Tony Scott to Make “The Warriors” Lame

This is an aside titled 'Tony Scott to Make “The Warriors” Lame' dated 11/29/08

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of watching The Warriors. It’s wonderful. It’s also being remade by Tony Scott. This is like assigning Eli Roth a remake of Susperia. Was Guy Richie unavailable? (Oh, right, he’s off ruining Sherlock Holmes.) “You’ll still get the same story, but we’re reconstructing the family, reconstructing the characters, and I’m doing it in L.A. The original was in New York and everything went upwards; L.A. goes [length-wise]. And instead of 30 gang members, there’s going to be 3,000 or 5,000,” he said. Fond of humorless screenwriting and MTV-effects and editing (at least, how a septuagenarian imagines it to be,) Scott is the world’s worst director. Look, I don’t have a problem with remaking films. Not even this one (the significance of the post-racial 1979 casting is less bold, but the change in location could be interesting.) I have a problem with cool concepts and cool screenplays landing in the hands of unsuitable directors. Who else could make the life Domino Harvey boring — and with Keira Knightley to play her! There are so many inventive major directors working today (Tim Burton, Michel Gondry, Terry Gilliam, Alex Proyas, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, etc) and plenty of people who would like to make visually interesting movies. So why assign a film with a core strength in its visuals to someone without that sense?

Posted by Joanne on Nov. 29, 2008

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