Well… if Zooey Deschanel is Dorothy… why not?!
I’m sure this trailer is going to inspire some moaning and groaning among Oz enthusiasts. After all, there are quite a few adaptations out there already, and few have been built to last.
But I don’t know why people tend to complain when we’re treated to multiple cinematic versions of a single story. Sure… when a remake is done poorly, criticism is appropriate. But nobody complains when the stage comes alive with new and bold interpretations of Shakespeare every year. I’d like to see a hundred big screen versions of Seven Samurai, or Citizen Kane, or Beowulf, so long as they’re imaginative and well-crafted. All the better to test the resilience of the source material, and to dazzle us with creativity, showing up the hacks and introducing an occasional visionary!
If you could remake a movie, rising to the challenge of remaking a great film or trying to make something good out of a bad one, which would you choose? Who would you cast? Who would you like to see direct?
I do hope I see another ambitious version of The Lord of the Rings in my lifetime.
I know it came out rather recently, but I would remake Star Wars Episodes I-III. There was so much potential there for another fantastic set of films but Lucas completely dropped the ball, especially with Episode I and the horrendous miscasting of Jake Lloyd. Every time I think too much about how awesome those films could have been I get very sad. If I re-did it I would hire Joss Whedon as writer and possibly co-director with Lucas. The gungans would be removed and replaced by something far cooler.
I would have hired either Haley Joel Osment or Daniel Radcliffe to play Anakin back when they were younger, and to replace Hayden Christensen, Radcliffe would be my first choice. And I know Casey Affleck is a little old but I love him now after Assassination. Ewan MacGregor would stay, no question, that guy is awesome, every time I watch Episode III he astounds me. And Portman is good, but she just wasn’t right for the role. Zooey Deschanel, now that I think about it, would be a decent choice for her, but I kind of like Selma Blair. Samuel L. Jackson would have to go. He may be BA in his other movies, but he was almost the worst possible choice for Mace Windu. To replace him I might even choose The Rock, as ridiculous as that sounds – he has some comedic chops, but he can also play a pretty decent tough guy. Viggo Mortensen might be a wiser and safer choice, though. And Liam Neeson just can’t be topped, I’d keep him in. There are probably others I’m forgetting, but oh well.
Brandon,
You beat me to it. I’m sure that’s the first answer a lot of folks will come to for Jeffrey’s question.
The first thing to do with episodes 1-3 is to trim all of episode one down to a 20 minute prologue. We just don’t need 2.5 hours of Anakin the boy wonder. Then we use all that extra time to more gradually and fully develop the relationship between Anakin and Obi-wan. We got just a few glimpses at the beginning of Ep 3 of how they had learned to work together, but I wanted to see so much more development of that theme to support Obi-wan’s lines from the end (“I loved you like a brother”, etc.). If that was the bulk of the middle film, then the third film could give a much more convincing depiction of Anakin’s decent into evil.
–sdc
Yeah, I agree. The majority of the Episode I was Lucas giving constant what he believed to be clever winks to himself and the audience, with Anakin creating C-3PO and R2-D2 coming along early. Chewbacca in the Episode III was a pretty bad wink, too – the entire battle on Kashyyk was entirely pointless and merely put there to wink one last time. I would have made most of Episode I a story of Anakin from boy to Padawan, with three different actors playing him. That would have been interesting and not just Lloyd blinking and looking cute and straining his face trying to act, lol.