Remakes - hit-and-miss affairs

What exactly drives a filmmaker to do a remake of a famous movie? Some may see a remake as an easy way to do a film - take the ideas/screenplay from an established classic, add a few frills here and there, and, hey presto, you have an extra point on your resume. Or it could be a homage to a movie that had influenced the filmmaker when he was cutting his teeth in the business. Or it could be a genuine attempt to update a path-breaking film and make it more relevant for modern-day audiences.
Whatever be the motivation behind a remake, there is no predicting how they will fare at the box office. Some of them can become big successes in their own right while others will disappear under an avalanche of hostile criticism. A recent example of how a remake can go totally wrong is illustrated by the case of the ill-fated Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. Varma tried to remake the most beloved of India's movies, the evergreen "curry Western" Sholay (1975), and it ended up as the biggest flop of the year. Audiences seemed to actually resent the fact that Varma would dare to "reinterpret" a perennial Indian favourite. Aag may have been an ineffective film but, amidst the catcalls, it was forgotten that even Hollywood regularly updates their own classics.
Alfred Hitchcock's horror benchmark, Psycho (1960), was faithfully remade almost frame by frame by Gus Van Sant in 1998; the only difference being that the remake was in colour and, of course, had contemporary actors. On its own, the new Psycho seemed to be a perfectly adequate film but when it is compared to the original, there were no fresh ideas and so it was immediately derided as a waste of time and money. What was forgotten was that a much younger audience was exposed to a classic this way and it could be argued that at least some of the newer moviegoers would seek out the older movie to find out how good it was. Last year's release of the cult Amitabh classic Don, in the Indian context, probably had the same effect. It is very much like remixing a vintage song for a younger audience - while the newer generation will definitely prefer the updated version, it does give them a context and an incentive to check out the original.
But some remakes do stand up well in their own right - a good example is Martin Scorcese's 1991 version of Cape Fear. It was far bloodier and over the top compared to the critically-acclaimed 1962 original, but thanks to Robert De Niro's scenery-chewing performance as the villain, the Scorcese thriller garnered a lot of positive headlines. A similiar success was Peter Jackson's 2005 version of King Kong. Jackson was paying homage to the 1933 movie of the giant ape which was a childhood favourite of his, and with the many advantages that modern-day technology offered him, was able to make a film that was arguably way better than the original.
Some other slick recent treatments of old classics that are worth mentioning here are The Italian Job, The Manchurian Candidate, and The Thomas Crown Affair. It could even be argued that the 1999 update of The Thomas Crown Affair was at least as good as the 1968 orginal which starred uber-cool superstar Steve McQueen in his prime.
But some Hollywood remakes are truly awful and pointless. The 2004 update of Stepford Wives , for instance, took away the brilliant twisted ending of the 1975 original and made the climax totally farcical.
There are, thus, no hard and fast templates for how a remake should be. Some filmmakers treat the original material intelligently and so they stand a better chance of making a name in their own right. (The remake of Ocean's 11 has been so successful that it has been spun off into a franchise of its own with the predictable sequels popping up in theatres every year or so). Those who try to copy the seminal product slavishly end up having their updated versions critically destroyed.
It is interesting, however, to note how so few of Hitchcock's classics have been remade so far; it is almost as if modern-day filmmakers have admitted to themselves that it is impossible to successfully attempt a reinterpretation of a Hitchcock standard.