Movie-Specific : Oldboy remake

[cameron326]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb ... lee-oldboy

This was one of the first Asian films I saw and it blew me away. Spike Lee is set to direct this remake. What do you think, is it a good idea remaking such a well respected, awesome film? Will you watch it?

[TheDenizen]

It will be awful and I won't bother watching it. That article alone implies enough changes to the plot to cause me annoyance. A female "caseworker" assigned to the main character, in place of the lonely girl he meets at a restaurant reeks of dumbing down/sanitizing the content. As does admitting that they've changed the ending. Oh sure, they'll crow about how "dark" their new ending is, but it can't compare with the sick shock of the original film's finale.

At least a Josh Brolin/Spike Lee collaboration will be about a billion times better than the originally proposed pairing of Will Smith/Steven Spielberg. *shudder*

Just stick with Park's films. For my money, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was a better film than Oldboy anyways.

[Spunkie]

I don't expect a terrible remake like most, but when the edge is gone (which most def. will) there won't be much left to Oldboy.

[TheDenizen]

The long, one-take hammer fight will be either completely scrapped or "upgraded" into a fully choreographed fight scene filmed with shaky cam and a million split second edits.

[movieboy]

There was an Indian remake of Oldboy - http://www.criticker.com/film/Zinda/
The female is a taxi driver in the movie who drives him around and ending much much sanitized.
I haven't seen Oldboy - only read the story.

[TheDenizen]

I haven't seen it, but Zinda was brutally awful by almost all accounts.

[movieboy]

I haven't seen it, but Zinda was brutally awful by almost all accounts.

I have seen it - it wasn't very good. Not brutally awful, but not good either. If someone hasn't seen or heard of Oldboy, then it would be worth one unpaid watch for them, mainly because the the story of Oldboy is rather unusual & has a lot of suspense.

The movie was made by Sanjay Gupta who has made a career of making very average and unauthorised copies of popular foreign films. Kaante is supposed to be a copy of Reservoir Dogs, though I haven't seen it. He has also copied "U Turn", "The Juror" and various other movies.

[ShogunRua]

Heh, I remember first hearing about an "Oldboy" remake as far back as 2005/2006, with Gary Oldman. It's now 2012 and they're still talking about it, having gone through several different rumored directors and main stars. I don't really know why they're trying to make this; it's going to be a huge financial flop anyways, which should be obvious to anyone.

I could understand Hollywood remaking great/masterpiece Asian films if they at least turned a profit. But so far, there has been a long track record of bombs and virtually no successes. (I guess "The Departed" was an exception...)

[sunhushin]

I for one am excited to see in what specific ways Spike Lee chooses to ruin this movie.

[snallygaster]

I'm not going to read the article (I don't like knowing much about movies before I watch them) but the fact that it's Spike Lee means I'll probably watch it sometime -- I'm not a huge fan of Lee, but I expect he'll be doing something "meta" with his interpretation of the original, which is really the only thing I find interesting about remakes. I would have no interest whatsoever in a "straight" remake by a typical action director, even a good one.