Modernized Stories and Hercules in New York (1969)

Cinema in this day and age (specifically the Hollywood bred section) is fixated on the idea of modernization.  Through the movies that are made based on toys, comics, books, and games of generations past, the film landscape is turning into a modern interpretation of the past.  Remakes, reboots, and new adaptations of old material have helped to build the movie world that currently exists.  When looking at it from a point of corporate greed, the argument can be made that using familiar material is going to help sell seats in the theater or copies on home video.  From the point of view of artistry, it can be quite an interesting experiment to find a new, interesting way to tell old material.  Each of these outlooks are valid in their own way.

The greed of Hollywood executives is something that I believe I have touched upon in previous posts.  The point of producing movies in Hollywood is to make money.  A lot of money is put into many of the big movies that get released in a given year.  Transformers, The Lone Ranger, The Avengers… Each of these movies had a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  That’s a lot of money.  You’ll also notice that these three films are based upon known products.  Transformers was based upon a line of toys and an animated television series for children.  It was updated to a modern (2006) world with modern looking robots and modern looking vehicles.  The Lone Ranger was originally an old radio serial that was brought to the audience through the use of a modern looking period piece.  The Avengers is a modern set story about characters that were created throughout the 20^th century in comic book form.  Each movie is a big budget film adaptation of an established source.

Established sources are a good way for studios and producers to earn money upon their investments.  They don’t want to invest in an unknown property when they could bring a recognizable name to the movie.  There will be more interest generated among the general viewing audience if they recognize the title of the movie that a studio is releasing.  If they have a good history with the previous iteration of the property, the studio is hoping they will want to see the current version.  This is not always the case.  Sometimes, as in the case of the recent Robocop remake, the studio strikes a negative chord with the potential audience.  The people who have an attachment to the original are against a remake of material that they love.  They know that the studio is playing upon the nostalgia that they have and they feel betrayal because of it.  They expect the worst.  However, there is still some curiosity within them that will likely eventually get them to seek out the film.  In the end, the studio still manages to get the audience that they desire, though not in the way they desire.

The other side of modernizing films is to find new ways in which to tell a story that has already been told.  In this scenario, the movie is not being made to profit upon an established product or known name.  Instead, a story is being reworked and readapted into a different setting in order to tell it in a new way.  The people behind the movie are trying to make a refreshing update of stale material.  Movies like West Side Story and Warm Bodies have new ways of telling Shakespeare’s classic romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet.  West Side Story takes the story and plants it in the New York teenage gang scenery of the 50s.  Warm Bodies takes the same tale of teenage romance and puts a comedic zombie spin on it.  The changes in scenery help to give a sense of newness to material that has undoubtedly been performed thousands of times.  It helps to reduce a feeling of sameness that the material may end up having.

Another way to modernize stale material is to make a sequel set in a modern day environment.  It’s a way to bypass the story while still capitalizing upon the characters and situations that they were a part of.  One such instance of this, and the one that sparked the whole modernization idea for the post, was Hercules in New York.  In 1969, Hollywood decided to take one of the most popular strong-men in the world and use him in a movie.  That man was Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The idea of the movie would be that Hercules got banished from Olympus and ended up in 1960s New York City.  He must experience life among the mortals and avoid the dangers of the mob.  He has already gone through all of the challenges that we know he faced, and now he faces the modern world.

Going about making a sequel like Hercules in New York can be a difficult thing to do.  There is an assumption that the viewers will know the events that preceded the movie.  There also needs to be care for the part of the audience that does not know the assumed back story.  The story needs to stand on its own while also building upon any previous lore pertaining to the characters.  It’s basically what a normal sequel needs, except it’s not a direct follow-up to the previous story.  Looking at Hercules in New York, you can see that all of this exists.  The problem is not within the creation of the story, but rather the execution.  The acting in the movie only weakens what was already a shaky script.  The action is shown in a way that makes it more ridiculous than good.  And the direction leaves a lot to be desired.  It’s tough to make a sequel of this sort work.  Hercules in New York does not pull it off.

No matter whether or not modernizations of familiar tales are successful or not, they are always interesting.  Movies that have a new spin on them can make unoriginal material feel like something that hasn’t been covered before.  The different methods taken to make stories feel new again can be a perfect example of originality being within the people who make movies rather than the stories themselves.  It’s easy to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into giving this sort of original feeling, and it’s something that I’m grateful for in movies every day.  If it weren’t for that skill, the movie landscape would be a bleak and barren place.  As it is, movies are still flourishing and providing entertainment for people around the world.  If that isn’t a good thing, then what is?

There are a few notes to make before you stop reading:

• I’ve previously covered retold stories in the post for April Fools.
• The idea of originality coming from how a story is told was originally written about in the post for Jonah: A Veggietales Movie.
• If you have any suggestions for future movies to cover, you can leave them in the comments, or tell me on Twitter.  Don’t be afraid to suggest a bad movie.  I’ll watch pretty much anything.