What is the Deal with Hollywood - Movie Remakes

Is Hollywood only capable of rehashing old stories or should I say previously made movies. Yes I believe some movies can be remade and maybe they will be better but at some point the Movie Big Wigs need to give their collective heads a shake and start hiring writers that can come up with original ideas. It is not that every movie is a remake but it is surprising how many movies are remakes. So I figured over the next couple of weeks or more I would look at the movies in my collection as well as some of the movies I have seen lately. seems that the choices that are made as to which movies

From my collection we have The Manchurian Candidate which was a originally made in 1962 with Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Harvey as Sgt Raymond Shaw. The premise is Raymond Shaw is a war hero from Korea whose Father has political aspirations and will use his son the hero to further those aspirations. Frank Sinatra plays his former commanding officer Ben Marco, from Korea who is experiencing nightmares about their time in Korea. As the story develops we see that Raymond Shaw is not what he seems and the nightmares that Ben Marco is experiencing maybe the key.

The remake made in 2004 started Denzel Washington on the role of Ben Marco and Liev Schreiber as Raymond Shaw. Sam premise except this time the army unit was in Kuwalt. The Raymond Shaw character is the one with political aspirations or should I say it is his Mother who is pulling the strings. As in the original there is an underlying conspiracy which follows a develops as Raymond Shaw gets closer to the White House.

If you haven’t seen the movie and do not want to spoil it do not highlight below.

The Name of the original movie is taken from the fact that the army unit in which the title characters served was captured by the Chinese and brainwashed with Raymond Shaw to be used as a weapon to kill so that the Chinese could control who got into the White House. In the remake it was a corporation Manchurian Global which had brainwashed the unit and Raymond Shaw was to be the next president of the United States, a dream come true for any corporation to control the White House.

Which is better? Well I enjoyed the story of both I especially liked the original story as well as the acting of both Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Harvey. The buildup was believable and the ending made sense. In the remake their were too many wild angles which just seemed too far fetched and took away from the central premise. The ending was predictable and was not well developed. While I like Denzel Washington I did not think he was at full capacity in this role.

In this case the original was better than the remake.