the sixties is not always easy to adapt to life in the new millennium. Plot elements might not work and have to be removed from modern scripts. Settings would have to change. Characters would have to evolve into something missing a quirk that made them special.

Just imagine that they would try to create a new series based on Green Acres. Could they find a Hungarian actress with the thick accent who inadvertently butchers the English language? Could they find someone who could play Hank Kimball, Mr. Haney, or Sam Drucker? How would they handle the Monroe brothers? Would they be transformed into a lesbian couple rather than brother and sister? That would screw up Ralph’s attraction to Hank. How primitive would they make the house? Would they have to completely eliminate the need to go up the pole for phone calls due to the existence of cell phones?

This is just a hypothetical failure based off of a show that existed before I did. There are numerous examples of legitimate attempts that don’t come close to the original. Steve Carell is no replacement for Don Adams as Maxwell Smart. The numerous live action movies based on old cartoons are usually atrocious. Did anyone else try to watch the movie based on Bewitched? Did you hear that they are making remakes of the Spiderman remakes? The first batch of remakes weren’t that good to start with. Perhaps the reliance on remakes and adaptations is part of the reason that the motion picture industry is in a slump that has lasted over a decade. At least, it’s been over a decade since I have really enjoyed anything that they have made.