What's Wrong With Remakes?

Hollywood is in the throes of remake fever. So far this year, we've seen the release of Clash of the Titans, The A-Team, The Karate Kid, and Robin Hood. Other remakes on deck or rumored to be in the works include Red Dawn, Footloose, Private Benjamin, Conan the Barbarian, Police Academy, Romancing the Stone, Slap Shot, Arthur, The Birds, National Lampoon's Vacation, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Total Recall.

The American film industry is slated to release about 75 remakes in 2010, and while that number is unusually high, remakes are nothing new in Hollywood. Some are outstanding films-Cape Fear (1991), for example. And some are painfully bad-such as Planet of the Apes (2001).

Moviegoers love to bemoan remakes-never as good as the original, they say-but they still turn out in droves to see them. Take Steven Spielberg's 2005 adaptation of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds-the Tom Cruise-starrer earned $592 million worldwide. The 2007 Will Smith film I Am Legend-a remake of the 1971 Charlton Heston-starrer The Omega Man-took in $583 million. Tim Burton's 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp-a remake of the 1971 Gene Wilder film-made $475 million.

We've seen many other remakes in recent years-King Kong (2005), Bewitched (2005), Miami Vice (2006), The Pink Panther (2006)-the list goes on and on.

So why does Bollywood get such a bad rap for remaking Hollywood films when Hollywood is guilty of the same thing? Is it because Bollywood is raiding another country's cinema for story ideas? Stop right there, because Hollywood has a long tradition of pilfering European cinema, particularly French, and no one raises any eyebrows about it.

Hollywood remakes of French films include Three Men and a Baby (Trois Hommes Et Un Couffin), 12 Monkeys (La Jetée), True Lies (La Totale), The Birdcage (La Cage Aux Folles), and Down and Out in Beverly Hills (Boudu Saved from Drowning). The 2001 film Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise, is a remake of the Spanish film Abre Los Ojos. The 2009 film Brothers, with Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal, is a remake of a Danish film by the same name. The 1960 film The Magnificent Seven is a remake of the 1954 Japanese film The Seven Samurai (and some people have the gall to call the 1975 Bollywood classic Sholay a rip-off of The Magnificent Seven when it's a rip-off itself!).

Hollywood doesn't stop at borrowing from its own and others' films. It helps itself to Broadway musicals-West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Chicago (2002), Phantom of the Opera (2004), The Producers (2005)-as well as books-from Gone with the Wind (1939) to the James Bond series to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact, more than 1,250 novels, short stories, and plays have been made into feature films in the U.S. since 1980 alone. Other notables include Out of Africa (1985), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Age of Innocence (1993), Great Expectations (1998), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Beowulf (2007), and Alice in Wonderland (2010).

So why then is Bollywood castigated for turning Hollywood's Hitch (2005) into Partner (2007), Memento (2000) into Ghajini (2005), and Bruce Almighty (2003) into God Tussi Great Ho (2008)? Western critics and journalists hurl insults like "copycat" and "knock-off" at the Hindi film industry when no sees anything wrong with Hollywood doing it.