Perhaps the most disheartening thing about the age of constant remakes and remakes that we’ve been living in for a long time is that nobody even bats an eyelid anymore when an all-time classic, unsung gem, or cult favorite is announced to be getting a new (and most likely not improved) coat of paint.
However, film buffs on Reddit have been pointing finger at the worst retreads to ever emerge from Hollywood, and the majority of the top-voted replies and comments at the time of writing have been layered in shock and astonishment. Why? As it turns out, there’s a lot of people out there who didn’t realize Pamela Anderson’s infamous bomb Barb Wire was a shameless leather-clad update of Casablanca, indisputably one of the greatest films of all-time.
Once the dust settles on that particular side of the argument, though, many worthy contenders are put forward, and the unifying theme is that almost all of them have flopped hard in theaters, almost as if audiences don’t really care much for an inferior version of a great flick they’ve already seen more than once.
Spike Lee’s Oldboy, Disney’s live-action Mulan, Jackie Earl Haley’s attempt at leading A Nightmare on Elm Street, the absolutely abhorrently lifeless Point Break V2.0, Colin Farrell’s incomparably bland Total Recall, and Joel Kinnaman’s wooden stab at headlining RoboCop all under-performed in theaters despite possessing plenty of inbuilt name value, and the reason is because none of them were any good.
Now that curiosity has been piqued, though, don’t be surprised if the Barb Wire renaissance begins shortly…