Since the turning of 2012, a widespread pandemic has been taking every media platform by storm.
Remasters. Remakes. Netflix adaptions. RTX. You name it. Every original media now needs a fresh coat of paint. I know I’ve beat the poor horse to death with my “everything is chrome in the future” rhetoric, but the joke keeps making itself, and I can’t help but acknowledge that my exaggeration is slowly becoming truth.
The craze around remakes has been, without a doubt, a ball of snow rolling down a snowy hill.
Every animated film must be remade with real life graphics. Every cartoon needs to be made with real life graphics. Every classic video game needs to be remade with real life graphics. Original ideas? Nonsense. Just rehash what worked before ad infinitum.
What didn’t work? Put a modern spin on it. Except the problem is, most of the time, the modern spin is unimaginative garbage that doesn’t get the depth or the point, so you just end up with some ugly Frankenstein.
Modern consumers cannot appreciate the nuances of the original, typically because it’s old and ugly and problematic. The product must be dumbed down so that it holds the hand of the viewers through the scary parts. Just like how the parent points at the predatory creatures at the zoo and says, “don’t go near that, it’s dangerous”, modern media guides consumers to point out the obvious poison in a boring black-and-white villain.
Making a remaster is an art in and of itself. You aren’t navigating a maze of chaos, you’re navigating a maze of order. It’s much easier to make a masterpiece than it is to recreate it, yet these people think they have what it takes.
Just get some real actors, spend an enormous sum on VFX, move around some key moments and dialogues, all while half-assing anything new just to avoid plagiarism. Butcher important character traits for the sake of being safe. Modernity is ephemeral in the face of posterity.
Avatar – The Last… Straw
Moving on… Avatar: The Last Airbender has recently garnered attention with its Netflix adaption.
It seems obvious to me: if you like the original, you’d watch the original. If you dislike something about the original, then a remake is going to do far more harm than good. But no. We must have an adaption of it. We must undo the problematic aspects, forget the nuances, and then we have to make it realistic because reasons.
Just… why? Why is there supply? Where is the demand coming from? The desire to have an original piece decimated in favor of graphics and a more ludicrous take is so odd to me. Such behavior needs to be studied.
The worst part is when I see people critiquing Netflix's avatar, they speak in such a solicitous manner, as if they are saying "this is how you need to improve", "this is what should be done in the next season".
The problem here is that big studios don’t listen. Not only that, these are (supposedly) professional scriptwriters that (supposedly) naturally became part of the film industry through expertise… supposedly.
I see discussions around the internet of people tightly gripping the crosses on their necklaces in hopes an unreachable baby doesn’t stumble unto the busy highway, and I’m left wondering what they expect will happen. How about this: if you have a fear that the studio is going to monumentally fuck up (especially when they’ve already mostly butchered the first season), you should probably realize that such a fear stems from a pattern, and I’m not just talking about M. Night Shyamalan’s dreadful attempt to modernize ATLA either.
You’re putting faith in an idiot that you know is going to screw up, but you keep having faith because you’re in too deep for some unknown reason, even though it has and will let you down again and again. Many would call this an abusive relationship. If you had just stopped this the moment it revealed itself, we’d all be fine right now.
Season 1 has already been ruined with bad writing and dialogue. As usual, the show's quality suffered because the writers believed that modern audiences cannot read between the lines and require hand-holding. Yet people point out these criticisms and say “here’s hoping this changes in season 2!”
Here’s a question for those that are hopeful: Do you wait around for your alcoholic partner in hopes the drunken tirades gets better? Do you perpetually fool yourself into thinking the light at the end of the tunnel will come eventually? You do not.
They had a $120 million budget. They had all the time in the world to conjure up ideas before proposing this idea to executives. They couldn’t get the first season right. Logically, there is no point rooting for it anymore. They’ve ruined the very thing that could justify it being a remake, and now it is set in stone. “Oh, maybe they’ll have better so-and-so in the next season”. Who cares about the next season? They butchered the first!
